Chains! These are chains!

I was pretty angry driving home from work today. It wasn't the hour long commute, though that usually gets me a little worked up, especially when I fail to make the turn onto the parkway and wander aimlessly through southeast DC.

Rather, it was listening to congressmen on the radio baldly assault the underpinnings of American democracy. I'm referring to the current rash of voter identification laws, the most recent of which is the Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006. I'll quote Peter Kirsanow of the National Review for the meat of the act's provisions:

The Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006 requires that by the 2008 presidential election all voters in federal elections must present a valid, current photo ID issued by a government agency. By the 2010 midterms, the photo ID must document the voter’s U.S. citizenship.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the IDs would cost about $10 each. The act requires that states reimburse the cost of the ID to any voter who attests that he can’t pay for an ID.

Mr. Kirsanow speaks for many of the act's supporters when he touts the prospective advantages of the act in eliminating fradulent voters (wherever they may be) in exchange for what he presents as a nominal fee:

A one-time fee of $10 dollars doesn’t present the same barrier to voting as the poll taxes of the past, especially when the act would provide valid IDs to the poor free of charge.

I concede; Mr. Kirsanow and supporters of the act are correct in that $10 is a relatively nominal fee, and does not present the same sort of systematic disenfranchisement that poll taxes on African Americans created in the post-Civil War south. What enrages me is that Mr. Kirsanow and the act's supporters think that it is acceptable to impose any sort of fee on my ability to exercise my vote. It's not enough that Election Day isn't a national holiday. It isn't enough that thanks to the Electoral college, my vote has little or no impact on the overall outcome of presidential elections. It isn't enough that I am denied voting representation in Congress by virtue of my residence in the District of Columbia, but that I must be dunned $10 at the door by a pack of tipstaffs. Viewed in terms of an economic analysis, my vote is next to worthless. Because the outcome will likely be the same whether I vote or no, I receive more utility on Election Day by performing almost any other activity, from going to the dentist to washing my laundry. The vote is the one day of the year that our elected officials receive feedback from voters that they have no choice but to listen to. It tells them how disaffected the populace is, and how many of them are willing to do something about it. It is not a service that government provides to the people. Rather, we provide them a service by doing voting; if anything, our elected should give me $10. At the least, they should refrain from charging me for my presence, however nominal the fee is. Imposing any fee, even a nominal charge, is an insult to the American traditions of universal suffrage and poisonous to efforts to revive any interest in American democracy. It is not as if the American populace is enthusiastic about voting. Long poll lines are an indication of the antiquated or juvenile nature of our voting system, not of robust citizen participation. In an age where voter turnout, even in presidential election years, hovers around the 50% mark, it is infamous to speak of any monetary barrier, no matter how minimal, attached to the franchise. Let us aside the question of whether sufficient voter fraud occurs at the polls to warrant increased safeguards. Let us have increased security, if you must, but why pursue a course of action that must necessarily decrease voter participation?

It is infamous to seek to attach any additional burden to identification necessary to vote. It smacks of Dickensian grave-robbers rooting through the pockets of a corpse for half-crowns, of an elderly rabble of bawds clutching at my shirt-sleeve, offering to show me behind the tent-flap the withered paps of the Goddess Liberty for a mere $10. It is a slap in the face to those of us who still choose to show ourselves at the polls and do our civic duty through a solemn sense of pride and stubborn faith in the promise of this republic. This vote is mine by virtue of my being born by the grace of God an American, and I resent the grasping reek of the petty bureaucrat I scent in every sentence of the so-called Federal Election Integrity Act. The crack of the lash does not hurt the lion, yet he still resents the hoops the ringmaster forces him through. $10 will not break my bank, but it will be one more petty humiliation to endure in exchange for participation, however small, in American democracy. Some people will choose not to submit themselves to that yoke, and we will all be the poorer for it.