The Patriot Post® · Low Dem Voter Turnout Obviously Is GOP's Fault...

So far this election cycle Democrat voter turnout is about as high as Hillary Clinton’s integrity is deep. Well, that’s not entirely fair — voter turnout can’t be that low. Anyhow, this can only mean one thing: Republicans rigged the system and suppressed voter turnout by implementing voter ID laws. That’s the argument made by Janie Valencia and Alissa Scheller, editors at the “Puffington Host” (thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto). The authors, writing in a piece titled “Fewer Democrats Are Voting This Year In (Surprise!) States With Strict New Voter Laws,” complain that “new voter ID laws seem to be hitting Democrats harder than Republicans.” Admittedly, the statistics are pretty astonishing:

GOP voter turnout in this year’s presidential race is up 62 percent relative to 2008, the last time both parties had open contests. But Democratic voter turnout is down by 29 percent across all the primary and caucus states that have voted so far. In all but two states, fewer Democrats turned out to vote in 2016 than did in 2008. Evidence suggests that new voting restrictions are at least a contributing factor. Eight out of the 16 states that have held primaries or caucuses so far have implemented new voter ID or other restrictive voting laws since 2010. Democratic turnout has dropped 37 percent overall in those eight states, but just 13 percent in the states that didn’t enact new voter restrictions. To put it another way, Democratic voter turnout was 285 percent worse in states with new voter ID laws.

It’s pretty easy to spin these results by claiming ID requirements undermine the Democrat vote (just look at the statistics!). But there’s another theory behind the numbers, and Democrats won’t like it. Radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh hit the nail on the head: “If voter ID laws are to explain for low Democrat turnout, it has to mean that the fraud and cheating has been nipped in the bud. That’s all it can mean. All voter ID laws do is identify the voter and confirm the voter is who he says he is.”

And what’s so unfair about that? “There is no intellectual reason to oppose voter ID laws, when you have to have an ID for virtually everything else,” Limbaugh says. “You can’t get on an airplane, for example. You can’t make a purchase with a credit card. You can’t get a credit card. You can’t do 90% of the things you do, that you need to do to transact business without an official ID in this country.” Those requirements, we can all agree, are important, but even they aren’t as critical as fending off attempts to buy off an election. And really, how hard is it to go to the DMV and procure an ID anyway? Make no mistake: If the GOP wins in November, this hot button issue will be thrust of the forefront of rhetorical brinkmanship. But Democrats will only have themselves — and integrity — to blame.