Once again the voters of Massachusetts will not get the chance to decide an important issue. Today Attorney General Martha Coakley has decided she will not allow a ballot question on whether voters should be required to show a photo identification when they vote. It seems she has decided on her own that voter IDs should not be required, instead of giving the voters a chance to decide.
This is not the first time the voters of Massachusetts have been denied their right to due process; the last being when they were denied a chance to vote on legalizing same-sex marriage. The voter ID issue came to the forefront after the 2010 mid-term elections when there were several cases of alleged voter fraud across the state, the most prevalent in the city of Worcester.
According to the AG's office, the reason she is not allowing this ballot question because:
the proposed law would interfere with the freedom of elections not because it would require a government-issued photo identification to vote, but because there is no way for the average Massachusetts citizen to obtain such identification without paying a fee of at least $25. —Extract from AG's decision
This is a lame argument as now residents in the state are required to have photo IDs for everything—from buying cigarettes, alcohol, prescriptions, cashing checks, paying bills, boarding an airline, to even some elementary schools now require students to carry an ID. Certainly the integrity of something as important as the vote should be of the utmost importance. It should be left up to the voters to decide if they want such a law. The proponents of this ballot question are deciding on whether they want to appeal this decision or not.
Once again the one-party state of Massachusetts has shown they don't care what the voters want but continue to further their own interests. The Democrats are the first to claim voter fraud when any election doesn't go their way, it would only make sense for them to support this measure.
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