Voting Rights Section Chief John Tanner

This is John Tanner, the Department of Justice Voting Rights Chief, talking to a Latino citizens group. He argues that minorities won't be hurt by voter ID rules because they die before they get old, unlike white people.

I don't know which is worse--the way he just says this casually, or the fact that it's actually true, due to horrible inequities in income and access to health care in the U.S.

Posted by Gwen Monday, October 29, 2007 at 2:47 PM Labels: , ,  

2 comments:

  Anonymous

October 29, 2007 at 11:54 PM

I totally don't get this. What is his point exactly? Aside from the fact that minorities don't get old?

  Gwen

October 31, 2007 at 7:50 AM

He's there talking about the proposal to require all voters to show a state-issued photo ID in order to vote. Activists have pointed out that the elderly, particularly if they're poor, might have trouble meeting this since they may not drive and may not have anyone to take them to the DMV to get an ID since they don't really need one. And b/c minorities are more likely to be poor, there were concerns that elderly non-white voters would be particularly hurt by this.

So Tanner's response is "Don't worry about it! Minorities don't get old, they just die, so this policy won't keep them from voting!"

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