Letters: VOTER ID UNDERMINES TRUST, COMMUNITY

Posted: April 06, 2012

TO CHRIS Vicente:

I am one of the idiots, as described in your letter, who is opposed to the voter ID bill.

You should change your mind and join in opposing the bill because it undermines our sense of trust and community.

When registered voters complete their ballot, they are fulfilling their communal obligation to participate directly in the process of government. When they sign their name in the voter registry, they are affirming that they are exercising their rights as a community member and stepping up to the responsibilities that are entrusted to them as such.

Voter ID turns this solemn act of trust and community into a mundane transaction. It equates voting with all the other routine commercial activities that subject us to identification, including those outlined by your fellow letter writer Kyran Connelly: buying booze, or cigarettes, or a gun; driving a car, playing golf; and so on.

It is an affront to every voter that we will now all be subjected to a process of identification as if we were standing in a security line at the airport. And we will all be considered objects of suspicion unless we can produce the required ID.

I plan to leave my ID at home in protest and ask to be identified the old fashioned way.

Chris, I hope you will plan to do the same.

Glenn Kutler

Philadelphia

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