Great news: UN Human Rights Council to investigate American voter-ID laws

Stop me if you’ve heard this joke before.  A Saudi, a Cuban, and an American political group walks into a room — and the American political group asks them to tell the US to be more fair about its voting practices.  Haven’t heard this one?  You may get a chance to see it in action if you go to Geneva and watch the UN Human Rights Council and the NAACP at work:

The United Nations Human Rights Council is investigating the issue of American election laws at its gathering on minority rights in Geneva, Switzerland.. This, despite the fact that some members of the council have only in the past several years allowed women to vote, and one member, Saudi Arabia, still bars women from the voting booth completely.

Officials from the NAACP are presenting their case against U.S. voter ID laws, arguing to the international diplomats that the requirements disenfranchise voters and suppress the minority vote.

Eight states have passed voter ID laws in the past year, voter ID proposals are pending in 32 states and the Obama administration has recently moved to block South Carolina and Texas from enacting their voter ID measures.

“This really is a tactic that undercuts the growth of your democracy,” said Hillary Shelton, the NAACP’s senior vice president for advocacy, about voter photo ID requirements.

Hey, who would know more about the “growth of democracy” than the member states of the UNHRC?  For instance, Saudi Arabia doesn’t allow women to vote at all.  Cuba and China are one-party dictatorships.  The UNHRC is a monument to the fatuity of moral relativism applied to global democracy; half of the member states should be in the dock of a human-rights tribunal rather than running it.

And this is the NAACP’s model of justice? Appealing to the democratic instincts of China, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia?  That’s the biggest joke.  Or perhaps not, as John Hinderaker points out, citing one of the NAACP’s claims:

“The civil rights group says one, Kemba Smith Pradia, was convicted of a drug-related offense and is concerned that if she moves back to Virginia from the Midwest, state law will block her voting because of her record, even though she was granted clemency by President Bill Clinton.”

So this is the best the NAACP can do: Kemba Smith Pradia lives in the Midwest and has a criminal conviction on her record. Can she vote? Yes, because the state where she lives either doesn’t bar felons from voting, or doesn’t have a voter ID law, so she can vote fraudulently. But she worries that if she should move to Virginia, she will have to present identification. In that event, if Virginia law doesn’t allow felons to vote, she won’t be able to get away with breaking the law! Is that a human rights violation, or what?

Bear in mind that a few of the countries to whom the NAACP is appealing only have allowed women to vote at all in the past few years, and Saudi Arabia doesn’t allow it even now (or women to drive, or to walk by themselves, and so on). Many more of them don’t allow for meaningful political opposition from women or anyone else.

If the NAACP wants to argue against voter ID requirements, they should make their case to American voters, not an international panel of thugs and kleptocrats.  We are a self-governing nation, not a fiefdom of the UN — and thank the Lord for that.  The NAACP wants to make its arguments to some of the most oppressive states in the world because (a) the NAACP knows it has a losing case here in the US, and (b) they just want to embarrass Americans into knuckling under to their demands, mainly because their screeches of “raaaaaaaacism” have lost all their impact here at home.  They believe that international scorn from dictators like the Castro brothers will enhance their efforts to oppose voter ID laws, which only proves that the NAACP has a serious disconnect from reality.

Michael Ramirez points out the absurdity in the opposition to laws that require proof of identity before casting votes:

I’ll make the NAACP a deal: when the federal government stops requiring me to produce government-issued identification to purchase firearms — a right explicitly guaranteed in the Constitution — then I’ll stop supporting state requirements to produce government-issued identification at the polling place.

Also, be sure to check out Ramirez’ terrific collection of his works: Everyone Has the Right to My Opinion, which covers the entire breadth of Ramirez’ career, and it gives fascinating look at political history.  Read my review here, and watch my interviews with Ramirez here and here.  And don’t forget to check out the entire Investors.com site, which has now incorporated all of the former IBD Editorials, while individual investors still exist.

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