Missouri GOP Wants To Keep Voter ID Policy But Not Pay To Tell People About It

[briv1016]

Source: Huffington Post

When Missouri voters approved a voter ID measure last year, lawmakers in the state promised to pay for costs associated with implementing the policy and educating residents about it. Now that they’re faced with a budget shortfall, however, Republicans are looking for ways to curb such spending.

Republicans in Missouri championed voter ID law for years before voters approved a ballot measure to require people to display identification at the polls. The measure came with the caveat that the state would provide free identification and documentation to anyone who needed it. Several other states with voter ID laws have made similar promises.

Democrat Jason Kander, who was serving as Missouri’s secretary of state at the time, estimated last year that implementing the policy and educating people about it would cost $5.2 million. The law went into effect on Jan. 1.

Kander told The Huffington Post that he shared that figure with his successor, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (R), and that Ashcroft didn’t raise any objections. But Ashcroft drastically cut his funding request for the law to $1.4 million as state lawmakers debated how to fill a budget shortfall of $456 million. Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (R) requested just $300,000 for it.

Ashcroft has said he plans to save money by cutting television ads and direct mailings to registered voters in the state, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. He has chosen to rely on personal interactions with voters and partnerships with community groups.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/missouri-voter-id_us_58deaccae4b0b3918c834456?kb&

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So it begins. Keep an eye out for a 50 state voter ID bill sometime mid next year.

[ck4829]

1. Oh really

[iluvtennis]

2. Pathetic. #Resist

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Double whammy. . . . nt

[Crash2Parties]

4. Been saying for months...they'll fine tune their gaming of the system for 2018 & will steal it, too.

[salin]

5. K & R

Need to get this onto the greatest page for a longer time span of visibility.

[lastlib]

6. One more step toward abolishing voting altogether!

[Elwood P Dowd]

7. Will the courts allow that to stand? (nm)

[BigOleDummy]

8. We have to find a way .....

... to get some kind of re-districting. The right has so tilted the voting playing fields that is hard to dislodge them. So they burrow in deeper and deeper until its impossible to lance the boil on our body politic they are.

That early scene in Taxi Driver keeps coming to me .." someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets". Pray for rain people.... and soon.

[Honeycombe8]

9. Depends on how complicated it is. The NEWS organizations should be covering this....

including telling people what they need to do. Unless it's so complicated that the govt should spell it out.

We in TX changed to photo ID, but the govt didn't inform the public about it, I think. Except that it was on the elections website. But the news covered it. I don't think there was any problem with that, no mass confusion or people who didn't know, that I heard of.

[Bengus81]

10. And their voters vote for CON ARTISTS Republicans in Missouri....

just like they do here in Kansas. Oh...things will all be so wonderful if you keep those liberals out of office. That sounds like the same kind of "money" CON JOB run on them just like Republican idiot Sam Brownback has done here in Kansas.

We're going to run a shortfall of close to a BILLION by 2018,NOW the Republican lawmakers in Kansas want to NAIL low income and middle class with a tax hike of about 2.5% while the rich get to pay an additional .4%. That's on top of TWO sales tax hikes trying to keep the plates spinning on his ZERO % income tax rate for Corporations/LLC's/rental owners.

Sound FUCKING familiar??