This one is for Mike.
He is a Houston reader who shot me an email after my recent column equating the GOP push for voter ID laws with voter suppression. I agreed with Attorney General Eric Holder, who called that a modern-day poll tax. Mike did not.
“You have to have an ID to write a check,” he wrote, “use a credit card and most other things in life. Saying poor blacks cannot easily get IDs is ridiculous. … Comparing this to the poll tax? C’mon, be serious.”
Actually, I am. Not that I don’t get why Mike’s argument sounds reasonable to Mike — and to many others who made it. But let us consider it more closely.
First off, I’ve never made the claim Mike attributes to me, i.e., that poor blacks cannot get IDs. No, my point is that when you don’t have a checking account, a credit card or a car, it is less likely you will already have ID.