The United States of America has a ramshackle, insecure, voter registration system.

In 43 out of 50 states, you don’t need photo ID. Proof of identity? Proof of citizenship? It’s a joke.

It’s good to know that more attention is being paid to this issue. For example, Representative Tom Tancredo has introduced his Voter Integrity Protection Act (VIP) which would hold back highway funds from states which don’t require voters to prove they are citizens. It includes free photo IDs to those who need them to forestall charges of VIP being a poll tax.

As I’ve written before, we could improve our voter registration system by copying Mexico’s system .

Here in Mexico, voters have a government-supplied voter ID with photo. When a voter arrives to the polling station, his voter ID is checked against a book which contains photos of all the voters in the precinct. It’s a good system and I’ve personally observed it in action.

Yet, when Americans call for photo ID, cries of “discrimination” follow.

Democratic Arizona congressman Raul Grijalva doesn’t want voter ID reform because he thinks it’s a Republican plot.

Quoth Grijalva:
"The (Republican) leadership of this Congress wants to maintain its majority. So the objective to me appears to be to begin to erect obstacles to voting by affixing a solution to a nonexistent problem by deeply dividing this nation with fear and hysteria."

Grijalva says a secure voter ID would be an obstacle to voting. What is he worried about?

Why would anybody object to a more secure voting system - unless he knew that illegal aliens were voting for his party and he wanted that to continue ?

Let’s copy Mexico’s voter registration system. Why does Grijalva object to that? Is he anti-Mexican ?

Allan Wall (allan39@prodigy.net.mx) recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq and currently resides (legally) in Mexico. This article was originally published at VDARE.COM
(http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2006/08/05/why-doesnt-raul-grijalva-want-secure-voter-id/ ) .