How to prevent all that voter fraud that isn't taking place

There's an easy way to deal with the Republicans' claim that they need harsh voter ID laws to prevent the widespread voter fraud they've spent a decade looking for with no results: adopt India's biometric ID database program. If India has the technology, the infrastructure, and the money to do it, surely the USA does.

Using people's unique retinal pattern trumps photo IDs by a long shot. And there's no ID card needed--just show up with your eyes in their sockets. You can use photo IDs for the few that lack eyes.

You can automatically register everyone to vote who's elegible to vote--just enter them as "undeclared" unless they take a further step voluntarily and join a political party.

No muss, no fuss. The Republicans get the positive voter identification they say is required "for the integrity of the system" though, wink wink, we all know what they really want.

And the Democrats have all their complaints answered about difficulty of registering and money/time required to get a photo ID. India is doing it sending workers out into the communities to ID everyone.

As a plus, it makes it really, really hard for illegals to cheat the system and use fake IDs to work. Another plus for Republicans.

So why isn't the Republican party demanding this? It would cost far less than the bureaucracies they're building state by state.

Oh yeah. Adopting a universal biometric ID database would defeat their real goal: to win elections by hook or by crook.

That's why.

EDIT ADD: I just read an article about this in The Economist. You can see it here. You need to register but it's free.

The comment thread for this article had lots of comments by American Republicans justifying the GOP's voter suppression program and villifying the Democrats, accusing them of whining about the GOP preventing their massive conspiracy to commit vote fraud.

Here's what I couldn't figure out: do they really believe their malarkey? Are they so far gone into their alternate-universe haze that they believe, absent any actual evidence, that the Democrats are the fraudsters and not their own party carrying on the century-long fine old Southern White tradition of preventing blacks from voting? Or do they want to win so badly that they believe their party's immoral behavior is justified by the end: getting the Negro out of office.

That's it, isn't it? The bone in their throat. The bone that the Southern Republicans are fully aware of, but that other Republicans probably only "feel" in an unverbalized sort of way--just a general revulsion at Barack Hussein Obama's Otherness--his name, his skin color, his international upbringing, his non-Fundamentalist values...even his slightly Black speech patterns (probably acquired as an adult, given his having grown up outside any Black community). And of course his old pastor, Rev. Wright, whose grievances at the White America of his youth are completely dismissed as having any validity--as if America never wronged Blacks. As if he should have instantly forgotten it all the instant the Supreme Court banned school segregation (which persisted unchanged for over a decade after the first ruling, mind you).

Today's racism takes the form of denial of racism and vilification of anyone who dares mention it. I know, liberals have played the race card about everything under the sun--most egregiously about illegal immigration. Truth is, both sides play the race card constantly, each in their own vile way. Doesn't mean it ain't there.

The latest evidence: turns out Wells Fargo Bank and other big banks charged black home buyers higher rates than white buyers with identical credit ratings.

But no racism here, bro.

What's a racist?

Racism, as a political baseball bat, has been wildly misused by both sides. Lefties are way too quick to cry racism when the answer is more complicated and long before actual racism can actually be proven. But Righties are way to quick to get on their high horse about charges of racism, acting as if public opinion must conform to the strictest rules of a court of law, otherwise it's absolute proof that no racism was involved.

Even in a court of law, being acquitted is not the same as being proven innocent, just as being found guilty is, unfortunately, not always the same a being proven guilty.

Thus in the Zimmerman/Trayvon case, the fact that Zimmerman has black defenders doesn't prove that race didn't play into his motives. Racists often make exceptions for personal relationships.

And in fact I'm far less concerned with whether Zimmerman was racist or not as with whether the cops who tested Trayvon's body for drugs but not Zimmerman were racist. Or the police chief who closed a case that was hardly open and shut. And the police department that obliterated nearly all the evidence that would be required to prosecute Zimmerman.

As for refusing to arrest him--well, Zimmerman is apparently free to do as he pleases. He was previously arrested for domestic violence, resisting an officer without violence and than resisting an officer with violence (a felony). Yet mysteriously all three charges were dropped. BTW Zimmerman's father is a retired local judge who has loudly defended his son in this case, accusing all who call for his arrest as being full of racial hatred (against whites). 

My own guess is that Zimmerman might have followed a white or Hispanic teen in a hoodie in "his" neighborhood--but his numerous calls to the cops in the months preceding this incident, along with other details of his history, shows that Zimmerman is a type of person most cops recognize--the wannabe cop who gets carried away with his fantasy about being a cop, with a cop's importance and authority, when in fact he isn't one.

And whether Trayvon attacked the man who was following him with no authority (like a badge) to justify doing so is only relevant if you think Florida's "stand your ground" law doesn't apply to blacks. That law works both ways unless it's applied as a tool of racism. So either it isn't--and Trayvon was right to jump his stalker--or it is racist, in which case a very ugly reality of Southern culture is shown to have not suddenly disappeared in 1970 or thereabouts.

So I don't think Zimmerman was a down and out racist, but more likely a wannabe cop who was at least a bit racist (using racial profiling). Neighborhood watch people are suppose to watch--hence the name--and not to be armed. To call the cops, not to imitate cops.

I also think it's possible that Trayvon did jump him, which I'd disapprove of, but which does appear to be justified by these "stand your ground" laws that every police dept. I know of oppose strongly, and which thugs have been using to escape prosecution for murders. All so elderly, fearful, angry old Southern white men can feel more virile--if they could be honest with themselves and with the rest of us.