Editorial: Zombie voter ID bill from a party that's lost its pride : Stltoday

Editorial: Zombie voter ID bill from a party that's lost its pride : Stltoday

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This year, subtle House Elections Committee Chairman Sue Entlicher, R-Bolivar, scheduled a Jan. 29 hearing on the voter ID bill for 6:45 a.m. Since the Capitol building doesn’t open until 7 a.m., this would have kept the crowds down nicely.

Ms. Entlicher relented under criticism and held the hearing at 8 a.m. Last week, after another sneaky committee meeting just off the House floor, the committee sent the bill to the floor on an 8-4 party-line vote.
If passed, the law would become effective only if voters in 2014 approved a constitutional amendment allowing the Legislature to enact voter ID laws. Mr. Nixon could veto it before then, but Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

Surely Mr. Nixon would be able to peel off a few votes from Republicans who still have enough pride and honor not to want to steal elections.

Because the fact is that it wasn’t so long ago that Missouri Republicans actually wanted to see more people voting, not fewer. U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, when he was Missouri’s secretary of state from 1985 to 1993, actually experimented with voting by mail. In his first year as secretary of state in 2001, Mr. Blunt’s son, Matt Blunt, proposed a package of reform measures, including an early voting period.