John Fund has a column in today’s Wall Street Journal about how some Democrats are alleging voter suppression at the merest hint of efforts to reform voting such as requiring a voter ID or using electronic vote machines.

The Voting Rights Act, whose 40th anniversary we celebrate this month, has helped minorities elect 81 sitting members of Congress and thousands of local officials. But the rally civil rights groups held in Atlanta earlier this month to push for extension of the act’s key temporary provisions downplayed those gains and instead pushed wild claims that some state laws requiring an ID to vote are the functional equivalent of Jim Crow poll taxes.

Both Judge Greg Mathis, the star of a syndicated courtroom TV show, and California Rep. Barbara Lee claimed that the last two presidential elections had been “stolen.” Judge Mathis told the rally Republican leaders “need to be locked up because they’re all criminals and thieves.” Other speakers claimed Georgia’s new photo ID law would suppress poor and elderly minority voters who might lack such a document. When the bill passed the Georgia House in March, black legislators sang slave songs and one even slammed a prisoner’s shackles on the desk of the sponsor.

Juan Williams, a National Public Radio correspondent and author of “Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years,” is “stunned” by such vituperation. He told Fox News that it is “reacting to devils that have been slain 40 years ago.” He says that “in service to having no fraud elections, I think you could say to people, go and get a legitimate ID. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

These allegations are terrible things. Voter fraud hurts legitimate voters by diluting their votes. A simple requirement to show voter ID does not strike most reasonable people as an excessive infringement on their right to vote. As Andrew Young points out later in his article, you need an ID to cash a check or rent a video. Showing one to vote is not intimidation. It demeans the people who for almost a hundred years since the 15th Amendment were truly denied the right to vote by violence and laws designed to keep blacks from voting.

The ironic thing is that this hyperbole may achieve the opposite effect of suppressing minority votes. If people start believing this propaganda about how hard and intimidating it is to vote, they may just decide to stay home. They should work on positive steps to increase people’s likelihood of voting. Make sure that everyone has a photo ID. Arrange vans to take them to the polling places. Educate them on filling out a ballot. But don’t go resurrecting some of the worst moments of our nation’s voting history and try to convince people that showing a photo ID is akin to Jim Crow or slavery. That is shameful demagoguery and truly detracts from any legitimate complaint they might have about voting procedures.

UPDATE: a reader wrote me to say that Puerto Rico has an extensive Voter ID program with special picture IDs required to vote. If they can do it, why should people get upset about Georgia requiring some sort of photo ID.

UPDATE II: Musing Mindshas up the transcript from Juan Williams’ appearance on Bill O’Reilly and Williams’ remarks about the Civil Rights Act and photo ID’s.

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