On needless barriers

Murray Mandryk is right on target in his assessment of the policy merits of the Sask Party's plan for voter ID restrictions. But I fear he's exactly wrong in his take on the Wall government's purpose in floating the proposal:

Admittedly, voter photo identification will be "new" if it happens, but it probably won't happen because it's a dopey idea. That Wall is already saying it might not apply to seniors or anyone else who doesn't have a driver's licence photo ID calls into question why it's needed in the first place. After all, no one seems to be able to find a single case of voter fraud in a Saskatchewan election that makes photo ID necessary.

More likely, it's part of a mildly alarming trend in the Wall government of throwing out a policy that's really about appealing to the party's base, like last year's throne speech call to clamp down on free needles for intravenous drug users. Similarly, this year's photo ID accomplishes little more than soliciting quiet cheers from those who like the notion of making it a little tougher for certain social-economic groups -- including those on reserves and in northern Metis and First Nations communities that sometimes vote in blocks -- to vote.

Now, it's true enough that restricting access to the polls is a fairly standard part of right-wing policy dogma, for the reason noted by Tom Levenson as a counter to the inherently shrinking pool of voters willing to cast ballots based on prejudice:

(T)he one thing the GOP has decided to do as demographics tilt ever more heavily against it is exactly what you’d expect from the Confederate Party. When in doubt, don’t try to expand the tent; instead, restrict the franchise.

But it's important to note the direction of the causation. Voting restrictions aren't thrown out as a policy bone which caters to a right-wing base without having an effect in substance. And indeed the parties pushing such schemes are normally at pains to deny that their intention is to produce the obvious effect of turning away legitimate voters.

But voting restrictions are obviously of political benefit to a party whose electoral prospects are improved by the suppression of minority and marginalized voters. And that, not some great commitment to limiting turnout in principle, is the reason why the right works so hard to turn away real voters based on nonexistent threats of fraud.

So there's little reason to think Wall's choice to talk about a more restrictive voter ID requirement is based on any theory that the policy will be popular, whether with his base or anybody else. Instead, the calculus figures to be that it's worth pushing the restrictions even in the absence of any rational need for change where their incidental effects once implemented happen to favour the Sask Party's political interests. And on that theory, the Sask Party is far more likely to push ahead with trying to bend the rules in its favour no matter how much resistance it faces, rather than listening to even the most reasonable criticisms of the move.