A slate of leftist politicians and an organizer of the “No” campaign got together and signed off on a lengthy diatribe published in the Edmonton Journal claiming the referendum questions facing Albertans this fall are meant to divide Albertans. Then they descended into typical tropes, including the usual claims of racism.

Rachel Notley, Cathy Heron, Don Iveson, Barry Morishita, Karina Pillay, Craig Snodgrass, Chris Spearman, and Avnish Nanda offered unity in misdirection in saying the question regarding identification requirements in voting, “has troubling echoes of the American far right’s campaign in the 1960s to keep Black voters from casting ballots.”

Identification and citizenship requirements for voting are standard in developed countries around the world and have nothing to do with race. The only reason a person would oppose identification requirements would be in hopes of cheating the system somehow.

Voting in Alberta is already limited to citizens. The question does not take the vote away from citizens because they are Black, immigrant, or naturalized. It asks for proof of the status the law already requires. This is not racist or unreasonable.

A rule that applies to every voter, regardless of race, is not the same as a system designed to stop one racial group from voting. Conflating the two cheapens real history and dodges the actual question: should only citizens vote, and should that be checked?

Let’s not pretend it’s difficult to attain or present identification in today’s world. There are numerous options and plenty of opportunities to obtain it. Carrying and occasionally presenting identification are part of modern life.

Perhaps this coalition of former politicians should be more up front and ask: should non-citizens be allowed to vote in elections? How would they like it if red-state Americans decided to pop into Canada temporarily and took part in democratic exercises?

The opinion piece tries to read racial motivations into almost all of the referendum questions. The questions regarding services are about temporary residents who can come in every colour in the rainbow. The questions on immigration in general have nothing to do with race either. But the politicians positing in the piece really only have a thin songbook to sing from, and racism heads every page within it.

They also invoke the caste system of India to try and imply that things such as voter requirements or limiting taxpayer-funded services to temporary visitors and tourists would create a divided society based on birthright. It’s an absurd case to make, but is the standard sort of thing we have some to expect from these advocates.

If Notley and her compatriots are truly concerned that identification requirements are holding people back from voting, perhaps they should form a group that can find these souls who can’t figure out how to get identification and help them attain it. It would be more productive than making inflammatory and baseless claims that asking for ID from voters is akin to embracing the Jim Crow laws from a different nation in a bygone century.

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