One car, one vote

The US presidential campaign switched into high gear this week with Mitt Romney’s selection of Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan as a running mate. But with a raft of voter ID laws now going into effect in crucial swing states across the country, it’s looking increasingly likely that the result in November could be shaped more by who is allowed to vote than by who is on the ticket. Thanks to these new laws, if an American doesn’t drive, he or she may not get to vote.

Until 2003, no state in America required voters to show a photo ID in order to vote. For Europeans this may seem strange, since showing your national ID is often a requirement here for things as simple as using a solarium. But English-speaking countries tend to not have national IDs. For some reason I’ve never understood, there’s just some deep-rooted Anglo-Saxon distrust of them.

In the United States, this leaves drivers licenses as the only government-issued photo identification most people have. Because such a large proportion of adult Americans (85%) have a drivers license, this has more or less worked out. Many people obtain a drivers license even if they do not routinely drive, in order to have a photo ID.

But that leaves 10% of eligible American voters who do not have a drivers license or any other form of photo ID, according to NYU's Brennen Center for Social Justice. This group is overwhelmingly made up of African-Americans, Hispanics and college students. And these three groups are statistically the most likely to vote Democratic.

Driving the English countryside

I went to a conference up in Oxfordshire yesterday. It was at this hotel in the middle of nowhere, literally in the middle of these vast green fields out in the country. The setting was quite pleasant but unfortunately it meant I had to rent a car and drive there, which was a little scary! You know, because they drive on the wrong side of the road here.

It was actually relatively easy to do it in the city and on the highway. After all, you just follow the car in front of you. But once I got off the country and started driving down all the country roads, it got considerably more challenging. I actually started driving down the wrong side of the road twice, and the second time was kind of a close call! I was driving on the right on this country road for a good two minutes when I saw a car about 40 feet ahead of me coming head on. Oh, riiiiight. Had I been taking a sharp turn, I’d be writing blog entries from the grave right about now.

The conference was good, I actually quite enjoy them now that I don’t feel like a fraud anymore. Before, when I was covering private equity and had to go to conferences in the US, I felt like a big fake because I didn’t know what I was talking about. When chatting people up at events I had two options, nod and smile and pretend to know what they were saying, or admit I didn’t know basic things and have to ask dumb questions, and having them wonder why they should read our publication if the journalists don’t even know what they’re talking about. I usually chose the former.