If I, speaking as a conservative, had to summarize the strongest unifying "liberal"/"progressive" deficiency, is it the tendency to appear to care deeply about a single visible victim, while ignoring, nay, creating a much larger number of less-visible vicitims of the same kind.

The Washington Post:

A state judge yesterday rejected a Georgia law requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification, writing in his decision, "This cannot be."

Fulton County Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford Jr. said the law, pushed by Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) to fight voter fraud, violates the state constitution because it disenfranchises citizens who are otherwise qualified to vote.

There are two possible forms of disenfranchisement, two possible ways a vote may be taken away. One is where I am a legitimate voter, and am unable to vote. There is indeed a danger associated with this: my single, legitimate vote might be lost. This is called "undervoting."

On the other hand, there is another way my vote may be taken away: If someone who should not be voting votes the opposite of mine, then my vote will be taken from me, cancelled by a ballot which should never have been cast. Or if a person who believes the opposite of me is allowed to vote multiple times, then they can not only nullify my own vote, but that single person can effective wipe out many opposing votes.

Every single time an illegitimate vote is cast, a legitimate vote is invisibly disenfranchised.

This is called "overvoting."

It's easy to see that the much larger danger is posed by overvoting -- a bus or two full of dishonest activists, going from poll to poll, can effectively wipe out the votes of a small town or two. Allowing the dead to vote can disenfranchise entire counties and cities. In an era of razor-thin margins, such tactics can make a huge difference.

When we learn that 50,000 unlawful records were removed from the King County (Washington) voting rolls, what does that tell us? When Milwaukee, Wisconsin -- one city alone -- discovers that at least 8,000 or so fraudulent votes were cast, in a state where the difference between the candidates was only 13,000, what does that reveal? When we discover that certain counties in Ohio had far more people on the rolls than lived there, what does that say? It tells us the danger of disenfranchisement due to overvoting is real and multiplicative.

You cannot have a perfect system -- there will always be errors of one sort or the other. The best you can do is choose the policy which will result in the least fraud. Sadly, whatever his intentions, the judge has decided to maximize, not minimize vote fraud.

Justice T. Jackson Bedford Jr. seems utterly concerned about the one, solitary victim sitting in front of him, yet appears utterly unconcerned about literally tens or hundreds of thousands or more who will be disenfranchised by his decision. (A federal law requiring ID is about to be passed and similar ones have been passed in other states. Other judges will now be able to cite this one as precedent; possible challenges will happen too late to prevent the ensuing overvotes.) Their future, larger vicitimization will be invisible, so he needn't trouble his mind about them, or fear appearing less than moral.

To paraphrase Stalin, one lost vote is a tragedy, but a million lost votes, or a stolen election or seven? A mere statistic.

You have to present a government-issued photo ID to buy beer, cigarettes, or even travel by plane. So I guess, by implication, it's far less important to secure the voting process than it is to secure beer.

Vote early! vote often! and only honest people will have their votes stolen.

I can only guess which political party this judge supports.