Originally Posted by xdrcfrx
(Post 3272744)
1. for constitutional legal purposes, you have a right to vote, but there is no constitutional guarantee protecting your right to drive, beyond 5th/14th amendment due process clauses, and 14th amendment equal protection clause, which require the states to adopt reasonable standards which are applied to all residents equally. States are free to set limits on driving, so long as they do not run afoul of those somewhat basic standards. The same is not true of voting, which is a specific right protected by the constitution in a number of places, as well as by the Voting Rights Act (such as it remains, in any case).
2. afaik there isn't a long history of using the law to prohibit specific groups of people from driving cars, whereas voting restrictions have a long and well documents history as part of the Jim Crow era to keep non-whites from exercising the right to vote. To that point, there is a Voting Rights Act, but but a Driving Rights Act. So, although it would not be per se racist to restrict the issuance of drivers licenses, or voter ID's, because of the history of voter suppression in the US (and, concomitantly the link between that history specifically and race) voter ID laws are immediately more suspect than laws dealing with the issuance of drivers licenses.
3. (for tentarro) you'll note that none of the Pinochet critics in this thread (such a controversial take, to be against mass torture and extra judicial killings) are in here justifying Pol Pot's disastrous khmer rouge on the basis of "well, those people probably deserved it. just doing what needed to be done." why? because that is a crazy, nonsense, thing to think, and believing it makes you a bad person.
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