Jackson Free Press

"We are committed to ensuring everyone who is qualified to vote has the opportunity to cast a ballot, and we need your help."

—Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, on the voter-ID public-information campaign his office launched this week.

Why it stinks: It sure is mighty kind of ol' Delbert to make sure that every single Mississippi citizen who is eligible to vote has the opportunity to travel up to 20 miles to a local circuit clerk's or driver's license office to obtain a special state-issued ID. All this in time for the state's voter-ID law to at long last be in effect for the June 2014 primary. Hosemann likes to play coy, saying that he is but a humble civil servant following the will of the Legislature and the people, who approved voter ID by referendum in 2011, but he's been driving the voter ID bus since he first ran for the office. If the law's backers were genuinely committed to stamping out the fraud they say exists, polling places would be outfitted with the same special equipment cops have in their squad cars to verify the identity of perps on the spot instead of putting the burden on citizens to prove they are who they say they are.