Several things are noticeable about Cox News' editorial of May 6 regarding voter ID laws. First, someone who writes for a living but starts six sentences with the conjunction "but" can't be too bright. The content of the editorial is even more revealing. If Cox Papers thinks that voter ID is not needed, then you are either stupid or part of the effort to promote fraudulent voting.

I was involved in 10 campaigns for the Legislature, and I guarantee that there is plenty of fraudulent voting. Typical old tricks include voting recently deceased people using ballot-by-mail, voting mentally incapable people who reside in institutions, mentally ill homeless people, and hauling a van load of "voters" to the polls and one person "assists" all of them, when the state law says that a voter assistant can assist only one person. Also, the abuse of the ballot-by-mail process is widespread.

Cox Paper, like any liberal person or institution, relies on the people being stupid or scared. Well, we're smart enough to realize that voter ID is an effective safeguard against voter fraud. Cox accuses elderly, minorities and the poor of being too stupid and shiftless to get either a driver's license or a DPS identification card. That is absurd and insulting. Anybody can acquire these very basic documents, but Cox Papers is putting these people in a class and asserting that they are second class.

The editorial also, in effect, accuses the Democrats of being the ones who commit the voter fraud. After all, the editorial specifically says that the effect is on likely Democratic voters. Every voter should have to follow the same rules, and all of us should be glad to do our part to assure an honest process. Everybody is, except Cox Papers and the Lufkin Daily News.