Progressive supporters hoping to attend the campaign rally for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in Arizona on Friday ran into a bit of an unexpected surprise. First of all, there was no general admission for the public offered. Everyone wishing to attend had to submit a request online and receive an RSVP response. Then, upon arrival, they would need to present ID and have their name matched to the list of invited guests. And it couldn't be any sort of local or school ID. They would have to present a government-issued ID card. The irony in all of this is that these stringent rules are being applied on behalf of the woman who continues to insist that states should not be allowed to require valid ID when voting. When news of these requirements began making it into the headlines, the inevitable jokes quickly followed.
From Fox News:
Vice President Harris was mocked online for requiring campaign rallygoers to present a government-issued ID upon entry, despite the Democratic presidential nominee opposing voter ID laws.Ahead of Harris’ rally alongside vice presidential running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in Arizona on Friday, her campaign sent out an email advising that only confirmed RSVPs will be admitted.The email said those on the RSVP list must present a matching government-issued photo ID in order to be admitted to the venue, KTAR reported.
To be fair, it's not unreasonable to want to identify the people coming to presidential campaign events, particularly after what happened to Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on July 13. But there's only just so much vetting you can do prior to a campaign rally, particularly when the candidates' schedules are constantly shifting, with new events being added and others being canceled at times. With a valid ID, you should at least be able to check to see if the aspiring attendee has a criminal record, but the Secret Service should already be doing that anyway. (Please note that I said "should.")
Even that doesn't provide any sort of iron-clad safety guarantee, however. Keep in mind that Thomas Crooks didn't have any sort of criminal record. Even the most thorough background check on him wouldn't have turned up anything more disturbing than a shooting range membership and perhaps a few classmates and associates who found him to be rather "odd" at times. Then again, Harris likely has less to worry about. Donald Trump constantly has people in the media fomenting potential violence against him and there are more than a few who hate him with a red-hot fury. Kamala Harris doesn't really seem to be all that "hated." People more often see her as kind of silly and probably not terribly competent, but not a target of rage.
That brings us back to the reason that the Harris campaign is requiring ID at rallies and vetting attendees. It's a fair bet that it's not just to protect her from potential assassins. She likely assumes that the USSS is taking care of that. More likely, in order to improve her optics, her team would probably like to bar protesters from the rallies lest they start chanting at her about genocide in Gaza while she's trying to deliver her prepared remarks.
But how could they screen out potential protesters, even if that wasn't a blatant incursion into voters' First Amendment rights? (Which it would be, of course.) They may never be able to identify every last one of them, but when you're in the position of being the Vice President and you have access to the Department of Justice, I can assure you that it's completely possible. They could compile a record of everyone who has already been arrested at a pro-Hamas demonstration and put them on the blocked list. Frankly, I'd be shocked if they hadn't done at least that much already. Further, with all of the facial recognition technology and AI available today, they could probably nail down the identity of most of the people who were at those protests and didn't wind up being detained or arrested. They could be sitting on a library of tens of thousands of names of people with no criminal history whatsoever. But they would never admit to it, and we're unlikely to find out unless someone on the inside leaks the information. And even then, most of the legacy media isn't interested in such stories if they paint the Democrats in a poor light.
