Yes, that is my position. I said you support the creation of more obstacles (ie voter ID laws). That is your position. You may feel you have good motives for taking this position but it is still a position of creating more obstacles for voting.
I’m not questioning your motives. I accept that you feel this would be a good deal and that for the step back on voter ID’s we would take two steps forward on gerrymandering. Personally I feel this is unlikely, as I have said in several posts in this thread. I do not feel the Republicans will agree to any proposal that doesn’t leave them ahead. They would only agree to a compromise that gave them two steps back on voter ID’s while only taking one step forward on gerrymandering (actually I doubt they would agree to a deal that only favored them that much).
I feel the Republicans will not any concessions unless they can get the Democrats to make much more substantial concessions. And I worry that the Democrats might be so eager to be able to say they have a bipartisan agreement that they will offer those substantial concessions.
Such a compromise is being floated. Mitch says no Republicans will support it.
Manchin’s pitch, which highlights how much power moderates continue to hold in thorny Senate negotiations, includes:
automatic voter registration
making Election Day a holiday
mandating at least 15 days of early voting for federal elections
banning partisan gerrymandering
He also favors voter ID provisions, which many Democrats often oppose, but with a wider list of alternatives to prove a voter’s identity, like a utility bill.
But to take the position that, while a voter ID requirement is indeed an obstacle to voting (and we can debate how much of an obstacle it is), gerrymandering is worse because it renders one’s vote (whether or not cast in the face of obstacles) actually irrelevant, and so a bit of horse trading and giving a bit on the less important issue in order to win on the much more serious issue would be, overall, a victory, is not actually totally unreasonable.
So someone might throw his support behind a system of Federal voter ID laws in return for the opposition’s support of his position on what he views as a much more important voting rights issue. That context seems important.
It’s not a position I would take, first, because when it comes to voting rights, I don’t think there is any acceptable compromise, and second, because at this point in our history, I don’t think it’s possible to negotiate anything with the Republican/Trumpist party. I do not think for one second that they’re interested in negotiating anything in good faith.
One may question the sincerity of the person making the argument, but it’s not absolutely unreasonable, nor does it, in and of itself, amount to that person wanting to put more obstacles in the path of certain voters.
Gerrymandering also tends to polarize the House, as a candidate in a safe R or D district only needs to fend off challenges from their own party, which results in moving further from the center and scuttles any incentive to reach across the aisle and appear to compromise or act reasonably.
Since you seem to be unwilling to even discuss with me my actual position I will have to disengage with further discussion on this topic with you.
I had already suggested at best the Dems would only get a handful of Republicans on board with Manchin’s plan.
That being said, there’s another line of attack, mainly that there might be a chance Manchin agrees to bypass the filibuster if his own compromise plan is shit on by Mitch, demonstrating Republican bad faith. There isn’t any particular reason to assume that will happen, but I don’t see a good reason to not pursue it. @Little_Nemo has a flawed belief that just discussing the compromise somehow entraps the Democrats into agreeing to give up a lot in exchange for nothing (which isn’t how legislation passes, there’s no magic way the GOP can just take a proffered offer and only pass through the concessions by the Dems.) Manchin has at least given a little indication he’s willing to keep the ball bouncing, he indicated today that he is willing to at least cast the procedural vote necessary for the bill to be discussed, which is in itself using the Dems 50 vote quasi-majority to go over Republican roadblocks. Will he go further? Hard to say, it’s not like we pay Senators by the hour though, I have no problem seeing them put in work trying.
Part of the problem is that fixing gerrymandering is easier said than done. It’s a complex issue that is fraught with difficulty even if everyone is working to solve it in good faith. Even more difficult given that it is unlikely that everyone will be working together in good faith.
It would not behoove us to “compromise” and allow republicans to disenfranchise more voters and then get a pinky promise that they will stop gerrymandering in return.
That’s just lose-lose, similar to @Martin_Hyde’s example of the compromise that gave us the senate, a poor decision that still harms our country to this day.
Unwilling to even discuss it with you? Fucking hell, Martin, I’ve been making massive efforts to try to discuss it with you. But all I get in response is you repeating yourself and telling me I’m wrong.
Have you considered that maybe your point is not as clear as you think it is? Or that other people have opinions?
All that said, I agree there’s not much point in me continuing to try to discuss this issue with you.
Yes but I have written in previous posts, this kind of horse trading only works when you’re linking two separate issues. Then you can offer support for your opponent’s position on issue A in exchange for your opponent supporting your position on issue B.
But when there’s only a single issue on the table and you and your opponent are on opposite sides of the issue, there’s no room for horse trading. You’re both trying to get the same horse.
In this specific situation, the Democrats want to let more people vote and the Republicans want to stop more people from voting. Where’s the possible compromise? The Democrats will not (or at least should not) agree to any deal that results in fewer people voting. And the Republicans will not agree to any deal that results in more people voting.
I agree that they should not, but I do fear that they will. Whether simply out of an attempt to show bipartisanship, or in exchange for some words about gerrymandering that won’t actually change the effect of the practice.
Democrats always end up being the ones to compromise, even in cases when they don’t have to.
That said, the position described by Martin_Hyde (and taken by others) in this thread isn’t inherently a bad-faith position. It’s one with which I disagree, but it isn’t, in and of itself, obstructionist, or an attempt at voter suppression.
A Federal voting ID with a fee of say $5, and easy to acquire (the federal government knows whether or not you are a citizen) could be less obstacle that 50-something different types of ID, with requirements from easy to onerous. You apply, you verify you are you, the Feds check their records and see you are a citizen, and mail you the ID. Now sure, in some cases, the Feds do not know you are a citizen when you really are- then obstacles appear.
But I still am against it, unless some really good equine deals are gotten.
It could be. But I’d have to see the final bill before I agreed that it was.
I’m all for a Federal ID that must be accepted as voter ID, but I don’t entirely trust that there will not be hoops and hurdles put in in order to obtain it.
As you said, in some cases, the Feds may not know you are a citizen, which brings us back to exactly where we started, except now you need to deal with federal bureaucracy rather than state or county.
I’m sure that the Republicans would do anything in their power to put obstructions into such a bill, and then if Democrats balk at it, they would turn around and say, “See, the Democrats don’t actually want to have secure elections. We gave a way for people to get a federal voting ID, and they refused to go along with it.”
I hear this kind of argument a lot, and I would’ve found it more plausible until the last decade or so of my dad’s life. (Sort of like how I never noticed the lack of curb cuts in some neighborhoods until he started using a walker.) He never did any of the stuff on that list — my mom or us kids or a caregiver did it for him, if he needed it. The last time he lost his wallet my mom didn’t bother replacing his state ID card — too much hassle. (Credit card? Easy peasy.)
I think of the time Omar on The Wiregot caught in a drive-by shooting (by members of a drug gang he’d been robbing) while taking his grandmother to church. He was very upset that the attack would blow his cover story for grandma that he worked in a cafeteria at the airport. His boyfriend asked “why the airport” and Omar said he knew she’d never go all the way out there to visit him — implication being that she spent her life within a small radius of her home, and may not have left Baltimore in years, or ever. There are a lot of people who live pretty simple lives.
By the way — what happens under an “everybody has ID, you can’t live without it” regime if you lose your wallet/purse/whatever on Election Day, before you vote? Statistically that has to happen to some people every large election. Are they just SOL?
It theoretically could work. But if the political realities in this country were such that it would work, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
The Republicans are already working on controlling elections using various tools like state voter ID laws, gerrymandering, vote audits, selective poll closings, questionable polling machines, etc. Creating a federal voter ID system would give them a new sandbox to play in.
It would also give them something they have relatively little of right now; the ability to reach into blue states and enact anti-voting laws through the federal government in states which have fair voting laws.
I will never support voter ID laws, as they are inherently designed to supress the vote. All I can speak to is Illinois, where I’ve always lived. You need an ID to register to vote; you have to prove who you are when you register. Then it’s done. Anything else is just a bullshit attempt to supress Americans from voting, and that’s bullshit, and I oppose bullshit. Republicans don’t want more people voting, this is obvious. I will accept no amount of bullshit when the result will be that it is more difficult for Americans to vote. It’s fucking bullshit.
And it would also be a poor compromise if all we got was even actionable legislation on gerrymandering, as there are many red states that are playing far more nefarious games with their voting policies.
I’m fairly certain this would be unconstitutional. It’s a blatant poll tax. Granted, a very small one, but still a poll tax. I think that most of the states trying to require ID with any sort of fee attached are also a poll tax. Voting ID, if required, would have to be literally free to not run afoul of the 24th. IANAL though, so I could be wrong.