I don’t, and I provided detailed and reasoned arguments both in the OP and in subsequent posts, none of which boil down to “evil white people”.
As has been pointed out many times, people seem to have an awful lot of trouble producing any evidence that this illegal behavior that people find so important to deter exists. A few posts ago, I explained exactly how easy it would be to find. And yet, (almost) nothing.
We get that. We really do. That’s why we are here, either argueing or honiong our arguments to get people to vote for politicians who will respect equality over partisanship. We know we can’t make this happen on our own, that’s why we try to convince others.
You are giving us the advice that we have already been following, long before you were ever involved.
And how would you argue that? If the majority of the population felt that vaccines were dangerous, would you not turn to science and reason? What else is there?
The context of my question was this thread: name a state that charges for an ID that is needed to vote.
California may charge for an ID, but it doesn’t require that ID to vote.
No, I don’t quite share the impression that you get it.
Posts here are filled with declaratory statements, with very few instances of “in my view,” or “I would argue that…”
How would your posts look if they were written by someone who believed that these laws were not legitimate, instead of (as you claim) someone simply arguing for the legislature to change course?
The first thing I’d do is never announce that my opponents were racist, sexist, misogynistic, or anything else except mistaken as to a set of scientific evidence and the inferences to be drawn therefrom. I would not aver that my opponents wanted to see children suffer or otherwise demonize them.
I would recognize that my opponents were acting in the best way they knew to protect their children. And I would show them, respectfully, that what they think suffers from factual error.
You aparently care how at least some people feel because your primary reason for supporting the rule is because it restores voter confidence. I am just pointing out that there while there may be a majority of people for whom voter IDs make them think “meh, IDs sound a bit safer”, or who agree because it will mean their party will stay in power. There are also a very large number who see it as evidence that the entire system is rigged against them, with good reason too. So it is not clear cut that this legislation does increase voter confidence in the system.
I agree that this is counter productive as I don’t think that the average voter who polls in favor of these initiatives cares one way or another about the disenfranchisement of minority voters. It that they have either been duped by snake oil salesmen or are just looking for partisan advantage. I don’t even believe that the authors of the bills are neccesarily racist. I just think that they cynically want to keep Republicans power and if possible would like to go back to a Jim Crow electorate, and are doing the best they can to push the envelope as far as they can back in that direction.
Similarly in the Vaccine analogy I wouldn’t necessarily demonize people who are fooled by the anti-vaccine hoaxsters, but I might point out that they are doing more harm to their children than good. I might point out that the people who are most prominently pushing for the anti-vaccine movement are actually the same people who are making millions off of homeopathic whooping cough cures, and so probably don’t have concern over autism at the front of their mind, and while they may not hate children they certainly don’t seem to care if they get preventable diseases. I might even (GASP!!) open a thread about it on a message board.
What I wouldn’t do is argue that even though science suggests that the ban will do more harm than good to children, that it is a net plus because it makes people feel better about their health.
You really ought to mentally add those in. As there are very few on this message board with dictatorial powers, you can assume that any statements like those are simply taht, statements expressing opinion and wishes for the future.
Depends on what you mean by legitimate.
Some of the laws that people were complaining about in the other thread were in fact struck down by the courts, with the courts determining that they were illegitimate, so in those cases, the posters were correct.
Even the cases that manage to pass legal muster, even though their intent is plain for all to see, I do not consider to be “legitimate”, if I define legitimate as not being in the best interests of promoting a peaceful and prosperous society. (I know that’s not the actual definition.)
As a voter in a district that is far removed from the states that implement such measure, I have virtually no power over them, so pretty much all I can do is go on a message board, and express how I feel about it. I believe that to be the case for most of the other posters.
Okay, and what do you do when that doesn’t work? Lets say that the anti-vaxxers are insulting you, calling you a shill for big pharma, and lambasting you for exposing your children to harmful antigens. I think that if your approach worked, we would not have an anti-vaxx movement at all.
People don’t like to be told that they are wrong, most especially when they are. (even more so when they know it).
Fair. That was an honest misunderstanding on my part, since that line of discussion had strayed somewhat from the original point.
Here’s an article in the Washington Post that shows the financial constraints some face in Texas to get an official id for voting.
Yeah, a state id might be free if you have a registered copy of your birth certificate, or can afford court fees to get your name change certified, but those things aren’t free. Looking at only the proximate costs of the id is insufficient.
So: Texas.
I’ll now ask a fourth time for you to answer my question about whether the stated purpose of a law can be nothing more than an obvious facade.
You only feel that he feels it’s not a good plan. Your support for it hinges on arbitrary determinations based on how it makes *you *feel.
That’s not the tone at all. The tone of these is confidently declarative: THESE LAWS ARE WITHOUT LEGITIMACY.
Nor is it for you to declare alone what such a society does. You mean it’s your view, your idea… but by not including that you try for the rhetorical advantage of proclaiming as established dogma what is actually just your argument. This approach assumes the truth of your premises, in that’s a logical fallacy. It seeks to sidle past the inconvenient weakness in your position by simply dropping the part where people of good faith may weigh different priorities differently. By asking me to mentally sketch in the line, you seek the freedom to continue to mask your assumptions as a given.
The beauty of representative democracy is that it gives us a way to craft public policy without requiring unanimity. My approach DOES work: we have a reasonably good vaccine policy. It’s not as perfect as it would be with King Bricker, true, but this is the price of a representative society. As Mick explains it: “You can’t always get what you want.”
I’m moving this to the top so I don’t miss explicitly answering it: yes, it’s possible that individual legislators might claim a stated purpose but actually intended some other, invidious goal.
But as I noted before, there are multiple votes from multiple legislators. And I regard it is highly unlikely that each person who voted had exactly the same motive. Some Democrats who voted against the law believed, I am sure, that the Voter ID requirements were not onerous at all, but they voted against the law anyway, and they had different reasons to do so: they felt pressure to vote in solidarity with the rest of their caucus, or they felt the plan would hurt their party’s chances at the polls. And some, it’s certain, believed there were genuine “obvious facade” issues in play.
And of course of the Republicans that voted for Voter ID, the same proposition is true: some voted for the measure because they felt pressure to vote in solidarity with the rest of their caucus, or they felt the plan would help their party’s chances at the polls. And some cynically mouthed lines about voter fraud or voter confidence while intending all along to stifle minorities.
That’s the answer to your question: in the minds of individual legislators, the stated purpose of a law can be nothing more than a facade, either obvious or well-hidden.
Fair enough.
Contrary to your statement above, Texas does supply a free copy of your birth certificate for the purposes of obtaining a voter ID. Texas passed SB983 to address exactly this concern:
The non-legalese version: a birth certificate is free if it’s being obtained to get a Voter ID. The local clerk’s fees are paid by the state.
Now, I agree the name change is not free. But that crosses the line for which I – and, I think, the strong majority of society – lose sympathy for the plight. Anyone who’s name has been changed should reasonably expect to incur fees in documenting that change. A person who complains because he can’t vote because he’s not using a different name than his legal birth name is reasonably expected to bear the burden of showing his name. This is a reasonable step for the state to ensure the person is a US citizen – the name can be reliably traced to a person born in the United States.
He’s done nothing of the sort. He has just made an argument.
Notice how I didn’t put in disclaimers like “I believe” in front of what I said? Because that’s not how people argue. It only makes it seem like you are less certain.
Right now, you have said a bunch of stuff without stating “I believe” in front of it. No one accuses you of stating dogma. We just tell you that you are wrong.
That other people disagree with what I’m saying here has no relevance, because I am certain I am right, just like you are certain you are right. Most people who make arguments are certain.
And, in that vein, I will say what I have to say about the topic:
These laws are illegitimate. They exist so that Republicans can try and mess with the fundamentals of democracy that allow everyone to vote. There is no “different priorities,” the right to vote is the most important thing in a democracy–an axiom. They could become the law of the land, and they will still be illegitimate, and we will become closer to one party trying to take control of the country.
There is a fundamental axiom involved here. Democracy can’t function if one party is allowed to do things that will disenfranchise the other. That leads to totalitarianism. Hence, again, why your fingerprint idea is good. Assures people of a lack of fraud and doesn’t disenfranchise. If you can come up with it, why haven’t they?
And, yes, gerrymandering is also illegitimate, even though it continues to happen. It undermines the purpose of democracy.
OK.
Great.
Too bad. Sucks to be you, huh?
It must be miserable to live in a country with illegitimate laws. I’d leave if it were me. Do what you feel, though, bro.
See what I did there?
How’s that for an argument? Not much to actually argue about there, is there?
If an argument, by your lights, can simply assert things in service of rhetorical advantage, then I’m all for it. I assert you’re just butthurt because your side has no power, are suffering from sour grapes, and have no chance of changing anything, so who cares what you think?
But of course, I don’t actually assert anything of the sort, because that’s NOT argument in a debate context. It’s a series of gratuitous assertions, which in debate may be equally gratuitously denied.
Which way should we work this debate, in your studied and learned opinion, BigT?
Isn’t “that’s NOT argument in a debate context” a gratuitous assertion? As is that a series of gratuitous assertions may be gratuitously denied in debate?
I get the vague sense you’ve forgotten that while the last voter-ID thread was in the Pit, this one is in GD where the debate is ostensibly supposed to have a certain maturity you kept complaining was impossible.
Utter nonsense. Even the poorest of the poor can come up with $29 in six YEARS.
It’s unclear to me why they should have to.
For frivolous expenses? Would you want to? Especially if that cost was to ensure that leprechauns don’t modify your vote.
Fair. I was going by what the article said. I am certainly not familiar with the specifics of various states’ requirements, but I am aware of the widespread result, which is that many people who had been voting now find themselves with obstacles, and a few of them have encountered major obstacles.
And since those obstacles are easily foreseen, well-publicized, and generally fall mostly on poor black people, I still don’t accept that these laws are neutral with respect to racism. It’s one thing to desire a law for a certain neutral reason. But you can’t just ignore the actual expected results of the law.
As I said in the OP: I think most people who support voter ID laws simply don’t know about the actual results. But the people who are politically involved, who do know what will happen, and casually disregard the fact that a bunch of people, predominantly black people, won’t get to vote because of it, I have no defense for them.
And I’m not really seeing one in your argument. I see a defense that the laws are valid, in the sense that they were legally passed and shouldn’t be thrown out by a court. But that’s not an actual defense of the law, or a rebuttal of my claim that callously disregarding the racially biased outcome of a law, when there are plenty of ways to meet the neutral purpose of the law that don’t have those outcomes, is racist.
How about this: Poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses. Those all had articulable neutral purposes. Are supporters of those policies racist?
Note that the gentleman in the article who had attempted several times to get a voter id didn’t chose to change his name. There was a clerical error on his birth certificate, and the name by which he had always lived didn’t match the birth certificate.
Isn’t that contrary to the idea that’s been pushed earlier in this thread - asserting that what is being discussed is simply a factual matter and the conclusion is obvious?
While the impact of such policies may be able to be established, and the various state laws can be analyzed, all of those contribute to the factual nature of the arguments. But once the argument veers into the realm of weighing the relative merits, it’s no longer in the realm of factual conclusions. That’s what we have legislatures for - and they have in many places determined that the relative value of voter ID laws is greater than the relative value of not having them.
“Merit of my proposal: less people die of snake bites. Merit of not following my proposal: we don’t nuke Arizona.”
Two things…
Firstly: At some point, weighing the relative merits becomes an exercise in the absurd. Voters who don’t have photo ID are so much more common than in-person impersonation voter fraud (the only kind of voter fraud this would prevent, and which is about as common as intelligent AboveTopSecret members are) that the problems that the solution creates would so drastically outweigh the problems the solution solves that no rational person could argue that it’s a good idea.
Secondly: In this case, it’s not just that we have two conflicting interests or values. We have the exact same value - ensuring that our election is representative and that our democracy is a democracy. And voter ID laws just don’t achieve that. You can actually find more news stories documenting individual people who have struggled and failed to get voter ID than you can find cases documenting people who committed impersonation voter fraud. Because it doesn’t happen. It’s stupid, risky, detected fairly easily, carries a huge punishment for a tiny benefit, and it’d take an absolute fucking idiot to do it. And that’s ignoring all the people who didn’t bother putting in the legwork, the people who were discouraged from voting because of this, and those who missed the memo that these laws were in place and found out at the polls that they wouldn’t be allowed to vote.