That post was an illustration of why gratuitous assertions are equally gratuitously denied, as the post itself clearly identified. In other words, there could be no reasonable belief that I was advancing those assertions, since same post that had them also ended:
How very meta!
The answer is: generally, no. The standards of logic in debate are themselves typically held to be understood in debate.
But rather than debate that assertion, since it, too, may be questioned as gratuitous: cite.
I have mentioned in this (and elsewhere) that Voter ID’s value is in creating an evidentiary basis for prosecution of an illegal voter, and I gave the example of a. Non-US citizen voter.
So – again – Voter ID does not simply prevent in-person impersonation. Voter ID allows the prosecution to obtain legally sufficient evidence to prosecute a non-US citizen who votes illegally. This in turn deters non-US citizens from voting illegally.
Ignore? No. Balance the expected gain against the obstacles and find the balance favors the law? Yes, of course you can.
To be clear, I am not saying that you MUST.
It depends on how much weight you give to the various considerations. In my view, there is a huge value in believing that an ultra close election still reached the “right” result, and a huge value in expecting people to care enough about voting that they truly regard obstacles as something to be overcome and not insurmountable barriers.
Yes, maybe, and yes.
Poll taxes impose a requirement to vote that is absolutely unrelated to the qualifications to vote. Absent a showing that someone’s animus was directed at the poor, I’d be comfortable with the rebuttable presumption that this was racist.
Grandfather clauses: same. A grandfather’s ability to cast a legal vote has no relevance.
Literacy tests: maybe. I’m not blind to the history of literacy tests, and someone proposing one now bears a heavy persuasive burden because of that history.
But I cannot say, especially in light of the recent elevation of Donald Trump to the status of President-Elect, that I am innocent of harboring the fleeting thought that requiring a basic grounding in civics and economics on the part of voters would not be uniformly terrible.
The state is entitled to verify that that story is true.
Your cites don’t actually back up that “typically held to be understood in debate” bit. And, oddly enough, you technically didn’t answer the question yes or no.
If you think that voting is frivolous. :dubious:
And we don’t have a way to prosecute non-US citizens who vote illegally? If our current system is incapable of catching them at any point, I fail to see why adding photo ID would help. Never mind that there’s no evidence that this is actually something that happens, so again, we’re chasing leprechauns.
:rolleyes:
If you’re living hand to mouth, voting may very well be frivolous. That is, your one vote may not be the kind of thing to burn a lot of money you would otherwise spend on staying alive on. But even then, it’s doubly insulting when the reason they demand this poll tax is allegedly to stop something which virtually never happens and has never swayed an election.
I cited the intended underlying claim (that argument by assertion is a logical fallacy).
My comment about what is typically understood in debate is (in my view) tangential to the main discussion, but it’s a interesting diversion. As your question exposes, any claim about what is typically understood in debate sounds at first like fair game for a participant to challenge. That is, there might appear to be a distinction between the identification of a logical fallacy and the claim that the use of that specific logical fallacy is “typically understood” to be verboten, or indeed that any logical fallacy is typically understood thusly.
A logical fallacy is a mistake in argument.
So my claim is that argument by assertion is a known and named common logical fallacy, documented in Part 5 of Aristotle’s On Sophistical Refutations, which is the seminal work of documenting arguments in dialogue form – that is, debate. And my claim is that in “Great Debates,” the existence of logical fallacies and their effect on the value of an argument is by virtue of the forum itself understood as an axiom.
So to explictly answer:
No, in this context it’s an accepted axiom.
To the contrary, I have elsewhere cited the case of Ramon Cue:
Our current system is capable of catching them, but prosecuting them is difficult. Notice that this linked story is from 2012 and lists several examples of non-citizens voting. None were subsequently prosecuted.
One reason is that Cue is able to cast doubt on the prosecution claim that he voted by claiming that he doesn’t remember voting, despite a voting record that shows he has. Waters, or someone using Waters’ name, voted seven times. The use of an ID would allow the prosecution to hand the jury a strong piece of evidence – to create a legally sufficient case for conviction.
Did a provisional ballot so who knows? They certainly didnt ask ME for id.
Data controls the boundaries of what is reasonable.
Its also going to deter a lot of legal behavior. In fact it is likely to deter a lot MROE legal behaviour than illegal behavior.
Voter ID laws are really a lot like gun laws that are not really designed to prevent guns getting into the hands of criminals but ARE designed to fuck with gun owners and make it harder for them to get guns. Voter ID laws are somewhat similar in that it doesn’t really deter a lot of criminal behavior but is a pain in the ass and deters a lot of legal behavior that people writing the laws don’t want (people buying guns or blacks voting). At least the gun control retardedness can be attributed to ignorant hysteria and hoplophobia, the folks in favor of voter ID laws are (or should be) fully aware of the deterrent effect this has on many otherwise eligible voters.
This is what I don’t get. You seem content to leave the shape of access to democracy to the democratic process. A process that gave us Jim Crow laws in the south.
Lets say that among the many Jim Crow laws, we could identify a law that had a disproportionate impact on blacks but was not a poll tax or literacy exam. Would you say, well, all the other Jim Crow laws have to go but THIS one, this one passes the test because even though it disproportionately impacts blacks (as it was meant to) it is not an impediment to voting, so we can pass this law that was passed along with all the other Jim Crow laws because even though the motives were suspect and the effect is discriminatory, we can make a reasonable argument for why its not an impermissible impediment to voting.
No, that is not the tone. The tone is “THESE LAWS ARE RACIST (and their supporters are racist or they abide racism)”
I don’t think there are many informed people of actual good faith who are weighing these priorities differently in a way that does not involve racism.
I think you in particular approach things in a legalistic manner that does NOT include racism but you are in the minority among the supporters of these sort of laws.
The racism has been admitted to by some of the folks who passed the laws.
Our representative democracy hasn’t always worked well when it came to minority rights. (see Jim Crow).
Sorry, this is a trap. It’s a logical fallacy: poisoning the well. It’s a Jim Crow law! No decent person would support it!
The thing is, in your hypothetical you are the reliable narrator of the legislature’s unanimous intent: evil beings passing a law with racially discriminatory effect.
The answer is real life is: there comes a point where the racially discriminatory effect is so grave as to mandate some sort of action. Here, however, the burdens imposed are (in my view) slight and easily overcome.
I don’t agree. How does Voter ID enjoy strong support even amongst surveyed Democrats?
Sure. But as I explained above, if a bill passes 92-17, and you have a quote from a guy that says, “Muahahaha, I voted for this bill to keep the darkies in their place,” you still have 91 votes that are split amongst many different reasons.
So what? It’s still the system we have. Unless you are proposing some other methoid to craft and impose laws on the populace, that is.
I think you’re constraining the history here too narrowly.
When I think about this, I frame it as “I’m not blind to the history of laws that establish restrictions on voting”. Anyone proposing any policy that makes it more difficult for people to vote should bear just as heavy a burden. Because history has shown that one attempt after another has been made to keep the “wrong” people from voting.
And I just don’t see it. The case for preventing fraud fails because no one can find any fraud. The case for “voter confidence” seems extraordinarily weak, both because there are so many other ways to accomplish that goal, and because I just don’t see how it can possibly balance out. How many feelings of confidence does it take to balance out people who have a right to vote not getting to do so?
That isn’t an argument, though. “By virtue of the forum itself”? Which virtue? The only quality of the forum that you refer to is the name, and I can’t believe you’d be using that as a basis. You haven’t given any basis for claiming this is a “an accepted axiom”.
The name of the forum, and the mission of the site as a whole, together argue for the use of debate to reduce or eradicate ignorance.
I just don’t see it, because we’re not talking about prevention. Someone who doesn’t vote isn’t stopped.