Of course the issue is that, as usual, the main point is missed here. In theory that is what everyone agrees it should be. The problem is when in practice most minorities and the poor get into burdens that in effect limit their vote.
I think that’s an oversimplification that doesn’t really apply here.
Republicans view their policies as right - and I don’t mean on the political right, I mean morally correct. Whatever they can do to keep those other people’s votes from counting is OK. And those “other people” are the poor and disadvantaged.
Sure, race and socioeconomic status are highly correlated in the US, but I don’t think their motivation to enact these laws is based on race, their motivation is based on socioeconomic class. So are the policies racist? They definitely have a disparate racist impact, although I don’t think that racism is the driver.
Actually what usually stops many conservatives from doing that is the effect of not wanting to be voted out of the Republican island, that is referring to the most likely circle of friends and associates.
The problem is that (exgagering of course but the results will be bad)the Idi Amin like guy has been put in charge of looking if the laws are enforced or how they are.
This goes to what I pointed many times before, I would be in agreement of many voter reforms if it was not for the ugly fact that on many areas of the USA the discretion of many in power is to kowtow to the people that do want to see minorities and the poor to be discounted. Over here in Arizona a lot of my opposition is based on who in the [del]executors[/del] executive branch are enforcing the laws, Joe Arpaio was finally canned, but the Governor currently is just a bit less worse. And people like the current governor are bound to get more asshole-ish with the rights of minorities and the poor thanks to the Attorney general being a clone of Joe Arpaio.
Missed the edit window: And the point can be made that a good number of the roughly one third of Republicans that are bigoted finally gave up on Arpaio not because he stopped being a racial profiler, but because he did demonstrate that he was also abusing his power with white people also. (like investigating the wife and relatives of the Judge that was overseeing the racial profiling case of Joe Arpaio)
It also needs to be mentioned that Donald Trump knew about those things and still joined Arpaio to the hip.
nothing can join Arpaio to the hip. To the “total dipsticks”, perhaps.
Suppose we generously decide not to ask you to try to reconcile your position with those of people who died fifty years ago, but with people alive and active today?
That was not a reconciliation. It was an illustration of how worthwhile and accurate positions may be held by undesirable people without invalidating the positions.
In current news, the Fourth Circuit says in Lee v Virginia State Board of Elections:
Another win for the good guys.
Helping to ensure another Trump victory in 2020. Such good guys they are.
Neither are inherently racist. I can’t say about other localities, but in the city I’m an Officer of Elections for, you can come into City Hall up to the day the provisional ballots are considered to get a free Voter ID, which is days after the election and have your vote count. In anticipating the burden concerns, we even had mobile registration units in multiple locations that were predicted to have these concerns to a high degree where people could get an ID.
The reasons behind the voter ID laws are BS, based on a completely undemonstrated assertion of widespread voter fraud, but I don’t see the laws inherently disenfranchising anyone as they are written in my area and with the accommodations my area has provided. I know there are people who would have a legitimately hard time making it to City Hall or a DMV or whatever, but when are complaints of the law being too burdensome more a reflection of the low value some place on voting as opposed to a legitimate burden that is preventing someone from getting an ID?
As an extreme example, walking a couple blocks to City Hall couldn’t possibly be so burdensome that it prevents one from getting an ID unless they physically cannot make it to City Hall and didn’t have anyone to take them there. But in that case, the person would have an equally impossible chance of making it to a polling station and would likely have to cast an absentee or mail-in ballot.
Friend Bricker has asserted on a number of occasions that a burden is inherently a good thing, because otherwise the value of voting is disrespected. Just as you say, the “voter fraud” chimera is, itself, a fraud. Why, then, should any burden be placed at all? What purpose does it serve? Do lazy people have some Constitutional failure that affects their right to vote? I don’t remember any statute or provision that demands that human rights must be earned.
I don’t share in Bricker’s position that voting being burdensome is inherently a good thing (presuming you have accurately portrayed his position; I haven’t checked myself but I have no reason to doubt you). But neither do I think that voting being burdensome is inherently a bad thing either anymore more so than anything else being burdensome.
It’s inherently going to be a burden of some sort to either get up early in the morning to go vote, go after work on the way home to vote, or whatever one’s situation may be, yet we do not automatically declare that this burden is disenfranchising. Only when a burden is above some arbitrary threshold or is shown to be intentionally placed for nefarious reasons is it considered disenfranchisement. Therefore I don’t see an issue with viewing obtaining a voter ID in a similar light, especially when attempts are made to lower the burden.
I can confirm that is his position. If asked, he has a screed on “not esteeming the vote too lightly.”
It is not inherently a bad idea, and I’ve written and read enough sci-fi that I can accept that other forms of suffrage can come to the same more or less peaceful and prosperous society.
And here is the problem, is that it creates unequal burdens. And not only are the burdens unequal, but the heavier burden falls on those who are already most marginalized in society.
If you are required to show ID at the polls, does that cause you to have to go out of your way at all? Do you even have to wait in a line?
Many of the people that are discouraged from voting through these laws are people who already have a much higher burden than you to vote. They often have rather long lines to wait in, in November, when the weather is not always all that nice.
To get my ID I did have to wait in line at the DMV although I hear I can order it online now. If you are asking if I have to wait in line to vote, I would if I wasn’t an Officer of Election. Since I am and work at different precinct from where I vote, I have to fill out an absentee ballot. My precinct thankfully did not have particularly long lines last November compared to other areas. I think the longest wait was 30-40 minutes if that.
To your larger point though, there are certainly burdens that are too high. I’ve heard of places in other parts of the country who are dozens of miles away from their polling place and with no realistic way of getting there because of poor infrastructure. So I’m not saying there are never burdens that are so great that they need action to correct, but I am saying that there are burdens that are so minor that they do not need action to correct.
What I think we can agree on, though, is that the voter ID laws are dumb; they are addressing a problem that none has proven exists and the arguments for voter fraud tend to appeal to the notion’s supposed unfalsifiability as a reason to address it like your average conspiracy theorist would. They are creating a burden unnecessarily. Also, I’m sure we agree that there are plenty of other areas in the voting process that need immediate addressing because of burdens that should not exist or not exist as heavy as they do.
Where I think we disagree is that it is creating a burden in all cases so heavy that it has to be avoided.
If that happens, it won’t be because of this policy.
But let’s say, for pretend’s sake, that it did.
This is not an argument against it. Unless, of course, you’re suggesting we should evaluate the voting scheme with an eye towards ensuring it produces an outcome you like?
Surely you’d never do something so heinous as support a voting policy because it helped elect your favored candidates or helped reject your disfavored candidates.
Right?
And while I appreciate the kind efforts k9 and 'luci have undertaken to lighten my burden by reporting my positions, I would ask that they leave that task to me. Because their positions are adversarial to mine, they run the risk of failing to capture the precise nature of the positions I have staked out.
Here, for example, it’s not quite correct to ascribe to me “a burden is inherently a good thing.” It’s more correct to say that I think some small burden is a good thing. Unduly onerous burdens are not a good thing.
Well, no. If a policy caused voter turnout to go down, due to bureaucratic shenanigans, and that caused my preferred candidate to win, then at the very best, I would feel pretty dirty about the win. I certainly would not feel as though my platform won on its own merits. It would make me strongly reconsider any loyalty I might have had to that party.
Apologies if I spoke too cavalierly about your position. Like I said, I don’t really have a problem with the idea of a more limited suffrage, in theory. I do have a problem with a limited suffrage that limits based on arbitrary bureaucratic hurdles that effect the most marginalized populations most.
This Cracked article seems relevant:
It describes someone whose mother kinda screwed up his birth certificate. As a result, he had a social security card that didn’t actually match his name. When he tried to fix it, he was told he needed ID. When he tried to get ID, he was told he needed a social security number that matched his name.
The guy needed $300 for the court to fix his problems. He eventually got arrested for not having ID on hand.
I find these paragraphs near the end particularly telling:
Pennsylvania at present does not require photo ID to vote.
And if it did, then the process would include a way to obtain an ID under these circumstances. In this case, for example, the SSA can change the name based on RM 10212.090 relating to a name change as a result of an amended birth certificate, which can be obtained from Georgia by mail for an additional fee of $10.
Which, if you’re wondering, in my opinion is not so large that it becomes onerous and discriminatory.
Again, Democrats by a strong majority think voter ID is right. Therefore, a strong majority of Democrats must think whatever keeps the poor and disadvantaged from voting is OK. Right?
Regards,
Shodan