But there’s just no significant support for that. The moment a voter ID law is changed to not disenfranchise black people, suddenly the supporters lose all interest in it. I wonder why…
Did you read the linked article?
To be clear, I’m not just talking about prosecutions. I track any specific, credible allegation that someone may have pretended to be someone else at the polls, in any way that an ID law could fix.
(emphasis mine)
Suppose he’s off by a factor of 100, which would be a massive undercount by a person whose full-time job includes investigating this stuff.
Out of 1 billion votes cast in “general, primary, special, and municipal elections from 2000 through 2014”, that would be fraud amounting to three ten-thousandths of one percent. For comparison’s sake, that’s 1/6 of the Florida 2000 margin.
FRAUD AT THE POLLS IS NOT A PROBLEM. People who tell you it is are grifters selling you something, just like Prof. Harold Hill.
I’d still support it.
That’s another we use here, in fact! UV ink – and the poll worker that checks your registration shines a blacklight on your hand.
Got the feeling that is another strategy that if proposed would get the Americans’ boxer shorts all up in a knot, on both sides of the aisle.
Your misconceptions about Florida have already been addressed. Voting fraud that is a real problem typically comes from the party in power using that power to do stuff, like, say, reducing the number of voting booths in areas dominated by the opposite party.
The voter id laws you seem to love are put into place by the dominant party - so it seems more likely that they are examples of vote fraud, not ways of defeating it.
The courts and election commissions are in place to prevent the party in power from making votes unfair, which they did here.
If we only had non-thinking candidate filters! There goes Trump!
So should I lose my right to vote - a right, mind you, not a privilege like buying alcohol or driving - if my wallet is stolen on November 1?
It’s all explained pretty clearly in this short thread.
An old acquaintance of mine was very, very against climate change/global warming. He was one of those people that, every time it was cold out, you’d hear him spouting off about how global warming is bullshit…we’ve got record lows today (oddly, the last time he said that, just for kicks, I checked the temps Down Under, they were having record highs, something like well over 100 for 10 days in a row). Now, I don’t care if you do or don’t beleive in global warming, but at least know what it means if you’re going to tell me it’s stupid. Anyways, to get back to your quote, I always wanted to say to him “That’s like saying ‘crime isn’t on the rise I haven’t been robbed yet’”. Alas, I kept my mouth shut. I was always told to politics, religion and money to myself around customers, and that I did. But it was funny when the next person in line after him said ‘that’s what happens when you get your weather reports from politicians’. And, while I’m on a roll here, I recall seeing a t-shirt or gif of something that said ‘global warming isn’t real, it’s cold out, right now, where I’m standing’.
Now that I like. Check for ink mark, no ink mark, vote, get an ink mark. I’d be curious to see how people would flip out over it. The left would argue that it would disenfranchise someone, the right wouldn’t like it because they wouldn’t be able to use it against anyone, but ISTM, everyone would get what they want. The right would get a way to make sure everyone can only vote once and the left, who seems to go out of their way to find a way way every Voter ID system every thought of won’t work because it’ll cost someone money, will find some way that this one won’t work.
I do find it interesting that (and it’s entirely possible I’m misremembering) whenever someone says ‘if we could set up a way to get every single person a voter ID card with exactly zero expense to anyone at all though some magical way, would you then be okay with Voter ID?’ it seems the left still uses the same arguments about how some group or another wouldn’t be able to get them or afford them or whatever.
I just quickly looked back, on this board, and ran across an old thread asking why we don’t use dye. The answers: allergies, people would still vote in other people’s names (not what the dye is attempting to stop) and there isn’t any fraud to begin with.
I have to say, I’m not one of those people that screams _____IST!!! every time another person opens their mouth, but when people say ‘what’s the big deal about Voter ID, we all need an ID to drive’, I really think they’re a bit out of touch. That’s the exact point the left is making, there’s a lot of people with out DL’s. Hell, I know a handful of solidly middle class people that choose not to have a DL. The majority of us think 'Voter ID, sure, why not, I carry my DL with me everywhere I go, but what about the people that don’t have one, that can’t afford the few dollars to get one (And on and on down the rabbit hole).
Anyways, that’s all to say, I like the idea of a UV ink based system. Yes, it’s not going to prevent me from stealing my neighbor’s vote, but if I do steal his vote, I can’t also vote for myself.
With how adament the right is for voter ID, I always wondered how long it’ll be before the purposely start messing with the votes to prove that we need it.
I’m generally pretty centrist to liberal but I don’t have a problem with having to identify yourself to vote. As mentioned, at age 59 I can’t buy beer without a photo ID. Instead of fighting voter ID laws go out and assist people in getting an ID. Here in Indiana a photo ID has been required to vote for years. If you don’t have one by now I’m going to assume you really don’t care much about voting.
If it were solely for ID, states would find ways to make it easy for legitimate voters to get the ID they need: longer hours at the DMV, special programs to help people get the right ID, etc. But, funny, the states often make it even more difficult for voters. People have a right to vote, so if you’re making it hard to exercise that right, you’re suppressing voters.
And that’s unnecessary. New York uses the same system of countersigned cards that American Express uses on It’s traveler’s checks. If it’s good enough for merchants all over the world, it’s good enough ID for voting.
Not that the ID system does anything. There’s next to no voter fraud that would be caught by this.
It’s a blatant attempt at voter suppression, absolutely nothing more than that. How can anyone be for it is the real question.
Buying alcohol is not a right.
I totally agree ID laws shouldn’t be used to maliciously restrict voting. Getting one should be pretty simple. If you have an ID then you can vote. Simple.
Maybe there are some state legislators that want to misuse a law like this. Hoping to further some twisted agenda. If so, then that’s when the courts step in. But to blindly say no ID is required at all to vote makes no sense. ID is too much an everyday part of our modern lives.
I could hand you three forms of ID right this moment. My drivers license, my birth certificate card and a credit card. I’ve used the birth certificate card a few times as a 2nd ID to cash checks at my mom’s bank.
It’s unimaginable in this day and age that somebody wouldn’t have an ID. Either a drivers license or a state issued ID. Either is equally valid. My mom has told that she applied for my SSN card when I was 8 months old. Long before I could sign my name. 
just remembered. I had to bring my Drivers License and a recent utility bill to get my public library card. They wanted proof of my current address.
A utility bill wouldn’t be accepted for ID many places. But it shows how commonly we prove ID to various institutions in the US.
Examples? Is there a place this has actually happened? In general since the 1970s rather than paging back through all of history.
Sorry - I have at least three they can’t deny and I can’t think of a neighbor who doesn’t have at least two. The point made in another post about student IDs may have some validity but the law or bill proposed can always be modified to include one of those assuming the student doesn’t hold a valid drivers license or state ID like non-drivers use for banking and other purposes.
I guess there it depends on your definition of fraud. I would consider illegal immigrants voting as fraudulent but I doubt most people in my own Party would agree with that. So that point I may have to actually give up.
That goes to my entire plan for campaign reform:
- remove the straight party option from ballots
- list names in random order with no indication of what party they belong to
- ban political workers from handing stuff out for say a 100 yard radius of the place where you vote and no crib sheets allowed
You want to vote for nothing but Republicans or Democrats I have no problem with that. But at least show me the common courtesy to memorize the names beforehand. Needless to say, people from both Parties HATE my ideas. 
We agree on so many things but again I have to ask for a specific example. I don’t doubt one exists but my Google-fu fails me tonight.
Did you read the appeals court’s ruling or not? Because in your OP, you made a reference to jackboots.
The court does not invalidate or ban any and all conceivable ID requirement.
It says that in this specific case:
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The legislature acted with intent to suppress black voting. This was proved as fact by the evidence in the record.
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The provisions of the law had the effect of suppressing black votes. Every one of the five changes at issue did so. The ID provision did so in part by making invalid the types of ID black people were more likely to have and by making valid the types of ID black people were unlikely to have.
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The provisions did nothing to prevent voter fraud.
It would be nice to get some acknowledgement that you understand these things. If you did understand them, you would also understand—
^^^This is a straw man.
^^^This seems to suggest that the conditions of everyone’s life must be the same as the conditions of your life.
Besides that being wrong, it also suggests that you seem to think that it’s okay to disenfranchise people who don’t live in the same conditions you do.
Good points River Hippie
They already have get out and vote drives. Assisting people to easily register to vote. I registered to vote for the first time in a shopping Mall during one of those drives. I think that I was 19 or maybe 20? My first votes were cast for Reagan and Bill Clinton for Governor in 1980. They could arrange a booth to issue state ID’s too for people that needed them. A little planning and coordination with the state beforehand and it could be done. One stop shopping in the Mall. Get your ID, register to vote and buy a Slurpee.
On voting days, various organizations offer free rides to go vote. I’ve seen church vans unload 12 or more people to vote. How much easier can we possibly make it?
Chronology:
1965 - Voting Rights Act - “a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting”
2013 - Shelby County v. Holder - eliminates federal preclearance before implementing any changes to their voting laws or practices unless Congress updates 40 year old formula (which it did not do).
2016 - Seventeen states have Voting restrictions not present in the 2012 election.
Quite an amazing coincidence, isn’t it?