Yes, Czarcasm has broken with the liberal orthodoxy. He must be shunned! Shunned until he sees the error of his ways.
My son is a person and he lives here. Whoever wins the election will affect his life as much or more than any of you. In fact, inasmuch as he’s only in fifth grade, it may affect him more, especially as far as decisions with long-term consequences, such as global climate change remediation.
Nonetheless, I don’t want fifth-graders to vote.
Bigot!
No. Ageist.
The last acceptable form of bigotry. Won’t someone think of the children?
But don’t think of them too much…if you know what I mean.
I thought that was size-ism. I think you should have to be under a 30 BMI to vote.
If your last sentence is your honest opinion then you either don’t know what “non-bigoted” means or you’ve never heard the usual reasons.
It’s not that they’re “illegals”(a word I don’t like) but that they’re not US citizens.
I don’t believe there’s a country on earth that allows non-citizens to vote in elections. When my mother was living in Iran she wouldn’t have been allowed to vote in their elections because she wasn’t a citizen. Similarly Americans working in Germany, Austarlia, and the UK aren’t allowed to vote in their parliamentary elections no matter how long they’ve lived there if they’re not citizens.
Actually as I understand it (I have not been here long enough to have participated) Sweden allows non-citizens to vote in county/municipal elections. Non-citizens are only prevented from voting in the national/parliamentary elections.
Though I have typically voted Republican when I was in the states, that is something I wouldn’t mind seeing in the US, either. If non-citizens couldn’t vote in national elections, some would argue there would be less incentive by certain groups to bring them out to the elections. But allowing them to vote for the state legislature or the school board makes sense to me.
(Maybe the Socialism starting to infect me. 
I think that it would take a Constitutional amendment-an amendment not likely to pass in today’s political climate.
Riiiiiight. Were you making this argument about insecure electronic voting machines? My faith in the results of elections in my county is limited because we now vote on machines that have no paper trail attached whatsoever. It’s all electronic, no receipts, no failsafe mechanisms. We only “know” the results because we’re told, and there’s nothing physical from the machine that can be reviewed in the event of a question about validity.
Frankly, I’d rather have every undocumented alien in Allegheny County, PA casting ballots than to have to continue having to trust my vote to the equivalent of the smartcard in my cell phone.
A vote is only as secure as the ballots, but we were effectively distracted from that ongoing issue (and it is, indeed, still very much an issue, with Diebold still the biggest problem) by this trumped up campaign from ALEC. Not from attorneys general, not from Secretaries of State, not from local elections boards, not from the FEC, but by a special interest group, pursuing a specific agenda for the purpose of putting their pet legislators in office and keeping them there.
We got played, and good. And people are still going along with it, even knowing this to be true. There’s a word for that.
So counter the lie that ID is necessary with another lie about how easy it is to get?
The whole reason why this is a problem is that ID *is not easy and cheap to get *for a considerable segment of the population. If it were that simple, no one would have any problem with this.
And when its compounded by the fact that the people making the demand are the people who control the process, set the rules, the prices and the accessibility and they’ve shown no hesitation to game those issues as well (e.g. closure of DMV locations in MN) it’s really not hard to understand that this isn’t about security, this is about playing political games with people’s constitutional rights in order to maintain power. It’s a power grab, plain and simple.
As challenged before, that statement is BS unless you can show us how many people cannot afford the ID required by their state to register or vote. And cannot does not mean doesn’t have it. It means that despite the person honestly wanting to get the ID, they cannot for lack of money or address.
Perhaps the finest post I have ever read here. I heartily endorse every single word.
Yeah, as has been pointed out, you’ll need a cite for this.
Ha! Are you really that naive?
Sure. While I don’t endorse a return to paper ballots, I absolutely agree that electronic voting systems should be secure.
And why not? we might well ask. If the Republican architects of this legislative crud really cared about “voter integrity”, if that was the true source of their actions, they would take measures to make it easier. Why, they could nullify all our objections and even earn our unstinting praise.
Why not a proactive effort to supply as many Americans as possible with iron-clad voter ID? Why, you could easily register tons of new voters at the same time! Wouldn’t even necessarily cost a bunch of money, there are any number of non-profits, like the League of Women Voters, who would be thrilled to help out.
But not only do they not take this obvious route to shut us the fuck up, they actually put up *more *barriers for voter registration. Because the Republicans, rightly or wrongly, see new voters registering as a threat. They see themselves as already having as many registered voters as they are likely to get, but registered voters from the “lower classes” (shorthand, no snark intended or implied) can only dilute that pool of voters, even turn it against them.
This legislation is not intended to thwart voter impersonation, because for all practical purposes, it does not exist. They know that, if they have so many as two synapses to rub together. Voter ID laws are the thin part of the wedge. Using the same (false) principle, they expand to making registration more difficult. (Haven’t they pretty much always resisted any effort to make voter registration easier?)
With this “disenfranchisement” effort, I doubt if they will get more than five or ten percent, at most, discouraged enough not to vote. (WAG, right out of my ass)
But a lot of the elections that the Republican power is based on were very, very close. Even by itself, that may well erode (from my lips to the Ears). But add in an incoming mass of previously unregistered voters, and its a lead pipe cinch. Which is, of course, why they murdered ACORN. Because it was working.
As friend Czarcasm points out, there is a simple and direct solution to all of this, it only a matter of overcoming the huge and carefully constructed disadvantage of power and money. Certainly true, but no more true today than fifty years ago. And somewhat more difficult, because now they get $20,000 when they pass Go, and they can put hotels on railroads and Free Parking. They can.
Oh, I’m sorry, did I drift off into a silly discussion of fairness and honesty? My good. I promise, I’ll do it again.
So at this point now that the anti-ID have complained that this is a vast Republican conspiracy do we address the following points:
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When will Connecticut with its Democrat governor and Democrat controlled Assembly repeal their voter ID law?
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Likewise Hawaii?
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Or Colorado from 2009-2011?
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Or Arkansas?
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Or Delaware?
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Why did the Democrat controlled State of Washington enact photo ID in 2005?
Address the hell out of it, pardner, ain’t nobody stopping you.
Go ahead. You’re the one claiming the Pubs are controlling Voter ID laws. Or are you admitting you can’t answer for why the Dems are not overturning voter ID laws and in one case voted it in?
OK, I’ll discuss it. The idea that voter ID laws are made by Republicans to prevent Democrats from voting is BS.
Your argument is too weak to belabor with facts. One doesn’t kick a puppy, after all. OK, the occasional puppy, but not a *crippled *puppy! That would be wrong.