Both sentences are fair. Voter fraud only very rarely, in ultra-close elections, has a potential to sway the results of an election. In the vast majority of elections, voter fraud is of so minor a dimension that it simply doesn’t change the result.
But the “problem being addressed,” is not simply the results of elections. It’s the confidence voters attach to the results of elections, especially ultra-close elections.
It’s not fairly arbitrary. It is clearly and rationally related to a reasonable state goal of ensuring that only qualified persons vote.
I get that you see it as a failure of the system.
I don’t.
And this is exactly what I was talking about. This is insanely hypocritical. Yeah, voter ID laws serve as a “deterrent” to voter fraud. They also serve as a deterrent to actually voting. You don’t get to claim that one is meaningful and the other isn’t.
Indeed, I challenge you to name one American election where voter fraud swayed the results. One.
LOL. This line again. Let me be clear on something. The “confidence” of the kind of person who don’t get that voter impersonation fraud is incredibly rare because it has virtually no effect is meaningless. Yes, let’s discourage a whole bunch of people from voting so that a few paranoid folk stop irrationally believing that there was widespread fraud. GENIUS IDEA. Except that voter ID laws would do nothing to stop jackasses like the folks from “Unskewed Polls”. They’re conspiracy theorists. You think this is going to convince them that Obama won legitimately? No! And even if it would, the tradeoff is absolutely not worth it. You’re making it far more difficult for large swathes of people to vote - providing a deterrent (I believe you’ve used that term before…) which in many cases can be quite extreme - while ultimately stopping a crime which almost never happens.
Voter confidence is a big fat waste of time. The people who are convinced that voter fraud is the reason their side lost the election will still be convinced that voter fraud is the reason their side lost the election after we implement voter ID. Because they’re not looking at this rationally. They’re not examining the evidence. They know fuck-all about the electoral process. They’re conspiracy theorists who just cannot believe that their side lost. Bricker, you are proposing cheapening our electoral process, making it significantly harder for many people to vote, to try to appease conspiracy theorists. That’s a terrible idea! It’d be like ordering a 1:1 replica of the twin towers be built, then flying planes into them to appease 9/11 truthers, except that all that would be is a colossal waste of money, rather than a debacle that heavily skews election results in favor of republicans.
(Oh, And when it does happen, it’s something like 40x rarer than, say, absentee ballot fraud, but we never see you guys bitching about not needing a notary to file those.)
If getting an ID didn’t require a trip to the DMV, I might agree. DMVs are notoriously few in number, and have notoriously long waits for service. A person can easily be on the hook for a half to full day adventure trying to get their ID, assuming their documentation is spot on, and they have access to personal transportation. Make one mistake, and you’ll have to do it all again in the future.
Interestingly enough, I can get a passport at the Post Office, and there’s one of those in every town, and the lines are almost never 2 hours long. But for a regular ID that doesn’t cost $100, sorry, go drive 30 minutes to the DMV, wait for 2 hours to see the angry person behind the counter, and drive 30 minutes back with vague instructions on what to fix when you come back tomorrow. De minimis, it is not.
Why not? Certainly they don’t deter by the same mechanism. Voter ID laws deter illegal voters with the treat of prosecution. If they deter legitimate voters, it’s a minimal effect having to do with the difficulty of obtaining ID. There are orders of magnitude of difference.
How would we know? What standard of proof is necessary before you agree with a case of voter fraud?
Not widespread fraud. As I have clearly and repeatedly maintained:
I understand that you don’t believe the trade-off is worth it.
I do believe it’s worth it.
:rolleyes:
Of course there is. Because making it almost completely impossible for some is orders of magnitude less of a deterrent than the threat of persecution. :rolleyes:
Well, here, let me give you a hint. In Al Franken’s congressional bid, his opponent alleged voter fraud. Then, the courts took over. If they had agreed with the plaintiff, I would have accepted it. I don’t fully understand the mechanism there, but I’d assume that if there were no mechanism, the courts wouldn’t have wasted 6 months investigating it, would they?
Oh, great, so what we have is a bunch of people worried about something which even they understand has no effect anyways. And in response, we should make it harder for everyone else to vote. That’s incredible. I’m virtually lost for words.
And one of us is clearly wrong. So how do we go about determining this? I’ve provided evidence. You haven’t.
You haven’t provided any evidence that counters my claim that, as a matter of policy, it’s better to require ID even if it creates what I see as a minimal, incidental burden. Have you? How can you provide evidence about which choice is better for society – about how society should weigh one against the other?
So how we go about determining this is: we each try to convince the public, and outer elected representatives, of the wisdom of our position. Those elected representatives will pass laws consist with the results.
Yes, I have. 120 miles in each direction with no driver’s license and no public transit available is not minimal, incidental. Neither is 30. That’s the whole point - there’s noting minimal or incidental about this burden. The reason people are against it is because it’s not cheap and painless to get photo ID! Your claim that it’s better to require ID if it creates nothing more than a minimal burden is something I have no trouble with. That’s why I have no problem with requiring ID to vote here in Germany, where you can get photo ID in virtually every small town and where the people with no ID are a tiny, fringe minority. But in the US, where getting ID can be notoriously difficult and many people (10% or so) don’t have one? I’m sorry, but the fact that you see it as minimal or incidental means your eyes are closed and you’re fast asleep.
Right. Because that worked so well when it came to evolution, global warming, and the like. And those aren’t even issues about rights! See, that’s the thing - voting about whether or not we let people vote is, in general, a terrible idea. This issue needs to be determined by people who know what they’re talking about, not an electorate who isn’t even aware of the problems and often gets their information from horribly biased and dishonest sources (remember how long FOX touted that bullshit O’Keefe video about voter fraud?). The fact is that this is one of those cases where the vast majority of people are not well-informed, and most of them are simply wrong. Even if it wins the popular vote, that doesn’t make it right. Ask a popular vote if George Zimmerman should go to jail and you’ll probably find a solid majority in favor; that doesn’t make them right.
Exactly. Just a different way of saying it. The new ID requirements depress in person voting, while not depressing absentee voting. Since absentee voting likely has a bigger percentage of fraudulent votes than does in person voting, you end up with what you describe and have an increase in the percentage of fraudulent votes.
From this, it could be argued that ID laws actually increase the incentive to commit fraud by absentee ballot, since such fraud will have a greater effect.
Is it fair to say that helping you (or anyone else with confidence concerns) to feel better about rare effects on rare elections is not worth a single citizen losing their chance to vote, as well as pointing out that the “dimensions” of inefficient voting processes, malfunctioning voting machines, human errors in counting and good old election fraud and malfeasance by officials are all historically far more influential than the Ramon Cues of the world and if maximizing confidence is the goal, why not concentrate on those?
Public polls have shown a pretty consistent majority in favor of Voter ID laws.
I think the burden is minimal and incidental. You seem to disagree.
So, as you pointed out, there must be a way to decide which of our views gets to become law.
So what’s the new solution, instead of letting people vote? Where shall we find a group of people who “know what they’re talking about?”
Can I be on the group?
Can you quantify that, even speculatively? One voter in a thousand? Ten thousand? A million?
A bad idea doesn’t morph into a good one by virtue of popularity.
No.
I think people should get to decide what level of confidence they wish in their elections.
I don’t agree the proper analysis is the number of votes. I say it’s an analysis of the weight of the burden. If the burden is a reasonable, minimum one, then the fact that some people choose to not vote in the face of it is not fatal to the adoption of it.
Who gets to decide which ideas are bad and which ones are good, though, and by what mechanism except popularity do you expect laws in a representative democracy to get made?
Absolutely they should be able to make such decisions about what they wish. The question is should their confidence be used to justify law affecting, indeed disenfranchising, others?
I get that it can be, and has been, so used. The mechanism of bad decisions put into effect is not in doubt.
This is not a casual choice for some, and the need for the burden at all, regardless of what metric of “reasonable and minimal” is applied, remains unclear.
I repeat my earlier comment: The mechanism of bad decisions put into effect is not in doubt.
Incidentally, as regards the question of the thread title, I conclude from this:
…that Bricker’s answer is “Who cares?” Well, I do.
You know what I’m getting from all of this?
“I reject epistemology outright in favor of the vote of the uninformed public”.
That’s what I’m getting from this.
Obviously, whether or not it becomes law in a democracy has to do with how many people vote for it. But this is a debate. On a forum. We’re not talking about “is it popular” or “can we get a lot of people to vote for it”. We’re talking about is it right.
Bricker, do you care whether or not what you believe is right? Because the implication I’m getting from all of this is a solid no. You don’t seem to care whether or not your ideas are right. You just care whether or not you can get a bunch of people who don’t know any better to vote for them. And at that point, it becomes a complete and total waste of time to even begin to debate with you. Because you don’t care if you’re right. You only care if you can get people to agree with you. At any given point, that is the end of the discussion. Full stop. We’re done. And nobody should even begin to engage you on the topic.
God forbid.
Right. And if they think the only people allowed to vote are those who can provide not only their own birth certificates, but the birth certificates of their families from within the USA going back 5 generations…?
Ugh. Just… no. This is a colossal waste of time.
I care deeply about whether it’s right.
You know what I’m getting from all this?
That you and I have very different ideas about what constitutes “right.” Our ideas are so different that I don’t see any real middle ground. If you try to sell me a widget for a dollar and I offer sixty cents, there is obviously room to negotiate. If I offer sixty cents and you say you were thinking six million, the next step is not me saying, “How about three million?” It will be clear that we’re in completely different worlds.
That’s what’s happening here. I am overwhelmingly concerned with doing right. But I don’t think you have any clue what ‘right’ is.
I’m unclear on the moral calculations that leads one to conclude that empathy with people with reduced confidence after ultra-close elections is better than empathy with people who lose a chance to vote, I admit.