Well, its possible! It could happen that some tiny number of fraudulent votes in a very, very, very close election could determine the outcome! Worse, those votes will probably be for Democrats, because that’s who fraudulent voters will vote for. And besides that, CASA, ACORN, George Soros and Jane Fonda.
You just have to connect the dot!
Not on a large scale quite yet, since until the recent Supreme Court decision the voter ID laws kept getting shot down. Voter ID laws are always racist and designed to suppress the Democratic vote; if they are allowed to be implemented as people here are saying we should, then you’ll gut the Democratic and especially minority vote across the country. It would be Jim Crow II; over large swaths of the country there will be nothing but white voters. And large scale violence, since you are telling much of the population that they can’t vote because they aren’t white.
And the only “problem” that voter ID solves is Republicans not getting elected because they are bigots.
It’s really pretty simple. Only one side, the one losing national elections, wants voter ID. They hadn’t said anything before this. That is enough for anyone with a brain to figure out that they are doing it for their own benefit and not to stop any problems.
And Bricker is on record as saying he’s okay with Republicans disenfranchising voters, and is on record saying he would not discuss the topic in this thread, despite choosing to do so, so there’s no point in arguing with him. He is not looking for a debate.
In the case of Texas, the problem is multiplied by the geographical fact that Texas is very big and mostly empty. If you live in Dime Box or Pumpville, you might have to travel ten miles to get to where you can catch a Trailways or Greyhound, which will take you to an actual town, where maybe you can connect to a city.
Oh, but they have said before- the other way.
Republicans have always been opposed to any sort of national ID.
Yes, this. Fortunately, these decennial elections, like Senate ones, alternate between presudential cycles (when Dems are strongest) and off year cycles (when right wing nutbags are at their peak). And 2020 will be our turn.
Right, and opposition to those measures does not have anything to do with opposition to voter ID. It goes both ways. This is true in a pure practical sense, but more importantly in terms of salesmanship. If Democrats are seen to be like “okay, sure let’s have better ID” while adamantly opposing the other measures you mentioned, they may get some traction with the latter opposition among the general public. By opposing all of it with the same urgency, they just come across as opposing anything that might hurt their election results, and it tends to make the truly egregious stuff you mentioned get lumped in with the reasonable-sounding measures. Very bad strategy. If I were a Republican watching this happen, I would be giddy like Brer Rabbit.
I am not so pessimistic about Democrats’ ability to win elections with voter ID laws in place. Many of these people do not vote already; they apparently can still vote absentee; they often are in jurisdictions where Republicans win easily anyhow or where CBC members have safe seats. And I am also not so pessimistic about Democrats’ ability to organise and get IDs to these folks just the same way as they did a brilliant job registering black voters in the '60s and then again in the past few years, to the point where African-Americans voted at a higher percentage than whites for the first time in American history (despite, it should be pointed out, a number of laws having been passed between 2010 and 2012 that were quite transparently designed to suppress minority turnout). Given that, now is a time for us to have a can-do spirit rather than a defeatist attitude.
I did read it and that is my position too. However, I see precious little sign of this position among the blogospheric left. It’s mostly just dig in your heels intransigence. And that is not how are you shape the final form of legislation, by opposing it unconditionally. When it has broad support among the public, that is the most foolishly impotent stance you can take.
I am generally not an optimist when it comes to the majority of the American people, given that I am an atheist and can find most places in the world on a map, both of which place me at odds with the American majority. But I think this statement is nevertheless hyperbole. How do you explain that only two presidents in the past 70 years have won two consecutive elections with more than 51% of the vote in each, and one of them was Dwight Eisenhower and the other one was Barack Obama? That is not a sign of a country in which the majority are bigots.
Reading the rest of your post, though, it sounds very paranoid, frankly. Reminds me of the people who 10 years ago were sure that Bush and Cheney were going to institute martial law and never allow any further elections.
No. And don’t call me “Fellow”.
Voter supression is racist bulshit fostered by dumb assholes who have realized too late that the people that have been the targets of said racism, are not going to vote for the racists responsible for the targeting.
Dumb fuckin republicans.
It’s like pointing a gun at yourself, and being surprised at what happens when the trigger is pulled.
That’s how dumb the proponents of this idea hope the rest of us are.
Otherwise, if we had the life experience of, say, a 10 year old, we’d see through it.
It’s an awesome way for delusional republicans to display their racism, while denying it all the while.
Cute, if it weren’t so hateful… I mean, fearful.
More like bloodletting to cure a problem that doesn’t exist.
Not at all pessimistic. Wouldn’t really cut any shit if I were, wrong is wrong. This bullshit is wrong. Pretty much that simple.
If the Republicans had wanted to, they could have put together a voter ID bill that I could support, nothing to that, easy peasy. Ideally, a combination outreach program, assertively and actively providing voter ID to all registered voters while actively registering new voters at the same time.
Gee, doesn’t that sound swell, hundreds of thousands of new voters, all totally ID’d?
Go ahead, guess who doesn’t much like that idea.
You’re not getting it because you’re looking at it on a micro level. Millions of people will have to take that bus ride in order for the Democrats not to lose a sizable chunk of their voting base. No amount of effort from the top is going to get more than, say, 30% of the ID-less to go out and get one who otherwise wouldn’t.
And what about the guy who simply lost his wallet a couple of days before election day?
The bottom line is that on any given election day, there will always be a sizable number of eligible voters who lack IDs for any number of different reasons. None of them should find themselves unable to vote.
IIRC, one of our founding principles is, “Better a guilty man go free than an innocent man be imprisoned”. You’d think a similar principle would apply to voting, and yet for every fraudulent voter we’re disenfranchising tens–hundreds–of thousands?
Can’t we just ask them their mother’s maiden name or the name of their first pet?
What is your objection to being called “fellow” (as a gender-neutral adjective, just to be clear)?
Then you should support that alternative rather than simply shouting “no” and playing right into their “Brer Rabbit” hands.
In a few years this will all be academic anyhow, as it will be trivial to establish identity with biometric scanners (retinas, fingerprints, or DNA). Will anyone here object to that?
You can’t reach a compromise with people who have no interest in reaching one. If you offer to meet somebody who’s intransigent halfway, they’ll just take everything you offer them and give you nothing in return. What the Democrats need to do is stop letting the Republicans tell the story. The Democrats need to explain to the public why the Republican position is wrong. They need to take control of the issue and put the Republicans on the defensive.
We could just agree to eat their shit sandwich in the hope that they might be willing to negotiate over the issue of mayonnaise.
It’s not an alternative since under no circumstances will the Republicans support such a law. The moment the courts force a voter ID law to be non-discriminatory, the Republicans lose interest in it.
Pointless because if they work, they won’t be allowed.
Well-informed voters often have reservations concerning all the candidates, and may thus be ambivalent about voting. Whereas the people who want to vote really badly may be partisan hacks.
I don’t think there’s a practical way to stop people who want to vote bad enough from voting, but, in theory, it sounds good to me.
Little Nemo, am I correct that just in the few years I’ve been reading SDMB you’ve largely switched from GOP-leaning to Demo-leaning? Welcome to the Light! 
IIRC, you once identified as Republican but posted a “platform” I agreed with but for one exception. (You were against gun control and considered it an important issue. I am slightly pro-control but regard it as an unimportant issue.)
This is similar to my immediate reaction. By all means, fix the alienation-from-the-economy problem, but while we’re doing that, don’t further alienate them by not letting them vote.
I think even a sincerely intended, justly administered ID requirement is more effort than the problem it is meant to solve really demands. That I have yet to see any proposed that I am confident is sincerely intended or will be justly administered only makes it worse.
Well … yes.
I mean, illiteracy is a problem, and a system that’s failing people to the point that they can’t even read or write is a problem, but if someone’s house was washed away, that’s a more immediate problem. Teach them to fish, by all means, but while they’re learning, they should also be able to eat for those initial days.
If you hadn’t assured me that you’re a progressive I might have interpreted this as political concern trolling of a piece with “if the Republicans want to win an election again, they should simply reverse their positions on everything.” Either that or the lurkers support you in e-mail.
What you are missing here, I think, is this: there are not widespread reports of massive voter fraud, let alone the specific types of voter fraud that an ID requirement would conceivably solve. So it’s not like there’s some obvious problem that Republicans are being proactive on while Democrats are either ignoring or decrying without suggesting any solutions.
I guess he’s saying that people who are alienated from society will stop being alienated if we threaten to disenfranchise them. I am skeptical of this.
And the only way to effectively do that case like this is to co-opt aspects of the story they are telling and then shift them, at least nominally, into the package you want. This just seems blindingly obvious to me, Politics 101. (Or Dale Carnegie, really.) This is exactly why Obama for instance always has some caveats about cutting waste in government programs where multiple programs could be combined to one, etc., but then pivots and describes a bunch of areas where government investment is needed. A decade ago Rove displayed the power of this approach by packaging unpopular things (giveaways to Big Oil and other polluters) in soothing Orwellian packages (“Clean Skies Initiative”). Progressives need to get a little craftier about this stuff.
They won’t admit it, but I guarantee you the smarter conservatives reading this are thinking “uh oh, don’t listen to that guy…please”.
Can you flesh this out? I don’t quite see what you are getting at, but you have piqued my curiosity.
Not missing this at all. I just don’t find it a compelling point. It is such a trivial and banal point, in fact, that it is embarrassing to see so many people jump up-and-down as if reciting this is the holy Grail that will vanquish their opponents. I’m literally* torn between yawning and wincing.
Oh, FFS. I think you know very well I am saying nothing of the kind, and you’re just trying to get my goat.
*New school “literally”, natch.
Strike 1
Strike 2
Strike 3
3 for 3, way to miss the point. :rolleyes: