Long voting times which lead to lowered voter turnout is a regular occurrence. Republican-led legislatures have been enacting (or trying to enact) laws which lead to longer voting wait times (reduced hours) and therefore lower turnout, which benefits their party.
Vote fraud which would be reduced by ID laws is miniscule. Recent examples of accusations of in-person vote fraud have included Republican mouthpieces (Coulter) or fools trying to “test the system” (and failing). Voter ID laws have been proposed by Republcans in order to lower turnout, and therefore benefit their party.
Can you see therefore, that these things are not equivalent?
The real funny thing is that this non-equivalency has not prevented certain posters from arguing both sides of the equation on these two topics, in terms of cost:
“Vote fraud must be stopped. Costs involved in getting mandatory voter ID in place should not be a barrier. The people have no confidence in the system, because the media has made them nervous about vote fraud.”
vs.
“Long voting lines and the resultant lower turnout are a problem sure. But it would cost too much to guarantee a fix, so we really can’t do anything about it.”
Er… her “statement about costs” was that if one solution is too expensive, we find another solution that isn’t. That doesn’t at all address the case I am asking about: that there is NO solution that isn’t prohibitively expensive.
I’m not sure that’s true. But it’s enough of a possibility that I believe it’s invalid to say “no matter what the cost” we should proceed.
John, do YOU believe that :no matter what the cost" we should guarantee no wait time for voting exceeds three hours?
I think you should have inserted a “, by golly” after “No”. Would have bumped up the pablum factor from 99.99 to 100%.
Seriously, Bricker is with you on doing what’s reasonable. But you seem to want to insist that he even agree with you if the solution is unreasonable. That’s your position, though it does help that you seem to be softening it a bit now. I think you have gotten caught up with fighting with him and are unable to see that he’d be an ally in making at least most of the changes you want.
Seriously, this post is the most clear example that you were speaking literally. This would have been the place to say:
Shrugging and saying, “well, it’s probably too expensive and taxpayers won’t like it” is not an option for us. Absolutely not an option. Am I saying that we must fix this no matter what the expense? No. That would of course make me “impractical” But as an American, I believe we can design a solution that works the vast majority of the time, and isn’t exorbitantly priced. That’s what I mean: not literally “any price.”
Doesn’t that work better for what you really mean?
You are seriously, literally, saying that you can design a system which guarantees … what, specifically? Tell me what your goal is. Specifically. Is it the 51 minutes, or the SoS gets impeached? What?
This is a fascinating thread. Some comments:
(1) We all seem to have completely stopped talking about the jackasses on Fox being jackasses, as was the actual original OP. I guess because what else is there to say, other than that they’re jackasses
(2) There’s an interesting question of whether the fact that one 102-year-old lady waited 3 hours to vote in and of itself proves that something is wrong with our voting system. And, in isolation, I don’t think it does. Certainly one can imagine a scenario where of the 100 million voters who voted (I just made up that number), 99 million waited 20 minutes or less, another 950 thousand waited between 20 and 40 minutes, another 45 thousand waited 40 to 60 minutes, and 5 thousand unlucky individuals waited up to 4 hours in one county in one state because a “perfect storm” of things all went wrong at once, one of whom was a 102-year-old lady. That wouldn’t be a broken system. Problem is, we all know that that doesn’t remotely resemble the actual reality of the election. But focusing so much on one person as opposed to average wait times (and really, average wait times with deviations of some sort, as a state where most of the people waited 10 minutes and some waited two hours is very different from a state where most people waited around 20 minutes, even though the average wait time would be the same) really obfuscates the issue, both in terms of what we’re arguing about and what a “working” system should look like.
(3) Of course the 500 pound gorilla is (a) the extent to which average wait times in precincts break down along party-affiliation lines, and (b) the extent to which that’s due to malicious human action as opposed to perhaps an accident of demographics. Does anyone have any actual data about that?
(4) As for Bricker, there’s a certain extent to which he’s been right. People have, in fact, been saying overbroad and unrealistic things. We should NOT spend “any amount of money” to reduce voter wait times, nor should we attempt to “guarantee” just about anything, at least literally. But his over-precise, over-literal and pedantic responses have then been met with vastly more hostility and insult than they deserve, at least purely in the isolated context of this thread. I’m not defending him, because a reasonable response for him to make in the first place would have been something like “when you say ‘guarantee’, what do you precisely mean, because taking that literally has some pretty serious implications…” as opposed to “oh you liberals are all whiny children”, but at the same time people’s reactions to his posts have been fairly over the top… which of course just lends credence to his accusations about liberals in the first place.
Of course I think her statement about “whatever the cost” was ridiculous, but it wasn’t the only thing she posted. She was simply saying that she didn’t believe we couldn’t find a cost effective solution, just like said you couldn’t believe taxpayers would agree to pay. If you can understand your own statement, you should be able to understand hers.
No, I don’t believe that. I don’t think anyone really does, no matter what they may say in a stupid Pit thread like this one.
It isn’t possible that lowering wait times will require eleventy billion dollars.
Machines, workers, ballots. These are knowable costs. There isn’t some mysterious element called *Nowaitium *that is necessary and whose price fluctuates wildly.
Evidently localities spend less than 1 billion on elections: Error
So even if it costs 10 times what it does now, it’s worth it. What possible scenario do you have that this will cost more than that? Is 20 billion worth fair elections?
Do you really think lowering wait times will require more than 20x what we spend today?
I am all for impeaching the SoS if the wait times are long and it could have been predicted. That is to say, if last time the lines were at 3 hours and polling shows that turnout will be higher this election and they cut voting time and number of machines.
If it’s an accident, say if the power goes out or a truck carrying machines overturns and they are under supplied, then I doubt most people would vote to impeach.
As for no matter the expense. Yeah, since the expense will never plausibly be outrageous. If you’re just going to make up that it might cost 900 billion dollars an election, then no. But if you’re going to be honest and say that we might have to spend anywhere up to ten times our current spending, then yeah.
Are we trying to debate public policy? Or is this a debating society where the question on the table is irrelevant and we score points when we can point out that someone failed to dot an i?
Bricker, you want voter ID. How about if it cost $1,000,000 per voter to implement? Oh, you think it won’t cost that much? Sorry, that sort of reality-based answer is inadmissible when the Brickhead is involved.
Next you’ll be attacking posters for spelling errors and misplaced commas. Do you think this rhetoric is useful or relevant? Perhaps you think it’s your role to “train” Dopers into writing precisely – to save them from thread-hijacking nitpickers like yourself. Let me disabuse of that: No, we don’t look to you to fill that role.
What role do we seek for you? I’m not sure. Looking at Bricker’s posts from 8 years ago I see a good-spirited intelligent gentleman who had useful opinions to contribute. What happened to you? Drugs? Or is it that as your GOP idols became more and more blatantly idiotic, you couldn’t help yourself from following them? If it’s not too late for you, I suggest you seek help.
You are arguing with yourself. See your post #202 in reference to costs of reducing long voting lines:
So… I am asking you to address the case I am asking about: There is NO solution to voter fraud that is not prohibitively expensive. Can you design a system that guarantees what specifically? That there will never be voter fraud at all?
Isn’t this pretty rare? I was under the impression multi-hour wait times were mostly found in developing countries transitioning to a democratic system. Or maybe I wasn’t being cynical enough.
Lawyers in general are paid to argue a case within a strongly bounded set of rules and regulations. Their role is not to find the most moral, just or correct decision in any particular case. Their role is to argue, vociferously and vigorously for “their side”, while keeping within the rules.
Bricker is simply doing what he does best in his profession. A good lawyer would be able to argue that his client should receive a minimal sentence because of mitigating factors, and then cross the street and argue that an identical defendant in a similar case should receive a long sentence despite identical mitigating factors.
If defendant “A” receives a 1 year sentence and identical defendant “B” receives a 5 year sentence, then Bricker has “won” in both cases. And THAT is what it’s all about.
Bricker does this for the same reason a dog licks his balls.