Sure, but has anyone actually endorsed a “no person should ever” position in the last 3 pages of this thread? At least in anything other than a clearly hyperbolic context?
a) What if someone has a sick relative to tend to? What if they have kids to pick up? What if they don’t have reliable transportation? What if they are wage earners instead of salary and can’t afford to be off the clock? These people are being discriminated against. The system is broken.
b) They might be affected, but it’s a stretch to say they’re being discriminated against. There are early ballots, extra days, etc. If those people can’t get to the polling place for whatever reason, it’s their cross to bear. I don’t see why more tax dollars have to be spent to see that every person should be able to go in, vote, and out in under an hour. If it’s 7am and it’s one of the highest voter turnout election in US history, expect to have above-average wait times. Expect it to be above average by a lot. It’s nothing personal. It just so happens to be the way that particular cookie crumbled. If you need language assistance? Probably going to take a fair bit longer. You’re 102 and you don’t move so well? Longer still. Sorry but that’s the way it is.
I disagree that “tough cookies” should be our response to problems with one of the most fundamental services (voting) that our democracy provides. If you think that, I doubt we can come to any consensus.
At no time have I suggested that long lines at the polls equal discrimination.
Well, you should, because it does, and that’s more or less the crux of the biscuit. It is no accident that Republicans defend the status quo on this, because it favors them. The more minorities, poor people, students, etc. who are discouraged, hampered or otherwise hindered from voting, the better for them. They have analyzed the topography of their bread, and determined which side it is buttered upon.
The Republican stance on this issue breaks down roughly into two camps, the stupid and the cynical. The stupid believe their own mythology, that America is a center right country and the majority of Americans favor their policies. How then to explain why they are losing? Voter fraud, of course. Busloads of illegal aliens shepherded by CASA volunteers. The logistical impossibility of this scenario does not faze them.
The cynics know this is nonsense, and don’t care. They exploit the cognitive impairment of their fellows without so much as a qualm. What the ratio is, I haven’t a clue, the only Republicans I meet on a regular basis I meet at Thanksgiving.
Have any doubts, simply review the record of Ohio Atty. Gen. John Husted. If you are a sincere American patriot, committed to equality under the law, be sure that your are no more than fifteen quick paces from your commode, or an appropriate tree. You may well be performing the Australian yawn.
If you are suggesting that I should care more about the problem of voting access when it affects one group more than another group, I disagree. Whether or not it affects one group more than another group, it’s still a problem that needs to be fixed. I honestly consider most of this “it’s engineered by Republicans” or “this is disenfranchising the poor” stuff to be a distraction from the basic problem. If long lines at the polls were occurring in primarily wealthy Republican districts, I’d feel exactly the same about our responsibility to fix it. This is not a partisan issue, regardless of how much people try to make it one.
As long as that’s the way it is in the toniest suburban voting sector, I have no problem (well, little problem) with that being the way it is in the poorest inner-city voting sector. Somehow, I don’t imagine John D. Rockefeller V is waiting for three hours.
Ever.
Ever, ever, ever.
Well, yes and no.
To me there’s a huge difference between:
(a) the state of Florida just can’t get its shit together to run elections efficiently and cheaply, and plenty of precincts across the state end up with very long lines on election day. These precincts are randomly scattered across all counties and demographics
and
(b) the state of Florida can’t get its shit together to run elections efficiently and cheaply, and plenty of precincts across the state end up with very long lines on election day. There is a strong correlation between these precincts with long lines and precincts which strongly favor the party that doesn’t happen to be in power and in charge of election laws and procedures.
The first is bad, but reasonable people can disagree on HOW bad, how much money ought to be spent to fix it, how best to spend that money, etc. The second is antidemocratic and unAmerican, and very strong (although not conclusive) evidence of a type of political corruption and manipulation that very clearly ought to be illegal and unconstitutional, although of course it might not be.
Bush v. Gore affirmed the principle that equal protection does apply to voting. Not at all what the partisan-activist wing intended, of course, but there it is.
Here’s the thing though… In what possible scenario, other than a voting precinct/polling place with only 1 voter, could there ever be only one voter experiencing an approximate three hour delay? Assuming all voters proceed through the check in point as directed by poll workers, and also assuming there is one individual representing “maximum waiting-in-line duration”, then for at least some measurable quantity of voters there must have been an average waiting period somewhere just below (ergo, very close to) that maximum duration.
So whether the maximum is three hours, six hours or 20 minutes, it’s entirely fair to say that the polling place experienced respectively three hour, six hour or 20 minute waiting periods on election day, regardless of the total number of voters. IOW, “not one person should ever” can properly by interpreted as “not one polling place should ever…” In other other words, the hyperbolic presentation is made of pretty durable and realistic straw, and the argument is much stronger than has been presented by Bricker et al.
Have you a plan to fix the problem but leave the illegitimate electoral advantage in place? If voting is easier more people will vote. If more people vote, the more likely it is that Republicans will lose. They know that.
So far as they are concerned, your position is very partisan indeed. Of course, if you could convince them that such programs that empower the riff-raff to vote will result in a Republican avalanche of voters, I daresay you would…hmmmm…wait a second…no, it’ won’t work, they’d never believe me…Darn!
No shit, Sherlock. But that has nothing to do with anything in this discussion, AFAIAC.
Where this side-issue started was:
You can come up with an infinite number of examples from this message board, but it won’t change the truth of that. Out there, the GOP is the party of ideology and theories, screw the facts, while the Dems are interested in what works.
And we can figure out which Dopers are more reality-based by the simple expedient of seeing who gets the better of the argument.
I did. And you’ve misrepresented me. “your reaction is to attack me, and ever so carefully NOT criticize them, even though I agree with mailing ballots and they do not.” That had nothing to do with my disagreement with you, and my support for them.
So the one example you cared to give of this generalization is a pile of steaming horseshit.
Evidence please, counselor, to support your claim that these events we’re discussing - three-hour waits to vote - are “extreme statistical outliers.”
ETA: I’d say one of the goals of us wild-eyed lefties is to bring about the day when such events are extreme statistical outliers.
I don’t claim they are.
I do claim that MeanOldLady wants to develop policy driven by extreme statistical outliers.
Have the people who made those endorsements earlier in the thread disclaimed them? Have they said, “I was wrong,” “I was speaking hyperbolically,” “I got a bit carried away?”
If not, I’m curious on what basis you chose to draw a line three pages back and start pretending that things said earlier can be erased like Trotsky.
That’s certainly a fair reading of your posts.
But that’s not a fair reading of others’ posts.
But that’s no different, really. The point Bricker was making (and he was making it in a very pedantic and snide fashion, but it was a reasonable point nonetheless) is that it’s entirely possible to have a reasonable and overall efficient voting system in which somewhere in the country over the course of election day some number of people experienced 3 hour waits. There are tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of polling places, all of which are things that are set up to operate for only a single day out of every 4 years (or 2 years, or whatever), manned by volunteers, and set up in places not primarily designed for that function. If, out of those hundred thousand, some small number have a combination of bad fortune and individual human incompetence which conspire to cause a mini-clusterfuck and a bunch of people at that precinct all have to wait 3 hours to vote; well, that’s not GOOD, but it’s not prima facie evidence that the entire system needs to be overhauled. Some people earlier in this thread were making overly-absolute statements about how if anyone has to wait 3 hours to vote, then the secretary of state should be impeached; or we should spend however much money it takes to GUARANTEE that NO ONE will POSSIBLY have to wait 3 hours NO MATTER THE EXPENSE. That is an untenable position, if taken purely literally.
Because, quite frankly, while you were right in your initial response, you were also a jerk. People made claims that (as I’ve expressed repeatedly in this thread) I believe were overly absolute and overreaching, at least when taken literally, and they did so in a context which clearly invited them to be taken literally. You then responded by pointing out flaws in their claims… but you didn’t do so in a polite or inquisitive fashion, ie, “hey, I’m curious whether you mean this claim to be as absolute as it sounds, because I believe that taken to a real literal extreme, a well intentioned plan becomes unfeasible”. Rather, you jumped directly to “well, this is another example of liberals being stupid”. Small wonder that people then responded with insults or by bringing up your claims in other threads rather than by calmly actually discussing the (actually fairly narrow and uninteresting) point of initial disagreement in this thread.
That rash of initial overbroad claims then fairly quickly died away. Now, many pages later, you’re still bandying it about and waving the bloody flag as if the fact that 4 or 5 individual posters have not gone back and either clarified their initial posts or admitted that Bricker was right and they were wrong somehow defines the entire tenor and substance of the debate.
Really, it’s not even clear what we’re arguing about at this point. I believe that you agree that it’s a bad thing when someone has to wait 3 hours to vote, highlighted when that person is 102, and whenever at all feasible, measures should be taken to obviate that situation. I’m pretty sure that’s your position, and that’s my position, and that’s the position of (nearly?) everyone who’s stated an actual position in this thread in a calm and non-exaggerated fashion. Sure we could discuss what is and is not “feasible”, but that would be an incredibly detail-oriented debate involving a lot of knowledge and expertise that none of us have (unless someone here is an expert on macro scale voting logistics and state budgets), so what would be the point? Aside from that, I think there’s just a lot of misunderstanding and people talking past each other, and an interesting side discussion about voting by mail, but it’s not at all clear who disagrees with who about anything there.
Cites for increased confidence as a result of both of your voter ID proposals, please.
Does this include the cost of designing the new voter rolls, approving the new voter rolls, distributing the new voter rolls, collecting the new voter rolls, storing the new voter rolls, and counting the new voter rolls? Does this include the cost of printing additional provisional ballots to accommodate for the voters that do not have fingerprints?
You were interpreting that as “more secure for the country”, I assume, in that ineligible registered voters (registered in two districts or perhaps a felon) are not permitted to vote, but what about impersonation or vote buying? You wrote in the other thread:
Say someone fraudulently impersonates you, somehow acquiring your mail in ballot. What recourse does the state have for catching them? What about the case of this Oregon man. What if he were more surreptitious?
Also, I see you left this statement unaddressed in the other thread:
Can you point to a single instance of my doing that to someone who hadn’t first made similar or worse attacks against me?
Is it really the rules of engagement here that others are free to hurl invective, make snide remarks, or call me vile names, and I must respond with continual and unfailing politeness?
And yet none of them are defusing this tactic by replying NOW to disclaim their literal claims. Why is that?
Would that it were so. A disagreement still exists because there are people here who still literally believe that even one who has to wait over three hours represents a failure that must be fixed.
Which thread was this in, and why are we talking about it here?
So, OK. We don’t aim to address every possible statistical outlier, we don’t set our goal at 99.99% of perfection and total equality. Does that mean we don’t try for 95%? Why not start taking steps to improve the situation and see how close we can get?
Well, there’s one good reason, or at least significant reason: the Republicans will daub themselves with shit and set their hair on fire before they will let it happen. This is how simple it is: they don’t want more people voting. Most especially, they don’t want any more of the riff-raff voting.
They will claim state’s rights, they will claim local sovereignty and jurisdiction, the will claim Bigfoot’s farts, they will come up with a rationale, however bankrupt, however vacuous. They will swear on all their Bibles and half their money that this is a principled stand, that they are not just stacking the deck. But of course they are.
Now, if someone can come up with a scheme that makes voting easier for all citizens and greatly increases the voter pool without damaging Republican prospects for re-election… Might need a secluded place to work on that plan. Overseas, perhaps. Lourdes comes to mind.