Fucking Stupid Democrat Fraudulent Voters

The BBQ Pit
81

My reading of his post #53 in this thread was that he was basically asking you to state your position. Doing it as a multiple choice question can be read as having a snide “I know your position must be one of these, and thus these are your choices” tone, but it can also just indicate “this is the level of specificity that I’m interested in”.

So, let’s take the general liberal argument against them:
(1) There is close to zero evidence that in-person voter fraud of the type that this law would address happens at all, certainly zero evidence that it happens sufficiently to influence even super-close elections like Florida 2000
(2) The requirements for voter IDs that these laws have been proposing have usually NOT been accompanied by any efforts to make it easy for people to acquire IDs, particularly people such as the elderly, the working poor, people with bizarre and difficult to spell names, or non-English-speakers who are least able to navigate the bureaucracy. Therefore the impact on voter turnout would be in many ways comparable to a poll tax.
(3) Demographically, the groups most heavily affected by this requirement tend to vote Democratic
(4) There’s fairly little evidence that those proposing these laws actually care about the issue of voter fraud and integrity, because they are focusing so much attention on this one issue while not doing things to address potential voter fraud with absentee ballots and other parts of the election that are arguably far more vulnerable to voter fraud, but don’t have the demographic issues that voter ID requirements do
(5) Compared to the glacial pace at which governmental change usually happens, these laws were pushed through at very much the last minute.
(6) Put all of the above together, and the whole issue seems far more likely to be an attempt by Republicans to suppress Democratic voting than a principled concern about anything

I think that’s a reasonable summary of the major points on the liberal side. So…
(A) Do you think these arguments are basically reasonable ones that you can see why a well meaning, intelligent and ethical person would make?
(B) Do you think that the vast majority of the people who are arguing against you about this issue are doing so because believe these arguments (or something very similar), NOT because they believe that there are lots of illegal or fraudulent votes currently being cast for Democrats, and they want to maintain that illicit advantage?
(C) Pretend for a second that evidence came to light that really strengthened some of the steps of this argument that are a bit hand-wavey… say (a) a really clever and comprehensive study made a very compelling case that the number of cases of in-person voting fraud was in fact tiny, even by the standards of very close state-wide elections, (b) a comprehensive study was released showing a clear and strong link between the effects of a voter ID law and party affiliation, and (c) a recording surfaced of a Republican politician talking to supporters about voter ID laws in the most cynical and corrupt fashion possible. In a situation like that, might you reconsider your position? Or is your claim that as long as you have a vaguely rational justification for the position you are taking, and as long as the law was in fact legally passed by a majority of the legislature in question, then arguments of the sort we’re making are irrelevant no matter how much evidence there is for them?

Could you imagine your reaction to a law of this sort being “wow, those 10 specific Republican politicians who proposed that law are clearly unethical scumbags because I’m entirely certain that they are just cynically trying to manipulate voter turnout under totally false pretenses… nonetheless, I think the law is a good one despite the fact that they’re jackasses, so I support it”?

So, someone comes to you with an absolutely exhaustively researched and footnoted study tomorrow that proves to a great level of mathematical confidence that while voter ID laws would prevent between 100 and 200 fraudulent votes (with no reason to think that they would all be cast on the same side rather than just cancelling each other out) in a particular state, it would also reduce voter turnout by 30 to 40 thousand votes, with a strong correlation between party affiliation and reduced voting. Does that make American Democracy and the integrity of our electoral system and your confidence in the outcome of elections stronger or weaker?

82

You’re right – it’s not your job.

But I feel you ask me questions that require me to precisely and fairly lay out my positions – which is fine. I’m happy to do so.

But it seems to me as though it’s only my positions which garner such interest from you. And I have some theories about this.

One theory is that you know, damn well, that septimus is not going to respond in good faith, and with honest detail, when you ask him similar questions. Ironically, given that his posts spend a fair amount of time claiming I’m a lying hypocrite, he will get a pass from this moral probity examination of yours, because you know it would be a useless exercise.

Would you care to comment on that theory?

83

(a) I don’t know anything about Septimus, particularly. I see that you and he are having a testy argument about something, and I basically skipped reading it because it didn’t interest me
(b) but you’re missing the far more obvious point, which is that your position is the one that I disagree with. Why would I ask someone who I basically agree with about voter ID laws to precisely lay out his position, so that when he’s done I can say “ah, yes, well, I would reprioritize issues E and F slightly, and probably phrase subpoint C1 a bit differently, but basically you and I agree”?
(c) also, at least in the context of this thread, I’m NOT (at least yet) accusing you of unethical behavior, hypocrisy, poor arguing, or anything else of that sort. I’m not jumping in and saying “hey, Bricker, you’re arguing in bad faith, stop it or I’ll rap your knuckles” while ignoring the people you are arguing with (although I admit that I have said things similar to that in other contexts and other threads). Rather, I’m fairly straightforwardly asking you to lay out your position, so that I can debate you on your position, as in fact I have done. Why would I ask Septimus to lay out his position when I don’t have any desire to debate him?

84

But there’s “zero evidence” precisely because the evidence you’re requesting is proof – typically via prosecutions – that such fraud has occurred, and there’s no framework that allows successful prosecutions.

Take this case.

Someone named Ramon Cue voted. But when the guy is tracked down, he says, “Wasn’t me – I don’t remember voting. And I’m a schizophrenic. Must have been another Ramon Cue with my birth date.”

That doesn’t get counted as a case of fraud, because it’s almost impossible to prosecute him.

So you sit there, in effect demanding evidence that your preferred scheme makes nearly impossible to obtain.

For this reason, I am unpersuaded by the “there’s zero evidence” claim. The fact that voting is an important aspect of the exercise of democracy, and the fact the hyper-close elections are possible and have happened, is enough to persuade me that Voter ID is a good idea.

In every single state that has instituted voter ID, the move has come with the introduction of free photo ID. Every single state.

Granted.

Yes, and I wish that weren’t so. But since the law they actually came up with is a good one, I support it, even though it’s not perfect… or even better.

That’s not always the case. Indiana passed their law in 2003, and the Supreme Court upheld it in 2008. That seems to be plenty of time.

Now, in Pennsylvania, your criticism is valid. And I agree. Going forward, I think it makes sense for every state to pass a Voter ID law that won’t go into effect until there has been an intervening election. Ultimately, that’s what’s happened in Pennsylvania: the law was stayed for this election cycle, but will be effective the next. I agree with you that pushing these laws through too fast is unwise. But the cure I propose is passing them, but with an effective date of the election past the upcoming one.

Absolutely.

And my arguments in rebuttal – are those also basically reasonable? Of course, you may disagree with them, but do you find them to be basically reasonable arguments that you can see why a well meaning, intelligent and ethical person would make?

Yes, I believe there are only two people here who believe, in their hearts, that Democrats need illegal votes to win. The vast majority of people simply see things differently – specifically, I think they weigh the difficulties in getting ID much more strongly than I do.

I’d be even more persuaded that there was strong support for these laws based on a belief that they’d give political advantage. But those revelations wouldn’t weaken my support for the laws. If you discovered that a politician took a bribe to vote to increase minimum wage, I assume it wouldn’t deter your belief that increasing minimum wage is a good thing. It would increase your distaste for that politician, though – right?

That’s pretty much my position!

I’ve used this analogy before: if I were to buy a TV ad that showed me with a voodoo doll and a pin, intoning, “If you vote Democratic, I’ll put a curse on you!” and you subsequently showed me a study that 30 to 40 thousand voters refused to vote as a direct result of my ad and threat, I would be largely unmoved. Why? Because the fear of a voodoo curse is objectively unreasonable.

That’s my answer here. if 30 to 40 thousand voters fail to vote because of these entirely reasonable Voter ID requirements, that’s an objectively unreasonable reaction. So it would make my confidence in the American electoral system stronger, knowing we didn’t have 30,000 votes cast by people who could be dissuaded by voodoo or by Voter ID.

85

“Quiet” is indeed the correct word, so quiet as to be very nearly silent. Took you quite a while to get around to it, as well. Too busy, were you, lad?

And I note how carefully you elide the context. Which is available here, due to the magic of the Google.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=11639326#post11639326

Couple of salient facts: I am not a Democrat, I’m a radical lefty, but I vote for the best I can get. This has the happy consequence of not obliging me to defend their every action. I also note, with some glee, that this is all you got, which is why you keep bringing it up. Seems to me if I am as much a liberal hypocrite as you would have gentle readers believe, you would have more.

But you don’t, do you, buckaroo?

86

OK, fair enough.

87

This is the most perfect example there be of Democratic politicians using their power as the party in charge to rig the rules in favor of Democrats.

When a Massachusetts senate seat is in danger of going vacant, and the governor was a Republican, they voted to take away his power to appoint a senator and instead craft a special election.

Later, when a Massachusetts senate seat goes vacant, and the governor is now safely a Democrat, they vote to restore the governor’s power to appoint a senator.

Finding such an absolute example of this kind of thing is difficult. But here it is.

88

One, count 'em, one. So, that’s it then?

89

I’ve no doubt you can twist and squirm and scratch your balls and find a way to pretend that statement is almost, sort-of, trueish-like. But I get nauseous trying to keep up with your bullshit.

Why don’t you argue with HONORABLE ROBERT SIMPSON, Judge of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, who seems to have a quite different take on your concept of “free photo ID.”

90

Where did you call GOP legislators “improper”? I can only find this:

It seems that only certain justifications are “improper”. If you believe that’s direct, and not an act of inference, I must strongly disagree.

91

elucidator, thank you for always making me laugh.

92

To a large degree, my political enlightenment I owe to Mr. Paul Krassner, who edited a trashy little lefty rag called The Realist. My mind had hardened into concrete, a Texas military brat and Mensa snot, totally enthralled by the Hag from St. Petersburg. It was my habit to pick up alternative writings, but only to congratulate myself on my open-mindedness,which existed to the same degree as my sexual conquests. And way in the back of a seedy magazine rack, I found The Realist.

Paul Krassner made me laugh at what I believed, like the first crack in the sidewalk where the green one day grows. Once I started, I was doomed, I tried to keep the stern face of hard-headed certainty, but it was no use. And may the Goddess hold him close to Her warm and bountiful bosom all the days of his life, amen.

Of course, I cannot say enough in praise of Mr. Clemens, so why start?

Saying “you’re welcome” is not strictly honest, of course you are, but I couldn’t help it if I tried, and I’m not about to.

93

I’d say that this question, of how much in-person voter fraud there actually is, and the general liberal claim that it’s a vanishingly small amount, is the weakest link in the general liberal argument. But that’s where the burden of proof issue that I brought up back in the huge voter ID thread comes up. I can’t prove that the number of cases of voter ID is in fact miniscule. And you can’t prove that it’s anywhere even close to enough to influence even super-close elections like Florida 2000. But I claim that since you’re the person proposing or endorsing actions which (arguably) interfere with extremely sacred voting rights, you’re the one who has the “burden of proof” in this case.

Septimus seems to provide a link disagreeing with you in post 89, although I admit that it’s a very confusing one that I didn’t get much out of. That said, while free photo ID is certainly important, something can be free and still very unattainable based on various logistical issues.

That would make them vastly less offensive to me, certainly.

I suppose that depends on how you would react in a more extreme case. Imagine this basic situation but with all the shifty elements ratcheted up by a factor of 10… so 15 days before the election, a law is passed saying that voter ID is required, and the voter IDs can only be obtained on Tuesdays between 10:00 and 10:15 a.m., and only if you sign up ahead of time via a poorly designed website which requires registration and doesn’t except accented characters in names, blah blah blah. If in an extreme case like that you were willing to say “I don’t support this law, I believe it to be an unethical attempt to manipulate the election by disenfranchising voters based purely on partisan douchiness”, then the fact that you might weigh the factors differently in the actual real world laws doesn’t make your position necessarily unreasonable. But it certainly doesn’t sound like you’re saying that in a lot of what you write… your position seems to be something like “well, I see a legitimate reason for the law, therefore that legitimate reason automatically makes it OK no matter what other facts there are in the case”.

Well, your analogy fails for two reasons:
(1) Anything which interferes with elections has to be held to a different standard of scrutiny than anything which doesn’t.
(2) There’s the issue of “what does this politician know that he’s not saying”. In the voter ID case, they’re saying “we think this law will decrease voter fraud” but what they’re REALLY thinking is “this law will disenfranchise democratic voters”. If he says “I’d like to raise the minimum wage because it will help feed the hungry children”, but what’s he REALLY thinking is “some guy paid me money to vote for this issue”, that’s certainly bad, but very different from “this law will actually have secretly-desired-effect X” (I can’t come up with a good example of a weird and nefarious side effect that some corrupt politician could secretly want here…)

In your example, is the person buying the voodoo ad a politician or a private citizen? In any case, I think it’s very dangerous to start judging what is and is not “unreasonable” in situations like that.

So there’s an orthodox Jewish neighborhood which votes heavily Republican. And I, a democratic politician, pull some strings and get the polling place for that neighborhood moved into the back room of a pig slaughterhouse.

Now, not believing the tenets of orthodox Judaism, I view it as totally irrational for that to dissuade Jews from voting. And in fact I’m pretty sure that nothing about the kosher laws prevent Jews from just being near dead pigs (although don’t quote me on that). Nonetheless, if I took that action specifically hoping to reduce turnout in that precinct, I believe that would be an abuse of my powers, and a corruption of the integrity of the election.
But really, your voodoo analogy, and my Jewish response to it, are pretty poor analogies for voter ID laws. Here’s a better analogy: I’m a Democratic politician. In my county, polls are open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. I look at some statistics and see that more Republicans vote early in the day and more Democrats vote later in the day. So I propose to change the poll hours from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m, claiming that this will save money. Which it almost certainly would, and we all agree that saving money is good, right?

Now, is it REASONABLE for anyone who cares at all about democracy to be able to set things up so they can get to the polls between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.? Certainly. That’s 12 hours. But are there going to be some number of people who are maybe not the most super-devoted voters ever, but always voted at 7 a.m. on the way to work, but have to stop after work and pick up their kids and it’s just a big hassle for them to vote later in the day, and, gosh, gee, they sure intended to vote, but couldn’t quite get around to it? Of course there are. That’s just human nature. And because of the demographics, there will be more Republicans than Democrats in that group.

Was my action unethical?

94

It isn’t simple handwaving; it’s the conclusion you have to declare as fact after the failure of an intense nationwide search by the people most highly motivated to find it. The searches haven’t been just for prosecutions, they’ve been for reported cases, and they just aren’t there. You’re declaring a weakness when it’s actually a strength - facts do matter, and the *fact *is that in-person voter fraud is *in fact *vanishingly small. It isn’t like the nonexistence of Bigfoot is merely an opinion, or that asserting it is a weak part of an argument, either - that too is a *fact *inescapably concluded from the failure of intensive searching to find it. Don’t be shy about saying that in-person voter fraud being vanishingly small (and that’s generous) is a fact, because it is.

Now, couple that with the facts that virtually all known cases of voter fraud, in-person and otherwise, prosecuted or not in involve absentee ballots, that the voter ID laws our friend has consistently claimed would improve “voter confidence” in elections (although he has just now changed his claim that they’re to produce a “framework for prosecution” after the fact :dubious:) would not affect those known problems at all, that he offers nothing that would, and that the laws he question-beggingly claims are “reasonable” would have a clear and definable antidemocratic effect that favors a party that has growing trouble winning via persuasion, and the case is complete.

You can’t argue him out of his position with reason and facts, because he isn’t taking it based on reason and facts.

95

Granted.
[/QUOTE]

Not super important, but do we really know this to be the case/ It seems to me that poor voters are the ones we’re talking about. But poor democrat voters tend to live in cities, where there is likely to be an administrative office nearby. There is also ample public transportation. Conversely, poor republican voters tend to live in rural areas, where a state or county office can be quite a ways away. So, I’m not sure that the majority of voters who would be negatively impacted by voter ID laws are democrats. That may be the case, but it may also be just accepted lore. Similar to to some republicans thinking that the welfare rolls are mostly Black, when they are, in fact, mostly White.

96

Until someone can provide any evidence at all that improper voting is on the same order of magnitude as simple human error in tabulating results, I am entirely unmoved by all such pushes. As an example, the MN Senate recount in 2008 changed the totals by around 1,000 votes per candidate and moved the margin by 500 votes. I find it entirely unconvincing that there were anything near that number of fraudulent votes.

In a truly close election we might as well flip a coin - that’s as close as we’re ever going to get to the “actual truth” of the situation. The weather, traffic, long lines, and the recent result of your local sports team have a larger impact than fraud.

ETA: I’ll add that it seems that this efforts, if truly motivated by ulterior motives, are not having their intended effect - turnout, in general, seems to go up when these restrictions are added. We will see if this trend continues.

97

Mags:

What speaks against your analogy/proposition is that these things are being advanced primarily, if not exclusively, by Republicans. They have staffs of people paid to point stuff out to them. Like if for instance this wonderful law would result in a net decrease in rural folks voting Republican, I think they could be persuaded to amend their position. Right quickly, too.

And, of course, in ruthless fairness, we must admit the possibility that the Republicans are wholly innocent of any nefarious intentions. Its possible that the aforesaid staff never even mentioned that these laws would tend to suppress and hinder Democratic voters. But is it likely? Is it at all likely that they had no idea, none, that this had a political advantage built in? I think not, you are welcome to your own opinion on that.

Now, the nitpick:

Oh, really? You sure about that? Everywhere that these laws were or are pending, that is the case? You got any way to substantiate that, or were just flinging that out there and expecting to get away with it?

98

So, voter ID laws might or might not affect republican voters as much or more than democrat voters. Good, we agree!

Not sure what you’re objecting to. I think it’s obvious that my point is that there is more public transportation in a city than in the boondocks. Do you think that is not the case?

99

Not even close. So far wrong, can’t even correct, got to tear it all down and start over.

Ah, but that’s not what you said, now, is it?

100

Go ahead, read it over. ::shrug:: Maybe it’ll help.

:rolleyes: Well, the sleuth in you has correctly discerned that the words are different. But the point being made is the same and stands. So, now that we have a rewording that is clear to both me and you, were all good. Right?