# How do voter ID laws suppress minority votes? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 11, 2013, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968 "2013-08-11T22:09:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2013, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/181 "2013-08-22T19:57:32Z")
> [@aNewLeaf](#): > > All the ex-felons I know hate Obama and would never, ever vote Dem. That may be, but the studies – one of which I referred to in my link – show that the strong trend is to the opposite. So it’s not all that important to hear about the felons you personally know – the question is what the weight of the numbers say. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2013, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/182 "2013-08-22T19:58:41Z")
Your cite offers good and solid evidence of the Republican conspiracy to bugger the right to vote. I forgive you, _egotist te absolvo_, go, and sin no more than usual. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2013, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/183 "2013-08-22T19:59:16Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Well, let’s not conflate two different arguments. The paper I linked to – the one that was too long for poor **elucidator** – makes a strong case that democratic principles require letting felons regain their voting rights. Why even wait for them to be released? Prisoners are wards of the state, they should have at least some small voice in how the state is run; and there should be an incentive for candidates to visit prisons while campaigning and actually see what they’re like close up, and remember that when next voting on any crime-related bill. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2013, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/184 "2013-08-22T20:15:45Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Your cite offers good and solid evidence of the Republican conspiracy to bugger the right to vote. I forgive you, _egotist te absolvo_, go, and sin no more than usual. Well, as I say, for the purposes of this particular sub-discussion, I concede the point: Republicans don’t want felons to vote because they would vote Democratic. But that’s precisely the point **Chronos** ’ observation denies. ---
**Author:** ![A\_nice\_guy\_with\_an\_opinion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/76d3ee/32.png) [@A\_nice\_guy\_with\_an\_opinion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_nice_guy_with_an_opinion)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2013, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/185 "2013-08-22T21:43:08Z")
If you don’t need an ID to vote, you shouldn’t need one to buy a gun. Also, any felon should be able to vote and own a gun if they are released. If they are deemed capable of returning to society, they should obviously be able to do both. If not, they can stay in prison and get free cable tv. ---
**Author:** ![aNewLeaf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@aNewLeaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aNewLeaf)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2013, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/186 "2013-08-22T21:47:08Z")
That’s a great example of _reductio ad absurdum_, but what do you think about the topic being discussed? ---
**Author:** ![A\_nice\_guy\_with\_an\_opinion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/76d3ee/32.png) [@A\_nice\_guy\_with\_an\_opinion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_nice_guy_with_an_opinion)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2013, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/187 "2013-08-22T21:50:38Z")
I’ll let it simmer. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2013, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/188 "2013-08-24T04:23:16Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > And that should be enough to convince you. A state that did otherwise is clearly and blatantly in violation of the mandate set forth in _Crawford._ That convinces me (at least on this particular point). But what you had in fact said can be reasonably paraphrased as “well, obviously.” And it’s not obvious to me, absent a citation (which, again, you eventually provided). > [@elucidator](#): > > And appreciate the twenty page PDF you offer for cite. But I stopped taking reading assignments when I stopped having to ask for a hall pass. The fact that you’re unwilling to read a citation doesn’t make it not a citation. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2013, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/189 "2013-08-24T05:05:44Z")
Sure, but the quoted part supports my case against the intentions of the Republican Party in suppressing the vote. Which he didn’t quote until pressed to, leaving the perfectly reasonable suspicion that he was trying to pull a slow one. > [@](#): > > …I concede the point: Republicans don’t want felons to vote because they would vote Democratic… Damned white of you. Cute as the Dickens, too! ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2013, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/190 "2013-08-24T15:22:47Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Certainly, many Americans agree with you, that a person of property and substance, such as yourself, is entitled to rights and privileges above and beyond those accorded to riff-raff and bums. Indeed, most of the original framers of our Constitution were wholly in accord with your views. Only a very few extremists and radicals like Thomas Paine dared demand that all men truly were equal, at least in the eyes of the law. > > His views are reflected in the modern day political thinker and wit Will Rogers: > > “Its not a crime to be poor in America, but it may as well be.” Even those hotheads talking about all men being equal didn’t say a thing about the _women._ Here’s Bricker’s dream–the results of the 2012 election if[only White Men](http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2012/11/if_only_white_men_could_vote/) had the vote. (He’ll be in his bunk.) Back in the real world\*–the[Feds have filed suit](http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/13980/federal-government-sues-texas-over-sb-14-voter-id-law)to block enforcement of the Texas Voter ID law. > [@](#): > > The relief sought by DOJ, however, is not without surprises, including asking the court to give Texas the Third World treatment. DOJ asked the federal court to block the enforcement of the Voter ID law; to rule that the Texas Voter ID law was adopted and being enforced “with the purpose of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group” and that it “would have the result of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group;” to bail Texas back in to preclearance under Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act; and - perhaps most shockingly - to authorize the appointment of Federal observers for elections in Texas. Lots of legal goodies there for those who like that stuff. - Is Texas the real world? Even here, a Felon who has completed his sentence (incarceration, parole, probation) regains the right to vote… ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2013, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/191 "2013-08-24T19:53:44Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > Even those hotheads talking about all men being equal didn’t say a thing about the _women._ Here’s Bricker’s dream–the results of the 2012 election if[only White Men](http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2012/11/if_only_white_men_could_vote/) had the vote. (He’ll be in his bunk.) That’s a pretty unlikely dream for me to have – I’m not white. What bizarre thinking might motivate me to dream about a country in which I am denied the franchise? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2013, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/192 "2013-08-24T19:56:39Z")
> [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](#): > > That convinces me (at least on this particular point). But what you had in fact said can be reasonably paraphrased as “well, obviously.” And it’s not obvious to me, absent a citation (which, again, you eventually provided). Fair point. It wasn’t all that obvious, absent citation. Sorry to have implied otherwise… ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2013, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/193 "2013-08-24T20:02:57Z")
> [@](#): > > …I’m not white… Oh, they’ll let you in, **Bricker**. Probably put you right in front of the group photo. You don’t have to born white anymore, it can be achieved. Course, if you _are_ born white, its damned hard to resign from. Perhaps we find ourselves in the oddest circumstance, you’re whiter than me, and I’m whiter than you. Doesn’t make much sense, but did it ever? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2013, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/194 "2013-08-24T20:03:02Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > - Is Texas the real world? Even here, a Felon who has completed his sentence (incarceration, parole, probation) regains the right to vote… The states run the gamut, from two which permit felons to vote even while incarcerated to twelve which remove the vote permanently (or subject to a governor’s actions such as a pardon). Others restore voting rights after incarceration, parole, probation, or some combination thereof have been completed. Delaware, to pick an interesting example, allows felons to vote after serving their full sentence including incarceration, parole, and probation…_unless_ the predicate offense was murder or manslaughter, felony bribery, improper influence or abuse of office… or a felony sexual offense. Felons in those categories remain permanently barred. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2013, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/195 "2013-08-26T04:04:42Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I have no idea why he said that. Perhaps he believed, without any evidence, that illegal voters in Pennsylvania number in the hundreds of thousands, and he’s a fool. Or he was admitting to suppressing votes. > [@](#): > > I think that if a nondiscriminatory law is supported by valid neutral justifications, those justifications should not be disregarded simply because partisan interests may have provided one motivation for the votes of certain individual legislators. Well, shoot, they had to pass a law to get rid of poll taxes and literacy tests so the question is whether that law covers this bullshit too. > [@jtgain](#): > > It’s good hyperbole, but I’m not asking for privileges above and beyond, only the same. I need an ID to vote and so does everyone else. Yeah, except you already have that ID; others need to go out of their way and take a day off to get theirs which they need for no other purpose than to vote. Not everybody has any need for a driver’s license. > [@](#): > > I’ve got to work to pay my taxes. Yeah but not to vote. I know a lot of taxpayers that don’t have the right to vote. So what the fuck does taxation have to do with the right to vote? What if we said that anyone on welfare, unemployment and food stamps, can vote but everyone else will have to go and get a special ID to vote. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2013, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/196 "2013-08-26T04:07:33Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > …What if we said that anyone on welfare, unemployment and food stamps, can vote but everyone else will have to go and get a special ID to vote. Oh, you better\* believe\* that would be unConstitutional. Also, a paddlin’. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2013, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/197 "2013-08-26T19:17:26Z")
> [@bobot](#): > > It sounded like an actual experience. (Unlike St. Cad’s, which sounds to me to be hypothetical at best. My opinion; and I’ve invited Cad to elaborate.) I’ve told this story in numerous threads. I went to my polling place in Los Angeles County and when I got up to sign the book, someone else had been there and scrawled thier signature next to mine. I was given a provisional ballot which may or may not have counted had there been a recount. The poll workers were completely disinterested that someone voted using my name even when I tried to prove who I was. So what was the net effect? 1. Someone voted illegally using my name. 2. My vote would not count unless a situation came about when provisional ballots were looked at but a) No guaranty of that b) Still does not nullify the illegal votes To be honest I’m tired of telling this story because everytime I do, the Lefties on the board minimize what happened by saying the illegal voting/disenfranchizing of a citizen via voter fraud isn’t really all that important in this isolated case because it only happened once. HOWEVER, if I said I was a poor old black woman living in the Bayou that didn’t have a picture ID (note I didn’t say I couldn’t get it) and how the White Republican Devil Slave-Masters ™ wouldn’t let me vote, you can bet the Lefties would be all up in that saying “See Bricker! We told you that Voter ID laws disenfranchise people.” ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2013, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/198 "2013-08-26T19:51:01Z")
**Saint Cad** , You’ve offered zero evidence that your personal experience involved in-person voter fraud. We’ve seen multiple cites in a variety of threads showing that clerical errors (recording of an incorrect name by the poll worker or equivalent mistake) explains virtually every such case that underwent investigation. Our discounting of your anecdote has little to do with “Lefties” refusing to believe evidence of massive amounts of voter fraud. It has to do with the fact that there is no evidence that voter fraud is anything more than minuscule. And your one-off does little to persuade us otherwise. You were given a provisional ballot and, had the race been anywhere near close enough for your vote to matter, investigation would have determined if your provisional should be counted as an additional vote, or as a substitute for an unallowable vote. Most likely, based on the cases cited elsewhere, the “fraudulent” vote you are so exercised about would be found to have been cast by a legally registered voter in your precinct having the name ‘Saint Cade’ which was incorrectly recorded. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2013, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/199 "2013-08-26T19:59:38Z")
Well, that’s all true, perhaps, but it doesn’t have any bearing on the all important issue of liberal hypocrisy. > [@](#): > > …HOWEVER, if I said I was a poor old black woman living in the Bayou that didn’t have a picture ID (note I didn’t say I couldn’t get it) and how the White Republican Devil Slave-Masters ™ wouldn’t let me vote, you can bet the Lefties would be all up in that saying “See Bricker! We told you that Voter ID laws disenfranchise people.”… ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2013, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968/200 "2013-08-26T20:08:50Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Well, that’s all true, perhaps, but it doesn’t have any bearing on the all important issue of liberal hypocrisy. [Emily Litella voice] Oh… Never mind. [/ELvoice] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-voter-id-laws-suppress-minority-votes/665968.md?page=11)