How do voter ID laws suppress minority votes?

Great Debates
61

Because its possible! It could happen, it is not a non-zero possibility, that an election could be so very, very close that an illegal vote could tip it! And we all know who the illegals vote for, now don’t we? And if its rational, that means its reasonable, because they are exactly the same thing!

That’s why when the President vacations in Yosemite, we send out teams of special units to shoot all the bears, because its possible that a bear could attack and kill the President! It could happen!

Besides which, the American people must have the confidence that their President is safe, lest they fret and worry about his well-being. Its the same thing with the confidence of the voter in the integrity of the voting process. Everywhere you turn in America, in the diners, the beauty shops, the truck stops, Americans are fretting over their voter confidence, its what *everyone *is talking about, all the time. That, and Kim Kardashian’s shoes.

And how is it that in a country that is solidly center-right, the conservative party sometimes loses? That doesn’t make any sense, when everybody knows that the country is solidly center-right. It has to be a huge conspiracy with George Soros, CASA and ACORN. And don’t even get me started on the League of Women Voters, those treacherous sluts!

Hell, we have even had reliable, unimpeachable, eyewitness testimony to the great CASA conspiracy. One of our very own saw it with their own eyes! Forget the name. Was it Breaker? Broker? Something like that.

If the Democrats were real Americans, they would step up and take the challenge, take a ballot for the team! They would be perfectly willing to give up a few hundred thousands of votes here and there, because freedom!

But noooooooo!

62

No, to the contrary: it’s not a very widespread problem.

But the results could be far-reaching in those rare elections that are decided by a tiny margin. So it’s not the frequency with which it happens – it’s the effect if it does. Car accidents are a rare event for any given driver, but because the results can potentially be very serious, we act to mitigate those effects by seatbelts and insurance.

The use of such cards is one workable solution, yes. The evidence for that is your own ability to reason.

63

Workable is a matter of opinion, specifically yours. Others might disagree as to whether it’s workable or affordable.

As for comparing voter fraud to car accidents, I think it’s a faulty analogy and you can do better.
Although the chance of any one person to be affected by a car accident is small, every day thousands and thousands of people are involved in car accidents.
Nothing like that has ever happened in regards to election fraud, and there’s no evidence that it’s going to.

64

As for national ID cards . . . some liberals have a problem with the notion of the government having everybody’s fingerprints, etc. . . . and some conservatives have a problem with national anything.

65

Do it at state level instead and they’re happy, though. Makes no sense but there it is.

66

Voter ID laws are currently legal. Things like literacy tests weren’t obviously discriminatory as written either. It was only when they were put in practice by people who wanted to use them as a means of disenfranchising voters that the evidence of discrimination could be found.

I expect the same thing will occur with voter ID laws. They’ll be enacted. They’ll be abused. People will document the abuse. And voter ID laws will be ruled illegal. The whole cycle will take around twenty years.

I’m sure conservatives know this and are taking it into account in their long-term planning. But their attitude for now seems to be “let’s disenfranchise all the voters we can until the courts close the loopholes on us.”

67

And every time you’ve made this argument, we’ve pointed out the obvious counter-argument: your solution will be worse than the current problem it’s supposed to solve.

As you admit, elections that are decided by voter fraud are rare. But once voter ID laws get up to speed, elections that are decided by legitimate voters not being able to vote due to ID problems will be relatively common. Confidence in the results of elections will be reduced as people see elections being decided by who can fill out the proper forms in order to get permission to vote.

68

State-wide elections have happened in living memory that have been decided by less than 150 votes.

When Washington State selects a governor based on a margin of 129 votes (after the first count was 261 votes the other way!) it’s clear that even a small number of illegal votes cast by unqualified persons may have swayed the result.

You’re right that there’s no way to prove it, though, and with no Voter ID, how could there be? An individual can simply deny he was the one that cast the ballot.

69

Not about “disenfranchising”. If they could make it illegal or impossible for the wrong sort of people to vote, that would be the very heaven, but no, they can’t. What they can do is make it tiresome and tedious. What they can do is discourage.

This plan wasn’t all that ambitious at the outset, the goal was only to trim a few percentage points from the Dem votes, to win the close ones. Somewhere around the time that the inmates took over the asylum that is the Republican Party, that sneaky and subtle plan got lost. They tipped their hand with laws restricting voter registration drives, laws to keep polling places from staying open, laws to restrict early voting.

Let the cat out of the bag, and a nasty, mangy, feral creature it is.

Which is why they only want to talk about voter id, that one is pretty close to sane. Not as obvious. They will argue about that all day long. Ask them why black people shouldn’t be allowed to gather at church on Sunday and then go vote. Ask them why we can’t equalize the polling opportunities so that everybody waits the same amount of time, so that poor folks don’t wait eight goddam hours to vote! Ask them why it is so important to restrict voter registration drives.

The main reason these discussions center around voter id is that’s the only one they can remotely defend. So they pretend that’s what its all about.

And if you’re dumb enough to buy that, you shouldn’t buy shoes with laces, they will only confuse you.

70

And every time you point this out, I disagree, pointing out that as a matter of law, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask for ID, and if anyone fails to vote because they don’t want to get ID, that’s their problem, not the state’s concern. And now that we’ve had several years worth of Voter ID, I notice that no one is able to point to any statistics showing a lack of minority turnout. There’s plenty of scare tactics about what might happen; there’s no solid research showing it’s ever happened.

71

Who, anywhere on this board, is defending those measures?

72

But it could happen, couldn’t it? There’s a non-zero chance of it happening, isn’t there? How is it that such justification works for you, but not for us?

73

Exactly. This is a non-problem and there’s no need to spend billions of dollars on it.

74

Nobody. Because they can’t. And yet, there they are.

I suggest that this is indicative of intent. I suggest that this reveals the true purpose of an entire suite of laws of which voter id is the only one you can defend, albeit weakly.

I suggest that any honest conservative worthy of the name would be disgusted and repelled by these efforts to use legislation to ensure perpetual political power. Barry Goldwater would rise from his grave and puke his guts out.

Was he the last one? Perhaps you will rise to the challenge and fill those shoes. I might not be the first to applaud, but I’ll damn sure be the loudest! Texan, you know. We tend to be a bit boisterous.

75

While they are yelling at each other, let me say welcome to the Dope.

I’ve worked as a poll watcher, and one reason the scam might not work is that poll watchers are local, and often know many people in the community. The faker would run the risk of trying to sign in as someone’s neighbor, and getting caught. He’d also run the risk of getting caught when the actual voter shows up later. Given the large number of fake votes needed to be sure of swinging an election, the chances of getting caught are very high, and the candidate / party behind it would be out of luck for a long time. So the small amount of fraud is not due only to the goodness of our hearts, but due to fraud not really paying.

76

Because.

77

Damn! Outsmarted again!

No doubt, if somebody else asks the same question, you will have a cogent and incisive answer at your very fingertips.

78

Yup.

79

You’re bluffing, Counselor. Don’t press your luck.

80

State governments are easier to dominate and corrupt. Both for the Republicans themselves and organizations such as corporations. The same goes even more so for country and city governments. Therefore, they prefer local government because local = corrupt.