How does TX requiring State ID violate VRA?

Great Debates
121

I attacked the idea, I didn’t attack you. When has that been a problem at SDMB?

In a word, No. I expect the “power” to object to the law, and to express my opinion on it just as you express yours. There are plenty of instances from our history that could be cited as examples of popular laws that were in fact reprehensible, slavery being perhaps the archetype. The fact that this law may be supported by legislatures, courts, and citizens does not abrogate my right to condemn it and to talk about it on a message board. The fact that you disagree with me does not in fact make my opinion valueless or unsuitable for presentation on these boards.

122

So it’s unfair that this is a left-leaning board and lefties favor other lefties instead off voting them off the island of something, and so you want to use this betting gambit to overturn popularity, essentially. The lefties are too easy on other lefties, so the ultimate valuation of arguments needs to needs to be taken out of the hands of the consensus of participants.

123

Well, putting up a hurdle to vote keeps people who aren’t as invested in making their vote known, who aren’t interested in being part of government, out. I think it’s analogous. I’m not the first one to make the argument, either.

124

Might not some policies be reprehensible even if they are supported by the legislature, the executive, the judiciary, and the vast majority of voters?

125

And, indeed, no one is suggesting you don’t have the power to object and to express that objection.

But what remedy, specifically, do you seek?

126

You make it sound so dirty.

Yes, although I wouldn’t say “overturn” popularity so much as memorialize in concrete fashion the various flaws that popularity would rather ignore.

127

How is that a better memorialization than just showing that their predictions turned out to be wrong?

If your complaint is that the consensus is saying “Eh, do X got it wrong this time, but X still keeps his membership in the Peachykeen Posters We Love Club because he’s a good leftie,” how is that in any way changed by adding " … plus X refused to accept Bricker’s bet"?

And if your complaint is that X shows no shame for wildly inaccurate predictions, why would X feel any more shame in the face if your betting gambit?

128

Since “reprehensible” is not an objective, but a subjective, judgement, then you could make the argument that at some point, anything now thought appropriate has the potential to be considered reprehensible by some hypothetical future society.

But those kinds of speculations are effectively meaningless; they are identical to woo-woo adherents claiming dowsing works because “scientists have been wrong before!” Yes, scientists have indeed been wrong before, but that’s not enough to prove that you’re right. The proponent of a claim bears to burden of proof for his claim. That even if all the decisional authority is arrayed against you, you can still claim you’re right, because there have been times when they all were wrong, is an example of argumentum ad ignoratium: argument from ignorance.

In a representative democracy, we have agreed-upon and accepted methods of making and refining the law. None of those methods is: “Checking to see how Ascenray feels about it.”

129

I’m somewhat taken aback by this response because it seems to indicate that our (collective) failure to communicate goes deeper than I thought.

In a representative democracy we have rules and procedures regarding how policies are enacted. You speak as if I (or whoever) am personally seeking a literal veto in the face of such a system.

But if I were to say “X policy is reprehensible and we should do everything we can to oppose it and anyone who supports it is disgusting” Then do you actually believe that I am seeking such a literal veto?

130

Because merely showing it produces almost complete lack of concern.

When Virginia was considering passing a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, it was a topic of hot debate here. One poster argued that Virginia should not adopt the amendment, because, said he, it would have an unintended effect on domestic violence prosecutions. According to him, a similar outcome had happened in Ohio, and by re-defining marriage under state law, certain victims of domestic violence would be unable to see their attackers punished in court, or at the very least have some additional hurdles to go through. “I consider it a matter of established fact, based on what happened in Ohio, that many victims of domestic violence would (at best) find it necessary to go through an extra wringer to obtain those protections or (at worst) be denied them altogether.”

Naturally, I disagreed with him on the point. And naturally, after Virginia passed the amendment in question, no such effect emerged.

So after nearly a year went by, I posted a follow-up thread, pointing out the error, and another one after three years, because several people objected in the first thread that not quite a full year had gone by.

The reactions were decidedly (although admittedly not unanimously) one-sided – and the side of ‘acknowledging the error’ was not the winning one. As mentioned, some posts leapt on the fact that it hadn’t yet been a calendar year. Others demanded I assemble every DV case from the year to prove that none had been affected. Still others were more direct:

[ul]
[li]“…it’s a bit unsettling that Bricker has been nursing this minor grudge for an entire year. I think the rest of us would have forgotten about it the day after it happened.” [/li][li]“Jesus, Bricker! Can’t a person be, you know…wrong, without you jumping their shit?”[/li][li]“Christ on a cracker–let it go. It’s been a year. You’re the only one who is bothered by this now. To seek a concession this far after the disagreement strikes me as a bit petty. You really need this “win”? Why?”[/li][li]“My god, you are a dick.”[/li][li]“It’s okay for someone to be wrong on the Internet. Obsessing over past fish that got away, posting about it (twice!) is beyond over the top.”[/li][li]“Bricker is certainly the single most impressive multiple-year-grudge-holding poster to an internet message board I’ve ever seen.”[/li][li]“Maybe, one day, you will realize why it is people on this message board hate you for being a nitpicking, must-be-right-at-all-costs tightass. It’s mainly because you are a nitpicking, must-be-right-at-all-costs tightass. Fuck, you should work for De Beers, because you probably shit diamonds.”[/li][/ul]

X will feel shame because X has to send me a check. And that act cements the consequence into reality in a way that just dodging the issue on the boards cannot.

131

How about because it is a very real distraction from the actual topic of the thread? This thread is one of my best cites.

132

Poor Bricker. I don’t think his “pay or shut up” idea will make us appreciate him more.

Still waiting for that brilliant legal dissection of the pending lawsuits. Which are allowed by the system. Now is the time for him to impress us with his intelligence. I remember when we used to respect him, at least…

This article ought to cheer him up:

133

Was there an obvious need for this law to be passed? Were situations popping up all over the place that the then-current laws couldn’t handle?

134

No Such Effect Emerged. would you mind sharing how you came to that conclusion?

I find it interesting that one can determine, with some certainty, that no DV victims were denied protection from the law. Proving a negative is usually pretty hard, if a victim fails to get her day in court, how do you know? Seriously, how do you know?

Especially in consideration of the fact that you consider it impossible to discover if a person took a positive action that is recorded in publicly available log books. We apparently can’t cross reference lists of felons with the publicly available list of people who voted in the last election, to estimate how many felons vote. We can’t poll voters who are listed as having voted and ask them if they actually voted, to estimate how many voters are impersonated.

Voter fraud is a mystery, yet we know that there are no DV victims who were unable to get legal protection as a result of this change in law.

135

How can I possibly answer I question like, “How is that a better memorialization than just showing that their predictions turned out to be wrong?” without illustrating precisely how showing that their predictions turned out to be wrong falls on deaf ears?

136

Enough. This is supposed to be an argument about the facts, not the personalities involved.

And everybody needs to drop the side discussion about betting. There is an ATMB thread about the issue if people are interested, but it’s a hijack here.

137

What’s that got to do with the topic of this thread(which isn’t “The effective of betting in debates”, btw)

Do you think this law filled a pressing need that the then-current laws couldn’t handle?

Edited to add: Sorry-didn’t see the mod note.

138

Sure. I’m a regular reader of Virginia Lawyers Weekly, as well as following the Virginia appellate court rulings. An effect like that would undoubtedly be the subject of publicity, almost certainly mainstream in nature, but even if not, there’s no realistic scenario in which a novel event like that doesn’t get mentioned in Virginia Lawyers Weekly.

Completely different standards of proof. When discussing the voter situation, we’re talking about a crime – prosecutors would have to assemble proof beyond a reasonable doubt to convict, and a person admitting to the act would be incriminating himself in a crime. The illegal voter has no motive to confess; the prosecutor has no method by which he can prove the illegal act and no reason to waste resources to uncover an act which he will not be able to prove.

When discussing the existence of domestic violence prosecutions curbed by the presence of the Virginia same-sex marriage prohibition, on the other hand, prosecutors would have every motive to argue the issue in court and advocates for women’s causes doubly so. Here, we aren’t talking about proof beyond a reasonable doubt but simply evidence of a particular legal maneuver’s use.

139

Fair 'nuff. While “technically” absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, I’ll buy into it.

I’m not talking about prosecuting anyone. I’m talking about developing an understanding of the concept of Voter Fraud, before trying to fix it. What does Voter Fraud mean in the landscape of our election process? Is Voter Fraud a problem that requires a solution? What types of Voter Fraud are most common, and what can we do to prevent them?

What we have is a group of politicians implementing a solution without understanding the problem to be solved. I won’t say it’s unprecedented, but it’s unusual. Governments love to track things, they conduct studies all the time. But not on this topic. It’s a topic that would be easy to study because every single person you want to talk to is logged in a book, with their name and address right in front of your face.

Why hasn’t a single study been done to support Voter ID laws?

I submit that no studies have been done because the politicians supporting Voter ID know that a study would show virtually no voter fraud. Fraud of a type that would be affected by Voter ID, at least. Which then leads us to ask why they would support a law that prevents virtually nothing. The (to me) inevitable conclusion is that they are not interested in the law’s effect on fraud, they are interested in the law’s effect on citizens who do not currently have ID.

140

And I submit that the effect of the law is not to prevent widespread voter fraud, because widespread voter fraud does not exist. But small amounts of it certainly exist, and in a razor-thin election, rare as they are, we may be faced with single or double-digit margins of victory out of hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of votes cast. In that rare but foreseeable event, even a tiny number of illegal cotes would be problematic.

And I submit those deductions are self-evident and need no study.