Agreed. If they’ve served their time, why should they have to prove themselves again to vote? The debt to society has been paid.
Yup, this is the strength of the anti-ID argument. Thanks for presenting it.
A voter can cast a provisional ballot if he’s refused. Why is that insufficient?
Fine. I don’t support the nefarious plans – just the ID requirements.
Why should a properly registered person be required to cast a provisional ballot?
We are ever so reassured.
So, what do we have here, then? There is no voter fraud worthy of the name, but this cure will fix the problem we don’t actually have. Which is a good thing, because it will prevent a problem we just as certainly will not have, anyway. And if this has the unfortunate effect of preventing a voter from excercising his rights, well, darn! What a shame.
And if that cure and prevention for the disease of unicorn anthrax happens to favor one political party over another, well, shucks, unintended consequences, oopsy.
Do you imagine that the Republicans pushing forth this shit are unaware of these unfortunate consequences? You are aware, I trust, that these unfortunate consequences is the whole point of this Pitting, yes? However much you may find the subject of voter ID appealing, you are, in effect, attempting to change the subject, yes?
You “don’t support the nefarious plans”. Is that irony, or do you accept and stipulate that the plans are, in fact, “nefarious”? So, what we have then, in that case, is that you understand that this is behavior is odious and repulsive, but you’d rather talk about something else.
Responding to your overall argument, let’s take a step back here… there are some number of civic minded things that you regularly do. Voting, giving blood, separating your recyclables, going to PTA meetings, whatever. Every time you do one of them, you’re (at some level) measuring the benefits of doing it (civic duty, you really really care about recycling, you really want to vote those bastards out, you get the little sticker) against the downsides (it’s a hassle, you want to be watching porn instead, whatever). Now, someone proposes some law or regulation that makes it somewhat more of a hassle, or somewhat more difficult, to do that thing. And you look at it and say “pshaw! I am Harborwolf, separator of recyclables! This minor additional inconvenience will not stop me from doing my duty”. And you may well be right, and you yourself will keep right on doing it. And in fact, there may be almost no one at all for whom this new law or regulation makes it literally impossible to do the good thing. And thus you look askance at anyone who opposes this law or regulation and say “but this isn’t going to make it impossible to do the thing, so why would it reduce how often people do the thing? Are people so weak? I am not!”.
But it’s all about the numbers. It’s just a really fundamental fact of human nature that when there are lots of people who do something, and you change something about that thing, making it harder to do, or easier to do, or more beneficial to do, or whatever, then the number of people who do it will increase or decrease. Pretty much the entire field of economics is based on this. Lower prices and people buy more of things. Increase advertising and people buy more of things. It’s a rainy day so harder to get around and people buy less of things.
So any specific anecdote or claim about “wait, it’s IMPOSSIBLE for these poor people to get those IDs for some reason? (snicker snicker)” is pretty irrelevant. If you make it harder for group X to vote, the number of members of group X who vote will decrease. Period. Guaranteed. Fundamental human nature.
We do know that “double voting” exists to some degree among people with multiple addresses. This includes students, people with summer or winter homes, and people in the military.
I won’t pretend that this is a huge problem, but a jurisdiction cleaning up their voter rolls and reforming their election procedures could legitimately take this into account, among other factors, to prepare for the odd close election decided by a few votes. And if this involves a provisional ballot, to allow for a double voting check, that would be fine with me.
Oh, the horror. People have to be citizens. People have to show ID. People can’t be convicted felons. Is this the demographic that the Democrat party depends on? If it is, then no wonder our country is screwed up.
That article is total bullshit.
Well, that certainly settles that!
If you’re suggesting that voters tend not to be very smart, I agree with you.
I do hope American voters come to their senses, soon! The problem with the disenfranchisement schemes you seem to approve of is that, by the time some voters finally come to their senses [SIZE=“5”]they won’t be allowed to vote[/SIZE]
Can you enlarge on this? Perhaps with a cite explaining these tricks so we can tell if the new ID laws would actually have prevented them.
OK, that covers one of the questions I had about the OP. You are saying that young working people have less time to get registered than older working people? If you do think that, why?
(Also, definition of “younger” and “older”. Unless you are saying that older=retired, I’m not getting why you would think one age would have more or less time than the other.)
What? There are Dopers who admitted that their monthly CC bill was about $20,000???
This. I was dirt poor for most of my early adult life, yet I managed to get around, vote, get ID, etc. I have to believe if a large number of poor people aren’t doing these things, it is because they don’t care.
Yup. I’m one of those folks that no longer vote and it has nothing to do with whether or not I’m registered, have ID or any of these other things.
The Repubs are simply doing the job they are paid to do. They do lots of things that hurt the people and the economy ,that the powerful think will be to their benefit. Many of us see elected officials as powerful.important people. To the rich, they are office clerks. Many do know what damage they are doing.
Yes, I do misunderstand - are you saying that there aren’t really laws in place that say “felons will not vote”, but rather “felons may not vote until they go plead their case in front of a judge”?
And that is something I could agree with - “lesser” felons getting a chance to vote after some period of time out of prison, if they have shown themselves to be responsible and law abiding. I personally do not agree that going to prison is enough to “pay their debt to society”.
Societal involvement is probably all kinds of good for them, but I’d rather they show that they are now going to work towards the good of society rather than against it before being allowed to vote.
Apparently this is true, as well as depending on young people who don’t know any better and poor folks who use their economic state as an excuse.
It appeared kind of biased as well.
I’m not allowed to vote either, unless I go thru whatever paperwork I need to do in order to move me to the precinct that covers where I now live. I wonder what percentage of those who no longer vote are in the same boat? Oh, the horror of having to make an effort to do something I want to do! :dubious:
I composed this before the ‘Great Banning’ interrupted my posting and, although the conversation has moved a bit farther afield, I still have some issues with Pennsylvania’s claim. That said:
I’d sure like to know more about that “real world data”. My reading of the link is that the Department of State got from DOT a number representing the total of all photo IDs issued. Then they compared this number to “a national survey of eligible voters” (whatever that is) and found the difference to be about 1%.
The number of people possessing photo ID includes some unknown number of people who are not eligible to vote, including felons (or those whose rights have not been restored, anyway – I don’t know Pennsylvania’s system for felons), resident aliens, college students from out of state, and whoever else might have either a driver’s license or need for the alternative ID. Thus the number is clearly inflated, and the scale of the overestimation is unknown.
And what in blazes is “a national survey of eligible voters” anyway? Some kind of poll? How does it provide an accurate quantification of the number of citizens over the age of majority permanently residing in Pennsylvania (this being what I’d take to be the number of eligible voters)?
I swear I’m not an overly suspicious guy, really I’m not. But given the politics involved, this ‘one percent’ thing sure smells like an effort to hand-wave away objections to the new requirement for photo ID to vote. “Oh look, this doesn’t really affect hardly anyone, so no need to be concerned about civil rights issues, really, this doesn’t change anything at all, and OH, LOOK!! SHINY!!”
And MsRobyn, I too question the subjective application of ID requirements by poll workers.
Here’s another data-point for this discussion.
Wisconsin DOT official tells staff not to mention free voter ID cards to the public — unless they ask.
What a load. Those statistics are for recent elections during which ID requirements generally have not existed. The difference in voting rates therefore cannot be due to ID laws. It is much more likely that they are due to young people not really giving a shit about politics.
Nonsense. This isn’t Mississippi in 1964. What makes it harder for blacks to vote is a general belief that voting doesn’t make a difference.
Fiddling around with voting laws is small beer, maybe 1-2% difference at most. It is nothing compared to 50 million left-leaning immigrants (legal and illegal) brought in at the urging of Democrats in the last 50 years. Millions are now voting citizens and millions more are in a pipeline that the Democrats would dearly love to blow clean open and flood the electorate with lots and lots of left-wing immigrants. Even Democrats themselves can’t stop talking about how demographics are working in their favor. That was no natural phenomenon, nor was it all about diversity and humanitarianism; if you think it was, you also are naive and uninitiated. Democrats knew the existing population would never go for their harebrained schemes, so they imported a bunch of people who would.
Yeah, the evil Repugs are stealing our election, cuz it can’t be about most Americans being sick and tired of the same old bullshit. Right?
RIGHT? 
Have your eyes glazed over yet? Well, get ready, we are about to talk about redistricting, or, as it is commonly known, gerrymandering. And why the Forces of Darkness are so concerned about all of this. Mostly, this has to do with the House of Reprehensibles.
After a census, there are adjustments made to the House, relative to population changes. Some seats added, some lost. Districts to be represented by a Congressvarmint are drawn and redrawn, to achieve a rough population parity. All well and good.
The mischief comes in as to how this is done. You may dimly recall some news about the odious Tom DeLay and the redistricting of Texas. Any given population has centers that are more likely Republican (gated communities, for instance) and more likely Dem (urban). What the party in power usually tries do achieve is stability, in that they remain the party in power.
The Pubbies have a problem that is growing, i.e., they are getting smaller. What do do? Get creative! Some of these districts are already lost to them. But some are solidly reliable. But the solidly reliable aren’t enough to offer the pretense of popular support.
Cut to the chase: what they do is, carefully cut the districts to include a large portion of solidly Democrat areas, but just enough solidly Republican areas so that there is a bare majority of reliable Pubbies. Just enough for 50% plus one, as Rove so famously phrased it. By such means it is possible, if very carefully done, that more representatives will be elected who are Pubbie even if more people voted for Dems, if the margin is thin enough, and the districts drawn with exceeding care.
Problem is, these decisions are made on the basis of who voted in the last election. If there is a sudden uptick in voter registration amongst the unwashed and unreliable (ACORN) this threatens the stability of the Republic. If the a district is drawn so carefully as to ensure a one percent surplus of Pubbies over Dems, then the last thing they want to hear about is more people voting who they cannot be sure are good, solid citizens. Far worse is some socialistic enterprise to register the poor and/or brown.
Because these things are so closely drawn, a five percent shift in the electorate could be total disaster for the party who drew the lines. And note, this isn’t a five percent shift in opinions, this is a shift in the people who vote or decide they want to.
The actual numbers of voters may be relatively small, but the Pubbie dominance depends on razor thin majorities, in many cases. They are anxious that such a happy state of affairs shall continue.
Which is to say, TL:DR, that even though the actual numbers of affected voters may be small, due to the miracle of creative gerrymandering, the resulting effect could be quite significant.