That’s an interesting rule.
Did you make it up?
(a) no
(b) no, but close
I didn’t say that.
Why do you feel you need to argue against stuff I didn’t say?
Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that it was un-American to speak out against laws that I disagree with. I’m sure you’ve never done such a thing. :rolleyes:
Why should I have to spend any money to vote? What’s next, a $10 entry fee to the voting booth?
Demonstrably false, but a good try, Bricker.
OK, so what precisely is your opinion?
And on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you think the motivation behind these laws is partisan as opposed to genuinely concerned with voter fraud?
Do they let you vote naked? They don’t - so you have to spend money on clothes in order to vote. Vote suppression!!!11eleven!
The Dipshit Store called, they’re running out of you.
Check the cites. The level of detected fraud is almost zero.
The obstacles are intended to force some people to waste time and money in order to register or vote. Even some Dopers here are saying, between the lines, that it’s a better democracy if insufficiently motivated people are given disincentives to vote. That may be a defensible position, but please don’t pretend these “reforms” are non-partisan.
In some cases the “reforms” (e.g. long lines to register or vote) were applied only in areas that vote Democrat. Dopers here have not addressed malice like this, preferring to score debating points by addressing only the weakest charges.
Are we really going to keep putting a finer and finer point on this? What percentage of the 11% without valid photo ID do you think there are with two or three jobs and still no time to swing by the DMV? I’d say those people are going to be too busy actually working to vote anyways. And if they’ve the motivation to work multiple jobs and the inclination to vote, an ID requirement is going to stop them? The photo ID is going to be the thing that disenfranchises them. Really?
Honestly. These arguments are getting more and more ridiculous.
Oh stop it. Go back and read the thread. This has been covered already.
And one of the ads at the bottom of this thread was for a fake ID website. 
One has to wonder where all these industrious two-job-a-day workers are getting their checks cashed, seeing as how they have no way of proving who they are to a bank or check cashing service. And how did they manage to rent a place to live, or get set up with utilities? How do they pay their bills?
The fact is that unless you are being 100% supported by someone else and all your bills are being paid by someone else, you are going to find it next to impossible to live without ID. The only way would be to have a cash-under-the-table lifestyle, and that leads back again to my comments about ne’er do wells and miscreants making up a large percentage of people who don’t have ID.
So, sorry, Budget Player Cadet, but my assertion still stands. There really is no legitimate excuse for adults living on their own to be going through life without some form of identification since it’s almost impossible to live legitimately without one.
First, quite a few of those two-job-a-day workers on the bottom of the economy are getting paid cash. Yes, sometimes under the table.
Second, I am aware of several (somewhat shady) “currency exchanges” in my community that are, shall we say, a bit lax on asking for ID, or are willing to accept ID of lesser types than what you’d need for voting (and several other) purposes. They will cash a check for anyone, for a small fee.
My landlord will happily accept payment in cold, hard cash.
Above noted currency exchanges will also allow you to pay your utility bills in cash. Or you can purchase a money order, for a small fee.
In other words - it’s quite feasible to do all that.
I’ll repeat. What percentage of our 11% of the nation without photo ID is this? How many voters are we looking at?
I’m all for 100% voting. I really am, but it’s just not possible to make it perfecty convenient for everyone in the country.
If they’re getting paid cash under the table then neither they nor their employers are paying their taxes and Social Security/Medicare withholding. So they and their employers both qualify as miscreants.
Yep, shady, llegitimate businesses which no doubt charge exorbitant fees for their services. Why would someone willingly opt to do business with them when an ID would allow them to cash their checks and pay their bills cheaply and easily? Answer: they’re ne’er do wells or miscreants who either can’t or don’t want to risk doing things legitimately.
Did he happily rent to you with no history (i.e., previously established identity) and no idea who you are? And unless you live in a bills paid place did the electric company hook you up with no history and no ID?
That’s right, you can pay extra money to exchanges or you can pay for money orders. But why would you opt for that extra expense and trouble rather than get an ID? It only makes sense if you have something to hide.
Yes, it’s feasable. What it isn’t is reasonable. Why would a person opt to live that way and pay their bills that way rather than simply get an ID which would allow them to open bank accounts and pay their bills cheaply and easily? It’s been my experience that people who utilize check cashing/payment services and pay their bills by money order are overwhelmingly people who could be categorized as ne’er do wells or miscreants, if not both. Seriously, there is just no legitimate reason to be living that way, and almost nobody does unless they’re forced into it by irresponsible or illegal lifestyles.
Your option B was: " these laws won’t make it IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to vote, just more difficult, and thus there’s no conflict of interest or political implications worth worrying about."
My actual opinion: For most voters who need them, the inconvenience of making a trip to the BMV, gathering the required documents, and posing for a photograph surely does not qualify as a substantial burden on the right to vote, or even represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting. And even assuming that the burden may not be justified as to a few voters, that’s not ebnough to make the scheme invalid.
Now, as to the motivation: I think on a scale of one to ten, “eight” is probably the partisan motivation for these laws and “two” the genuine desire to safeguard against voter fraud.
On a scale of one to ten, how partisan is ACORN-type group’s activities and how much is genuine desire to see every single person vote? For example, how much time do such groups spend in lower income areas that vote Republican, such as rural areas?
Well, let me clarify again. I do not claim that the Democratic leadership met in a smoke-filled room in 1964 and hatched a plan to guarantee a leftward swing by selectively importing leftist immigrants. As far as anything that was said publicly, the Immigration Act of 1965 was primarily a civil rights initiative.
But the effect of recent immigration in pushing the country’s politics leftward is well known to both sides, freely talked about in every national election, and has been for decades. You cannot possibly believe that the left is ignorant of the decisive advantage immigration has given them and that that knowledge does not play into their continued support for immigration. Take away immigration and you can forget about universal healthcare, affirmative action, and most of the rest of the progressive agenda. Any Democratic campaign strategist who doesn’t know this ought to be fired.
Everyone knows what the “Southern Strategy” was. You might call left-wing support for immigration, especially from Latin America, the “Global Strategy”. For instance,
Do you suppose the Clinton Administration may have been less than diligent in rooting out the deficiencies of CUSA (a program to accelerate naturalizations) knowing it was helping them win re-election?
It turns out that I misspoke about the convicted felons business. Felons on parole are eligible to vote and have been since 2000. Incarcerated felons still can’t vote, although those in pretrial detention and people convicted of misdemeanors can.
This relatively small point aside, that doesn’t change the fact that there may be more eligible voters without ID, and those with ID may not be eligible to vote. We do have a fairly conservative governor who wants a voter ID bill passed, so my guess is this is a PR thing intended to “prove” that voter ID isn’t as big a problem as the opposition claims.
There are check-cashing services in poor neighborhoods that don’t require ID, or they’ll take the person’s picture and issue their own ID for the purposes of cashing checks at that establishment. Or employers are happy to cash checks for their employees. (The relevant case is Arizona v. Labor Ready.)
Before you paint all these people as “ne’er do wells” and “miscreants”, how about you consider those people who move into a family member’s or friend’s house because of foreclosure or downsizing? Or single adults who choose to rent one bedroom in someone else’s house because it’s less expensive? Or people who live in some sort of group housing? Are you going to call all of them “ne’er do wells” and “miscreants” because they don’t have traditional living arrangements?
I see a number of tu quoque (appeal to hypocrisy) arguments being put forth here.
Ignoring for the moment whether or not it’s a legitimate kind of argument, and also ignoring whether or not the two sides are really equivalent in this case, doesn’t using it concede the OP’s point? “Yea we’re doing it, but so are you”.