# I Pit the ID-demanding GOP vote-suppressors (Part 1) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 12, 2012, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943 "2012-06-12T19:15:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 271
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2014, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5401 "2014-06-06T21:32:14Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > Your so-called “chain of logic” requires that everyone agree with the assumptions that you start with. Bricker very obviously doesn’t, and he has called you on that point repeatedly. > [@Lobohan](#): > > Someone who can think clearly. > > **The problem:** Fraudulent in-person voters, who number in the tens, distorting elections. > > **The solution:** Institute a requirement for ID’s at elections. > > **The problem with the solution:** Many thousands of people don’t currently possess the IDs. Most of those people are voters of one party. > > **Additional Problem with the solution:** Getting the IDs can involve anywhere from several hours to several days, and many of those without the IDs are poor or elderly. > > **What a rational person would think:** Well, until the ID situation changes, the very, very, small distortion to elections caused by in-person voter fraud would be dwarfed by many thousands of people who otherwise could vote being assigned hours or days of labor in order to do so. > > **What Bricker thinks:** They don’t have ID? Fuck the lazy cunts. HAW HAW HAW! Which assumptions does **Bricker** reject? ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2014, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5402 "2014-06-06T21:39:02Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > Your so-called “chain of logic” requires that everyone agree with the assumptions that you start with. Bricker very obviously doesn’t, and he has called you on that point repeatedly. Address the specific points, if you will. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2014, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5403 "2014-06-06T21:44:45Z")
Don’t ask Clotha about the topic, you’ll confuse him. He’s only here to defend Bricker. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5404 "2014-06-07T00:03:16Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > I have several responses to that: > (1) You’re viewing this through the lens of someone who not only presumably has the time, money, and automobile to make a twenty mile trip once in a two-year period, but also has the health, the knowledge and understanding of bureaucracy, the confidence of dealing with similar situations in the past, and so forth. I wouldn’t say that your attitude is “fuck the lazy people”, but it certainly resembles “aww, c’mon, this is EASY. I mean, it’s easy for me, right?”. Well… yes. But to some extent, you could make the same argument about registering to vote at all, or registering for [TANF](http://www.dss.virginia.gov/benefit/tanf/) – which is arguably of at least equal importance in the lives of those that need it. I don’t think anyone has seriously advanced the notion that because you must return the TANF form to a single location in each county – a location that is only open 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. Monday through Friday – the program is unduly burdensome. And this is a program that by its very nature is needed by people struggling with poverty. So I feel like that kind of demand is not unduly burdensome. > [@](#): > > (2) This may just be an agree-to-disagree issue, but I’m also incredibly uncomfortable with an elected body taking an action that will lower turnout of the opposing party no matter HOW trivial the burden. For instance, the east-side-dominated-city-council schedules a special election for the day of the west-side-high-school homecoming carnival. That may not be illegal. Heck, it’s possible that there’s no way to phrase a law sufficiently carefully that it COULD be illegal. But it’s clearly a dirty trick. And yes, dirty tricks are just as dirty when Democrats do them. We don’t ask you to leave your party over those dirty tricks, but we do ask you to denounce them, much as you frequently ask SDMB liberals not to stop being liberals, but at least to denounce assholish posts from other SDMB liberals. Unfortunately, I think that this is a problem inherent in vesting power in our elected officials. And I’m certainly willing to say it’s crappy. But I’m not as filled with righteous anger because in my view it’s not unusual for any party to use their position of power to leverage their own advantage. So I agree it’s a base, crappy, contemptible thing for elected officials to use their power to govern to instead give their own party advantages. I just think it’s par for the course. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5405 "2014-06-07T00:09:05Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > “Improve election results”? I assume you mean “improve precision and recountability of election results” as opposed to “improve how much the election results accurately reflect the will of the electorate”. Because at best you’re gaining a TINY bit in column A for a potentially huge loss in column B. I realize we’re really getting into semantics with this response, but: “The will of the electorate” in this context is a tricky phrase. We do not, as some countries do, make voting mandatory. “The will of the electorate,” thus includes people who chose not to register, or register but decide on Election Day that they don’t want to brave the early snowstorm. Yes? So if that’s true, then I would argue that “the will of the electorate” is not meaningfully hurt by requiring ID, because some portion of the electorate has chosen not to vote. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5406 "2014-06-07T00:16:10Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I already tried the “Type I Error vs. Type II Error” bit on Bricker. Perhaps I was being too technical, though. > > Anyway, that he’s responding to you _and_ Lobohan/elucidator but not me is interesting (to me, anyway). I guess I fall into the uncanny valley of people who Bricker can’t ignore because they’re being too polite (and thus cutting them off would make him look bad) and people he _won’t_ ignore because he thinks if keeps talking to them, a magical moment will occur when the lurkers conclude that he is more mature than they. > > I hit the target. I win, I guess. I’m following your wise suggestion: > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > If I read this right, you’re asserting your prerogative to pick and choose what you will respond to and what you will comment on. > > Guess what - we ALL have that prerogative, so your whining about how we’re not policing each other is especially immature. However, since I started ignoring you, to my dismay [you’ve made some excellent](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17437217&postcount=5343)posts, and frankly I feel like kind of a stupid ass now for doing it as long as I did. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5407 "2014-06-07T00:24:48Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Why are those our only choices - legalistic vs. moral/ethical? There are pragmatic aspects to this particular issue. > > The more I read on this topic, the more I come to realize as an axiom\* that elected officials should not be in charge of elections.\* It strikes me as fairly obvious and with adequate (indeed overwhelming) historical support that this encourages corruption and manipulation of the electoral process. Right. History supports this view, and has repeatedly reaffirmed its truth. > [@](#): > > If the mere appearance of impropriety is enough to get a judge to recuse himself from a case in which he _might_ have a personal interest, it is inconsistent to allow elected officials to manage the electoral process where the potential for conflicts is as great or greater, since it involves their livelihoods and those of their rivals, and thus carries the incentive to not only encourage people to vote for you, but to actively discourage them from voting for the other guy, indeed the obvious preference is _they not vote at all_, if it was going to be for the other guy. You are absolutely right. As a poor man’s solution, I suggested no changes to election procedure become effective until at least one election cycle has passed – this is the same solution used for Congressional pay raises. No Congress can vote itself a pay raise; it may only vote the subsequent Congress a raise. This is not a perfect bulwark, of course. > [@](#): > > Bricker expresses concern that votes about the possibility of four fake voters (i.e. voters who should have been disqualified) in a close election. Even _if_ this occurred, it is a minor concern, several orders of magnitude less significant in determining the election’s outcome than human error, mechanical error or bias on the part of those tabulating the votes and, as Bricker suggested and then I thought rather disingenuously backpedaled on, whoever makes the final determination. In the razor-close election he has repeatedly referenced (Indiana’s 8th District, 1984), the final determination was made by Congress (then controlled by Democrats) in favour of Frank McClosky, the Democrat incumbent. Correctly? Incorrectly? Who knows. Again extremely valid. But politics is described as the art of the possible. I don’t believe either party would support any real reform that would take power out of their hands in this way. > [@](#): > > I consider it very fortunate that Elections Canada was created in 1920, an (ideally, but nothing is perfect) nonpartisan government agency with the purpose of managing elections. Certainly there have been scandals and abuses in its history, but the goal is to manage elections for the sake of managing elections, regardless of outcome. Sure, a worthy goal, but even as you acknowledge, people have tried to game the system, and have had some success. > [@](#): > > That doesn’t sound like me, but I’m sure with enough aggressive parsing and liberal use of unlikely and clearly unintended word definitions, something I’ve said in this thread might possibly bear some similarity to the above, if one squints. It wasn’t you. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5408 "2014-06-07T00:52:40Z")
Suddenly, this is a lot less fun. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5409 "2014-06-07T03:21:31Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > … because some portion of the electorate has chosen not to vote. “Chosen” being the operative word. Whether you regard the resulting burdens as onerous or petty, they did not choose them. They were not offered a choice, and the decision made for them runs counter to any empowerment to make such a choice. Deliberately, with political malice aforethought. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5410 "2014-06-07T15:54:14Z")
So, that’s it then? **Bricker** retreats to the last bunker, the Citadel of Equivalence, they’re all the same, all corrupt, no difference worth noting? Well, OK, sure, why not? Except, of course, that the Republicans did this and the Dems didn’t. Except for that minor detail… ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5411 "2014-06-07T16:13:01Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I realize we’re really getting into semantics with this response, but: > > “The will of the electorate” in this context is a tricky phrase. We do not, as some countries do, make voting mandatory. “The will of the electorate,” thus includes people who chose not to register, or register but decide on Election Day that they don’t want to brave the early snowstorm. Yes? > > So if that’s true, then I would argue that “the will of the electorate” is not meaningfully hurt by requiring ID, because some portion of the electorate has chosen not to vote. > [@elucidator](#): > > “Chosen” being the operative word. Whether you regard the resulting burdens as onerous or petty, they did not choose them. They were not offered a choice, and the decision made for them runs counter to any empowerment to make such a choice. Deliberately, with political malice aforethought. “Chosen not to vote” being the operative phrase. By that I mean that while they did not choose the burden, nor more than the people who decide not to vote because of the snowstorm chose the snow, they did choose not to vote. > [@elucidator](#): > > So, that’s it then? **Bricker** retreats to the last bunker, the Citadel of Equivalence, they’re all the same, all corrupt, no difference worth noting? Well, OK, sure, why not? Except, of course, that the Republicans did this and the Dems didn’t. Except for that minor detail… This particular move, yes, comes from the Republicans. But that’s not emblematic of the Democrats’ purity in refusing to use political power to gain political advantage. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5412 "2014-06-07T16:52:46Z")
That’s true, no bout adoubt it! Just because somebody is guilty, doesn’t make somebody else innocent! Yeppers, you got that one nailed down! You’ll get no argument from me on that one! Got a mind like a steel…what’s that thing, slams shut, grabs a leg?.._whatever_! **Bricker** triumphs again! And the peasants rejoice… ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5413 "2014-06-07T17:12:03Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > “Chosen not to vote” being the operative phrase. > > By that I mean that while they did not choose the burden, nor more than the people who decide not to vote because of the snowstorm chose the snow, they did choose not to vote. The difference is, are you reading closely? The difference is, that the GOP is making it snow mostly on the Democrats. If this burden fell randomly on voters, you might have a point, although I’d still be against it. But your analogy of a snowstorm is nonsense for two reasons: 1. A snowstorm is a random event that cannot be controlled. 2. Snow is being created in this analogy and being dumped on likely Democratic party voters. So \*choose \*is a little disingenuous, don’t you think? > [@](#): > > This particular move, yes, comes from the Republicans. But that’s not emblematic of the Democrats’ purity in refusing to use political power to gain political advantage. I suspect you’d find that the Dems have, recently at least, decided that getting more people to vote helps them more, than making it harder for others. So it’s really not that comparable. Sometimes you’re just rah-rahing the bad guys. Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5414 "2014-06-07T18:59:42Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > So, that’s it then? **Bricker** retreats to the last bunker, the Citadel of Equivalence, they’re all the same, all corrupt, no difference worth noting? Well, OK, sure, why not? Except, of course, that the Republicans did this and the Dems didn’t. Except for that minor detail… And because promoting participation in an election is healthy for democracy, while restricting it weakens it - \*regardless \*of partisan advantage. ---
**Author:** ![Reyemile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/46a35a/32.png) [@Reyemile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reyemile)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5415 "2014-06-07T19:41:55Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > “Chosen not to vote” being the operative phrase. > > By that I mean that while they did not choose the burden, nor more than the people who decide not to vote because of the snowstorm chose the snow, they did choose not to vote. This logic would permit a law requiring everyone to chop off the tip of their little finger, Yakuza style, in order to vote. Sure, we’d have .01% turnout at the voting booths, but that just means 99.99% chose not to vote. We’d still be respecting the will of the electorate, right? ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5416 "2014-06-07T22:15:19Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Well… yes. But to some extent, you could make the same argument about registering to vote at all, or registering for [TANF](http://www.dss.virginia.gov/benefit/tanf/) – which is arguably of at least equal importance in the lives of those that need it. Sure… but there’s a HUGE difference between “hey, look, over there is the state of Washington, and in the state of Washington it’s MUCH harder to register to vote than in any other state… but it’s been that way for years, and there doesn’t seem to be any partisan intent behind it” and “hey, look, over there is the state of Idaho, and someone there is proposing changing the rules so that it gets much harder to register, disproportionately affecting their political opponents”. It’s an entirely reasonable position (and again, I’m talking about an ethical/moral opinion) that the status quo in Washington in that example is just fine, while the proposed change in Idaho is not, even if the proposed law in Idaho still doesn’t make things as onerous as they are to begin with in Washington. And comparisons to things other than voting are a bit spurious. Voting is really not much like anything else. It’s not essential-to-life for each individual person, so a rational person is going to prioritize if far behind actually having a job and food and shelter. At the same time it is ESSENTIAL for the functioning of a democracy as a whole that people vote. So simply saying “well, that person was able to do X in some other context, clearly they can do X” might prove that they CAN do X, but of course a fair bit of this discussion is not about “voting was made IMPOSSIBLE” but “voting was made DIFFICULT”. Obstacles don’t need to be un-overcomable in order to be objectionable. > [@](#): > > And I’m certainly willing to say it’s crappy. But I’m not as filled with righteous anger because in my view it’s not unusual for any party to use their position of power to leverage their own advantage. So I agree it’s a base, crappy, contemptible thing for elected officials to use their power to govern to instead give their own party advantages. I just think it’s par for the course. This is one of my strongest areas of disagreement with you, both in terms of your opinion, and in terms of how you have presented it. First of all, there’s a big difference between a situation where a well meaning politician has written a law intending to do X, and some people suspect that it might as a side effect do Y, and we’re trying to debate whether it will do Y, but it’s a complicated and subtle issue, and reasonable people disagree… vs a situation where we all agree that the politician was scuzzy, and he wrote a law claiming to do X, and we all agree that he had as a strong (sole?) motivation that it actually do Y, and then we’re debating whether it will really do Y. In that case, I feel like the presumption is that it WILL do Y. It’s a very odd and unusual position to be saying “I agree that these politicians unethically wrote this law intending that it accomplish X… but they failed, it won’t really accomplish X, therefore I support it for its on-the-surface stated position”. I suppose it’s possible (and note that despite how long this thread is and how carefully I’ve read your posts I’m still not quite sure what your precise position is here) that your claim is “they wrote these laws, with justification voter-confidence, but with actual motivation of supressing-liberal-voters, and they likely WILL succeed in suppressing-liberal-voters, but that suppression happens without applying an undue burden so it’s peachy keen”. But that just seems to be giving politicians carte blanche to be as scuzzy and dirty tricky as they possibly can as long as they stay within the letter of the law. On a different note, I believe that it is our moral and ethical obligation to oppose dirty and scummy political tricks. That doesn’t mean you have to leave your party over them, or wail and beat your breast, but when they do something scuzzy, and then you cheerfully leap in and start depending the scuzzy action with both oratorical fists, the message is “eh, I don’t care about the scumminess”. It makes you seem totally mercenary. That, I suspect, is at least one cause of how much anger you’ve gotten in this thread. (And note, if you’re going to bring up the Massachusetts Senate once again, that I at least would never have accused you of being unethically OK with Republican dirty tricks if you had just never posted a word about voter ID ever. Not posting about something is not implicitly supporting it except in some very contrived situations.) ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5417 "2014-06-07T22:52:00Z")
> [@Reyemile](#): > > This logic would permit a law requiring everyone to chop off the tip of their little finger, Yakuza style, in order to vote. Sure, we’d have .01% turnout at the voting booths, but that just means 99.99% chose not to vote. We’d still be respecting the will of the electorate, right? **Reymille** , you’re responding to post number five thousand, four hundred eleven in this thread. The “Yakuza solution,” you mention above would be an example of an onerous burden, and my characterization of needing photo ID to vote is not a onerous burden, a distinction which was discussed in more than a few of the five thousand four hundred ten posts preceding the one to which you replied. I apologize if you just began reading on this page. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5418 "2014-06-07T23:04:02Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Sure… but there’s a HUGE difference between “hey, look, over there is the state of Washington, and in the state of Washington it’s MUCH harder to register to vote than in any other state… but it’s been that way for years, and there doesn’t seem to be any partisan intent behind it” and “hey, look, over there is the state of Idaho, and someone there is proposing changing the rules so that it gets much harder to register, disproportionately affecting their political opponents”. It’s an entirely reasonable position (and again, I’m talking about an ethical/moral opinion) that the status quo in Washington in that example is just fine, while the proposed change in Idaho is not, even if the proposed law in Idaho still doesn’t make things as onerous as they are to begin with in Washington. Can you expand a bit on this? Elsewhere in this thread, several participants argued strongly that it was appropriate to measure votes fungibly – that is, if voter ID prevents a thousand valid votes at the cost of preventing ten fraudulent ones, it’s a failure. If you accept that calculus, can you explain just why an observer should be content with Idaho and Washington in your example? > [@](#): > > And comparisons to things other than voting are a bit spurious. Voting is really not much like anything else. It’s not essential-to-life for each individual person, so a rational person is going to prioritize if far behind actually having a job and food and shelter. At the same time it is ESSENTIAL for the functioning of a democracy as a whole that people vote. So simply saying “well, that person was able to do X in some other context, clearly they can do X” might prove that they CAN do X, but of course a fair bit of this discussion is not about “voting was made IMPOSSIBLE” but “voting was made DIFFICULT”. Obstacles don’t need to be un-overcomable in order to be objectionable. OK. I think we have a strong attachment to argument by analogy, but I’ll accept that voting is sui generis. > [@](#): > > This is one of my strongest areas of disagreement with you, both in terms of your opinion, and in terms of how you have presented it. > > First of all, there’s a big difference between a situation where a well meaning politician has written a law intending to do X, and some people suspect that it might as a side effect do Y, and we’re trying to debate whether it will do Y, but it’s a complicated and subtle issue, and reasonable people disagree… vs a situation where we all agree that the politician was scuzzy, and he wrote a law claiming to do X, and we all agree that he had as a strong (sole?) motivation that it actually do Y, and then we’re debating whether it will really do Y. In that case, I feel like the presumption is that it WILL do Y. It’s a very odd and unusual position to be saying “I agree that these politicians unethically wrote this law intending that it accomplish X… but they failed, it won’t really accomplish X, therefore I support it for its on-the-surface stated position”. OK, another “first of all” right back at you. Even if that’s the initial presumption, why would that presumption stand in the absence of any confirming evidence. Again I’ll point out that Voter ID laws have been active in many states for many years. I’d say the presumption cannot stand without someone being able to point out why we cannot actually confirm it. > [@](#): > > I suppose it’s possible (and note that despite how long this thread is and how carefully I’ve read your posts I’m still not quite sure what your precise position is here) that your claim is “they wrote these laws, with justification voter-confidence, but with actual motivation of supressing-liberal-voters, and they likely WILL succeed in suppressing-liberal-voters, but that suppression happens without applying an undue burden so it’s peachy keen”. But that just seems to be giving politicians carte blanche to be as scuzzy and dirty tricky as they possibly can as long as they stay within the letter of the law. Unfortunately, I believe that the majority of successful politicians that rise above purely local, part-time positions are, in fact, “…as scuzzy and dirty tricky as they possibly can as long as they stay within the law.” ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5419 "2014-06-07T23:21:09Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Elsewhere in this thread, several participants argued strongly that it was appropriate to measure votes fungibly – that is, if voter ID prevents a thousand valid votes at the cost of preventing ten fraudulent ones, it’s a failure. If I may, I said a ratio of one-to-one was unproductive and a single prevented vote over the number of prevented frauds was a failure. “Fungibility”, as far as I recall, was a concept you brought up and I don’t think it applies, personally. I’m not sure what interpretations other users may have described. An alternate comparison might be the idea of banning handguns because criminals use handguns. Such a law may impact a larger number of law-abiding citizens who own handguns with no intent whatsoever to ever use them in a criminal act. Would ten law-abiding citizens affected while only one criminal is be considered a failure? Assume for the purposes of this question that there is no constitutional issue with the proposed ban. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2014, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/5420 "2014-06-08T00:41:15Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > An alternate comparison might be the idea of banning handguns because criminals use handguns. Such a law may impact a larger number of law-abiding citizens who own handguns with no intent whatsoever to ever use them in a criminal act. Would ten law-abiding citizens affected while only one criminal is be considered a failure? > > Assume for the purposes of this question that there is no constitutional issue with the proposed ban. I think someone could argue either side of the question in good faith. A gun rights proponent would weigh the value of individual self-defense much greater than the cost of criminal activity; a gun control proponent would just as sincerely give weight to the cost of crime and little weight to the value of self-defense. Indeed, we don’t have to imagine it: we see that essential debate all around us. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943.md?page=270) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943.md?page=272)