# 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:** 529
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10561 "2017-05-16T20:01:37Z")
> [@Chisquirrel](#): > > If they’re anything like you, I want to stay as far away as possible. It seems pretty clear that chronic stupidity is rampantly contagious. I have to agree with the “chronic stupidity is rampantly contagious” bit. That’s the only explanation for liberalism, other than mental disorder. ---
**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10562 "2017-05-16T20:24:48Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > I have to agree with the “chronic stupidity is rampantly contagious” bit. That’s the only explanation for liberalism, other than mental disorder. Ah, the old “I know you are, but what am I?” Glad to see you made it to second grade, at least. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10563 "2017-05-16T20:36:18Z")
Worst three years of his life! ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10564 "2017-05-16T20:59:48Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Worst three years of his life! Eh, everyone has a few bad years in their late teens. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2017, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10565 "2017-05-17T04:03:00Z")
Oh, let him cry if it makes him feel better about how Trump is a failure and the Republican party a joke. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2017, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10566 "2017-05-17T14:17:29Z")
> [@Chisquirrel](#): > > Ah, the old “I know you are, but what am I?” > > Glad to see you made it to second grade, at least. Nope. Simple statement of fact. Would you care to discuss how liberalism is NOT a mental disorder? About the only way you can do that is by arguing contagious stupidity. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2017, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10567 "2017-05-17T14:19:42Z")
> [@The\_Tooth](#): > > Oh, let him cry if it makes him feel better about how Trump is a failure and the Republican party a joke. Cite? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2017, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10568 "2017-05-17T14:32:35Z")
Don’t speak to me. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2017, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10569 "2017-05-17T14:43:59Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > A Trump voter upset at lies? Yeah, it’s this irony and lack of self-awareness that I really can’t understand among the more, um, adamant supporters of Trump. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2017, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10570 "2017-05-17T14:47:19Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > Would you care to discuss how liberalism is NOT a mental disorder? You lack the mental capacity to discuss anything. Stick with inarticulate expressions of rage at people whose politics differ from yours–it’s more your level. ---
**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2017, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10571 "2017-05-17T15:11:39Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > Nope. Simple statement of fact. Would you care to discuss how liberalism is NOT a mental disorder? About the only way you can do that is by arguing contagious stupidity. I’m sorry, you must be confused - you seem to think I wish to engage in debate with you. You seem to be laboring under the impression that you possess as many firing neurons in the empty cavern that SHOULD contain your brain as I do in my left ass cheek, let alone inside my head, when it’s obvious that my puppy is smarter than you. You are nothing more than a simpleton - an easy target for mockery and contempt. You are kept around for the entertainment of the masses. You are living, breathing, shit-spewing proof that for every **Bricker** level of intellect in the Republican Party, there are a dozen who prefer to lick walls. Your defense of CCW does a disservice to its proponents, because you are evidence to everyone with more than two concurrently firing brain cells realizes there are people who are too fucking stupid to be allowed to wield a firearm. Simply put, every single one of your posts can be answered with the quote from Billy Madison. You possess no wit, no voice, and nothing I could remotely equate to a virtue. The fact that you can vote makes me wonder if a literacy test might have been the right idea, they just screwed it up with the grandfather clauses. You are the first person to be awarded no nuts, because, well, I don’t like you. I [del]anxiously[/del] await your response [del]with dread[/del], even though it will fall into one of three categories: [ol] [li]You’re dumb[/li][li]You’re a liberal[/li][li]You’re dumb[/li][/ol] Please, enlighten us as to the combined effects of eating lead paint and repeated strikes to an unprotected head. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2017, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10572 "2017-05-17T15:34:25Z")
You have to remember that **Clothahump** lives in a very tiny bubble which presents the world in a skewed way that justifies the views of the alt-right while presenting liberals as mindless hive-drones. Hell, he literally follows a site called “rightwingnews” and deliberately avoids the MSM because he believes the view of the world they present contradicts his own not because his news sources are biased but because the other 99% are. Like Wonko the Sane, he has marked out his tiny territory and then declared the entire rest of the world to be the ones living inside the asylum. Unfortunately, this approach leads to a vicious cycle of reinforcement - the more the outside world presents evidence that conflicts with the way he thinks, the more it proves to him that everyone else is delusional and he and his fellow travellers are the Voice of Reason. Which he and his fellow travellers are all too happy to tell each other on a regular basis. So it’s not surprising that he thinks liberals are all mentally deranged. Everything he reads on his favourite websites tells him so. It doesn’t matter that this involves building strawmen so large you could burn Edward Woodward in them - to admit that would be to admit that he might be wrong, and he remains incapable of even considering that. Meanwhile, the rest of us can only mock and/or pity him and the tiny prison he’s built for himself. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2017, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10573 "2017-05-17T15:41:45Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > The 4-4 tie was back in August. They refused to hear it this time. Which means there weren’t 4 votes to hear it. Roberts hinted that his was one, though. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2017, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10574 "2017-05-17T15:45:18Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > Nope. Simple statement of fact. Would you care to discuss how liberalism is NOT a mental disorder? About the only way you can do that is by arguing contagious stupidity. Hey **Bricker** , here’s a great opportunity for you to demonstrate, by example, what you’re always complaining that we liberal Dopers don’t do enough (a fair criticism, by the way)! ---
**Author:** ![BigAppleBucky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigapplebucky/32/178_2.png) [@BigAppleBucky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigAppleBucky)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2017, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10575 "2017-08-12T00:34:25Z")
[After Obama’s 2008 Win, Indiana GOP Added Early Voting in White Suburb, Cut It in Indianapolis](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/08/10/the_indiana_gop_cut_early_voting_in_area_with_black_democrats_after_2008.html) > [@](#): > > The state’s Republicans got to work right away, cutting early voting in Marion County, which includes the state capital of Indianapolis, while expanding it in a nearby suburban county filled with white Republican voters. > > That’s the distressing but entirely predictable upshot of a blockbuster report published by the Indianapolis Star on Thursday. The Star found that between 2008 and 2016, Republican officials reduced the number of early voting stations in Marion County from three to one, resulting in a 26 percent decline in absentee voting in the 2016 presidential election. (Early votes are cast via absentee ballots.) Meanwhile, officials added two early voting stations to the neighboring Hamilton County, which is populated primarily by white Republicans. The county saw a 63 percent increase in absentee voting in 2016. There is now one early voting station for every 100,000 voters in Hamilton County and one for every 700,000 voters in Marion County. In total, the number of people who voted in Marion County decreased by 11,261 between 2008 and 2016 and increased in Hamilton County by 27,376—this “despite an increase of registered voters in both counties,” the Star reports. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2017, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10576 "2017-08-12T02:28:58Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Hey **Bricker** , here’s a great opportunity for you to demonstrate, by example, what you’re always complaining that we liberal Dopers don’t do enough (a fair criticism, by the way)! Very sorry I missed this on its first appearance! > [@Clothahump](#): > > Nope. Simple statement of fact. Would you care to discuss how liberalism is NOT a mental disorder? About the only way you can do that is by arguing contagious stupidity. I assume this is intentional hyperbole. Because taken literally, it’s utter nonsense, defensible only by nut-picking: you can easily find stupid liberals (just as you can easily find stupid conservatives, stupid baseball fans, and stupid medical doctors; stupidity is no rare disease in humans). And if you then take the stupid liberals you’ve found and proclaim that they prove your point, you’ve argued dishonestly, since the same process can find stupidity in virtually any group. But if you’re suggesting that liberalism itself is a mental disorder, literally, you cannot possibly support that claim. Objectively it’s untrue; there is no consensus on the point from the mental health community. And subjectively you must realize that the driving force behind most liberals’ views is a benign one: they want the world to be a better, fairer place. They have ideas about how to accomplish that, and definitions about what constitutes “better” and “fair” that I don’t share. But that’s not evidence of mental disorder: it’s evidence of good faith disagreement. “Mental disorder,” is a world of wrong. It baffles me that we cannot simply point out poor ideas, and poor arguments. No. It must be that those that disagree are deeply flawed, evil, or mentally ill. Absurd. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2017, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10577 "2017-08-12T05:05:16Z")
Wonderful. [Trump’s lemmings say they will support delaying the next presidential election](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-majority-of-gop-would-back-2020-election-delay-if-trump-proposed-it/). ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2017, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10578 "2017-08-12T07:34:13Z")
> [@BigAppleBucky](#): > > [After Obama’s 2008 Win, Indiana GOP Added Early Voting in White Suburb, Cut It in Indianapolis](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/08/10/the_indiana_gop_cut_early_voting_in_area_with_black_democrats_after_2008.html) We can fairly say that _some_ of the Republicans behind this effort have malign intentions. Some others may be fraught with concern for voter integrity, to an extent that has upset their balance and composure. Or there is some other valid neutral justification that the article does not mention. Perhaps it is something like not permitting the more extravagantly populated counties from bullying those more modestly and sensibly inhabited? > [@](#): > > …Then, in 2013, the Republican-dominated state Legislature passed a law that effectively barred “counties with populations over 325,000” from opening more than one early voting site… (above cite) (For shits and giggles, I Google. Looking for anything from a GOP Indiana legislator giving the public shine for this legislative turd, some valid neutral polish. Nada. Shirley _someone_ must have stood before a camera or a pencil and explained why it was needed. Explain that what _appears_ to be shameless skulduggery is actually wholesome crunchy goodness!) ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2017, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10579 "2017-08-12T09:11:16Z")
Let me save Dear Counsellor a click. > [@BigAppleBucky](#): > > [After Obama’s 2008 Win, Indiana GOP Added Early Voting in White Suburb, Cut It in Indianapolis](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/08/10/the_indiana_gop_cut_early_voting_in_area_with_black_democrats_after_2008.html) Wrong. As your own cite shows > [@](#): > > Then, in 2013, the Republican-dominated state Legislature passed a law that effectively barred “counties with populations over 325,000” from opening more than one early voting site. It was GOP-dominated legislatures and GOP-dominated election boards, not the GOP, which acted on the people’s wish to improve confidence in elections. With such profound ignorance demonstrated by both you and the [Slate.com](http://Slate.com) headline-writer, it’s no wonder that some hypothetical officials might allegedly work to reduce voter turnout from certain people. [Then, after Bucky apologizes for this dreadful and horrifying error of wording:] No. The key issue here, for which you have not apologized sufficiently, is your referring to a democratically elected Election Board and a democratically elected Legislature as “the GOP.” Now, it is remotely possible that a teeny-tiny minority of these fine GOP officials noted that suppression of stupid voters might be a side-effect of their courageous efforts to increase confidence in electoral outcomes. So what? These were democratically elected officials in a democratic body, subject to the democratic Constitutions of the U.S.A. and Indiana. If Indianans don’t like it, they are perfectly free to amend their Constitution or elect less courageous and less pro-American officials. _**If they can still find enough votes (Ha ha ha ha! You lose again! Chortle.)**_ ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2017, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943/10580 "2017-09-27T12:18:27Z")
[Wisconsin Strict ID Law Discouraged Voters, Study Finds](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/us/wisconsin-voters.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur) A combination of the laws themselves and misinformation about the laws appears to have had a significant effect in Wisconsin, matching the results of a previous study in Texas. I can’t tell you how much this is boosting my confidence in the voting system. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943.md?page=528) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-id-demanding-gop-vote-suppressors-part-1/624943.md?page=530)