As a followup…
There are essentially three things that matter here.
The first is the percentage of people lacking ID who lack ID because it is unreasonably problematic for them to get it. This could mean that they’d need to take time they can’t really afford to take, or need to spend money that they can’t afford, or simply cannot get to the DMV for whatever reason. Let’s call this “X”.
The second is the margin of error on the investigations present in the field of voter fraud. Maybe some cases were missed, maybe certain districts weren’t combed well enough, and maybe there are issues. Let’s call this “Y”.
The third is how much more important it is to you that fraudulent voters are stopped than legitimate voters are ensured to be able to vote. Let’s call this “Z”.
Then you plug those numbers into this formula:
X * 0.1 * A – 0.000004 * Y * A * Z ≥ 0
A is the population of the USA. So basically what we have here is the percentage of people who simply cannot get voter ID (X * 0.1; 0.1 is the ratio of people who don’t have photo ID) times the total population, minus the rate of voter fraud times the total population times the margin for error, times the degree of importance of voter fraud compared to voter disenfranchisement.
If this equation is not true, then voter ID laws hurt the integrity of elections, rather than helping them.
Let’s make something clear right off the bat. If Z is anything other than “1”, then you are wrong, and you have the missed the point of voter fraud legislation completely. If X or Y are extremely small or large coefficients, then you’re going to need to explain why, preferably with real evidence.
Actually, you can kinda simplify this:
X * 0.1 * A = 0.000004 * Y * A * 1
X = 0.00004 * Y * 1
X / Y = 0.00004
So basically, given the knowledge that we have, in order for voter ID laws to make sense, the rate of people who simply cannot get photo ID for whatever reason, divided by the rate of error of the current investigations must be 0.00004. I’d be willing to take people’s word for it that X is something like 1%, but not that it’s something like 0.001% unless someone could actually provide evidence. Similarly, I’d believe that voter fraud detection is off by a factor of maybe 5 or 10, but not a thousand. Not without very good evidence.
I do not care if the general public is in favor of voter ID laws – if they make elections less representative, they are wrong and must be stopped at any cost, the public opinion be damned. We don’t let people vote on voting rights.
So, class, any questions?