I Pit the ID-demanding GOP vote-suppressors (Part 1)

[Bricker]

@Bryan_Ekers

No, you’re mistaken. My position is that the circumstances do not justify the creation of tighter voter ID laws. Your justification for these laws is not only baseless - i.e. you believe the public might lose confidence in the validity of close elections - it represents willful blindness to much larger sources of electoral error, defined as outcomes that do not represent the will of the electorate.

I don’t agree that’s a likely outcome.

But I wonder what definition of “the electorate” you’re using in that sentence. Mine? Or yours?

Enhanced voter ID laws are designed to, some members of the Republican Party have publicly acknowledged, give an edge to Republican candidates.

No. Merely because some have acknowledged this does not make it true. In fact, they are designed to add a measure of confidence and non-repudiation to the authentication of the voter. The fact that some Republicans also expect that this will result in an electoral advantage for them does not change the design purpose.

You’re not recognizing this as a possible outcome, i.e. you’re implicitly saying those Republicans are engaging in sheer fantasy. I content you are determinedly not recognizing the intended outcome, clinging instead to the tenuous notion that these laws are needed to address a nonexistent problem, which you further insulate yourself from adding a pointless buffer zone:

1. Voter fraud is a nonexistent problem.
2. But your concern is that public perception is that voter fraud is a real problem, therefore it is fair to pass legislation with the goal of addressing public perception rather than voter fraud.

Yes. Correct.

There are of course better ways to address concerns about election fairness, based on what we know to be actual problems with how votes are cast and counted, but you absent yourself from having to consider those, in part because legislators aren’t pursuing those options, because legislators don’t benefit from those options.

I don’t mind considering other options.

What are they, and why haven’t Democrats proposed them? (I assume they have not, since you say that “legislators aren’t pursuing those options.”

Are the people pushing for these laws elected officials? If so, they are by definition part of the system, hence their efforts are indeed “systematic”. The more petty your nitpicks, the more confident I become in your loss of the argument.

That’s not really the impression that the word “systematic” conveys. Indeed, by your proposed definition, there is a systematic effort afoot to make the American public believe that the island of Guam is in fanger oif physically capsizing and sinking into the sea due to the weight of additional armed troops being housed there. This concern was voiced by Rep. Hank Johnson, an elected official and thus part of the system.

Of course, that’s absurd.