Yeah, if you don’t like the laws being passed then just vote the bums out. What was that? You are passing laws that make it harder to vote the bums out?
Bricker, you keep pretending that voting is like any other governmental activity. Its not even close. It is the one right on which all of our other rights are built. If the voting process is flawed then you can’t have faith in the legislative process.
There were also valid neutral justifications for poll taxes, literacy tests and shit like that too. A law that excludes millions of eligible voters in the hopes of keeping out a handful of ineligible voters needs to pass a higher test than the one you propose, especially when there are other avenues for for much more significant leakage that don’t seem to bother the Republicans at all.
He figured a couple of percentage points. I find that perfectly reasonable, as I think the original plan was aimed at trimming Dem voters just enough to carry the close ones.
Now, I should like us to move on to the next challenge, equality in voting opportunity at the polling place. That anyone in the inner city needs to spend several hours to vote while his/her more comfortably advantaged counterpart does not offends our democratic principles. That such a change would advantage the side I prefer has not escaped my attention, but hey! Talk about a valid neutral justification!
Yes, there were. And so they were permissible, until we passed a law forbidding them - an amendment, in the case of poll taxes.
That’s what people in a democracy do. That’s what “self-governed” means. Poll taxes are odious? I agree; so did three-fourths of the states, and the Constitution was amended to forbid them.
Says you. I don’t agree.
Why do you imagine you get to win this disagreement?
Probably not in Florida, which may explain his discrepancies there.
As it turns out, people enjoy the right to vote and will stand in line for hours to exercise it, even if you don’t provide them with enough voting machines. Obama was even encouraging people to not give up if they were in line to vote, and I bet some people stayed when encouraged to do so by seeing this on their smart phones.
Doesn’t Pennsylvania already issue drivers licenses and state ID for non-drivers? Don’t many Pennsylvania residents already have miltary or federal/state employee id? Why do they need another ID?
Whether the "backfire or blowback helped any one party or the other is only part of the issue. The other part is that the courts did see it as a rights issue.
To say otherwise is like saying “calm down, I was shooting at you but missed”.
It’s nonsense.
What’s next? Three or four picture ID, a sworn affadavit from neighbors and a valid credit card?
It’s still only November and we see The Brickhead is already plotting to steal the next election. Since I’m one who admitted voter ID laws might be a good idea if developed by good-spirited people, let me put Brickhead in his place.
To add interest, I’ll use a metaphor, a story with sexual interest. The characters are Suzy Democracy, and Evil Rick the Wolf. If Evil Rick had asked Suzy politely for a date a few years ago, she’d probably have agreed – Evil Rick is a smooth-talking guy.
Instead, Evil Rick lingered in dark alleys trying to catch Suzie unaware. Several times he tried to rape her, but she escaped by calling the police.
Released from police custody, Evil Rick sends Suzy flowers and offers to take her out for lunch next time, before raping her. No, Brickhead, I’m not OK with that.
Democracy prevailed because she had a network of friends on the watch for Evil Rick, calling the police when he tried to violate her. How long must Suzy Democracy and her friends be expected to keep their guard up?
The 2012 election saw a blatantly scurrilous GOP, led by a pompous and hypocritical asshole, get, unbelievably, almost 49% of the American vote. Democracy is still in grave danger. So no, Brickhead and other disciples of Karl Rove, we’re not interested in your plots to “improve” American democracy.
They don’t; they can use those extant IDs to vote. If they don’t have any of those, they now have the free ID for voting.
From the Pennsylvania Supreme Court:
So far as I can discern, the court’s rationale rested squarely on the lack of sufficient time to distribute the cards, as opposed to any per se constitutional infirmity with the scheme itself.
Bricker, I am trying to understand your point of view. You say that poll taxes were odious but permissible, because (I think this is what you are saying) they were created through valid legal processes.
On this basis, you seem to draw no distinction between poll taxes and the requirement for voter ID. But you seem to be defending voter ID requirements as more than just legally valid, you seem to be saying that they serve a real need. Is that indeed your view?
You also say that, odious as they were, there were valid, neutral justifications for poll taxes. I can’t reconcile this in my mind. What would a valid, neutral justification for poll taxes be? The requirement seems, to me, to fly in the face of the principle necessary in a democracy that every citizen who is not positively disqualified (such as by being a convicted felon, or under voting age) should be eligible to vote. Poverty ought not to be a disqualification for voting, even if there were no racist underpinnings.
Earlier, you referred to “the data that this election created in states that had Voter ID laws.” What data? Are you referring to the overall winners and losers in the election? How does that come close to proving that voter ID laws do not suppress at least some legitimate votes? How does that speak to the unproven assertion that voter fraud, of the type that would be prevented by voter ID, is a larger problem than the one introduced by voter ID laws themselves?
Roddy
Inasmuch as the court in Pennsylvania rested its decision on the timeframe, an issue that’s now off the table, I’m curious to know what other strategems you imagine will work for defeating this law in 2014.
Yes. They do serve a real need; people need to feel confident in the integrity of election results.
But that wasn’t always the view. The original scheme on which the country was founded limited the vote to men, for example. Was the country not a democracy back then?
You say poverty should not be a disqualification for voting, and I agree, but I cannot place that finding in some sort of scientifically proven category. It’s my preference; it’s not ordained fact from above.
This position is one that’s repeatedly ascribed to me, despite my numerous attempts at disclaiming it. I don’t claim there is a large amount of voter impersonation fraud in play. I claim simply that there is sufficient voter fraud in play to affect an extremely close election, the extremely rare razor-thin elections that happen once every twenty or thirty years.
The data I’m referring to is the overall turnout of minority voters despite the supposedly onerous restrictions imposed by Voter ID laws.
Of course not, that’s the whole point! Sure, voter ID isn’t a bad idea as such, it became a bad idea the way it was misused. You keep trying to pretend that our issue is with voter ID as the thing itself, and no matter how many times we tell you otherwise, you keep harping on it as though we had not spoken. Are you even listening?
Hey, let’s do it! Lets have a full court press to register the unregistered, and supply them with voter ID that is quick, painless, and effective.
Unless, of course, the Republicans have some objection to expanding the voter rolls?
No? Well, OK, lets do this, lets fund this. Have to clear it with our gated communities, don’t want people wandering around in the rain looking like they are on drugs, or anything.
Massive new numbers of previously unregistered voters? I’m cool with that. How about you, Bricker? A little pro bono work for the new, legitimized, non-partisan ACORN? It will make the ghost of Tom Paine smile.
Imagine us working side by side, striding forward into the golden dawn of a new democratic age! Brings a tear to my eye, and a song to my heart. Imagine!
That is a distinctly different message than septimus’ message:
Now, maybe liberals are more hip to the subtle nuance of meaning than conservatives, but that doesn’t seem to me like, “Voter ID isn’t a bad idea as such.”
Where did you get the idea that I’m a constipated political news junkie like you are?
And why do you think your opinions have any non-satiric value when you have zero interest in the ideals of democracy or what’s best for America, but just want to gloat whenever a Rovian “strategem” succeeds.
It amuses me now to think of it, but when I first arrived at SDMB three years ago, I thought of you as a rarity: an intelligent right-winger. Now I think of you as a clown. I’m not sure if you believe your own claptrap or, like Rush Limbaugh, exaggerate your own buffoonery to appeal to a peculiar class of listeners.
Oh,you poor dear! So misunderstood, when you were being so congenial, and all. Need a moment? Hanky? Here, I borrowed this one from Lobo…sure, its kinda crusty but that’s probably nasal. Pretty sure. Probably. No, you keep it, that’s OK…
And just for the record, nobody speaks for me but me. Nobody wants to, but still…
And if asked a direct question, I do not duck down the hidey hole with a “no comment”. With me, you get as good as you give. And if what you give is a thumb in the eye, brother, you are gonna see the military side of tai chi.
This seems to me a commendably candid admission that the voter-ID movement is to some extent about considering poverty a disqualification for voting.
Many conservatives do not like the way poor people tend to vote, and (or perhaps hence) they think that poor people ought to be discouraged from voting.
Bricker is pointing out, AFAICT quite correctly, that those conservatives are entitled to push for the implementation of their views as far as the law will allow them to do so. Saying “but voter-ID laws tend to disenfranchise poor people” is not in and of itself a rebuttal to them, because the whole point of the voter-ID laws for them is to disenfranchise poor people.
Even if that so-called “real need” is ultimately manufactured by elitist conservatives deliberately manipulating and misinforming voters about the integrity of election results precisely in order to diminish their confidence in it?
Suppose I manage to convince large swathes of the electorate that extraterrestrial aliens routinely put bombs in the body cavities of middle-aged white male voters on election days and therefore such voters need to be strip-searched when they get to the polls. The electorate is understandably worried about this “threat” and favors legislation mandating such precautions.
Obviously, such legislation serves a real need, because people need to feel confident in the physical safety of the electoral process. So we should pass it, right? Because by Bricker logic, the fact that this “threat” inspiring the legislation doesn’t happen to have any basis in what’s actually happening is irrelevant.
