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.”
[/QUOTE]
Boy, you really are dense, aren’t you? I shouldn’t have tried a “metaphor” with you, without providing Cliif Notes. Please use Google to translate the following into whatever your Native language is:
Voter ID isn’t a bad idea as such. But I want the system designed by good-spirited pro-Democracy people, not the cretins like you who just tried to rape us. Get it?
OK, so now they can go do their ID card thing and it will be in place for next time (unless it gets sabotaged for some reason).
HOWEVER I stand by my original suspcion that the whole thing was too “coincidental” and too “convenient” and too suspicious in that is was happening during the election. That is the “sufficient time” issue. Now let’s see if “certain of those people” have trouble getting a card. Not that it could ever happen in THIS country, where everyone is totally honest :dubious:
Got it. Except… I don’t really care what you want. Or, more accurately, I care about as much as you care what I want. Each of us has different ideas about how the system should be designed, and by whom.
So how do we settle the conflict?
Hint: we already have a system for doing just that. Only one of us opposes its use.
Thank you for your response. I am going to confine my reply to this one part.
Where is the evidence that voter fraud, of the type that could be combated by voter ID, is of sufficient concern to “people” to override the obvious concerns about voter suppression that arise from voter ID laws? Which is the greater concern and which is the greater threat to fair elections?
I hear in various places a lot of concern about voter fraud arising from voting machines misbehaving, or from vote-by-mail. Voter ID laws do nothing for that.
So which people are the ones who are not confident in the integrity of their elections, based solely on things like people voting twice, or unregistered persons voting, or whatever other “voter fraud” can be dreamed up? And where is the evidence for this lack of confidence?
I suspect it will turn out that the people who claim to have this lack of confidence, if they exist, will be the people who agree with you politically; but this is only my own suspicion and I don’t offer it as fact. I wait to see what actual evidence there might be.
Roddy
But that applies equally to ANY question before the body politic.
Do we define some body to sit in judgement and ascertain the truth of a proposition before the legislature is empowered to act? How will such a body’s members be chosen? How long will this super-legislature sit? What if their factual determination is also skewed? Should we then empower a meta-super legislature to overrule them?
It seems to me your proposal boils down to, “Kimstu gets to decide these things.” Yes? Because you reject the current method; other methods are equally susceptible to the same flaw you identify with the current one.
What kind of process can we agree upon to settle these sorts of disputes such that you would recognize its legitimacy even if you disagree with its results?
A study quoted earlier in this thread placed the incidence of improper voting – non-citizens or felons voting, for example – at 0.004%. That translates to about a hundred votes out of 2.5 million, if I haven’t dropped a decimal point.
Everyone should remember that Bricker supports making it harder or impossible for millions of Americans to vote to stop tens of people from fraudulently voting.
Never mind that in-person voter fraud isn’t even the most common type of fraudulent voting.
So making it harder or impossible for thousands or millions of people to stop a hand-full is what Bricker thinks would make voters more confident.
It’s quite stupid. And only his bald desire for partisan gain at any cost blinds him to it.
Of course it does. I’m not disputing that legislation and the courts are the proper way of implementing and modifying public policy, even when the motivation for policy proposals happens to be imaginary fears whipped up by manipulative elitists.
I’m jeering at you personally for supporting policy proposals motivated by imaginary fears whipped up by manipulative elitists. Piously intoning “Well, I myself am not a manipulative elitist, but I think the public’s fears on this issue deserve to be assuaged with legislative action” is malarkey. If the public’s fears are illusory, then no, they don’t deserve to be assuaged with legislative action, even though we cannot (nor should we) prevent manipulative elitists from pushing for such legislative action.
The question is not “Should the body politic be somehow autocratically prevented from passing stupid legislation in response to imaginary threats?” We both agree that the answer to that question is “No”. Rather, the question is “Should we be supporting stupid legislation in response to imaginary threats?”
Except that our system demands a degree of trust. As we are not just governing ourselves, but governing one another. We must be able to trust that no one will try to rig the system, otherwise we have little more than a slightly more egalitarian version of tyranny.
You have stipulated that voter suppression is the motive of at least some of the authors of these laws. Why should we obliged to accept their judgement as equal to our own, when they have abrogated their responsibility and their duty to uphold democratic principles? Are they not sworn in on that basis, do they not pledge to respect those processes? Why are we obliged to respect their opinions when they cheat?
You rag out on me and mine for not being sufficiently outraged about Massachussets, yet have nothing to say about these people? No renounce, denounce and condemn? And this just before you deliver another scathing indictment of liberal hypocrisy.
Point out to us where you condemned such people, how you have worked to oppose them, what efforts you have made to stop them. Show us where you are the worthy inheritor of such men as Barry Goldwater, then perhaps we will offer your opinions the respect you demand, but refuse to earn.
Plausible as a number of fraudulent votes? Yes. Plausible as a cause for such concern that we have to take (probably damaging) steps to overcome it? No. I can live with 100 fraudulent votes out of 2.5 million, even in a close race (that would not have made a difference in 2000, the closest presidential race in recent memory, as an example).
Does anyone really expect any system to be so perfect that there is both a) no fraud, and b) no voter suppression? I don’t. And if I have to choose one of those two, I pick b). Voter suppression does not seem to be a problem for you, at least not enough to rise to the surface in your comments (if I have missed that concern in the 60 pages of this thread, I apologize).
Roddy
Well that just shows you that it really is A PROBLEM, that must be STAMPED OUT, and the only way to do this is with Voter ID. Well, we won’t stress about it right away, but immediately before the next election? THEN IT WILL BE AN EMERGENCY!
(what do you want to bet that these stories will be morphed by the right-wing nutbars over the next few years, and we’ll be hearing about them as attempts by the evil liberals to attempt fraud?)
Protip: When it’s your OWN SIDE that is attempting (and failing) to destroy confidence in the system, it’s pretty disingenuous to cite “lack of confidence in the system” as a reason to get your way.
Some of them, at least, believe it. They are so certain that they are the majority, they are forced to find some plausible reason that they lose. “Voter fraud” fits the bill nicely. The people who exploit this opinion probably do not share it, but it is useful.
It is a grave weakness of democracy that people can be so easily misled, and it will be a fatal weakness if we are not alert and vigilant.
Bullshit. You do care what pro-democracy people like me want, because you want the opposite.
We have to fight the assholes like you every step of the way, because, as you admit yourself, between the lines, as soon as you get political control you change the rules to make that control permanent. Ohio just voted for Obama, but is already proposing a rule change which, if passed by its GOP-controlled legislature, would have given most of its 2012 electoral votes (had it been in effect then) to Romney even with the non-suppressed vote.
(To save you time, I just now posted in the other thread what your brilliant response to that move would be.)
Well, here’s why I am not concerned about this instance of voter suppression: it’s not unreasonable. What I mean is: asking for ID,when we already require ID for dozens of other functions, seems so straightforward that even if it discourages some voters, I don’t think that discouragement was itself reasonable.
The analogy I used before was: suppose I announced that I had a voodoo doll, and would use it to curse every person who voted for Obama. I showed the doll and the cursing procedure on a slick TV commercial. And suppose you were then able to prove, convincingly, that a thousand voters were disturbed enough that they didn’t vote.
My reaction would be: who cares? I am allowed to do what I did, it’s not unreasonable, and if votes are lost anyway the onus is on he voter who let himself be stopped by such a slight barrier.
You still don’t say what system you propose to decide such questions. For the purpose of this argument, let’s say you’re right: I want the opposite of what you want.
So here we are in a country. You want one policy; I want another – the opposite, in fact. What system shall determine which of us gets our desire?
See the point I am making? I accept the results of the system we agreed to use, even when it cuts against me. I may argue for change but I don’t call the results I don’t like illegitimate.
You only accept the results when they please you, and declare that contrary results are illegitimate.