Obviously. And some number of people, of all political affiliations, are lazy. That’s a fact of human nature.* So you’d have no objection to a plan, implemented by Democratic elected officials, with some legitimate pretext, which removed half the polling places in Republican-heavy areas, while leaving Demcratic-heavy areas untouched? After all, those voters can still vote, they just have to get to somewhat-more-distant polling places. The only thing stopping them from doing so is laziness.
*It’s also worth pointing out that any time you put these kind of obstacles in place to make it slightly harder to register and/or vote, there will be some actually lazy people who are stopped by these obstacles for no better reason than that they’re just plain lazy, and some other people who are incredibly hardworking responsible people but are simultaneously working 3 jobs and caring for sick relatives and dealing with incredible amounts of shit in their life for whom that extra 15 minutes it takes to get-down-to-the-DMV-and-get-that-ID, or drive-that-extra-5-miles-in-traffic-to-the-further-polling-place means that they might miss a shift at work which they just can not afford to do.
The objective criteria is: go the state office, get a photo ID, or don’t vote. So simple even a liberal can understand it, with of course the requisite help of a diagram in Mother Jones.
I’d want to see details, and I’d want to see what the “legitimate pretext” was. But sure, assuming there’s a valid, neutral basis for the change, my objections would not include any accusations of illegitimacy.
Those people either already have photo ID, for the simple reason that they can’t exist in society without it, or they don’t really exist and are an invention to salvage the objections to the law.
It’s “worth pointing out” that when these cases have gone to trial, the actual people offered up by the defense as examples haven’t been what you describe. Why is that, do you think?
Except that you’re leaving something out. The objective criteria is: ALREADY HAVE A PHOTO ID, and if you don’t, do X. And if doing X requires some amount of effort, and if far more Republicans than Democrats already have a photo ID, then the law is likely to have a partisanly-unequal impact.
(And yet another part of this discussion is that Bob William Smith, a Republican who grew up in this state and has birth records in this state all of which record his name as Bob William Smith, will have very little trouble getting his “free” ID, whereas Mustaffa Bin-Qalima Al A’Haiffa, a Democrat who moved to the state at the age of 7, and whose name has been spelled a few different ways with and without various bits of punctuation, and whose birth certificate would be a lot easier to get ahold of right now if his native Syria wasn’t in the middle of a civil war right now, might have far more trouble proving to the friendly folks down at the ID office that he is who he says he is.)
So, is it a free photo ID or a “free” photo ID?
Oh, dear. A “criteria” is a principle or standard by which something may be judged or decided… It is not a set of actions, however simplistic those actions may be.
Glad to help. Call on me any time for the big words that give you trouble.
And…?
If it has such an impact, and I don’t concede it will, it’s a minor one, and it’s a result of people being unwilling to do entirely reasonable things.
Look, if Mustaffa’s native land is Syria, and he wishes to vote, then he was naturalized. Yes?
So what state law’s are you alleging present a terrible problem for Musty?
I don’t know. It was an assumption. You’re kind of missing the point, though. Let me ask you this: what level of scrutiny should be applied to constitutional challenges to voter ID laws?
Jeez, Bricker, you are thrashing and flailing about like a spastic spider having a fit!
Do it the easy way! When you say something totally stupid, like that “lazy” remark, just do the facepalm and say “D’oh!”. Its too much work to defend your dignity, especially when you are overburdened with dignity. Throw some overboard, it’ll lighten your load.
Don’t worry, be hippy! You want to get older, you don’t want to get old. Dignity is for the old.
When I want your opinion, I’ll ask…actually, I’ll never want your opinion.
Rational basis, unless the law creates a racial or gender classification.
Bless your heart, that’s precisely why you need it so badly!
By “such an impact”, do you mean a reduction in voter turnout?
Because it seems to be that it’s an inescapable fact of human nature and the behavior of crowds that if you make things harder to do, then, all other things being equal, fewer people will do them.
If you raise the price of donuts from $1.00 to $1.10, fewer people will buy those donuts.
If you decrease the time that polls are open, fewer people will vote.
If you add administrative overhead that people have to go through in order to vote, fewer people will vote.
Do you disagree?
I want to be very clear… I’m just a guy who reads threads on the internet, and I don’t know specifics of any particular state. It’s entirely possible that one or more states have added voter ID laws in the past decade or so in ways that, were I to study them specifically, I would have no objection. That said, many of the strandes of your argument are along the lines of “well, yes, this adds a requirement and/or obstacle, but it’s one that’s trivial to overcome” which I think is fundamentally flawed, for two reasons:
(1) It doesn’t matter how trivial it is to overcome IF IT IS IN PRACTICE UNEQUAL. Going back a few posts to my example about removing half the polling places in Republican neighborhoods, it is my contention that removing half the polling places WILL CERTAINLY REDUCE TURNOUT, even though to outside observers it still “should” be easy for all those people to get to their voting places
(2) Something that seems trivial, and in fact IS trivial, to you or me isn’t necessarily trivial to everyone. How hard would it be for you to get a photo ID? Trivial, you have one. What if the state suddenly requires that a brand new voter-ID card specifically for voting is needed? Well, that would be a minor hassle, but you (presumably) have a car and free time in the evenings and the general know-how to get yourself down to the DMV and wait in line and fill out some forms and get your new ID. But there are zillions of reasons why that process could be MUCH harder for someone else, including:
-people who can’t get around much due to their age
-people who can’t get around much due to health issues
-people who can’t get around much due to childcare issues
-people who work 14 hours a day to support their families
-people who don’t have cars
-people whose command of English is less than yours
-people who got purged off the voter roles last year because they share the same name as a felon
-people who have a warrant out for their arrest because they were accused of a misdemeanor (wrongfully or not) and are afraid to go into government buildings
etc, etc.
And, of course, it’s not just black and white. There aren’t 1000 people who can trivially get the ID or drive an extra 10 miles, and 10 people who can’t. Rather each person has their own individual set of issues and restrictions and levels of laziness and prioritizations, etc, which takes us back to my initial point about the effect that any restriction will have on large groups of people.
Isn’t the potential for abuse fairly obvious when the people who get elected by votes are in charge of the lists of who gets to cast votes?
I mean, if you cared about the integrity of the process and its application without bias, why not just set up an independent government agency at the state or federal level whose sole purposes are to maintain voter rolls, draw lines for electoral districts and oversee elections? Any attempt to interfere with the operation of this agency could be viewed as seriously as an attempt to interfere with the operation of the post office, and I understand that’s something which is taken very seriously.
Amen
And literacy requirements only hurt those who were too lazy to learn to read.
. . . go on the SDMB.
Well, if the U.S. didn’t have a history within living memory of systematic disenfranchisement, I guess I wouldn’t see a problem. But it does, so I do.
… you don’t think voting rights warrant elevated scrutiny? Why?
Well, conveniently, there’s nothing distinctive written in such a law about how the law is or should be enforced. It’s very “gentlemen’s agreement”-ish.