Do you deny that such voter id laws have any effect on voter turnout? Or simply that it cannot be proven? Or that it has not been proven?
To be fair, I guess we won’t have serious data on disenfranchising effects until November 2014. It’s just that the anecdotal evidence we have now already outweighs the alleged problem, i.e. if there were ten case of voter fraud and 12 anecdotes about people prevented from voting, then anecdotal evidence is enough, wot?
And now comes the contempt for the voter – when he doesn’t vote your way, he’s " sufficiently propagandized." The contempt the Left has for the people is truly staggering.
And the idiocy of its adherents, even more so.
Notice how you cannot discern the slightest difference between what I actually said: that your scheme of “shining light” was useless – and what you decided to claim I said: that all debate was useless.
Indiana has had a strict Voter ID law since 2004.
Wot? Wot? Wot? Never mind that; it doesn’t support the leftist storyline!!!
Asked and answered a zillion times, but since you’re you:
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I deny that any meaningful effect exists.
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If such an effect were real, it certainly could be proven.
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It has NOT been proven.
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Even if such an effect existed, I say it should be ignored as an example of believing in voodoo. (If I paid for a TV ad in which I announced that I was placing a voodoo curse on every voter who dared to vote Democratic, and you subsequently proved that my ad affected turnout rates for Democratic voters, I’d say, “Tough shit. If they’re so stupid as to believe in voodoo, that’s not something the law needs to address and correct.”)
It’s too bad you liberals don’t have an emergency response center set up somewhere so you can escalate these kinds of problems.
“Oh, shit! What do we say now?”
“Distract the conversation. Change things up. We can’t have listeners thinking about THAT point too much!”
Who here is still arguing that they are illegitimate? As far as I’m aware, that died after the 2012 election. No, now people are arguing that it’s simple horrible policy, that there’s no reason for them to exist and that they should be removed as they serve no purpose other than to make voting more difficult for democratic blocs.
Buddy, if we’re going to overgereneralize each other along partisan lines, it does not make you look good. You want to talk about “your ilk” adopting or abandoning rules and processes as they see fit? Really? After last month? Really? After the last 5 years? Really?
Of course, nobody made that claim. We did, however, rightfully point out that for many people, getting ID is really hard. Don’t have a copy of your birth certificate because you’re too old? No vote for you. Didn’t understand the law and showed up with an expired ID (which should be damn well good enough, but for no good reason isn’t) like that former Texas majority leader? No vote for you. Work double shifts at minimum wage and can’t afford to take an entire day off, pay for public transit, and then maybe get your ID (or possibly have to go back later)? No vote for you. These complaints are very real, and given the large number of people without valid ID, you can’t hand-wave them away. And given the data collected by Nate Silver which shows that this actually has an effect, but the lack of any evidence that in-person, boots-on-the-ground voter fraud exists to any real degree (and indeed the lack of any logical way for it to make much of a difference without becoming a conspiracy the size of which would make it impossible to cover up), it’s no big shocker that you won’t debate these laws on their merit. Because they have no merit. They are 100% pure bullshit.
The Nate Silver information posted multiple times upthread that I know you saw. Come on, try a little harder over here.
Who are “my ilk?”
I read the Nate Silver information – apparently you didn’t. His column was written before the voting took place – can you explain to me how that column could possibly contain actual information about the turnout?
That column is simply Silver’s prediction that there will be an effect.
True? Not true? Or destined to be forever ignored?
Assessing the effects of photo ID laws is pretty difficult, not least of all because states like Indiana have fought tooth and nail against efforts to collect county-by-county data (twice defeating bills with the sole goal of researching the issue).
What the research does suggest is that the voter ID laws are not applied homogeneously to all ethnic groups, and that knowledge about the need for voter ID has not been successfully spread to all eligible voters. Those findings should be very troubling for proponents of voter ID who aren’t just out to disenfranchise liberals.
We can also roughly quantify the number of voters who show up at the polls without ID based on provisional ballots, but it is much harder to quantify the number who do not go to vote. That’s because there’s no control variable, and demographic shifts in voting are extremely common. It would be the unusual election that had the same demographic makeup of a prior election.
That said, pointing to Indiana and observing that there hasn’t been a substantial drop-off in minority votes is the scientific equivalent of pointing at the level horizon and concluding that the earth must be flat.
Indiana has state-wide numbers that don’t show drops in turnout, though. Why?
And in fact, pointing at the horizon and declaring the earth must be flat is a very scientific thing to do.
It’s up to the person who claims the earth ISN’T flat to show that his counter-intuitive claim is accurate.
The person who then persists in the claim that the earth is flat has problems, yes. But the person who begins, tabula rasa, with the claim that the earth is flat is acting rationally.
In point of fact, we don’t know why for sure. We have two main hypotheses:
(1) Voter ID has no substantial effect.
(2) Other known causes of changes in turnout swamped any effect.
Knowing the other facts we know (of the kind identified by Silver), many people think (2) is more likely. But the point isn’t that the believers in (1) are necessarily wrong. The point is that saying (1) is the only option is ignorant.
If we knew nothing else about the earth, that would be true. And if we knew nothing about voting or voting patterns or had any polling data about voter ID, then you would have a point. But I’m saying your argument is like pointing to the horizon in 1450 and declaring the earth to be flat. We can’t say for sure that it’s wrong, but we know that that particular piece of evidence is entirely inconclusive based on what we know about sailboats and sundials.
It doesn’t say much for your argument if your schtick is to say something, wait six minutes, then follow-up with “got no reply, huh?” Your excitement is pushing aside your reasoning abilities, not that your reasoning abilities have ever been such a weighty obstacle.
So Indiana has a strict voter ID law, huh? So if I link to a study on the impact of Indiana’s law, it would be relevant, right?
I went ahead and decided to research it anyway. It doesn’t look like it really mattered in Indiana in 2006, possibly because none of the elections (except for possibly the 9th District, and probably not even then) were close enough for voter ID laws to matter. Heck, by the standard Bricker himself has laid out, he loses confidence if the election is close and voter fraud is suspected to exist. He’s said very little that I can recall about his confidence level if the election is close and vote tabulation machines are suspect, or if the election is close and voter ID laws are suspect. His confidence is highly selective.
Indiana 2008… the house elections all had sizable margins (and the 9th district’s margin significantly increased). The governor’s election wasn’t close. The presidential vote was close, extremely so… 30,000 votes, favouring Obama. Would it have gone the other way had the voter ID laws not been in place? I doubt it. Would the margin have been higher without the laws? Possibly.
I leave analysis of Indiana 2010 and 2012 to others. Had I to speculate, we don’t yet know the impact of Indiana’s voter ID laws (or if there is any impact) because none of the races have been sufficiently close for it to be relevant. At best it’s a useless law, at worst a harmful law. I don’t see any formula by which it’s a good law, but that’s okay. The Indiana legislature and governor had the power to pass and sign it. SCOTUS sustained it. I guess all we can do is analyze its merits, if Bricker will be so kind as to give us his apparently necessary blessing to do so.
I’m saying that the people pushing (2) have the burden to prove their claim.
No, I contend there are flaws in what Silver says. For example, his analysis looks at all people without IDs to determine the extent of the suspected effect, without considering how many of those people would have voted anyway. That makes his suppositions considerably weaker than the sailboat sail disappearing beneath the horizon.
How did you get from the admission that you merely can’t recall anything I’ve said to the certainty that my confidence is highly selective?
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Analyze away. If you think it’s a useless law, and I like it, then everyone’s a winner.
And I don’t think those arguments about evidentiary burdens make sense, but it’s really neither here nor there. My point was that saying Indiana is inconsistent with the liberal narrative on voter ID is incorrect in exactly the same way saying the flatness of the horizon is inconsistent with the earth being round.
That’s fine. I haven’t closely scrutinized Silver’s work, which is why I said “of the kind identified by Silver.” The point is that we have a fair bit of data about who has IDs, who doesn’t, how well-spread knowledge of the ID requirements is, and other indirect data about the influence of these laws. The great weight of that data points in the direction of hypothesis (2), though not conclusively for various reasons (including the unknowable fact of whether in an alternative universe such a person would have voted).
The sole point I was trying to persuade you of is that you’re wrong to act like you’re the only one considering the evidence. That isn’t true, and indeed I would hazard a guess that you’re unfamiliar with most of the academic work that has been done on this issue (e.g., heterogeneity of application of ID laws, number of provisional ballots being cast by registered voters who lack ID, etc.).
I expressed no contempt for voters since voters didn’t enact these laws – legislatures did. As I recall, your own turn of phrase was that the measures “enjoy wide popular support”. Propaganda is well suited to creating such a situation, regardless of the actual merits of the case. My contempt is reserved for the propagandists, the vote-suppressors they are in league with, and their apologists.
And if providing information is useless – that “shining light” – who is being contemptuous now? If you’re right, we’re all fools and this message board may as well close down. Or at least find another motto.
As for what you did or didn’t claim, the record is clear for anyone who wishes to peruse it. Of course, since most words have multiple meanings, you craftily allow yourself wiggle room with every statement. That seems to comfort you, but methinks you haven’t convinced, confused, or distracted any readers with your semantic escapades.
Well, you’ve been given evidence of election influences larger than voter fraud and I don’t recall you commenting on how they affect your confidence. Heck, you invoked Washington State 2006 (sorry, I meant 2004) as an example of voter fraud as a possible influence in a very close election, except that when I looked into it I saw there while there were claims of hundreds of bad votes (confidence-shattering!), there was evidence of an equal or greater number of mishandled votes (confidence-neutral, I guess).
I’m shocked - shocked!* - that a cite you provided demonstrates selective interpretation on your part.
Speaking of which, how did you get from this:
to this:
Selectivity again?
*Well, not that shocked.
By the way, if you haven’t replied in six minutes, I might requote you, then quote myself, and use your lack of response as evidence all conservatives are dumbass pussies. Just saying.
Well, it’s been more than six minutes, but I’ll restrain myself because unlike some people I have class!