The issue is how non-citizens might vote, or convicted felons might vote. But even then, that’s not the entire issue – because in ordinary circumstances, most elections have such comfortable margins that even if we concede that a couple hundred non-citizens, felons, or out-of-state residents voted, it doesn’t matter. Joe won by 100,000 votes… so maybe 175 of them were invalid, and he really won by 99,875 votes. Who cares, right? He’s still the senator.
But when all those factors happen to occur in the rare election where the margin is 150 votes. THAT is “the problem:” the confluence of illegal votes, mistaken votes, erroneous votes with a rare-ultra close election. THEN is when people will lose confidence in the result.
Now, I’ve explained this again and again, but since you collectively don’t have an answer to it, you keep trying to redefine it away, and then attack the redefined problem so you can sail to victory.
I have already provided the refutation of it – but of course you keep bringing it back.
Voter ID laws address the problems of people like Ramon Cue of Miami, who is registered to vote:
That’s not “in-person voter substitution fraud.” Cue is not a legal voter. But Cue voted. Records show he voted. Yet he denies voting, and he cannot be convicted, because the prosecutor has no legally sufficient way to prove he voted.
Forget that aspect of things, didja?
Or did you “forget” in order to shore up an otherwise unwinnable argument?
You cannot simultaneously claim that the law is really about razor thin margins while also hand-waving away the tiny number of people fully disenfranchised by these laws or the larger number who have an extremely difficult time getting ID.
The funny thing is even if Bricker’s 100% right, the number of cases of actual voter fraud are so small that the delays caused to law-abiding citizens outweighs the discouragement done to criminals.
As a society, we have made a determination about acceptable trade-offs. We make precincts a certain size, knowing that lines may form and not everyone will be able to walk in and instantly vote. We determine that some people may live driving distance from their local precinct, even though some people don’t have cars. And we accept those restrictions – even though those decisions were not made unanimously.
Now we have made another decision: the benefit we gain from positively identifying voters at the ballot box outweighs the tiny number of people with difficulty as a result.
You, obviously, don’t agree.
But surely you don’t imagine that we need a unanimous decision here. You surely understand that even though you, and your coterie, do not agree, the majority of your fellow citizens do. And that’s how that rule got made.
I’m saying that you cannot say a few disenfranchised votes don’t matter in the grand scheme of things while focusing your justification on very rare elections in which a few votes matter.
I am not making the argument you rebut in your post (which appears to be something about how majorities shouldn’t be able to legislate or some other straw man).
On further reflection, Bricker’s invoked a “voodoo” analogy at least twice, hasn’t he, i.e. if people are stupid enough to believe that a voodoo curse has been put on an election, then it’s not something the law should address, or whatever. Well, where does the belief the in-person voter fraud is an actual problem fall on the zero-to-voodoo stupidity scale? I mean, the idea that voter fraud is happening in large enough number to sway elections is pretty stupid, wot? Pretty determinedly stupid, too. Asinine, even.
Is it important that people have “confidence” that voter fraud is being checked in the same sense that people have “confidence” that voodoo curses aren’t in play?
Yes, I can, because they are very different things. The Presidency of the United States hinged on 537 votes cast (or not) in Florida. That’s an outcome of dramatic consequence, seen by the entire world.
The issue of people not being able to cast votes in the first place because they could not obtain free photo ID may, I grant you, lead to the same result: the lack of their votes might have changed the election result.
But the perception associated with those two events is dramatically different. And it’s entirely proper that the people of the United States decide to value fixing the first much more highly than fixing the second.
So there was a voter-fraud issue in Florida 2000 as significant as butterfly ballots or people kicked off voter rolls because their names were similar to felons, or absentee ballots mishandled…?
I mean, if reality doesn’t actually matter, then why not voodoo it up?
We’re still not quite connecting, because that’s not the issue I was addressing. What I was addressing was inconsistent frameworks for assessing the relevance of a few votes here and there.
As to the above, I’m not sure the people *can *choose a method that disenfranchises voters in order to make it even harder to vote illegally. Certainly the Supreme Court has not so held. I think your legal argument rests on no one actually being disenfranchised (something you have previously said is pure liberal fantasy).
But even if this is a value judgment left to the people, I’m not convinced they have made that value judgment. What I think has actually happened is that most people are unaware of the disenfranchising effects, or don’t care because the law furthers their partisan interests.
You have ignored the fact that increasing the restrictions on voter ID, without a genuine outreach program to get IDs into the hands of people who need it, will stop many times the number of people voting as would commit in-person voter fraud.
This makes it a shitty solution to a problem. Your cure for a hangnail, is to amputate the arm. It’s literally a solution that only a stupid person, or a sniveling partisan could like.
Allow me to save you time by typing your reply for you: “Buh buh buh but, it’s legal!!11”
The Supreme Court certainly said, when upholding Indiana’s photo ID law for voters, that the scheme imposed only a limited burden on voters’ rights, and even assuming that the burden may not be justified as to a few voters, it does not invalidate the scheme.
There is no universe where some grey-haired old biddy is going to take the stand and the defense attorney is going to ask, “Isn’t it possible that in the hundreds, no, thousands of IDs you saw that day, that you might have missed spotting a fake ID with John Doe’s name on it?” and not raise some doubt.
By the way, the link to Ramon Cue of Miami doesn’t work, so I remain not knowing who he is or why he is relevant. Bricker says he’s relevant, but I have reasons to doubt this, and even if Ramon Cue is relevant now, a hundred posts in the future, Bricker might say he isn’t.
Instead of assuming that I’m ignorant of Crawford, maybe you should consider the meaning of the word “disenfranchise.” I’m not talking about imposing limited burdens on people, I’m talking about entirely removing their ability to vote no matter how hard they try.
Pennsylvania (whose law is still enjoined from implementation) got around this by issuing temporary voter id cards to people who are rightful voters but cannot obtain state ID under the voter law or ordinary channels. It remains to be seen what will happen in other states, or long-term in PA.
Am I? I’m not the gibbering liar trying to scrape together a logical defense of a wretched and obviously partisan scheme.
You’re floundering and flailing because you’re wrong. You’re just too much of a twat to admit it.
I just want a fair system where the franchise is protected. You just want to make sure that the party you love gets to keep winning elections long after 50% of voters find them repugnant.