I’m cool with that - there won’t be serious data of the effect (if it exists) until 2014 or even 2016. Also, the effect (if it exists) could be very minor and only a factor in elections with margins that are less than two percent. Heck, at that point the weather becomes a factor.
Heck, maybe the actual effect on the voters is trivial - the real benefit is to give confidence to low-level Republican organizers who are led to believe “heh, heh, this’ll really give us an edge, heh heh”. A few of them have said as much, no?
Well, I have decided I post to the SDMB to have fun, and I no longer care about boring unfun things being internally consistent, or like answering points other people make, so I will continue to participate in this thread without doing anything I consider not fun.
Voter ID rules! They’re not just a good idea: they’re the law! Woo hoo!
Funny how the Indiana law has been in effect since 2004 but we won’t have any “serious data” until 2014. I guess there were no elections in Indiana for ten years, huh?
Maybe there isn’t an effect (or not a significant one, anyway) in Indiana. I think I looked into it earlier and noted that the elections in Indiana in 2006 and 2008 were not close enough for ID-gaming to be a factor, though I did leave 2010 and 2012 to be looked into by others.
Frankly, I’m tired of watching you argue the pro-ID side with such a determined mix of immaturity and irrationality. For the remainder of this thread (or until the end of November, whichever comes first), all my posts after this one will argue for ID laws, just as an intellectual exercise.
I’m curious, would not the effect be shown in the turnout amounts of democratic voters and not in any way be dependent on the closeness of the election? So if voter turnout for registered democrats is 40% prior to the ID law and 37% after it would suggest that there was an effect.
I do realize that the above is simplistic and doesn’t control for any other variables that would tend to affect turnout but it does demonstrate that the relative closeness of the election, while it may in itself affect turnout, has little to do with the effect you are attempting to measure.
A stable democracy encourages complacency, indeed confidence in the stability of one’s government at all levels is a feature, not a bug. We retain the ability to complain and to protest, but we in the westernized liberal democracies enjoy a level of personal security in our homes and persons denied to most of humanity today, and virtually all of humanity until recent decades. And for this enjoyment, we observe a few important duties:
-obey the laws of the land
-respond to the call for juries
-pay our taxes
-vote
The last, and arguably the most important since it lets us decide who will set the laws and the taxes, is even voluntary, and large segments of the population have used elections to express their indifference, not casting a vote at all. They have abdicated this responsibility - the concern now is to whom. It is not an abuse or an unreasonable demand that all who wish to vote demonstrate that they have the legal right to do so. We are not going to show such indifference to the process as to assume that any warm body that shows up at a polling station should be given a ballot.
-anyway, that’s the start of an essay on the subject. Later on, I could talk about students who should not be able to cast votes with lasting influence on communities where their presence is by design temporary, or illegal immigrants who by definition live outside the system being able to influence said system. I’m confident I can present a case for strict voter ID laws (though I don’t personally believe in the need for them) without calling anyone a crypto-Stalinist or making a fool of myself.
Heh, it dawns on me that my earlier promise was overly ambitious and I’d like to modify it, and if that means my honour takes a hit, so be it.
For the remainder of this thread, I’m not going to argue the anti-ID law case. I’ve already done so sufficiently and it’s obvious Bricker is not interested in being convinced and frankly the immaturity of his behaviour has me wondering why I bothered as long as I did. I’ll try to keep making minor arguments for ID laws, though, or at least challenge those who challenge them.
Well, yes, there are numerous reasons turnout could drop. Did population drop during that time? Economic migration? And simply being registered as a Democrat does not automatically assume one would vote Democrat, does it? I can see dissatisfaction being an element, especially now.
But you admit that there is no relation between the closeness of an election and the ability to measure the effect of voter ID laws on voter turnout, right? It is one instance of something that could affect turnout and thus should be controlled for when attempting to isolate the effects of voter ID but it is not intrinsically necessary.
Sorry, I’m having some trouble parsing your question. For the purpose of argument, I’m (currently) assuming that voter ID laws have no effect on turnout. If there are people who registered to vote (and voted) two elections ago and in the last election, a similar number registered but there was a drop in the number that voted… well, that could be due to lots of things.
It is Bricker’s contention that the voter ID laws in place in Indiana for almost 10 years have had a minimal to nonexistent effect on the ability of the people in that state to cast their vote. Others contend that voter ID laws will reduce the ability of people to cast their vote owing to the fact that a certain percentage of people will be unable to obtain such ID due to several factors. You have said that the elections in Indiana since the implementation of voter ID have not been close enough to show any effect. I am questioning the relevance of the closeness of the election to the effect of voter ID on turnout.
I would assume that the proper way to measure the effect of voter ID would be to determine the percentage of registered voters who have voted in elections previous to the voter ID and compare those results to the percentage of registered voters voting after the measure (after coming up with criteria to control for things such as weather, closeness of the race, etc which can affect turnout but are independent of voter ID).
The relative closeness of the election, while a contributory factor to voter turnout, is separate from the effect that voter ID may have and thus it is not a relevant objection.
That’s a valid point - I should have said there was no evidence voter ID was decisive, at least for the 2006 and 2008 elections I looked into, and I admit my analysis was not a deep one.
Conceded, I was focusing on hypothetical elections where voter ID laws were a decisive element, on the assumption that those arguing against such laws do so in part because they see them as a means to steal close elections. If a lopsided 70-30 vote can still show a 1% influence because of voter ID, i.e. 1% of the electorate who would have voted for a particular party were prevented from doing so, I’ll gladly review whatever evidence is presented.
Of course, any law will lead to a period of adjustment and require new policies be put in place and old ones adapted or scrapped. This does not mean the law was a bad idea in the first place.
You’re missing my point entirely. I’m not saying that everyone just gets a free pass on the content of what they post on the SDMB because “it’s just for fun”. If someone is an assholish troll then they’re an assholish troll even if they think being an assholish troll is fun.
What I am saying is that ABSENCE OF POSTING is not evidence of anything, because SDMB posters aren’t obligated to express opinions on things.
Suppose that another Catholic-priest-underage-boy-sex-scandal came to light tomorrow, one which was completely unambiguously a coverup job by the Catholic church, but without any particularly new or different features. If there were a thread about it, would you post in it? As someone who is generally a fan of the Catholic church, would you want to go into a thread in which you’re going to have to be doing nothing but either apologizing for people doing awful things, or else offering extremely narrowly phrased qualifications? Well, you might. But you also might not, you just might not be in the mood, you might not have the energy. And of course you might just be out of town or away from your computer or called away by real life for whatever reason. And if you did not post in that thread, THAT WOULD NOT PROVIDE ANY EVIDENCE ABOUT YOUR OPINION OF THAT SCANDAL. It would not give some anti-Bricker poster in a later thread evidence that you tacitly approve of the Church’s actions.
Is there serious evidence that there has been no impact on voter turnout at all in Indiana? If so, that is definitely evidence for your side of the argument, and not something that we should just sneeringly dismiss. But it’s not decisive evidence, because there are tons of variables that could be very different between Indiana-in-2004 and other states with proposed voter ID laws now:
-what types if IDs were valid under the law
-how many people already had IDs
-how difficult it was to get an ID
-how much time there was between the passing of the law and the first election it covered
-whether the demographic differences concerning party affiliation which are the root of all our worry existed, or were as pronoucnced
etc.
I’m not saying that I can demonstrate what differences there actually are between Indiana-in-2004 and other states now, but that’s not because I’m lazy, it’s because I lack the expertise and knowledge to even begin to attempt to make such a comparison.
So, to repeat myself, IF you have studies showing that the impact of the Indiana voter ID laws was not to reduce turnout, then that is EVIDENCE for your argument, but not, by itself, DEFINITIVE EVIDENCE.
If there were a drop in turnout, what is to prevent them from claiming that it was the reduction in fraudulent voting that accounts for it? Hell, for that matter, what is to prevent them from *believing *it?
Actually based on previous experience, he would come in, find post in which there was a technical mistake and hijack the thread so that it became not about the molester and the catholic church but whether or not it was ok to call someone a criminal even if they had not as of yet been convicted by a jury. But that’s just the way he rolls and has nothing to do with what Max should or should not do.
I think as a lawyer Bricker got used to putting up the greatest defense of his client possible whether or not the evidence was on his client’s side. An admirable and necessary trait for a lawyer, but less helpful in discussions where the goal is actually to follow the evidence to reach a conclusion. In this way he wants provide the best defense possible for Voter ID laws. If that means arguing vociferously that it is worse to have a handful of illegal votes than 10,000 disenfranchised voters then so be it. Whether the laws actually good or bad for democracy is irrelevant. What is important is the skill with which he can defend his side. Being on the opposite side of the evidence and rationality just makes it more challenging, but probably also more fun.
Shit, hasn’t even done that! Its why he keeps bringing up the guy in Florida. There is no evidence of any voter fraud worthy of consideration, so he falls back to pretending that the reason there is no such evidence is because voter id laws aren’t in place so the crime is not prosecuted.
Kinda nifty, in a perverted way, he can say yes, that’s right, there is no evidence, but if the laws were there, then these crimes would be prevented. And then there would still be no evidence, but now it would be because these crimes have been prevented!
His arguments make more leaps of faith that a meth-addled kangaroo!