That’s a terrible, inaccurate argument and you should feel bad for making it.
You do realize that we have immigration laws, right? So perhaps Obama could take lessons from me, too. I’ll call the course, U.S. Constitution 101. Followed by, How Not To Make A Bad Situation Worse.
That is NOT the purpose. It may be an undesirable outcome, but it is not the purpose. No matter how much you say it is.
Then again, maybe so many people don’t have them because they just never needed them. You seem to be assuming that this theoretical 12% have been salivating over having ID but were just unable to get it. Wouldn’t you agree that that 12% fall into two categories—one that never felt the need to get an ID but can get one rather easily and those who would like one and would have a legitimately difficult time in obtaining one? If so, how big do you think those respective groups are. My guess is that it is a much smaller percent that would have a really difficult time getting an ID, and I do believe we need to make it free and help them do what is needed to be done to get it.
Of course I read the story.
Both of them were seeking Wisconsin driver’s licenses, which they had to have anyway. Their efforts, whatever they were, were for the licenses.
But will it affect the election?
Repressed.
Excellent, I love make work programs. As it stands, the government already runs an SSN Verification Service, which could probably be expanded to include details about eligibility to vote.
Then again, a far simpler solution would be to implant a chip into everyone’s hand at birth, with 666 individual noncoding DNA segments recorded for identification purposes.
I’m not talking about ID laws here. I’m talking about closing the polls on Sunday. Until someone can give me an alternative explanation, I’m taking the obvious one: black people turned out in droves on sunday, it’s the most convenient day for most lower-class workers to vote, and republicans don’t like that. Uzi wasn’t denying that that was the purpose, but rather that it actually would work.
I made that assumption too. I assumed that just 1% of those who don’t have ID don’t have it because it is unreasonably difficult for them to get them. I think that number is ridiculously low (if I had to guess, I’d put it slightly below 50), but I decided to use it anyways, just for the sake of meeting you guys halfway. The result? Voter ID laws still skew elections far more, unless you want to make the assumption that between voter apathy of those without ID and missed cases of voter fraud, the figure is skewed by a factor of about 250 – that is, there’s 250 times as many cases of voter fraud going on than have been detected, or damn near all of those who are disenfranchised by these laws wouldn’t have voted anyways. Any other case, and the Voter ID laws caused more voters to be disenfranchised than the total number of fraudulent votes. And if your goal is “make the elections representative of the populace”, as it should be, because election fraud being a crime doesn’t make sense without that goal behind it, that means that these voter fraud laws fail. Miserably.
Yes, but that needs to be done before we make it a necessity to vote. Like I’ve said before, I have no problem with this law in theory, but in practice, it disenfranchises too many citizens. Get a system that actually works, like in Germany, to ensure that everyone has photo ID by age 18, and then we can talk about voter ID laws. Until then, no. We cannot make participation in democracy contingent upon having a legal document that 11% of the country does not have, and which is at times quite difficult to procure.
Just a slight excerpt from my above wall of text:
If your top priority is “catch those committing voter fraud” above “ensure that elections are as representative as possible”, then you are missing the point of why voter fraud is a big deal in the first place.
It seems to me that if I was a party looking to get people to vote for me, I’d be making an effort to help them get that ID. A perfect opportunity to do good by demonstrating the added value of having ID and to gather votes.
But I’m pretty sure that most of these people who can’t be bothered to get an ID probably can’t be bothered to vote much either. Which is why I suspect the Democrats are taking the path of bitching about it rather than take advantage of the opportunity. In fact, they probably know it would be a net loss for them to spend the resources aiding people in doing this simple task even though it would be good for the people in question. It isn’t about the people, it is about the votes, which when it comes down to it, is what both sides only care about.
Why, yes, yes you did. You offered the speculation that perhaps they couldn’t afford it.
Is that your own? Come now, don’t be modest, its got Bricker written all over it. Speculation based on nothing more than a need to rationalize a reasonable cause for an unreasonable action. Did you get that from some Republican legislator, or make it up out of whole cloth right on the spot?
And who, exactly, “can’t afford” it? The State of Florida itself? Polling places open on Sunday threatens the fiscal integrity of the Where the Sun Don’t Shine State? Heavens, they are in more serious trouble than we imagined!
I’ve looked for a rationale offered, to no avail. Apparently, so have others. Did you find one, or did you make one up? Do they even bother to pretend to give a shit? Perhaps they took a page from your playbook: It’s legal, it’s Constitutional, ain’t shit you can do about it, bite me.
Its perhaps a small point, but telling. They don’t seem to have even bothered to offer a rationale for this middle digital salute to black Americans. You had to make one up on the spot. How more clearly can you say “Fuck you guys, you don’t vote for us anyway, so go pound sand.”? The sweet eloquence of silence. No flowery rhetoric to try to parse.
Interesting that you bring that up.
Check out the “cosponsors” bit. Not a single republican. That bill is not likely to make it out of congress.
You know what I love about this post? “Can’t be bothered”. Not “Can’t take days off” or “Can’t afford to spend a bunch of money”, “Can’t be bothered”. That’s obviously putting the situation in a fair light, eh? In any case, I reject this notion, and would like a citation if you want to keep assuming it. But hey, you want to assume that only 1/100th of those involved can be bothered? You’re still not making the election more accurate!
Okay, seriously? What “opportunity”? These people could vote before. Now they can’t. How is that an “opportunity”? And “bitching about it”? Yes, I suppose you would probably “bitch about it” if someone took away your right to vote and made it contingent upon you shelling out a few hundred bucks!
They probably know that the republicans will block any bill coming their way along the lines of “let’s spend money to help people get their ID easier”. And I mean, what do you suggest for a solution? What could you even do in this case? The only real solution to the problems would involve making sure that you don’t actually have to make that fucking trek to the DMV, but can rather do it on your own time with very little expenditure of resources. I’m open to suggestions, but highly dubious that, you know, you have any.
But once again, this is missing the forest for the trees (or, more aptly, a fucking obvious sideswipe to a completely pointless topic); it doesn’t matter that the democrats don’t care, the republicans are passing a modern poll tax off as a necessary security measure to a threat which is non-existent. It’s like what mandating body cavity searches for each and every American if 9/11 had never happened would have been – fucking insane.
Do you deny that a wide group of laws are being made with the obvious, though not stated, goal of suppressing voter turnout? (Shorter voter registration/early voting time, draconian restrictions on voter registration groups, etc.)
Heck, if they wanted to fix it, it would be easy, any of us could come up with half a dozen plans.
OK, how about a hot line to call? If you have ID problems, or are worried that you might, call 1-800-ILL-EGAL. Somebody will check you out, if you’re kosher, someone will come to your house an take your picture, bingo! picture ID for voting purposes. Our tighty righty friends assure us that there are very, very few of these, so it can’t be too much of a problem, can it?
How about a new ACORN, one thoroughly vetted and up to date with the latest voter registration hurdles all clearly outlined? League of Women Voters has offered to do just that. Guess who brought the hammer down on that idea? Go ahead, guess!
The Republicans don’t want new voters registered, they want to keep what they have and trim down the ones they don’t. The last thing they want is a whole bunch of previously unregistered voters getting legitimate ID and registering.
*Tried to.
Last I checked, it got stopped by the courts. Thank goodness for small favors, eh?
OK, so “Guess who brought down the Nerf Bat on that!”
What are those ways?
There are ways to catch some kinds of fraud, sure. When an alien who has overstayed his visa tries to register to vote and then votes, he can be identified. But when an alien who entered the country illegally registers, there is no Immigration list to catch him as a non-US citizen.
But you tell me what you think these ways are.
Post number?
No. When there is no ID procedure, you could only get a conviction with a poll worker being certain he remembers the accused. When there’s an ID check, the poll worker can testify that the absolute practice is check IDs, and the jury can rely on that testimony.
Pretty extensive experience in the world of criminal law.
Overall, I think this is a reasonable post. The bottom line for me is that we should have something in place that ensures no fraudulent voting. You seem fine with that, but want to make sure people first have the IDs. Like I said, seems reasonable. But it won’t be done. It won’t be done until its viewed as a crisis that people don’t have the IDs and can’t vote. So I say, let’s institute both the laws now and scramble as best we can to see to it that those who need help getting the IDs can get them. If we start now, we can minimize those unable to vote in November. And virtually eliminate that happening to anyone over the next election.
Then why did you say that no one had answered you?
If you were to learn it came from a legislator, would that satisfy you?
Which are required to vote now. I don’t have nearly as large of a problem with putting hurdles in front of the privilege of driving. Those same hurdles don’t belong in the voting process. Unless you want to suppress votes, that is.
What the fuck? You really are a piece of work.
Perhaps you should have your own thread about this, Bricker? One about how voter ID laws are one hundred percent kosher and full of crunchy goodness, and leave this one to be about how the misuse and abuse of such laws are all stinky? About which, apparently, you have nothing more to say but yeah, tough shit, walk it off, legal and constitutional, you lose, neener neener.
Did you notice the thread title? Does it say “I Pit Voter ID Laws Because They Are Illegal and UnConstitutional”? No? Well, then, why do you keep dragging the conversation in that direction? Beside, you’ve already stipulated the main point, that these laws hinder the voting of likely Dem voters, you just want to pretend that its an accident, an “oopsy-daisy”, an unintended consequence of a noble endeavor.
We aren’t against puppies, we are against rabies. You can defend puppies all day long without once making a salient point, because it isn’t about puppies. Is this somehow too complicated for you to grasp, after a mere seven years of higher education?