As usual, Bricker - well stated, concise and accurate.
And I agree. I have yet to see any logical, rational explanation from the left as to why voter ID laws are bad. All I see is them jumping up and down and yelling, “They are bad! They are, they are, they are! And you’re evil for thinking they’re good, so I win!”, and the like.
I’ve seen them say they don’t work for what is intended, yet almost every other country has these sorts of laws. It makes sense to have them.
I’ve also seen them say there is no easy way for many people to get ID’s, yet 90% of the population manages it.
I understand their concerns. I just think that the points they are making against having some form of ID to vote actually stop people from voting who really want to. It just takes some little ability to plan when and how to get the darned thing.
Not again?! Not again with liberal hypocrisy aria?
Didn’t your Momma teach you about how just because somebody else does it, doesn’t mean you become entitled to emulate? Mine did. Raised right, went wrong. Besides, you had already done it, how come it isn’t him emulating you?
Didn’t say this in GD?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=652910&page=9
Or this:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=15112317&highlight=CASA#post15112317
Keep in mind, this was after you tried to support the inference that Democrats were depending on illegal voters. When it was suggested that illegal aliens were unlikely to take such a risk, you responded with a further unsupported innuendo, to the effect that the people demonstrating for the DREAM act were, to some vague degree you couldn’t be bothered to specify…were illegal aliens, talking on TV! So, clealy, if these vast hordes of illegal aliens were demonstrating for the DREAM act, then obviously they had no fear of being caught!
Of course, this was right about the time you began to find my rhetoric too dense and convoluted for your sparse vocabulary, poor dear, poor dear.
So, lets put the question bluntly: do you believe that the Democrats, to any meaningful degree, actually depend upon the votes of illegal aliens and/or felons? And this is a substantial motivating factor in their resistance to these laws?
Let me know if this is too dense and complicated for you, I’ll try to break it down enough for someone with seven fucking years of higher education!
PS: “Did I really say that”? Jeebus Marimba, I used the quote function! Of course you really said that! Counselor, you’re as slippery as a catfish in a barrel of motor oil!
There’s no greater proof in either scenario. Someone comes in claiming to be a particular person and votes. Someone comes in with an ID claiming to be a particular person and votes. There’s no difference.
This prosecution bit is also still secondary to the question at hand. There’s no evidence that significant voter fraud presently occurs, and there’s no proposed voter ID card system that will meaningfully change the number of fraudulent votes.
You’ve simply got nothing except some weak appeal to confidence (undone by actual studies to the contrary) and argumentum ad populum.
Well, I’m not an election official or legal buff, but I also am not willing to assume that the government is that incompetent. There are safeguards in place. I mean, as said, there have been voter fraud convictions in the past. It happens. Officials know how to spot it. However, it’s also simply not happening at a rate that matters, and when it does happen, it gets caught. And remember, the punishment for one extra vote is a jail sentence – usually not worth most people’s time. Then there’s also this letter from an election official pointing out how impressed she is at how good the system is at catching fraud… Google is your friend, I guess? I’m not in the USA right now, but if I was, I’d call my local election official and ask them how they stop voter fraud. Why don’t you do that?
#339. Really should’ve ended the thread right there.
But we already have that! Again, how fucking stupid do you think the government is?
…Oh wait, you’re a republican. Don’t answer that.
Seriously though, we have safeguards in place to prevent and detect fraudulent voting. So far? They seem to work pretty well. Voter ID laws would probably help further, but once again, they’re completely and utterly unnecessary. Even if we were able to ensure that everyone got voter ID through the government, it would be something I would cite as wasteful government excess – an additional fail-safe on a system which is already ridiculously well-off. Simply implementing the free ID system (not ensuring that everyone had it, just making sure that anyone who asked for it with the necessary papers could get ID) cost Alabama something like $900,000 – that’d be a drop in the bucket compared to the costs of ensuring that truly everyone got them. So in short:
I’m not “fine” with that. I would be willing to accept it because people like you keep on buggering on about it (despite a complete lack of real motivation) if the only cost was a financial one.
THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN! If it isn’t happening now in the states where this has been implemented, despite the many, many complaints, it never will happen. If the things going on in Wisconsin and North Carolina and the research by the Brennan Foundation won’t convince you that such voter ID laws are terrible news, nothing will. Ever.
Okay. Why? Why, if there are already fairly convincing safeguards in place? Why, if the recorded voter fraud cases are all but non-existent? Why, if this will cost us millions of dollars for no real effect? I mean, in theory, I could agree with this. I just don’t see the point, and I also don’t see a republican house of representatives ever letting the “make sure that everyone has ID” bill pass.
I love this post. And speak of the devil…
…This makes all of exactly no sense. Like, seriously, what, do you want the DNC to finance fucking voter drives? Yeah, good luck with that one.
Well, the USA doesn’t do it that way, and with good reason. After all, no person should vote who can’t prove who you are, and those people who drag their “friends” because they don’t have ID? Their “proof” is the word of a person they know. No telling as to whether or not that person’s word is worth something. 
Not seeing any cognitive dissonance here, are we?
The idea that people should have to prove who they are is valid. Here’s the thing: they did that already. It’s called voter registration. It happens. You want to go in and vote as someone else? Well, gee, that’s a swell idea. It’s just that you have to sign your name on a legal document that clearly states that doing so is perjury and voter fraud. Then, when/if the person you are imitating shows up, and has a signature that, you know, actually is his, guess what happens to you. I’ll give you a hint: it involves the soap, and not dropping it.
If you want to assert “they would not matter, because they don’t vote anyways”, then it is your duty to actually provide evidence for that claim. I think that a good number of them don’t vote. More than 90% of them? More than 99% of them (which, again, is kinda what it would take)? Eh… I don’t think voter apathy is that high, even among those who don’t have ID. I’m going to assume that voter apathy is at the same, or a slightly higher rate (read: 1-1.5x as high) as within the general public. Got evidence to support your assertion? Great. Put it up. And while you’re at it, provide evidence that they also don’t plan to vote in the future.
…Oh, you can’t? Great. Then stop making this baseless fucking assertion.
Le sigh.
Point = missed. Completely.
You seem to be under the impression that this should not be handled by the government. Can I ask why?
How many of those have a system in place to ensure that everyone has ID? I mean, yeah, I’m not gonna complain about the German system, but here’s the thing: the system works, and everyone has ID, largely in part because Germany isn’t anywhere near as laissez-faire as the USA is. You literally cannot quit school before 10th grade (where you get your first official graduation degree of the lower levels of highschool) unless you have a damn good reason to. The government keeps very close tabs on its citizens. If you don’t show up for class, and your parents can’t account for where you are, the school calls the cops. If you move to a different place, the government knows about it. You are legally obliged to have photo ID at any given time. Et cetera.
The comparison to other countries just doesn’t work, because the American system isn’t geared that way. It’s like saying to your wife, “Well, John is able to spend every day at the golf course, so I should be allowed to as well” without recognizing that John is a professional golfer (who, by the way, makes about 10 times as much money each year as you) who has his entire life geared around golfing. You can point to other countries and say, “Look, they have voter ID laws!”, but it’s ignoring the big picture and things such as:
– The extreme libertarian streak that pretty much only the USA has in the western world
– The distance to which other countries go to ensure that everyone has photo ID
– The number of people in the USA who simply lack voter ID
– The uniquely huge American lower class and the difficulties involved in allowing them to vote
Yes, but removing an existing statute which is known to help primarily minorities and lower-class citizens for no stated or apparent reason is a pretty clear issue.
It’s because your SSN isn’t valid ID for these photo ID laws. Which, as I pointed out back in post 339, is just fucking retarded. And you know what’s funny? My “excuses”? These little things? They add up. You need voter ID, and you can’t vote on Sunday any more, and the organizations that help take you to the polls or help you register to vote got kneecapped, and DMVs are getting shut down in blue areas, and early voting is being shortened further and further (giving people less and less chances to find the time to make it down there), and polling stations are getting more and more overcrowded…
Also, do you want to explain how absentee ballots work with photo ID?
…
Hang on.
Absentee Ballots.
How the fuck does voter ID law work with them?
You are my hero!
Welp, as divorced from reality as Uzi and Bricker often are…
It could be worse.
Um… Bwahahahahahaha!
Of course there’s a difference. With no ID system, there’s no evidence for a jury to rely on. With an ID system, there is evidence that the person claiming to be Ramon Cue of 656 Edgemere Drive presented a valid ID with a photo matching that name and address. In a bad check case, a check accepted with no ID can’t be prosecuted unless the utterer can be identified. A check taken with a notation of photo ID can be prosecuted even if the acceptor doesn’t remember the utterer.
What the hell do you mean, there’s no difference?? It’s only the difference between legally sufficient evidence and no evidence at all.
Of course there’s no evidence: it’s virtually impossible to prove a case for non-citizens voting unless they’re already in INS files. But fortunately, I didn’t base my argument on the presence of existing fraud, so you’re not rebutting me by declaring that no fraud exists now.
Well, I did point out precisely where those studies failed to address the point I was making.
But I have something else on my side: the actual voter ID laws, enacted and working.
As long as I have that, I’m happy to let you babble impotently about how evil I am.
I have. And my elections official told me there s virtually no way to catch someone who votes illegally without an ID system in place. And your letter writer simply says she’s confident no one would risk a felony conviction to vote, but doesn’t acknowledge how difficult it would be to get a conviction.
So your argument is, in effect, that you have no idea how they might catch such people, but you’re just sure there must be a way.
That’s the fallacy of argument from ignorance: we don’t know it, so it must be true.
That’s not how it works. You make a claim, you have to defend it.
Ideally, your ID is shown when you register and the ballot is mailed to your address of record.
However, the Bricker Doctrine permits you to insinuate, imply, and otherwise suggest something you couldn’t defend to save your very soul. Well, “permits you” is a bit off, it permits him to do so. You have to prove what you say.
Shall we try again?
Quite a remarkable statement from someone who has made clear that there’s no way to know if they’re working. :rolleyes:
But we do know if they’re suppressing participation in democracy or not. They are, and that would be what you’re so proud of.
What a fucking dishonest, amoral, destructive shitbag …
90% of the people could pay a poll tax, too. But poll taxes were found to be an unconstitutional barrier to voting for the poor. But if we dress up a poll tax, call it a voter ID, we can fuck these same people right in the ass and pat ourselves on the back with self-righteousness.
Well, here’s the thing. In order to vote (fraudulently or not), you need to be (or be impersonating) someone on the voter rolls. Sure, if you just show up, claim to be someone you’re not, and vote under their name, you may get away with it. But… what happens if the person you’re claiming to be shows up to vote? Yeah. For one extra vote, you get a federal criminal record. And rest assured, just because you could potentially get away with murder, doesn’t mean that people are doing it left and right.
Look, I don’t know how investigations into voter fraud work. You know what I do know, though? That there have been investigations into the issue, on large scales, and that there have been convictions. You’d think, if there was no way of actually investigating the issue, this wouldn’t happen. I’ll gladly try to do a little more research into the subject, but I reject the notion that everyone, from the government for setting up such an abusable system, to the Brennan Center for not bringing up how it’s impossible to prove voter fraud, to local governments all over the place for spending time and resources looking in to the issue, could possibly be that dumb.
So… This doesn’t do anything at all to help ensure that absentee ballots are not fraudulent. Huh. I wonder… Do absentee ballots have a tendency to swing republican? Yeah, I’m sure that that’s just a coincidence. After all, it’s not like a large portion of them happen to come from soldiers, and soldiers are a primarily republican demographic.
Not in your country of residence.
Divorced from reality like the rest of the world that requires an ID? Noooo, I’m pretty sure there is only one group here who is divorced from reality.
I live in Hong Kong. I have to use my ID for all sorts of things.
I’ve already shown what you need to do to vote in Canada.
I never said you were evil. I said you were a douchenozzle and a dimwit. And those still stand. I’ve really been impressed with how facile and childish your arguments on this topic have been. I have previously overestimated your intelligence. Thank you for setting me straight on that account.
You kidding? Have any idea how much intelligence it takes to construct such rationalizations? The complexity of interwoven half-truths? There’s no trick to making a silk purse out of silk, telling the truth is easy!
And useful for so many other reasons.
It makes no sense that people can go to a political party to get information on their political system and how to interact with it or to navigate through the labyrinth that is the government? WTF!?
Their friend has to provide ID before they can vouch for anyone and they can only do it for one person.
Evidence: They can’t be bothered to fill the basic requirements of voting - prove who you are with a satisfactory ID or equivalent. Something easily done. Something that everyone else does in the world.
Why should the government pay for your ID? You’re the one claiming you are more ‘laissez-faire’ than the rest of us. That pretty much means you pay your own way. Well either you are or you aren’t.
In Canada you need an ID or equivalent. We are more like the US than Germany.
So, the 90% of people in your country who have ID’s aren’t ‘Libertarian’?
Unproven. I have to get my own ID in Canada.
Excuse
Again unproven that being poor means you are incapable of getting an ID.
In Canada these organizations are called ‘political parties’.