But tell me, Max: when I say that in-person voter fraud exists, and I bring up examples like Neville M. Walters and Ramon Cue, and I point out that it is nearly certain that there were other people similarly situated, but there’s no reason to think that we’d have any way of knowing those people’s names – in fact, we’d expect not to… when I said that, it was somehow not acceptable. If I couldn’t specifically identify the cases of in-person voter fraud, then I wasn’t entitled to claim they existed.
Why is it acceptable in this case for Bryan to make this kind of argument in support of his position, but unacceptable for me to make a similar argument in support of mine?
And getting back to this case: all you’ve described is people for whom voting was made slightly more difficult. Not people “unable” to vote. True?
I’m not sure we’re using the word “law” differently. What I am saying (and have been saying for literally years in this very thread) is that regardless of the legality of the law (which I am certainly unqualified to debate at length), the promotion of these laws in this context reflects badly on the Republican party and those who support this action. It is an underhanded, antidemocratic, disenfranchising, unAmerican move, and you should be ashamed that your party is engaging in it.
Have said, over and over again, that it wasn’t about actual disenfranchisement, simply about making it more difficult and tiresome, to discourage and harass, not to stop.
For instance, here…
and here…
Hell, Bricker, they are on the same damned page! So, if I can’t prove something I never even said, you win?
Republican Poker, they get seven cards, you get five, all of yours are face up and they get to draw twice. Good thing they can’t bluff for shit.
Those were not cases of “in-person voter fraud”, you lying shit. Your own cite describes them as improperly registered. Asking them to show ID’s at the polling place would not have prevented their voting at all.
Do you even know what an honest argument is? Do you even know when you’re lying, or do you just not care? And do you ever wonder if there ever will, even once, be a chance when you’ll slip it by us?
It isn’t a similar argument, you lying shit.
Getting back to the real issue, the problem is the sheer numbers of people who want to vote but are dissuaded by your silly law, combined with the disparate amount of their party affiliation. Which is why you support them, you lying shit.
I acknowledge that you carefully chose the standard you wanted - people who have been unable to vote. Of course, that wasn’t the question I asked originally, which was:
That’s an invitation to examine your premises if you were given evidence that they were wrong. For actual cases of blocked votes, we naturally only get data every November (or less often at other times for various special elections). Meantime, we can explore cases of people who are trying to be compliant with the law in anticipation of November and are having trouble. Or at least I can explore them because unlike you, I am honest about the issue.
You have, I note, repeatedly ducked the question on who, if anyone, is advocating for voter ID and making voter ID easily available, something I might expect from a politician who is genuinely concerned about voter confidence in that he wants:
-everyone who can cast a vote, can do so easily
-everyone who cannot cast a vote, can be blocked easily
…rather than someone trying to game the system for his party.
As for your laments that voter fraud is not being recognized to exists - don’t lie so blatantly, please. Sure, it exists. However, we have no evidence that it exists in anything but truly trivial amounts, one miscast vote in a million or so. So you want to cite Walters and Cue, who according to your almost two-years-old cite “could face third-degree felony charges.” Did they? Did anyone? Meantime, we have obvious attempts to shift elections by small percentages, supposedly fixing a one-in-a-million problem by introducing a few-in-a-hundred bias, and this offers no challenge to confidence whatsoever, in Bricker-world.
You’re challenging my honesty? Please. You’re either naturally stupid or willing to be conveniently stupid for ideological reasons. I reiterate my astonishment that anyone on this board is impressed by you.
Of course I carefully chose my words. The moment I don’t, I am attacked for the slightest inaccuracy. I chose my words and my claims with careful attention and precision.
Unfortunately, you are giving yourself a very reasonable standard: you did not mean “unable,” but simply were referring to voters who might face difficulties.
At the same time, in these discussions, you have demanded of me a very exacting standard: I cannot claim voter fraud unless I can show a specific criminal conviction.
It seems unfair to me that you allocate yourself the forgiving standard and me the exacting one.
I am not ducking it. Whenever we discuss a specific individual, it always seems to turn out that someone in state government was willing to go the extra mile to help resolve difficulties. That’s what I mean. So as you name individual cases, I can name people that are willing to help them get resolved.
Perfect. “We have no evidence.” Well, fine: you have no evidence of anyone being unable to vote. Let’s use the same standard.
Or I could agree that your standard is reasonable as to what might happen to voters, and use that to agree that some voters won’t be able to vote…and you could agree that more fraudulent voting exists than is detected.
If someone in state government acts to prevent an injustice, how does that make the attempted injustice disappear? If I try to steal your car, and a cop stops me, I didn’t try to steal your car?
Fortunately, we’re smart enough to see through such efforts to lie-by-literalism.
You dismiss such difficulties as “slight”, as I recall. That strikes me as wishful thinking at best.
Bullshit. You can claim voter fraud all you like - you simply have no evidence I’m aware of that it is anything more than a vanishingly small problem, less so than even the simple counting errors any tabulation is prone to. What you cannot claim by any reasonable standard is that this shakes your confidence - that suggests your confidence is absurdly selective, even conveniently so.
I’m asking you apply reason to the situation - is addressing a trivial-to-near-nonexistence problem (people who vote improperly) worth creating a potentially significant one (people who can vote legally but don’t get to because they can’t get the IDs, because demands for IDs slow down the voting process. Do you not recognize that people calling for voter IDs do so because they believe it will work to their party’s favour? If this level of reason is too “exacting” for you, that’s not my problem.
Why does the need for state employees to go extra miles seem reasonable to you? How many extra miles do you think state employees have, anyway?
So much for precision in phrasing. I said: “However, we have no evidence that it exists in anything but truly trivial amounts, one miscast vote in a million or so.” Your paraphrase is dishonest by omission.
But I’m okay with the standard you imply. We’ll see in November is the issue has any effect. I said a while back that I was willing to let Nate Silver’s research inform my opinion, i.e. if he reports on the effect voter-suppression has in November (including the possibility that it might have none at all of any significance), I’m cool with it. In fact, I’ll provisionally accept that that effect may be trivial-to-insignificance. That doesn’t mean it was a good or necessary policy to pursue.
Well, if voter fraud exists that is not being detected (i.e. that hasn’t been proved to exists), how does that justify legislation? I of course recognize that various legislatures and executives can pass such legislation, it remains unclear that they should for the good of the electorate, as opposed the good of themselves.
What an apt turn of phrase, why, I might have said it myself! Wait, I didn’t, did I? No, that can’t be right, you’re Canadian, a Canadian would never steal something without leaving a thank you note.
Did you? If you cite a post number, I’ll be glad to recognize your earlier use, but I was not consciously aware of any copying. In fact I had in mind Starving Artist’s tactics during the Penn State gargantu-thread.
So, you set Bryan a task, something he must do for you before you unleash your rock solid facts to crush the argument. (He got off easy, just one, usually trolls and other subterranean creatures demand three…)
And you’ve got them, you say “Sure, I’ve got those facts, right here in the bag with the cat. But you can’t look until you give me what I asked for. Sorry, those are the rules. Sure, I could let you see them, destroy your argument, but I don’t much care about winning. And its against the rules, because I called shotgun. And King’s X.”
Hoss, if you really thought you had the goods, no power on the Goddess’ green Earth would stop you from slapping him upside the jaw with them! Who are you kidding, here?
Shit, two bits says he does what you ask, you’re gonna say “What is your favorite color?” He says “Blue”, you’ll say “Wrong! Now I am not going to answer! Winning!”
If you got truth, howcum somebody has to perform for you before you’ll reveal it? Horseshit, you’re bluffing, covering a retreat with a smokescreen.
Bryan, seems you’re making Bricker’s point again. Improper voting is a trivial-to-near-nonexistent problem. We should accept this as a given, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary.
The voter ID concern, on the other hand, is a potentially significant one, one that might prevent someone from from voting–and apparently we needn’t worry about any evidence that supports such a concern. We should also accept this as a given.
How is this not supporting exactly what Bricker pointed out as the non sequitur in your argument?