The closeness of the election is almost an afterthought. It’s the presumption of 200 out of three million that I’m prepared to bet against, regardless of whether or not the election is a squeaker or a blowout.
Heck, I can’t say with confidence that four thousand votes weren’t uncounted or miscounted for technical reasons or human error on the part of election officials through no fault whatsoever of the voters who cast in good faith (Wikipedia: “but more than 4,800 ballots were not recounted for technical reasons”). A literal handful of votes potentially being illegal is way down the priority list.
To inspire voter confidence. Duh.
What is this, you have to pass the law so you can find out what’s in it? You’re presuming a problem exists on the scale of 200 out of three million, and then using that presumption to justify a law. How about proving the problem exists first, and to the degree to which you have speculated? And if you can’t prove it, then what the hell are you talking about?
Let’s stop IRS audits. If we did that, there would be no tax fraud that we could detect. Which means that there is no tax fraud!
Then if someone wants to reinstate IRS audits, we’ll just say, “Prove there’s been tax fraud since the audits stopped!” You won’t be able to. Bricker’s point is that without an ID requirement, you can’t successfully prosecute people for voter fraud.
Which to me is beside the point. I believe most illegal votes are cast by mistake. The system should be able to prevent such mistakes, or failing that, to account for them by eliminating recounts and just calling close elections a tie. If you have 500 felon votes, it doesn’t really matter whether they intentionally broke the law, what matters is that they voted and their votes should not count. Same goes for all the double voters who vote absentee and in person in two different states.
Since I feel no incentive to dignify your dumbassery with a thoughtful response, adaher, I’ll just pick this out:
At the moment, Bricker’s point seem to be that he believes voter fraud is happening on a potentially significant scale, so better make it illegal* just in case*, and regardless of the effect on legitimate voters. If they aren’t doing anything illegal, they’ve got nothing to worry about, apparently.
Bricker, you complain that some Dopers don’t understand your points. Let me see if I do.
Someone starts a thread to Pit GOP vote-suppression, with malicious voter ID laws as an example, and your point, obvious but non sequitur, can be summarized as
[QUOTE=Hypothetical (more laconic version of) Bricker]
BTW, it would be possible for a party – though certainly not the present-day GOP – to design a voter ID program to solve non-existent problems, without the malicious features of GOP plans.
I’d welcome another thread to help design such a program, however purposeless, since such things fascinate me. I do realize it has no relevance whatsoever in this thread.
[/QUOTE]
Instead, what do we get?
[QUOTE=Post-counting Robot]
Who Posted?
Total Posts: 4,560
User Name Posts
Bricker 1,007
elucidator 674
Lobohan 350
Uzi 195
…
[/QUOTE]
One thousand and seven (1007) posts to make the obvious and irrelevant point that some hypothetical non-malicious party could have designed a non-malicious program to solve a non-existent problem. In a Pit thread about Monica’s semen-stained dress, would you hijack to discuss dry-cleaning? Or the advantages of using condoms?
Wow. 1007 posts.
Wow. My questions were intended as a sanity-check, like asking about 2+2. Now I wonder if your rose-colored glasses blind you to GOP perfidy, or whether your denials come with some implicit legalism. (e.g., “no crime is committed unless proven in a court of law.”)
Given that you were unaware of Karl Rove’s nearly-criminal trickery, described in mainstream media two decades ago, I’ll guess the former. You’re a sincere, possibly even good-spirited, conservative who has willfully blinded yourself to the present-day GOP.
But then again … 1,007 posts? I hope it won’t offend if I suggest psychiatric help.
The problem with proving that presumption is that:
Of course, MaxTheVool was describing another issue…but with the same problem.
Indicting people that don’t ever get convicted is the opposite of creating confidence. It shows ineffectual sanctions and re-inforces the narrative that illegally voting carries little risk.
Nope. When did the rule become that someone has to prove something before passing a law? There’s one group that has to be convinced: the legislators. Not you.
Based on defendants’ own explanations when they get caught and indicted. And usually acquitted.
You wouldn’t have divisive recounts where the losing side feels cheated. And which aren’t any more accurate than the original count. Recounts are a pointless waste of money, because it’s just a different count, not a more accurate count. They should be ended. Either the first result should be final, or the election should be declared a tie and a runoff held.
Since most close elections involve no candidate winning a majority, a runoff between the top two candidates is entirely reasonable and would usually produce a clearer result.
Ah, so we’re back to the “plenary power” thing, huh? In that case, I hope we’ll see no further references to the Massachusetts Senate-appointment issue from you. The Mass. legislature (apparently) has the power to modify the rules of who gets to appoint a Senate replacement, so who are you to suggest we should criticize them for exercising that power at their discretion? Why do you hate democracy?
The only time I bring it up is to respond to others’ “outrage” at the use of legislative power to achieve political ends. Someone posts a pious objection to the use of legislative power to achieve political advantage, and I point out that their objections seem curiously limited. That’s all.
My own objection is much less dramatic. I think it sucks, but ultimately the power to fix it rests with Massachusetts voters, and they don’t seem discomfited, so I’m OK with it.
I’d be ok with the abolition of early voting, extended hours, and absentee voting as long as legislation is passed that employers must give employees a reasonable amount of paid time off in order to vote (this is the law in Canada so it is doable). Think of how much more confidence there would be in the results when we do away with the fraud associated with absentee ballots.
