Yes.
Of course, in 1960, none of those things existed, and yet still people were convicted of speeding.
How do you suppose that happened?
It’s not “memory of an ID.” It’s being able to testify that the clerk followed the requisite procedure: that he or she would not have permitted anyone to vote who did not present a valid ID. Even if the clerk cannot remember the individual details later, being able to testify that the ID was presented because that’s how each and every voter was handled is legally sufficient.
I’m perfectly happy to have illegal voting treated with the same level of severity as reckless driving.
That doesn’t address my actual arguments, which is what I asked if you understood.
You have given your summary of what you believe my underlying motive to be.
I’m asking if you understand the specific arguments I have made well enough to summarize them accurately.
Do you?
Can you explain why it hasn’t actually happened?
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/despite-voter-id-law-minority-turnout-up-in-georgi/nR2bx/
Same question. I’m the one who refuses to “do the math?” There’s the reality. I DID the math: Turnout among black and Hispanic voters increased from 2006 to 2010, dramatically outpacing population growth for those groups over the same period. What is your response? Sow me the figures in any state that validate an actual downturn – not a prediction, not a guess, not an estimate. Voter ID laws have been in place in many states for several election cycles.
Where’s the actual suppression evidence?
I love how this question gets met with evasion, throat clearing, and a return to “But…but Republicans are EVIL!”
I dunno. The goalposts moved?
That would be selective interpretation on your part, which fails to surprise me.
As a minor note, if ID laws are meant to improve voter confidence but are actually having the opposite effect for some people (i.e. they are left with the impression that election results are being made less representative of the will of the voters), shouldn’t that require a rethink? Or does confidence only matter for some and not others? Perhaps we could attempt to objectively evaluate the reasons for confidence and the reasons that undermine confidence to see which are more grounded in reality.
Seeing as how this does not establish that it was the accused who presented an ID and just that there is a procedure to check ID, how can it be shown that it was the particular ID held by the accused which was presented? Would not the relative ease of obtaining false ID and the prevalence of identify theft work to counter the assumption that because an ID was presented that it was the accused who presented it?
I was under the impression otherwise, but finding the post of yours which gave me that impression is something I won’t deal with now.
Yes, but it turns out your motives are more significant. Of course, I’ll cheerfully admit the possibility my impressions are wrong, but you asked for what I thought was my honest opinion and I felt no incentive to condescend you by softening it.
It’s almost a compliment, actually.
OK. Apart from you and MaxtheVool, who else has addressed the Georgia findings in any meaningful way?
I’d say there is a huge difference between the more generic “lack of confidence” that arises from the implementation of Voter ID and the more specific lack of confidence that arises from a close election in which it is clear that a small number of illegal votes may turn the result.
There are a lot of reasons for lack of turnout. A heavy thunderstorm on election day can cause thousands of voter to stay home. But no one reasonably views the election with less confidence as a result…even though I could probably show that the poor are disproportionately affected by such an event, since more of the poor rely on public transportation and waiting in the rain at a bus stop is far less palatable than arriving at the polling station by car.
So my answer is “no:” any voter confidence that suffers from Voter ID’s implementation is not of great concern – at its heart, it is misplaced.
So can you now demonstrate your understanding of my actual arguments by summarizing them?
No.
First let me note the irony. Previous arguments against the requirement of valid photo ID in order to vote have inveighed against the difficulty of obtaining such ID. Are you now arguing that obtaining fake IDs of such quality as to be indistunguishable from real ID to be of “relative ease?”
Really? Relative to what?
So in what way does it shore up confidence in our electoral system to plug the smallest leak in the dam?
The only reason that there is any issue of confidence at all is because the Republicans have created it in our minds. Their lack of focus on absentee ballots explains why people are concerned about that source of voter fraud.
Probably so but sometimes people can see their blind spot when its pointed out to them.
I’m not interested enough to even guess. Other posters are going to write what they want, just like I write what I want. It’s not my desire to survey them.
I gather that is something you’d say. So? You’re comparing the qualities of confidences in a self-serving and arbitrary fashion.
Sure, I think I’ve referenced weather as a factor several times, typically mentioning it as a factor that is likely far more significant than voter fraud.
Uh-huh. Nevertheless, some of your fellow citizens are losing confidence as a result of the measures you are supporting ostensibly to improve confidence.
Not at the moment since I have to go out shortly and will be gone for the day, but the above quoted material seems to cover the gist of it. My summary would be redundant and my impressions unchanged.
Not true. The Presidential election of 2000 hung on a tiny number of votes. The whole country saw the confusion that resulted. The whole country had it brought home to them that the President for the next four years hinged on 537 votes out of millions cast.
The Republicans did not “create” that. It was the result of the election.
Now, it’s true that absentee ballots are an equally ripe source of concern. But they are also untouchable, politically, since the AARP wields immense power. So it’s best to fix what is fixable, and not commit political suicide by going after absentee ballots.
Sure, but… you’ve read the thread, haven’t you?
Do you recall anyone else addressing the Georgia study of results?
Yes. I’ve addressed that difference before with the voodoo analogy. If I were to learn that a voodoo priestess had announced a curse on any persons who vote for a particular candidate, and I were to further learn that the threat had caused five percent of voters in a particular precinct to stay home, I would not advise any remedial measures…because their decision to not vote is objectively unreasonable – even though the effect of the threat is objectively real.
If that’s so, why did you say this:
That question shows a lack of understanding of things I have repeatedly said here.
Did you post that?
Did you mean it? Did you mean it to address arguments you felt I had made?
I entirely disagree. If an election was within 0.01% I would have a much larger lack of confidence in the result due to the fact that a non vanishing percentage of voters predominantly on one side was prevented from voting than that a vanishingly small percentage of voters on might have voted illegally, particularly since there is no reason to believe that impersonating voters will skew one way or the other. There are large numbers of things that erode my confidence in an election. Everything from the possibility of hacked voting machines, the massive amount of money spent, the discrepancy between the number of voting machines per voter in affluent vs inner city precincts, etc. Lack of confidence due to in person voter fraud doesn’t even begin to ping my list. I don’t see why your highly targeted view of lack of voter confidence trumps my more global view.
As far as voter impersonation being a large problem but just hidden from sight, I will remind you that there have been a number of cases of conservative provocateurs trying to vote illegally to prove the flaws in the system only to get themselves caught in the act. If it was really that the one case you found really represents many thousands of undetected cases, you would think that the provocateurs would have a near 100% success rate
Let me get this straight, though the task can be daunting, unraveling a Bricker argument can be like trying to unwind a balloon animal giraffe into several long balloons.
But simplified, it is that if a dastardly plan backfires, then it wasn’t a dastardly plan?
You, yourself, stipulated that “some” Republicans were up to no good. You are studiously silent about the rest, but we are assured you will point out the many, many Republicans who renounced, denounced and condemned this sordid exercise, just as soon as somebody completes certain requirements.
(Who was it, again, that needs to prove their sincerity to your satisfaction? Was it Max? You’ve used this ploy so often, one forgets…)
One reason that voter registration and turnout increased among the lesser citizens was ACORN. That was what they were doing, proving Saul Alinsky right, that grinding, boring, shoe-leather politics can work!. That’s why they murdered ACORN, it was working.
But how to approach such an argument? That if a nasty, cheap, low-down stunt didn’t work, then it wasn’t a nasty, cheap, low-down stunt? Ponder, ponder…
Mockery and derision. Yes, that is the response it deserves. But Grampa 'luc is a bit tired, his reserves of mockery and derision are nearly exhausted over 90 odd pages. Time to settle back, read some Twain maybe, get inspired, find something to steal…
Excellent question. Why does my view trump your view?
Answer: because we have a system of government to resolve just those types of conflicts. I present my view, you present yours, and the elected officials make a decision.
So my view trumps yours because my view was the basis for the actual laws enacted.
Except in some states, where your view evidently trumped mine and no such laws were enacted.
I equably approach my failure to convince the legislatures of Oregon and Minnesota that Voter ID is a valuable addition to government policy. I reason that while Voter ID makes perfect sense, there are good arguments to be made against it, and that the voters of Oregon and Minnesota have every right to act, through their elected officials, to adopt the contrary arguments.
In like manner, I am pleased with my success in convincing the legislatures of Virginia and Texas of the wisdom of Voter ID.
And etc etc for each of the other states on each side of the issue.
In other words: I regard our system of governance as the appropriate way to resolve differences between citizens on the best governance policies to adopt.
That’s why.
Can you remind me of a few of those provocateur cases? Because I agree that a person trying to register and vote in a non-Voter-ID state would have a near 100% success rate, assuming they wished to remain anonymous and not subsequently expose themselves to criminal prosecution by admitting an act that could not, but for their admission, be proved.
Sure, and having read a fair bit about the 2000 election, here I things I remember being frustrated by, things which made me agree at least somewhat with the whole “Bush was never elected” meme:
-Butterfly ballots which (conveniently?) led to bunches of older Jewish voters voting for Pat Buchanan
-voter purges overseen by the brother of one candidate
-recounts which were stopped (think for a second how ridiculous that is, by the way. An operation intended to more accurately count the votes was STOPPED) because Republican thugs were surrounding the building banging on the doors
-a BS supreme court decision
-dangling chads
-Kathleen Harris
Nothing, NOTHING in that has anything to do with in-person voter fraud at all. Your position on this has always been a bit weird. Is your objective to (1) make sure that future close elections as accurately as possible reflect the will of the people? or (2) future close elections have results which, even if they do not reflect the will of the people, at least are nice and definitive and don’t leave everyone hanging? Because your support of voter ID laws seems to give a tiny boost to (2) in exchange for a potentially large hit to (1)… and that large hit to (1) itself translates to a potentially large hit to (2), meaning you’re worse off in all ways than you started, and, more importantly, you’re not at all addressing any of the real issues that showed up in Florida 2000 at all. In fact, I’d argue that anything which weakens (1) effectively weakens (2). If there’s a state in which there are a bunch of voter role purges and weird ID restrictions and reports of immigrants with funny names not being able to register and we think that was done on purpose, and then there’s an election which is super close, and the side doing the “suppressing” wins by a tiny number of votes, there is going to be a TON if distrust and unrest, even if the actual verification of who voted and who they voted for was done by God himself.
Your comparison is specious. If real IDs are easy enough to get that 98% of the population can get them with no problem, then that potentially adds a disparate burden to 2% of the population, which is significant. If fake IDs are easy enough to get that 2% of the population CAN get them (and of course if that 2% has an incentive to do so and to use them to vote) then that’s a problem. The relevance of the ease of acquisition is completely flipped.
And yet another specious comparison. A cop giving someone a speeding ticket is a professional law enforcement officer interacting at some length with a specific individual, at most maybe 30 or 40 in a day, compared with someone sitting at a table watching people line up to vote and checking their names off in a book, who sees thousands of people in a day without any specific interaction. Furthermore, there’s all the extra paperwork and car registration and so forth, so it would take an extremely unlikely situation for the entire speeding conviction to rest solely on one officer’s sworn testimony that that guy is the same guy I saw four months ago.
Max:
In response to my claim that I support positions consistently without regard to who proposed them, you said:
I asked why you didn’t challenge septimus’ claim that sparked my post. To refresh your recollection, septimus had said:
Subsequent conversation seemed to make clear you didn’t endorse what septimus said.
Why did you immediately challenge my claim – one I was able to at least provide some evidence for by pointing out that my posting history here was free of any examples supporting the septimus claim – and leave unchallenged the septimus claim itself, for which the evidence was “… a study with experimental confirmation that people like Bricker are purely partisan…”