Nothing in the list you wrote has anything to do with in-person voter fraud?
Yes, that’s true. But since you wrote the list, it seems obvious that you could choose not to include it.
So my question to you is: how many of those votes were cast by persons not legally qualified to vote?
Both (1) and (2).
However, since I contend that the people remain free to express their will by voting, and no Voter ID law creates a substantial impediment to that, the adoption of Voter ID laws don’t create any meaningful conflict between (1) and (2).
Now, I agree that voter roll purges conducted with nugatory criteria do create a conflict with goal (1). Therefore, I do not support such purges. If there exists a systematic effort to prevent immigrants who are U.S. citizens from registering or voting because they have funny names, then this, too, threatens (2) and I do not support such efforts.
I do, however, support Voter ID. That’s all. That does not translate into support of any other programs, plans, schemes, designs, or motives.
30 or 40 Monday, 30 or 40 Tuesday, 30 or 40 Wednesday, 30 for 40 Thursday, 30 or 40 Friday. And then the next week, and the next, and the next, and after several months, the trial for the eighth guy he pulled over on the first Wednesday.
And his testimony is still legally sufficient to convict the guy for speeding.
So you agree that the statement that lack of confidence being more real that lack of confidence due to the barriers put up to prevent people from voting is just a matter of opinion and carries no empirical weight.
In fact looking back at it, I actually agree with your original statement …
Yes there is a huge difference between the two. The difference being that one is real cause for concern that has a non vanishing probability of actually turning an election, while the other is just paranoid fantasy. As far as your weather example the difference is that one is the direct result of political manipulation while the other is the result of an unavoidable act of nature. If someone created a weather control machine and specifically turned it on to rain on Election day, I would be upset with them as well. Or as a more extreme example, we still prosecute murder even though the person could have just as easily died from a heart attack.
I may have to withdraw the claim of multiple cases of conviction. Some of the cases I only remember vaguely and so can’t provide cites, One of the cases I remembered was actually an instance of voting twice, rather than impersonation. The second, was the O’Keefe situation where one out of multiple attempts were caught, but the perpetrator left before he could be captured by police.
So I guess the proper calculation would be to find what percentage of people attempting to vote, are challenged regarding their identity but flee the premises before being caught. Multiply this percentage by the number of attempts Okeefe made, and that is approximately your voter fraud percentage. Or if we imagine that there is say only 5% chance that a person who has been unmasked can be aprehended, multiple the number of people arrested on the spot for in person voter fraud, by the number of attempts O’Keeffe made times 20, and there is your total number of cases of voter fraud.
Not irony, we are speaking of different populations. A ne’er do well college student with friends with cars and certain forms of ID can cross provincial borders and present themselves to the liquor commission as Bobby Rex, a 19 year old resident and receive a liquor ID to be used throughout the school year with ease as compared to a guy in the same small town without access to a car and who works 2 jobs and has no time or method to get to said liquor commission.
And are you saying that identity theft is not a common place crime? Sure, it is normally for your credit but if someone wanted to vote illegally why would the se methods not work just as well for obtaining the requisite ID.
I’ve never heard of even a single instance of the first thing happening, have you? Surely it would if it were real, there are so many people depending on the problem being real in order to prop up their arguments.
IIRC, cops frequently refresh their memory by looking at their notes. If they had to pick the driver out of a line-up months after the fact, they couldn’t do it. It is only possible because of the contemporaneous that the driver loses.
The quick and basically correct answer is because I read your posts in this thread and skim over everyone else’s, because in general you’re the person I’m arguing with. I suppose I could stop and find every incidence in this thread when a poster on the left goes into hyperbole or outright falsehood when describing your position or character and argue with them about it, but that would basically leave me no time to do anything else in my life. Furthermore, while I hope I generally debate you respectfully, politely and honestly, you should not forget that I find at least parts of your position and attitude on this issue to be basically reprehensible, which doesn’t really put me in the greatest mood to be also constantly leaping to your defense.
Yes, as the Georgia example shows, the claims that imposing Voter ID will lessen minority turnout are paranoid fantasy.
But the real cause for concern is that another Florida 2000 situation may arise, and the electorate will wonder if the votes that made up the margin of victory came from illegal voters.
You do generally debate me honestly, respectfully, and politely.
But it puts me in the position I’ve complained of many times before: weak arguments from me are scrutinized; weak arguments from other are ignored unless I scrutinize them. I’m the bacteria in the penicillin; my opponents are the bacteria in the petri dish.
I’m suggesting to you that Richard Feynman had something to say about that approach:
It does? So, you dismiss out of hand the possibility that the wretched plan simply backfired? Can you substantiate that? Or are we simply to accept it based on your spotless record for honesty and candor?
Happened right here in Baja Canada, Franken-Coleman, Franken wins by the eyelash of a butterfly, exhaustive recount ensues. All on the record, Counselor.
I live amongst them, and have yet to see any hue and cry over illegal voters tipping the election. Why not? Even though, as you say, the voter id laws here are too “lax”? I’ll go way out on a limb and suggest its because there wasn’t any. You have a better explanation, I’m sure, and I await with bated breath.
(By the by, your declaration that you “do not support” sordid schemes for electoral advantage…might want to tone it down a bit. I know I have remarked on your rather placid response to such skulduggery, but “do not support”? Lets not fly off the handle, here. Mustn’t overdo it. That would be bad.)
Hmm, what else could have happened in African-American life between 2006-2010 that might account for an increase in voter turnout? I have no idea, do you?
There’s a simple reason I chose not to include it, because it is one of hundreds of hypothetical things that COULD have been problems, but which I have no evidence to think WERE problems, so why clutter up ACTUAL problems by including mention of hypothetical possible problems?
This may be the key issue. At one point I believe you agreed that a poorly implemented voter ID law in fact could prevent a substantial impediment to voting. Do you in fact agree with that? If so, what’s your evidence that of all the various voter ID laws passed around the country, none are poorly implemented? Particularly given that you seem to agree that in at least some of those cases the people writing those laws have incentive to deliberately craft them poorly?
This is an exceptionally stupid tangent, even for this thread, so I will just say this: suppose it’s 1960 and I have a friend with a truck who didn’t look much like me. I borrow his truck. I’m driving around. I get pulled over for speeding. The officer asks me for ID. I produce my friend’s registration and claim to be my friend. He writes down a bunch of info in his logbook, which records that on (date) he pulled over (my friend’s name) for speeding, looked at (some list of documents).
Then 3 months later my friend gets a summons to appear in court. He does. He says “this is bullshit, I was never pulled over for speeding”. They summon the cop into the courtroom. The cop is a hard working and diligent guy but not possessed of superhuman memory. The cop reviews his log book, and swears under oath that it was in my fact my friend who got pulled over for speeding. My friend has to pay a fine (and probably ceases to be my friend, assuming he remembers that it was me who borrowed his truck that day).
I can’t see anything that would stop that from happening, and I would in no way hold it against the cop if he honestly got that wrong in that type of situation.
Fortunately, however, that’s a situation in which the cost to society if that happens fairly rarely is that the wrong person (who already has to be in a fairly specifically contrived situation) has to pay a speeding fine. That’s much less serious than democracy being subverted.
I do agree that a poorly implemented voter ID law in fact could constitute a substantial impediment to voting. (Not what you said, but your context makes me think you mistyped).
You ask for my evidence? I haven’t heard of any. Until I hear of any, I can hardly know of them.
Isn’t it for you to identify an implementation you claim is poor?
OK, then you accept my point.
Who cares? I said that the evidence is legally sufficient. You appear to agree that the evidence is legally sufficient.
On your high school debate team, were you coached to keep up the stream of bullshit until the referee blows the whistle, or something? This was over long ago.
If you say the sun rose this morning because Og willed it so, and I ask for some proof of that, and you give me the news report “Sunrise: 6:23 am”, you have not “substantiated” your claim.
Pretty sure you know that. You must have seen that in college, they call it a “non-squirter”.
Only because they’re the ones who crawled into bed with this proposal.
Old-time Chicago Democrats were EVIL too, when they engaged in inflating the voting lists by registering dead people. And both parties are EVIL for engaging is outrageous Gerrymandering.
It’s only a partisan issue because one party decided to act EVIL in this way at this time. Is it your intention to defend EVIL because opposition to it appears to be partisan?
You want proportionality review of the exposure of logical fallacies? You want an Affirmative Action quota? For every time we expose one of your errors, we’re obliged to expose a certain number from people we happen to agree with?
What if you actually make more errors than any other group of people, calculated per capita? Say, every time adaher misstates a fact, we have to find elucidator misstating a fact? What if the error ratio of the two persons varies highly?
Another problem: you’re pretty much alone here. If you had some significant support from others who held the same view, you could divide the duty, and all take turns pointing out the errors made by your collective opposition.
It isn’t our duty to police ourselves. That’s your job. Our job is to say what we believe, and why, and then to rebut the rebuttals. It’s absurd for you to demand that we all argue both sides of the point. If you insist on that game, you’ll have to participate in it also. You’ll have to point out all the errors you, yourself, make!