You’re misstating my starting premise.
Apologies.
I’m having a little trouble understanding you, then, if you’re saying that how we weigh the relative harms and the extent to which we are willing to impose individual responsibility on voters do not number among your starting premises.
What is your starting premise?
I don’t consider the creation of an arbitrary barrier for someone without a corresponding benefit to them as imposing a responsibility on them, i.e. I don’t see “barrier” and “responsibility” as synonyms.
It occurs to me that I may have just invited dictionary cites for “barrier” and “responsibility” and where they overlap. If I’m right, feel free to spare me.
But that’s not quite what you said, is it, buckaroo?
You said “…Yes, as the Georgia example shows, the claims that imposing Voter ID will lessen minority turnout are paranoid fantasy…” POW! CRUNCH! And the hysterical, pants-wetting lefties go down for the count.
First off, you aver that the results of a single state should be taken to be universally applicable. Certainly, you have every right to do so, and it makes perfectly good sense, in that Georgia is, for all practical purposes, identical to, say, Missouri or Vermont. However, your cite also contains expert opinion that one might misconstrue as running counter to your argument.
Which you did not mention. Very thoughtful, to not burden us with extraneous misinformation. Still, many of us think that is not quite the done thing, don’t you know? We might well prefer to make such decisions ourselves. I know that I do, that’s why I read cites. Even a relentlessly candid and honest poster such as yourself might overlook such trivia. Think nothing of it, your reputation is secured by your own spotless history of candor and openness.
You also overlooked this little nugget of information:
Well, that was on the other hand. Wrong hand.
And this:
A tantalizing hint, it would appear, that Georgia avoided the sort of approach to voter ID that so many of us hysterical bed-wetters find so objectionable. Because, in case we failed to mention it, its not the actual fact of voter ID that bothers, but the way in which it can be, and often is, applied. Another bit of trivia that seems to escape your notice. Repeatedly.
As well, I can’t help but notice that you offer no comment on my use of your “one state fits all” premise in the case of Minnesota. Which had a super-dooper ultra close election with voter id laws you find to be “too lax”, and does not appear to have crumbled into a smoking ruin. Leastwise, they didn’t notice that they had, apparently.
But enough of my petty niggling over insignificant details. Please proceed, Counselor.
Nothing can burn in Minnesota. It’s too cold.
For what it’s worth, putting barriers in the way of voters is just as bad when Democrats do it. They definitely have done so historically (I was vaguely amused when Bricker referenced traffic law enforcement of 1960, back when disenfranchisement was undergoing a veritable golden age) and probably somewhere in the U.S. right now, a Democrat is thinking up ways to discourage the voters of Wilson Street because they tend to vote Republican, either by gerrymandering them into another district or planning some road construction on Wilson for early November, or arranging for the polling station Wilson residents normally use to be undergoing renovations at the time or “losing” voter registration records for Wilson Street…
Basically every time Bricker falls back on his “but you liberals are just whining about how eeeevil Republicans are”, I roll my eyes a little.
OK. Then this is another area on which we disagree. I see you have already announced you’re not interested in what the dictionary has to say, so your premise is that imposing this particular barrier is not fairly described as something that can impact a person’s responsibility, regardless of what the dictionary says about the matter.
Correct?
Since I disagree, and since the issue involves definitions, and since we don’t appear to share a common authority for definitions, that’s really as far as the discussion can go.
To start I would say that there is a difference between a law against burglary and a requirement used to ease enforcement of an existing law which is how you have positioned voter ID. A more on target analogy would be the use of CCTCV cameras used to identify and convict burglars. I would certainly think it was good public policy to review the effectiveness of these measures vs the cost to implement.
As far as I can tell with voter IDs we have a low cost to implement relative to other government expenditures but I have not seen any evidence of the effectiveness. This is why I asked if you have numbers for the states where it has been implemented. Would you not agree that spending 1 million dollars (numbers pulled out of my ass) for no measurable impact is a bit irresponsible? Surely if 9 years is enough to gauge possible effects on voter turnout it is also enough time to gauge the effectiveness of the program.
Referring to a Weaselese-English dictionary, “I disagree” translates to “You’re right and I’m wrong, but I’m certainly not going to admit it to you”.
Sure I did.
I even quoted it, in post 4669.
What sort of approach, specifically, did Georgia use that the objectionable states did not? Specifically.
And what about the lack of any data supporting your case from other states with voter ID laws?
Strawman. I have not argued that the result of a super close election with no Voter ID laws is crumbling into a smoking ruin. Indeed, the example I have used was Florida in 2000, which has also not crumbled into a smoking ruin. You can search my posts carefully and not find one post in which I
predict the crumble into a smoking ruin for any state.
<duplicate post, for some reason>
The discussion was never going to go anywhere. You were wrong from the start when you embraced the unfalsifiable premise of “voter confidence” (at least where it regards to illegal voters), decided voter ID was the remedy, and never looked back.
As for the barrier/responsibility distinction, let’s say hypothetically that you (just you) now have to dance a jig to get your driver’s license. Dancing a jig benefits you in no way, indeed only benefits DMV employees who get a laugh out of it and the satisfaction that non-jigging Brickers won’t be driving, no-sirree. There will probably come a time when you can’t dance a jig because of age or infirmity, but that’s no excuse. So have you been hit with a barrier or had a responsibility imposed?
No, because voter confidence is not susceptible to metrics. I’d say the way to gauge the effectiveness is to rely on general public reaction and the continuing judgement of the legislature.
You disagree, obviously. So in this country, how do we resolve disagreements amongst citizens over which public policy to enact and maintain?
Both.
I’d certainly say the imposition of the responsibility was unwise, but I wouldn’t deny it existed. I’d also say the barrier imposed was onerous, and constitutionally infirm.
Yay! Let’s make law based on things we can’t measure! Who says rationality is necessary for rational basis? Nobody, that’s who!
I rise to quibble. A minor point, perhaps, but that’s the trouble with quibbles…
Gerrymandering is often, if not predominantly, a conspiracy of incumbents to remain incumbent. A kind of horsetrading and divvying up territory. Unseemly, to be sure, but roughly and crudely a form of responding to demographic situations. No virgin ever wins a whore’s track meet.
Its only when one side gets greedy that any further threat to the Republic is noticeable. Like when Republican representatives get fewer votes in the aggregate than their Dem counterparts, yet prevail in House elections. Kinda stinks.
There are rumors afoot and abroad that the left is planning on trimming the impact of the rich and powerful. I plan to vociferously and fiercely oppose such an effort, unless it occurs in the month that I am busy picking wildflowers.
Then a rewrite of post 4840 is in order, where you describe the premises that “we” are starting with. Feel free to re-characterize my part of the “we” to include references to barriers.
Rationality is necessary for rational basis. But I’m a radical lefty, and nobody listens to me anyway. I’ll say it, even though I can’t quite parse it…
Plenty of laws, regulations, and government funded programs are rolled out to address things that cannot be measured with any degree of precision. A couple of years ago I started a thread complaining about what I called "green grocer liberalism,’ in which the city of Philadelphia spent $900,000 to outfit corner grocery stores with fresh fruits and vegetables despite having no way to measure the success of the program, and no reasonable belief that it would succeed, given failures in other cities of similar efforts.
Shockingly, the idea that this was a “law based on things we can’t measure,” bothered none of the liberals in that thread.
Cheerfully noted. What I had in mind with the example was something akin to “My District, the 9th, has close elections. Wilson Street residents tend to vote Republican. I’ll shift them into the neighboring 10th District which is safely 75% Democrat so my elections chances will slightly improve and my fellow congressional Democrat isn’t hurt by it.”
Alternately, the 10th might be solidly Republican, so putting Wilson Street there won’t make any difference, since Democrats have essentially given up on the 10th through the foreseeable future anyway. The gist is that I have no problem whatever picturing a Democrat who sees some voters as problems instead of constituents and will use various means to make them go away. That is to say, I have no illusions about the morality of the Democratic Party when it comes to getting elected.
Overall, I’d say these kinds of problems will always exist when elected officials get too much say who in gets to elect them. Putting control of these matters including voter ID requirements would be far more confidence-inspiring if they are mostly in the hands of somebody nonpartisan.