All I got is the ACLU. They’re a much better source of opinions than I can be.
The ACLU’s opinion falls short of an appeals court…but it is more than just my opinion. You tried to force this false dilemma upon me, that either I was just stating my own opinion, or else a court’s.
My cite of an ACLU appeal is somewhere in between.
Your argument style is fallacious.
The ACLU advanced that argument, but they lost. The courts decided it was not meritorious – that the Equal Protection Clause did not apply. And while I grant it’s not just you, the ACLU is not the authority on what the Constitution says either.
I said:
I agree I offered a false dilemma there.
But it’s still true that what you said is wrong as a matter of law. The ACLU tried to persuade a court they were right, and they failed. No court has ruled the Equal Protection Clause is violated merely by assigning difficulty to one class of people more than to another.
And what you said was:
That is not true, as a matter of law, and any federal court that might have held otherwise has been overruled by a higher court.
True?
Okay. That’s all I got.
Yes, those are true statements.
No, none of the above. Like much of our legal framework, we criminalize conduct in order to reduce or eliminate it. So the solution being used is to prevent illegal votes before they are cast by creating penalties.
Why not just use the Purple Finger principle, designed by the Party of Lincoln® in the Greatest Bastion of Democracy in the World™, to conduct America’s own elections? To ensure the process is totally fair and impartial, we can have Bricker apply and inspect the purple inks personally.
This is the way that America brought thriving and robust democracies to Afghanistan and Iraq. Why wouldn’t it work (at least as well as the present system) here?
Problem solved. Mods, please close the thread.
Simply because unicorn do not currently exist and have not, so far as we know, existed in the past is no reason we should not have unicorn leashing laws to preemptively prevent unicorn stampedes. After all, we cannot be entirely certain they may not exist in the future!
Yes, I quite take your point…
I might note that the preceding Bricker-Pity-Party™ was little more than a bleat of distraction about how he’s rah-rahing a law that does more damage than it cures. And in the process just so happens to make the GOP, Bricker’s favored party, have a lasting electoral advantage.
Someone taking a shot at his daughter or wife is, I’ll admit a low blow. But a piece of shit laughing smugly at a law that makes it harder for poor people to vote, is by far worse. Making fun of a bad man’s family is uncouth. Warping democracy so the batshit-insane party gets an electoral lock can cause real damage for generations to come.
Imho, anyway.
But he overheard Unicorn social workers talking about how easy it is to vote.
HE HEARD IT! Bricker wouldn’t lie to us!!1
Bricker has chastised us for not understanding his message. I thought I had it, but now realize I was assuming a good-spiritedness on his part which, on careful reread, is not present after all.
He makes it clear that he is delighted by any difficulties voter ID might present to the wrong kind of voters, and bases his case on whether such a voter would be strictly “unable” to vote, i.e his or her voting would be impossible.
To a mathematician who understands things like measure theory and Poincaré Recurrence almost nothing is impossible. Dorothy Cooper, for example, who was “unable” to vote as ordinary mortals would use the term, wasn’t “unable” to vote in Bricker’s mathematical sense. She could have won the lottery, been brainwashed into supporting the GOP, and been lifted by GOP officials to the front of any ID line, bypassing all queues.
I’m tired of guessing games, Bricker; just tell us the answer. May we assume that in your ideal system, the difficulty of obtaining voter ID would be carefully calibrated to maximize GOP advantage?
Non-sequitor.
If voter confidence in the results of such an election are shattered, why would the results be let standing? So you catch ten fake voters after the fact of an election with a margin of five votes. What, if anything, is your reparative mechanism for the injustice? Issuing ten minor punishment and calling it a day?
If voter confidence in the results of such an election are shattered, why would the results be let standing? Practicality. Allowing the alternative would create too many opportunities to game the system and throw any election into endless repeats.
My mechanism is to punish the offenders – with serious misdemeanor charge that carries jail time – to discourage them from committing the act.
A person who is mugged cannot ask me what my mechanism is to repair the injustice they experienced, either. All I can do is criminally punish the offenders.
No. Any difficulty in obtaining Voter ID would simply be the ordinary difficulty in obtaining ID that is inherent to the process. In other words, the goal is to require that every person, no matter what their voting proclivities are, have a photo ID that reliably identifies them. That’s it. Any difficulties that might exist in that process would arise from the ordinary necessary workings of issuing that ID.
Unless, of course, there are simultaneous efforts to hinder that process, as in cutting hours of availability in the specific offices, such as motor vehicles, etc., that would be necessary. My memory isn’t what it used to be, or maybe it is and I just don’t remember, but seems to me that on more than one occasion, such concurrent actions did, in fact, arise.
Of course, it is possible that is simply a coincidence, since the experience of Georgia proves, beyond any possible doubt, that voter id laws have no malign consequences for minority voters in* all *the states. And no one can doubt that the hysterical paranoia friend Bricker has so helpfully pointed out could be warping our perspective on this, giving a malign cast to an entirely coincidental set of facts.
I’ve been mulling this question over quite a bit of late. Georgia on my mind, so to speak. As it were.
The 85 year old widow that never learned to drive and doesn’t have ID has to find someone to take her to a government office miles away to get a copy of her birth certificate then take her again to another government office miles away to get a photo ID mailed just because some people don’t like the way she might vote and want to make it more difficult for her to do so? It isn’t that some people question the validity of the process without photo ID, it’s that some people don’t like the results.
I’ve never said they were “entirely coincidental.” To the contrary, I have consistently allowed that many legislators pushing these plans were doing to in large measure because they felt they or their party would gain some advantage in subsequent elections.
What have said as well, though, is: “But if a nondiscriminatory law is supported by valid neutral justifications, those justifications should not be disregarded simply because partisan interests may have provided one motivation for the votes of individual legislators.”
Actually, as I understand things, don’t the elderly vote very strongly Republican?
I think that to the extent the elderly are affected, it will hurt the GOP more that help them. I still say that Voter ID is a good idea.
Except there isn’t one. Your rationalization is neither valid, nor neutral, nor a justification.
You’re utterly failing at convincing anyone your own motives are not partisan. Why? Is that because we’re all too stupid to understand, because your powers of explanation are lacking, or because you’re simply lying?
I think a lot depends on demographics and geography. Rich white widows, sure they’ll vote GOP. Others, not so much.
It still seems to me that voter ID is a solution in search of a problem. I find it quite disturbing that the people who promote it are simultaneously passing laws to limit voting hours. It’s almost like they are trying to get certain demographics to vote in fewer numbers.
And I agree that (absent some other strong justification) limiting voting hours is poor policy.
But that’s why I’m not defending that policy.
I agree with you and commend you for that. But, sadly, you seem to be in the minority. It’s my impression that far too many proponents of voter ID also advocate for limiting voter IDs for the express purpose of reducing Democratic turnout.