Haven’t you noticed all the outreach efforts the Republicans are organizing to go out to the people and help them register to vote, including with the proper ID? No doubt **Bricker **volunteers for ACORN every weekend.
Certainly there are many of those Republicans. But the Referee of Board Propriety has determined that their names not be released until such time as certain obligations are met to afford proper dignity. We may rest assured that when the Referee has determined that such obligations have been met, we will be offered the opportunity to cheer for their non-partisan commitment to civic virtue and equality before the law.
We might best move that happy moment forward by scolding and criticizing those who have delayed that moment by their unseemly behavior.
Why are those our only choices - legalistic vs. moral/ethical? There are pragmatic aspects to this particular issue.
The more I read on this topic, the more I come to realize as an axiom* that elected officials should not be in charge of elections.* It strikes me as fairly obvious and with adequate (indeed overwhelming) historical support that this encourages corruption and manipulation of the electoral process. If the mere appearance of impropriety is enough to get a judge to recuse himself from a case in which he might have a personal interest, it is inconsistent to allow elected officials to manage the electoral process where the potential for conflicts is as great or greater, since it involves their livelihoods and those of their rivals, and thus carries the incentive to not only encourage people to vote for you, but to actively discourage them from voting for the other guy, indeed the obvious preference is they not vote at all, if it was going to be for the other guy.
Bricker expresses concern that votes about the possibility of four fake voters (i.e. voters who should have been disqualified) in a close election. Even if this occurred, it is a minor concern, several orders of magnitude less significant in determining the election’s outcome than human error, mechanical error or bias on the part of those tabulating the votes and, as Bricker suggested and then I thought rather disingenuously backpedaled on, whoever makes the final determination. In the razor-close election he has repeatedly referenced (Indiana’s 8th District, 1984), the final determination was made by Congress (then controlled by Democrats) in favour of Frank McClosky, the Democrat incumbent. Correctly? Incorrectly? Who knows.
I consider it very fortunate that Elections Canada was created in 1920, an (ideally, but nothing is perfect) nonpartisan government agency with the purpose of managing elections. Certainly there have been scandals and abuses in its history, but the goal is to manage elections for the sake of managing elections, regardless of outcome.
They report to Parliament and must get innovations approved by Parliament, but they are not under the direct control of Parliament. Our “ridings” or “constituencies”, (i.e. our equivalent of districts) have their lines drawn by Election Canada on the bases of population density and convenience. Certainly some arbitrary decisions have to be made at times, but I invite anyone to examine the riding maps (which are not drawn based on past voting history) for the three most populous provinces; Ontario (106 ridings), Quebec (75) or British Columbia (36) and pick out the most irregularly-shaped riding. It might be interesting to compare it to the shapes of districts in California, Texas and New York, which can indeed be redrawn based on past voting history.
Further, the notion of targeting an agency like ACORN (or even having an agency like ACORN) is unusual, here. The registration processes in Canada need no specialized middlemen. Elections Canada can draw information from numerous places in order to build and maintain its database of eligible voters (formally, the National Register of Electors) and why shouldn’t they? Every time I’ve filled out a tax return (or at least as far back as 2004, the earliest of my tax returns I can readily find), I’ve checked the box to authorize the Canada Revenue Agency to share my name, address and birthdate with Elections Canada. I’ve never heard of anyone who made a point of announcing their refusal to do so (though I’m sure we have some Freeman-on-the-Land types bouncing around) because I have a plausibly-established confidence that I’m not going to get screwed over at any point by someone who thinks I’m likely to vote the “wrong” way.
That said, there are indeed significant differences between Canadian and American elections. A Canadian typically is choosing a single candidate or a single issue, not facing potentially dozens of individual decisions like choosing a presidential ticket, a senator, a governor, a congressman, a state senator, a state legislator, a mayor, an alderman, a judge, a city supervisor, a sheriff, a dozen or more yes-or-no ballot initiatives, or some combination of the above, on a single day. While the idea of strict ballot standardization nationwide is tempting and could improve efficiency and accuracy, the amount of needed local customization remains very high.
Yes, I was asked for a piece of ID the last time I voted. No, this was not always the case in previous elections. Yes, I recognize the possibility that an eligible voter might not be able to satisfy any of the rather lengthy list of allowable forms of identification at a polling station. I don’t see any efforts, ongoing or pending, to shorten these lists, however.
Anyway, is it really a moral issue to object to a possible avenue for election abuse, or can it simply be the belief that elections should be fair, should be consistent and should be accurate, with the elected officials being required to conform to the whims of the voters and not the other way around?
That doesn’t sound like me, but I’m sure with enough aggressive parsing and liberal use of unlikely and clearly unintended word definitions, something I’ve said in this thread might possibly bear some similarity to the above, if one squints.
Of course voter id is popular, it is such a simple commonplace that it doesn’t require any serious consideration. You need id to purchase beer, cigarettes, sometimes even weapons! That kind of simple, common-sense sort of question is almost bound to get the results that favor voter id.
And there is nothing wrong with that, in and of itself. And, we are given to understand, the result is similar if the question is posed with a “what if it imposes a burden on some citizens”, it remains popular.
But what if you removed the question of voter id, entirely? What if you asked “Do you favor allowing a political party to place barriers and obstructions on their opposition for the purpose of tilting the election results more in their favor?”?
Which is the actual question here. Not the validity, or even the neutral value of voter id. But using that value as a means to a sordid and partisan result. Bricker can assert and defend the value of voter id until the cows come home and pigs fly, without having any impact on *that *question whatsoever. And he does, whenever he can draw the conversation onto more comfortable grounds.
Said before, say again: put voter id into an outreach program, make it easy and convenient to obtain, couple it with a voter registration drive to draw more citizens into the process, and you have my enthusiastic support! Yowzah, lets do it!
Republicans do not like voter registration drives, they’ve already got theirs, and are unlikely to get any of ours. They have no interest in expanding the voter base, 'struth, they resist any such efforts. For people who like to insist that the vast majority of American favor their positions, and that America is a center-right nation, they have little actual faith in that proposition.
Put baldly, they don’t want a lot of previously unregistered voters on the rolls, they will lose.
For once in this thread can you actually read what Bricker wrote and respond to it, not to some straw man? He didn’t say “those noble Republican law authors carefully researched this before writing their spotless laws”. He was using availability of public transportation as an example of something that varies between states, meaning that identically-worded laws could create different burdens in different locations, which is a fairly indisputable point.
Seriously, there are plenty of legitimate rebuttals to Bricker’s points without stooping to this kind of bullshit.
You’re not just policing your ilk-mates because Bricker kept complaining that you wouldn’t, are you?
Not sure if this has been posted here:
Study finds strong evidence for discriminatory intent behind voter ID laws
In other news, water wet, Pope Catholic.
Well, I feel like it’s reasonable to go into already-angry-pit-threads and start debating the denizens, risking a shitstorm. And it’s also reasonable NOT to go into those threads and start GD threads with very clearly laid out positions instead (possibly linking to them from the pit thread). What strikes me as kind of silly is to go into the already-angry-pit-threads, and not do a particularly good job of laying out what your position is but gosh darn all the angry people are WRONG and you are RIGHT… and then tut-tutting when you are met by more anger than, in isolation, your posts might seem to deserve.
“Gain ground”? Do you have some tracking data that indicates that among 100 politically undecided SDMB posters, there was a push of +11% over towards the liberal position because of this pit thread before you entered it?
I mean, there some reason to what you’re saying, but you talk a lot about convincing the lurkers… do you think lurkers reading this thread were likely to be swayed to your side of the position? More effectively than if you’d just started a GD thread laying out your actual position clearly? Heck, you’ve been debating with this particular style for years… how much success have you had in getting people to agree with you about things?
There are two aspects to undue burden… one is the cost that is imposed by the law, the other is at what level that cost becomes undue (with cost being converted into some kind of universal units of “human inconvenience” or something). The first varies from state to state based on vagaries of geography, weather, public transportation. The second, at least for your moral purposes, should be an invariant that is up to you. It should be possible for you to look at a court ruling and say, “well, they correctly analyze a bunch of factors, decide that the burden level is X, and then say that X is not undue, while to me that does seem like it’s undue”.
But it’s not a black and white issue. A level of burden implied by voter ID laws isn’t either super-peachy-fine or horribly-disenfranchising. At some level there needs to be a legal cutoff so the court can either strike down a law or not strike down a law, but that doesn’t mean that those are the only two choices that ethical debaters can have.
If law X is passed in Georgia, and I say “I think that law presents an undue burden” and you don’t, and it gets challenged in the courts, and the challenge is tossed out at every single level by unanimous rulings, that strongly supports your claim.
If another law X is passed in Alabama, and I say “I think that law presents an undue burden”, and you don’t, and it gets challenged in courts, and 10 different courts around the state come to different conclusions, and then it goes to the state supreme court, and a 5-4 decision upholds the law, with a dissenting justice writing a blistering diatribe, etc., well, it’s still exactly as much a law as the Georgia law, but that situation strongly suggests that whatever burden it imposes is awfully close to the “undue burden” line. Which means you might want to at least double check your position… was whatever purpose that law was serving really all that important in the first place, etc.
Similarly if 10 laws are proposed in 10 different states, all about the same issue, presumably written by like-minded people who were at some level collaborating, and several of those laws get struck down and the rest don’t, well, the ones that didn’t get struct down are still 100% laws, but again there’s strong circumstantial evidence that the laws that passed are likely to be brushing up against whatever standard of decency it is that caused the other ones to get struct down
Umm, not sure what you’re saying here. I certainly never said “I find these laws to be odious. So they are. I win. Debate over,” or anything like that. What I’ve been trying to do in this thread (at least not in the innumerable tangents and digressions) is (a) suss out exactly what your position is, which has been surprisingly difficult given how much you’ve posted in this thread, and (b) trying to come up with reasons to get you to question your positions and conclusions.
Possibly. Unless he actually makes me do it less just to be contrarian.
Yes, but at the same time, he claims that there are no “onerous burdens”. He does not say, “Well, Pennsylvania’s public transport isn’t so hot, so maybe there are onerous burdens there, but not in Georgia”. He offers a blanket statement. Well, I ask, how does he know this, on what does he base his certainty? Was the subject carefully researched in all of the various state legislatures? Or any, for that matter?
I think the question is entirely legitimate. I see no reason to withdraw or modify it.
Because of the FOR EXAMPLE. He made no claim that burdens DID vary by public transportation. He used that as an example of reasons that burdens MIGHT vary, based on a question I was asking him about whether “undue burden” always meant the same thing state by state.
I think it is entirely plausible that a law which had specific ID regulations in it might be acceptable in one state and not in another, based on various factors which cause the two states to be different from each other, one of which might well be availability of public transportation.
I also think the vast majority of the Republicans who pushed for these laws don’t give a rat’s ass about these kinds of subtleties… but that doesn’t mean that variations like that can exist and can be discussed.
Ooh! Ooh! I wanna be policed by my ilk! Are there handcuffs?
My safe word is “John Mace.”
I can only speak for Texas, since that’s where I live. Getting an ID in Texas is a piece of cake. It’s minimal cost, minimal time.
Let’s assume that you want to vote in Texas and you do not have a lick of ID at all (how you got to be voting age without getting an ID is beyond me, but I digress). Here is what is required. From VoteTexas.gov:
Let’s say that you decide to get a personal identification card from the state. You need to have supporting documents. There are a ton of them that you can use (list here). For example, you can get the form required to get a certified copy of a Houston birth certificate on-line, fill it out and mail it with the payment, and they will mail it to you. You don’t need to go in person, but if you do, the process in the Vital Statistics office takes about 30 minutes.
You then go to a DPS office to be photographed. It’ll cost a big, honking $16 and less if you are over 60.
This whole thing about IDs being difficult to get is a horseshit argument, as is the claim that voter id laws are intended to disenfranchise people.
I’m prepared to accept that Clothahump is 99.9% correct.
Of course, it’s the 0.1% that is important in this discussion.
You need to pay someone, anyone, for the right to vote?
Here in the People’s Republic of Minnesota, AKA Baja Canada, you may simply show up at the appropriate polling place with a registered voter who knows you and is willing to attest, under penalty of law, that you are who you say you are and that you are a citizen. And you vote. That very day.
Well, goodness gracious, what about ultra super dooper close elections, what disastrous consequences for voter confidence might ensue? Had one, Franken/Coleman, decided by a butterfly eyelash. If there is a dreadful crisis in voter confidence, I have yet to hear of it.
You live in Houston yes? Condolences. The attitude of Oakland and the climate of Calcutta. Are there no citizens in Houston for whom sixteen dollars is a significant amount of money? Are you comfortable with the idea that their voting access is less than the voting access of someone for whom sixteen bucks is no big deal?
As a native Texan, I am well aware of the long standing tradition of retail politics. I’d like to see that changed. Change is coming to Texas, and the pillars of Heaven will shake. Lord knows, not soon enough, but it is coming…
Max, with all due respect, I find your syntax confusing, especially that last sentence. Might you take a moment to review and clarify as need be? As Eugene V. Debs is my witness, I intend no snark whatsoever…
For even those analogies to hold up against voting, you would be required to show your ID every time you drank a beer, smoked a cigarette or shot a gun. These people are already registered to vote; they have the legal right. Additional sticks in their wheels are solely to reduce the number of liberal voters .
If you have to choose between all of that, including a day standing in line at DPS (come on, man) and the day’s pay you need just to buy groceries, which would it be? Or are you suggesting that there is no one so hard up as to have to make that decision? If that’s the case, I suggest taking a quick drive around your city and seeing for yourself. Even stop and talk with a few people you meet that way; see what they think.
Wow I am doing a bad job of typing today. Let’s try again:
Because of the FOR EXAMPLE. He made no claim that burdens DID vary by public transportation. He used that as an example of reasons that burdens MIGHT vary, based on a question I was asking him about whether “undue burden” always meant the same thing state by state.
I think it is entirely plausible that a law which had specific ID regulations in it might be acceptable in one state and not in another, based on various factors which cause the two states to be different from each other, one of which might well be availability of public transportation.
I also think the vast majority of the Republicans who pushed for these laws don’t give a rat’s ass about these kinds of subtleties… but that doesn’t mean that variations like that CAN’T exist and SHOULDN’T be discussed.
In other words, it’s possible for Bricker and I do have a side discussion about whether the impact of “you must go to a DMV” type laws is identical in every state or not, and for Bricker to suggest “some states have more DMVs, and more public transit, and thus in those states it is easier to get to the DMV”, and for me to agree that Bricker has a point, without either of us actually doing a bunch of research and coming up with a chart of precisely which states do or do not have what amounts of public transit and how many DMVs each state has and so forth. Nor is agreeing with Bricker about that minor point a concession that he is in any way right about the larger point… it could still certainly be the case that every one of those laws is odious and antidemocratic, even if there are state-by-state variations in exactly how much of a burden otherwise-identical voter ID laws would create.
Hope that clears things up.
From the concluding paragraph:
Are you saying that the legislators in this study answered their e-mail personally?