Why the fuck does that matter? You are free to imagine that the moral majority of silent readers stands firmly at your back if it makes you feel better.
Why does it matter?
There’s a huge gulf between, “I am fully aware of everything that’s being said; I understand exactly what arguments are in play, and i still think you’re wrong,” and “I know you’re wrong because the position you support is wrong, and that’s really all I need to think about.”
It’s one reason I’ve asked to see if people who ARE actively participating in the thread can correctly reproduce my side, my arguments. Lobohan thinks that my message is, “They don’t have ID? Fuck the lazy cunts. HAW HAW HAW!” So it’s obvious he has no understanding of what I’ve said. If that applies to everyone reading except MaxtheVool, then there really isn’t much point to my discussions.
If, on the other hand, there’s a mostly silent audience that understands – even if they don’t agree – there’s a point to continuing.
Maybe he understands perfectly what you said. If that’s not what you MEANT then try again.
To be fair, I don’t think that’s your message. Your message is: “Voter ID is legal, and has a valid neutral justification, so even if a few GOP legislators did it for partisan gain, that doesn’t taint the overall laws. It isn’t an onerous burden to have people who want to vote, spend a few hours getting an ID. If they really want to vote, they will put in the effort. Especially when they have several years to do it.”
I get that that’s what you’re selling. Your motivation, from what I have seen, is the HAW HAW HAW part.
Translation: I will stop debating and declare victory, because the SD is so liberal I simply can’t be heard.
1200+ posts in one thread? If he’s not being heard, it sure isn’t from lack of trying.
Yes.
That’s exactly correct.
Why have you imputed other arguments to me? Why have you miscast my position dozens of times, if you understood it?
if you think that position, the one that you accurately summarized, is in error, then why can’t you show how it’s in error? Why make up all these distortions?
No, no – not remotely. I just wanted to understand whether I was actually being understood. The answer seems to be yes, at least by you.
So since you understand that position, tear it down. Address that argument, the one you just summarized.
I know that you have chosen not to acknowledge my quotes from you about the issue of voter’s in Sauk City. But I’ve brought that up precisely because it exemplifies my perception of your argument.
And again, your take was that it was not problematic for the voter ID facility there to be open only EVERY 5th WEDNESDAY, because people could simply drive or take a taxi to the nearest facility 20 miles away.
To me, that pretty much sounds like you are saying fuck the lazy cunts.
How otherwise should I interpret your position re: Sauk City residents?
In my view, a one-time twenty mile trip to be taken any convenient time over a two-year period is not onerous, and especially true when a closer facility is open once a month and that trip may not be needful.
Is it really fair to translate that as, “Fuck the lazy cunts?” Really?
I was attributing motivations, based on my take of your behavior. Chuckling that it was the law, so everyone can just get bent, and the like.
I know that you aren’t literally saying, “Fuck 'em”, I’m saying that your position shows a dismissal of the problems caused by the actions you’re supporting.
As I say, you’ve never literally said, “Fuck 'em”, however, you have made it clear that the individual people suffering the results of the legislation you’re defending aren’t a significant consideration for you.
As for the deconstruction:
I agree that the law may well be legal. That will ultimately be up to what is a very partisan court. The SCOTUS may not come to the “right” decision because of partisan leanings, but I accept that they are final.
I would say that even if the law is legal, that has no bearing on whether the law is good public policy. So regardless of the legality of the laws, I think, the way they are being implemented by the GOP makes them bad ideas.
I accept that I cannot change this via imperial decree. But I can still try to convince others that what they think is a good law, is in fact a cynically designed cudgel meant to keep people the GOP doesn’t want to vote from voting.
Onerous burden is in the eye of the beholder. I grew up on welfare, and I didn’t have a car. Since it was in Hawaii, it was’t as bad as some places, we have a good bus system. But taking a day out of a backbreaking week to wait in line at the DMV is easier said than done.
I’m pretty well off now. But I remember what it was like to struggle like that. And voting, an infinitesimal flicker of power, seems awfully small compared to losing a day’s wages or having to navigate a complicated bureaucracy. My mother now has trouble walking. When we last went to the social security office to hammer out a problem with the paperwork, it taxed her greatly. And asking someone in her position to just jaunt down to the DMV and stand in line a few hours is a greater burden than someone with a strong body may realize.
But the most important issue is that it’s basic human nature. If you sell widgets and you raise the price on them fewer people will buy. If you raise the price on voting, by tacking hours or days of effort, fewer people will vote. If you target a demographic so that only they pay the price, it will mean fewer of those people will vote. Which, to my mind is repugnant.
And aside from how vile it is (and I’d find it just as vile if it were Democrats doing it), it doesn’t actually serve the stated purpose of the law. To improve voter confidence, or maintain the integrity of elections.
If you make it harder for thousands of people of one party to vote, to stop a literal handful of fraudulent in-person votes, you’ve distorted the election far, far worse than the fraudulent voters would have. Especially since the fraudulent votes would likely be split between the parties.
Oooh oooh, do me next!
Certainly people are a legitimate consideration – this particular burden, however, is so small that I think it – the burden-- is not a significant consideration for me. I hope that distinction makes sense: I’m not dismissing the people, but rather the size and difficulty of this burden.
Actually, SCOTUS has already ruled on the issue, in case from 2008 called Crawford v. Marion County, 553 U.S. 181. (PDF link).
Sure. The fact that it’s legal doesn’t make it good public policy. But it should make you reluctant to imply that it’s not legal.
The reason I keep asking, “What’s your proposed solution?” is because I honestly don’t see what you’re suggesting – other than, I guess, legislatures reconsidering the wisdom of Voter ID. That’s absolutely understandable, but I feel like your comments go well beyond that. I feel like you suggest that there is some wrongness or illegitimacy to these laws that goes beyond your convictions that they are poor policy.
Yes. I grew up poor, as well. My father was in immigrant from El Salvador, and we had no money for non-essentials. So while I admit that onerous is in the eye of beholder, I’d like to also say that my eye isn’t blind to being poor.
But the concept that it’s in the eye of beholder – doesn’t that cut both ways? By that I mean that many people don’t think this is onerous. People that cannot physically stand in line at the DMV may also have trouble standing in line at the polls – they can always vote absentee. So I understand completely that you weigh the requirements for getting a photo ID and worry that they are too onerous, but I hope you accept that other people can weigh those same requirements and decide, in good faith, that they are not onerous.
But, see, I think it does. I think that when people have to show ID to vote, they feel as though there is a process that secures the system. And the courts have agreed that this is a valid rationale. Again, I get that the problem it solves is very rare, but I remember thinking, during the Florida debacle, how crazy it was that all these questions were only now coming up. It’s very destructive to public confidence to have to argue after the fact that a particular method is fair or biased. Before the election, no one thought to question the “butterfly ballot.” Afterwards, there was much dispute about how confusing it might have been. Some of the criticism was muted by the fact that it had been designed by a Democrat, but even so, it fueled intense debate. To this day, we can’t say that if the ballot had been designed more clearly, we would still have had a “President Bush,” at all. This is an example of things that affect voter confidence.
It’s the same approach that James Randi uses to debunk psychics: he gets them to agree, up front, that the parameters of his test are fair. Because long experience has taught him that after the test fails, people will discover all sorts of reasons to explain away the results they don’t like. It’s much better – it makes for much better confidence in the results – if we don’t wait for a crisis and then start trying to ensure reliable results.
So I know that many politicians are pushing these rules because they think it will help them. But even so, the idea that we should verify voter identity is a good one, no matter what the motive is in pushing it. I think if voters see that there’s a process to ensure they are who they say they are, that creates respect for the outcome ahead of time. It’s another way of agreeing on the rules first.
Except, of course, the people negatively impacted. The people who witness the spectacle of Republican legislators deliberately setting out to make it more difficult for them to vote, what of them? Do you imagine that they are brimming over with reborn confidence? Does their confidence in the system have some lesser value, they are not worthy?
They may well feel that Republican legislators are deliberately setting out to make it more difficult for them to vote. but they also feel – I hope – an interest that the actual process of voting is limited to those who are really allowed to vote.
I have to take an eye test every time I renew my license. Although I need glasses for reading, so far I haven’t failed the driving eye test. As I approach that infernal little machine to peer into it and start reciting letters and numbers, I sometimes get irritated that I have to take this test. But I recognize that ultimately, the aim is to have drivers that can see things well enough to drive. So even though I don’t think I need to take this test, I recognize the value of having it.
So my hope is that anyone who considers Voter ID concludes that the ultimate result is in to improve election results, if only by a small amount.
Even you don’t believe that.
I have several responses to that:
(1) You’re viewing this through the lens of someone who not only presumably has the time, money, and automobile to make a twenty mile trip once in a two-year period, but also has the health, the knowledge and understanding of bureaucracy, the confidence of dealing with similar situations in the past, and so forth. I wouldn’t say that your attitude is “fuck the lazy people”, but it certainly resembles “aww, c’mon, this is EASY. I mean, it’s easy for me, right?”.
(2) This may just be an agree-to-disagree issue, but I’m also incredibly uncomfortable with an elected body taking an action that will lower turnout of the opposing party no matter HOW trivial the burden. For instance, the east-side-dominated-city-council schedules a special election for the day of the west-side-high-school homecoming carnival. That may not be illegal. Heck, it’s possible that there’s no way to phrase a law sufficiently carefully that it COULD be illegal. But it’s clearly a dirty trick. And yes, dirty tricks are just as dirty when Democrats do them. We don’t ask you to leave your party over those dirty tricks, but we do ask you to denounce them, much as you frequently ask SDMB liberals not to stop being liberals, but at least to denounce assholish posts from other SDMB liberals.
RE: post 5392
Gosh, when you look at it that way, the Republicans who passed this are really *praising *such citizens! Congratulating them, in advance, for their willingness to “take one for the team”! In fact, they were so certain of their self-sacrificing devotion that they didn’t even need to consult them about it, of course they were willing!
So, heaps of praise rained down on the Pubbies from the affected citizenry? “Thank you for extending me the opportunity to stand up for voter confidence!”. Why, there must have been thousands and thousands of such statements! OK, hundreds. A dozen? One?
(You might avail yourself of the custom of reminding that you will be here all week, try the veal and tip your server, as a way of letting the reader know that you have posted an exercise in droll Republican humor…)
“Improve election results”? I assume you mean “improve precision and recountability of election results” as opposed to “improve how much the election results accurately reflect the will of the electorate”. Because at best you’re gaining a TINY bit in column A for a potentially huge loss in column B.
No, “improve election results” is right. More Republican votes, less of the other kind. Might well be his most truthy statement so far.
I already tried the “Type I Error vs. Type II Error” bit on Bricker. Perhaps I was being too technical, though.
Anyway, that he’s responding to you and Lobohan/elucidator but not me is interesting (to me, anyway). I guess I fall into the uncanny valley of people who Bricker can’t ignore because they’re being too polite (and thus cutting them off would make him look bad) and people he won’t ignore because he thinks if keeps talking to them, a magical moment will occur when the lurkers conclude that he is more mature than they.
I hit the target. I win, I guess.
I see it. And you are correct - the post from Max is what debate is supposed to be like.
Your so-called “chain of logic” requires that everyone agree with the assumptions that you start with. Bricker very obviously doesn’t, and he has called you on that point repeatedly.