I was only asking for indictments, I specifically said convictions were not necessary. Further, there’s a later post of mine showing a clear willingness to negotiate standards for evaluation. Please don’t rewrite history in such a readily-refutable manner; it’s not challenging.
The voter confidence issue remains unforgotten, meanwhile.
Bless your heart, I’m not complaining, I’m making fun of you! Whoever complains about a sound thrashing from a Nerf bat?
Oh, a joke!
Which parts of your posts that looked like arguments were actually jokes, then? I guess I got no sense of humor. They all looked equally like attempts at argument to me.
I cannot think of a way to quantify voter confidence, but it seems to me almost beyond cavil that (a) there is such a thing as voter confidence; (b) our current system of government depends upon its existence; and (c) learning that we accept and count illegal votes weakens it by some measure – that is, the delta is negative.
Now, can I quantify that measure in some way? No.
Bricker: For someone who has quite flatteringly praised my posts to this thread, you don’t always seem to, you know, actually RESPOND to those posts…
There may be such a thing as love, too, but I don’t see it as a good foundation for legislation. At the very least, if you’re going to assume that X exists and is affected by illegal votes to Y extent, it is not unreasonable to explore how attempts to remedy Y might create Z, with the potential to also affect X.
Anyway you found some illegal voters. Good for you. Now explain how voter ID is supposed to stop them and, for laughs, why it wouldn’t just be better to improve the registration process, which by your cite is where the problem begins.
By the way, I’d suggest one indicator for lowered voter confidence is a statistically significantly lower return rate for incumbents after disputed elections. Just off the top of my head.
It takes much longer to craft a response to a post that has correctly identified the subject it is replying to, does not advance a strawman, and typically acknowledges in fair-minded fashion any obvious inconsistencies.
Fair, as long as you don’t forget entirely.
Here, obviously, I agree. I believe this comment should be directed at elucidator, who seemed to either disagree or be genuinely baffled by the concept. (Or, possibly, “making a joke.”)
I’m not sure I see how that changes the burden. In debate, the affirmative side always bears the burden of persuasion.
Moreover, as for the vast majority of Voter ID laws, I don’t believe it’s a matter of “people are proposing,” which would indeed suggest a burden falling on the ones proposing the adoption of a new law. Instead, these laws have already been passed. They exist. The discussion here may be, “Let’s get rid of them,” or it may simply be, “They are a bad idea.” Either way, the persuasive burden falls to the one asserting the claim.
In the specific exchange that gave rise to this discussion of the burden of proof, however, the claim was almost exactly of that form: people who move between states vote Democratic, case closed. In fact, that tactic was employed almost immediately following elucidator’s chiding of another poster for offering uncited conclusions. But of course elucidator was “joking.”
The problem is, Max, that in this country, at present, there really isn’t any mechanism to change the rules of an election except by action taken by the elected body. There certainly could be steps taken to mitigate the direct influence of the elected body – bipartisan commissions, etc. – but ultimately the appointment of those commissions will be done by the elected officials. So it seems to me that what you’re looking for is some sort of an external body to veto or modify or create in the first instance rules that govern elections, and there just ain’t any such animal in the United States, so far as I know.
Sure. But do you make room for the possibility that not everyone views that context with the same jaundiced eye that you do?
These laws are all passed, signed, approved by the courts – at what point do you believe it’s appropriate to say, “I still oppose them, but they are legitimate?”
Same question: YOU think it’s not that big a deal. Others disagree. They have convinced enough legislators, governors, and judges to accept this solution – or to cynically support this solution for nefarious ends, I suppose. How many bites to the apple can you demand?
“Unable?” No. Chose not to. And that’s a big part of what we keep coming back to.
True enough. But it’s also the easiest to tackle.
Absentee ballots are also rife with potential for fraud. (Anecdote time – my mother is blind, and requires assistance when voting. A couple of election cycles ago, the person assisting her was shocked to hear her ask to vote for Republicans, and explained to her how much help the Democrats give to the blind, and how she – the helper – could ‘tell some stories’ about the Republican candidate; ultimately my mom was left wondering how the ballot was actually marked.)
But at the same time, the AARP tends to strongly lobby against changes that impose any additional difficulties for elderly voters. So adding verification measures to absentee ballots is not as politically feasible as other steps.
But it’s not any kind of a fatal flaw to tackle reform piecemeal, to choose to take one step only, especially when other steps are simply not practical. To do so would be to make the perfect the enemy of the good: to say that until we can completely solve the problem, we ought not to start.
It might be more meaningful, as you say – but that does not make it UNmeaningful to do isolated steps in isolation.
You carve out this tiny aspect of meddling with election results as though it has some special and independent meaning. But gerrymandering can ensure that everyone gets to vote and yet their votes are diluted or meaningless. I consider the pernicious motives that sometimes animate gerrymandering to be more harmful than any which animate Voter ID, and more to the point I consider them as birds of a feather – that is, there is no meaningful reason to treat them with any more or less disdain. And my outrage meter is broken.
I don’t get why this really matters. A law could be perfectly formatted and procedurally correct and STILL be a craven and unfair abuse of power.
Yes.
But none of those terms are objectively verifiable. You think it’s unfair. I think it’s fair.
So I’ll simply repeat, “Fair!” And you rejoin, “No, unfair!”
This doesn’t seem a useful approach.
Or we could, ahead of time, agree on a framework for “fair” and “unfair.”
When James Randi began his mission of debunking self-proclaimed psychics, dowsers, mediums, and the like, he adopted this policy: let’s agree, now, on the terms. Then later, after the fact, you cannot claim the test is unfair, because you agreed to the terms ahead of time.
This situation is similar. We have a process for making law. The process has generated a result you don’t like. But the fact is that you cannot guarantee results you like if we all get a say in selecting people to lead us. Sometimes, these people create laws I don’t like. But I recognize that I can’t demand that these laws be rejected.
Sez who?
Of course you can! Been doing it for years now, with varying degrees of success. Its that whole “petition for a redress of grievances” thingamabob.
Wait, was that a joke? Trouble with Republican humor, its a lot like homeopathic medicine…
Interesting point.
I chose the word “demand,” because it carries the implication of a forceful statement in which you say that something must be done. This is distinct from “petition,” which implies a request for something to be done.
But I grant you that one can, in fact, demand that these laws be rejected - and as you point out, that demand may well not have any effect.
So perhaps I should say instead, “If you demand that these laws are rejected, it will be an impotent gesture without something more than simply the demand to animate it.”
What? Our pot laws have been rejected by several states and it’s only a matter of time before they are rejected everywhere. Sex offender registries are on a lot of people’s lists of Things To Undo. Forbidding marriage between gays … Rejected!
Now the people who made these things happens may not have been in a position to DEMAND that the laws will be rejected in the knowledge that the laws would be rejected just because they alone said so. But en masse, they certainly got their way.
That would be the difference between an impotent gesture and a rigid, firm, fully engorged gesture.
Absolutely.
I guess I’m suggesting there’s a difference in tone. So far as I can tell, those seeking the legalization of marijuana did not adopt the position that, as a matter of right, marijuana should be legal.
Instead, they argued for the benefits, and swayed public opinion. They did not say that those who wished to keep marijuana use a crime were worthless motherfucking liars with the civic virtue of a sewer-rat’s tapeworm.
About voter confidence, a question which sticks in my craw, that I keep bringing up, only to see it set aside without comment…
We have accepted that voter confidence is a factor, it exists, we accept that even though it cannot be quantified. Personally, I can’t quite give it the crucial and essential significance that the Counselor insists that it deserves. After all, people voted before there were voter id laws, voted afterwards as well. And since we cannot measure this factor, we are left with reasonable assessments, or “guessing”, is it is most commonly known.
At any rate, those people who wring their hands and fret over the dreadful threat of voter fraud are reassured. What a blessing that must be to such persons! Those of us who are comforted by reason and rationality, of course, are not much affected. We weren’t worried about unicorn stampedes before, so unicorn leash laws do not gladden our hearts.
But what about the subjects of this malign bit of legalistic skulduggery? What about the voter confidence of people who witness the spectacle of a legislature rigging the game against them? What about their confidence? IIRC, the Counselor has offered us the bland assurance that their confidence is bolstered as well, since they are equally free from the dreadful fear of voter fraud. Had he a sense of humor, I might think he was kidding. Alas, no.
Voter confidence does not rest solely upon the question of fraudulent voting, there is also the matter of equality before the law, that each voter is assured that his vote is equally important, equally worthy. I submit that this value is of far more direct significance to a healthy republic that the chimera of voter fraud.
The poor, the brown, the otherwise unworthy have been offered decades of insult to any notion of their equality before the law. And now this. Now, a Republican legislature can offer one more insult to the dream of equality before the law, and get clean away with it. Indeed, the Counselor would blithely brush it aside, it is not important, not when compared to the central and crucial issue of Republican voter confidence.
Why? We are not advised as to why, we are invited to take the Leap of Faith by the alpha lemming. His voter confidence is crucial to the well being of the Republic, theirs, not so much. Neither are quantifiable, of course, but no matter, we have his reliable testimony that it is so. He says it is so, and, if necessary, he will say it again.
But I am not sure he was actually said it at all, so I will offer the opportunity. Tell us why.
Tell us why the voter confidence of the ill-informed, who actually believe in voter fraud is so important that the voter confidence of others must be sacrificed to reassure them? It is not an “onerous burden”? Well, that’s nice, so a light kick in the nuts is not as bad as a hard one? No doubt, no doubt, but why should they so afflicted *at all?
*
Is it liberal hypocrisy? Did the brown, the poor and otherwise unworthy fail to react with sufficient outrage at the horror of the Massachusetts Massacre? So they deserve this, tit for tat, and all that?
if you cannot measure voter confidence in the first place, how can you tell us that one form of it is weightier than another? On what objective basis do you justify your certainty?
Counselor, it is not so much the burden, onerous or otherwise, it is the* insult!* An insult, I remind you, they have done nothing whatsoever to deserve.
The presence of illegal votes is clearly an issue – that is, it is obvious why permitting illegal votes would decrease confidence in the final tally of votes. (Whether this decrease is an angstrom or a kilometer is obviously still a matter of disagreement). But the simple fact is that an illegal vote changes the final tally of votes – its existence as a matter of error is self-evident, even if there is debate about how much we should care about the error.
The kind of confidence elucidator talks about is not a matter of error. It’s a matter of choice. A person – be he poor and brown or wealthy and brown or wealthy and pasty or poor and pasty – who casts a vote will have his vote counted. If he wants to vote, and is legally entitled to vote, he can. No Voter ID law prevents him from doing so.
So why would this shake his confidence?
It’s obvious that hurdles placed in the way of otherwise qualified voters will decrease voting disproportionately among those with fewer resources to overcome those hurdles, whether the decrease is an angstrom or a kilometer, and consequently the decrease in the confidence of those who wish that the voting be maximally representative seems equally obvious.
That you ask that question in earnest stretches credulity.