I’m not a Republican, and I see nothing in this post that explains why minorities have any more difficulty obtaining ID than anyone else.
Let’s get real, I admit that it is the poor who are unlikely to a)have, or b) get, a government identification card. Yes, many of the poor are minorities, but not all.
The only reason the term minority is used in this context is that it implies that voter ID supporters are racist.
If the problem is that the poor can’t or won’t get ID, then let’s fix that. But continuing to use the phrase “poor and minorities” is disingenuous, twinkletoes.
I live in a state that has same-day voter registration, and the requirements for proving residence are amazingly sloppy in this age of Photoshop. I want safeguards, even if it is only 8 votes per election that are fraudulent
A question to conservatives (because I know what the liberals are gonna say): when the PA House Majority Leader (a Republican in this case) says that voter ID laws are "gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania," what did he mean?
I can’t read minds, but I can offer a guess: he meant that he believed that in prior years there had been a non-trivial amount of pro-Democratic voter fraud, and the Voter ID laws now in place will prevent similar problems this year.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha… (phwew! let me rest a minute)
So Obama won PA in 2008 by 3,276,363 to 2,655,885, a margin of 10.3%. Indeed, that margin would certainly qualify as “a non-trivial” one, if it were due to Democratic voter fraud.
And you honestly suggest there is a snowball’s chance in hell that he, or anybody else, actually believes this?
I’d agree that poverty, not race or ethnicity, is the factor that has to do with difficulty of getting ID.
But the poor are disproportionately minorities, and minorities disproportionately vote Democratic. And that’s where the connection with election outcomes comes in.
2a) You can’t make that connection without using the term ‘minorities’ or some equivalent.
Because of (1) and (2), if someone wanted to change the composition of the electorate to make it more Republican-leaning, without changing the composition of the population of adult citizens, voter ID requirements would have that effect.
[QUOTE]
OK. But by and large, the voter ID laws don’t fix that. That’s the point. The people who pass these laws aren’t interested in safeguards, per se; they want to change the composition of the electorate using safeguards as an excuse.
I can understand your sentiment. But if voting is a right, then there has to be a balance. You can’t just kick people off the voting rolls by the thousands and tens of thousands just to prevent 8 fraudulent votes.
That’s really the question: is voting a right or a privilege? If it’s a right, then any burdens put on its exercise have to be proportionate to and germane to the actual threat to the integrity of the voting process. If it’s a privilege, then voting can be burdened with whatever requirements one wants to put on it.
I think you should go back and reread what I wrote.
Nowhere did I write that he believes Obama’s victory margin in 2008 was due to voter fraud. You just made that up.
And, indeed, if your version of his remarks is correct, the claim is still implausible. He believes that over 600,000 people in Pennsylvania won’t be able to vote because they won’t have ID?
OK counselor, you wrote about “prior years” and so not necessarily 2008. Or perhaps yours wasn’t a reference to the presidential election, even though the original context involves Romney’s pending victory. A victory to be gained by preventing that aforementioned non-trivial amount of pro-Democratic voter fraud. Or maybe you didn’t mean that Obama’s re-election constitutes a “similar problem” to be prevented. So yeah, I guess I just made that up. For a really unusual value of ‘made up’.
So what exactly did you mean when you said
that would “allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania”?
You simpering twat. A solution that causes more people to not be able to vote than would cast fraudulent ballots is by definition stupid.
I have a button, if I push it, I will save 5 random people from from dying of heart attacks, but 15,000 random people will immediately die from heart attacks.
Bricker Logic: *Push it! Push it real good!!1111; 1l1j *
While there are a significant percentage of voting age citizens belonging to certain demographics without IDs, it’d be difficult to demonstrate that the number of disenfranchised voters would be a significant enough voting bloc in the upcoming election to swing it.
What the statement demonstrates is the mens rea of the Republicans. They cannot, in good faith, believe that there are six hundred thousand instances of voter fraud in favour of the Democrats in Pennsyltucky. Neither can they honestly believe they’ll be capable of disenfranchising that number of voters. I can only assume they wish to pass the measure in order to disenfranchise a few of them and that the trend continues until it’s a wholly Republican state. Either that, or the guy making the comments is campaigning for Obama.
ALEC. Look it up, if you don’t know about it. Its a Republican operation masquerading as civic virtue. Its very well funded, though some corporate sponsors have bailed when they saw what big teeth Grandma had.
It isn’t so much about how Pennsylvania may or may not be in play, its a full court press all across the nation. By pressing for “voter fraud prevention” everywhere, they can mask the more reliable goal, of trimming off some Dem votes in close elections. This way, their pious bloviations about voter fraud become more or less “credible”. If they only did it in places where it might have practical effect, it kinda gives the game away.
The people behind this aren’t stupid. And the combination of cynicism, money and power is daunting. They will get away with it.
Now, of course, there are some people who totally believe this crap. Because America, as everybody knows, is a center-right country. And most Americans, as everybody knows, are inclined to favor the Republicans. Hence, it follows that the only way Dems win anything, ever, is by treachery, deceit and fraud.
Here’s what I say he meant: in prior years, to include 2008, there was plenty of voter fraud. Of course, Obama’s numbers were so large in 2008 that even stopping all the fraud would not have changed his win of the state. This year, with the weak economy and so many voters seeing what a poor President he is, the state will be much much closer. So eliminating all the illegal votes in Pennsylvania this year will be enough to cause the state to go GOP this year.
With that meaning in mind, you see (I hope) that your quoting Obama’s 2008 margin at me was not relevant. My interpretation of his comment’s meaning does not rest on thinking that Obama’s 2008 victory was the result of voter fraud. Instead, it rests on the claim that there was pervasive, if small, voter fraud in Pennsylvania, and eliminating that fraud this year, combined with Obama’s unpopularity, should dothe trick.
No. How about this idea: Obama won in 2008 by only 590,000 legitimate votes and got 10,000 illegal votes. This year, based on his declining popularity, he will lose Pennsylvania by 5,000 votes. But of course if he got those same 10,000 illegal votes, then he would win. So the comment is: because this year will be so close, eliminating the illegal aliens who routinely vote Democratic should do the trick.
I’ll take that. You can have your idiotically based version of the moral high ground. Keep it, and tell all your friends how pathetic I am. I’ll nod happily, on my way to a polling place that asks for photo ID.
The one where I’m a good human being, as opposed to you, an outright evil fake-Christian who Christ himself would have denounced.
I’ll note that you’re too much of a coward to answer the central point of my post. Your solution causes more damage than the problem. But that’s okay, because only poor people and Democrats are being hit.
Did he offer any evidence of voter fraud in Pennsylvania? Pottsylvania? Transylvania? Anywhere, at any time, whatsoever? Where did he find out about all this voter fraud, who told him? And if he actually has some evidence to offer, shouldn’t he have told someone by now, called the cops, went to the papers?
Surely he isn’t going to say stuff like this without some sort of evidence, right? I mean, you would be the very first to renounce, denounce, and condemn anyone who slandered the other political party without any evidence. I’d have to run here to get ahead of you, what with your righteous indignation. And all.