Wait, what? You get to assign “debate partners”? Suppose I don’t want one?
(Could you make sure it isn’t a Scorpio? Ex was a Scorpio, pretty much done with that lot…)
And what about you? ** Shodan? adaher?** Romney?
That’s an interesting analogy. Obviously I regard the act of abortion as a wrong …er…choice, because I view it as the taking of a human life.
But I don’t regard Sunday voting as a human life, or anything particularly analogous to a human life.
Says the guy who claims his ad hominem argument wasn’t the crux of his argument, but hasn’t posted the actual argument…
It wasn’t an ad hominem argument, because I wasn’t making an argument. I didn’t post the actual argument, because I wasn’t making one.
I was pitting you for your dishonesty. And I will continue to do so, as you richly deserve it. You are the single most dishonest person on this entire message board.
Is that an example of liberal debate? Or just Trinopus debate?
Irrelevant. You have attempted to debate by finding a perceived weakness in opponents’ arguments; namely that although NY and OH are in the same condition (no voting on Sunday), we are viewing NY and OH differently based on how they got to that condition. I postulated, knowing at least vaguely your views on the subject, about two women who were in the same condition (neither has children). Will you view them differently based on how they got to that condition, knowing that one was never pregnant and the other had had an abortion?
If not, I trust any suggestion that Means don’t matter, only Ends, is nullified.
Relevant.
strawman.
It’s not a debate. I’m pointing out your dishonesty, and criticizing you for it.
You are a dishonest person. I have never met worse in my entire life.
This is the Pit, not Great Debates. You’re Pit-worthy.
Then clarify what you think the alleged NY/OH disparity demonstrates.
It’s true that this is the Pit. But that fact does transform your unsupported claims into cogent argument. The invocation of “But it’s the Pit,” does not make weak sauce into anything other than weak sauce. You’re posting on a board that claims some interest in fighting ignorance.
It demonstrates the weakness of the one-way ratchet argument: that it’s absurd to claim that once given, Sunday voting can’t be taken away.
Note that I don’t claim, as you tried to construct a straw-stuffed scarecrow of me saying, that the ends and the means thereto cannot be considered. A man with a two dollars in his pocket is certainly entitled to point out that he started the day with a hundred dollars and was robbed, and therefore not identical to a person who started the day with two dollars.
And you’re right - laws should never operate on a one-way ratchet model. If there exists a good reason to change a law, then I’m not opposed to changing it. I’ve described two conditions under which I can picture Sunday voting being curtailed:
- It was proving to be very expensive, and
- Nobody was using it.
If we had some stats on how popular Sunday voting was in Ohio and it turned out that (for example) less than one voter in 100,000 was taking advantage of it, coupled with stats on how expensive it was to keep polling stations open on Sundays, I can see using said stats to bolster a curtailing argument. I can see expense and lack of public participation being used to bolster any number of arguments in favour of cutting back on government services.
If all you actually have is “lawmakers wanted to do it, so they did it because they could”… well… that’s not very compelling and it comes with the baggage of not being done for the sake of improving election results in Ohio, but to give a particular party an advantage.
I’m glad you recognize that the situations are not identical, and I trust we should not treat them as identical, nor try to imply something disparaging about people who decline to view them as identical. The Ohio and New York situations are not identical.
All very true. I readily concede my denouncements were weak sauce.
Of course, your rebuttal here is also weak, so very much so that I can wholly agree with it without in any way finding myself refuted.
Which position?
“It’s wrong to take actions that are designed to try and make it more difficult for supporters of one’s political opponents to vote.”
That one? Absolutely. I have been consistent in my support for that position this entire thread.
Obviously not, what an odd question.
I think the “might” is key there, although of course it renders the statement somewhat meaningless. And I think it depends on precise context and details. So imagine a state in which over many elections, data shows that turnout among white voters is 4 or 5 percent higher than turnout among black voters. Does that mean that any law or procedure in the state is unfair or racist or due to chicanery by one political party? Well, not necessarily. It might just be that culturally, in that state, black people tend to be less motivated to vote. Or it might be that poor people in that state, culturally, tend to be less motivated to vote, and black people in that state tend to be poor. In any of those cases, that’s troubling, and I think something that should be addressed in a civic education way, not in a change-voting-time way. On the other hand, it might be the case that, for instance, the average time it takes someone living in a heavily-black part of the state to vote is 1.5 hours, counting longer driving time to get to sparser polling places, and longer lines at those polling places, while the average time it takes someone living in a heavily-white part of the state is 20 minutes. This might be due to an accident of history and demographics, or it might be due to something malicious 50 years ago. And it might be something that one party is now desperately trying to improve while the other party blocks it, or it might be something that everyone just takes for granted. However, that’s something that I think SHOULD be fixed.
And, crucially, any attempt to make the situation WORSE is one that should be viewed with EXTREME skepticism and should require a very high standard of justification.
I think that voter ID laws are, if not identical, then at least very comparable to issues like Sunday voting, longer lines at minority-heavy polling places, and other things which make voting more difficult but not impossible, in a way that falls disproportionately on a particular group.
Wrong again.
“An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person”
We attack your rancid arguments based on their own lack of merit.
Then, because your foul hypocrisies annoy us, we offer you a mirror to help see yourself, in case you want to try to live up to your intellect.
Based on what little we know about you – going to opera annoys you because so many opera lovers are liberal, you brag about “needing” a concealed-carry permit – I wonder if SDMB is the only place you can get feedback from intelligent people. We are trying to help, but you are god-awful stubborn.
It looks like we’re in agreement, then.
I entered this particular sub-debate to argue against the one-way rachet model espoused by iiiAndyiii.
I certainly agree that the conditions you describe would be examples of defensible reasons to eliminate the practice.
Does this mean you rely upon other posters for the logical argument and reserve for yourself the ad hominem attack?
Because I agree that this is what’s going on.
I don’t think this is a “one-way ratchet model” – it can be both reasonable and consistent to make a judgment about what was done in OH while withholding final judgment from the lack of early voting in NY. Further, I specifically named the reasons for my judgment in OH, such that a removal of early voting in some other place for some other reasons would not necessarily be criticized by me.
“One-way ratchet” is how you described his position - I see nothing in his posts supporting this as a concept he embraces or advances, nor any in which he uses the phrase (well, prior to the post immediately before this one, which was not there when I started to write) or explicitly or tacitly agrees with its usage. You were arguing against something solely of your own creation.
By the way…
Can you suggest an INdefensible reason to eliminate the practice?