Really? You go from asking me to post in a way to “…advance anyone’s knowledge, understanding, insight, etc., on this issue…” to this reply?
Was this the spirit in which you asked me to advance anyone’s knowledge, understanding, insight, etc., on this issue?
To the contrary. If you were withholding any comment on my behalf because you believed I enjoyed this kind of treatment, you can abandon that belief now, please.
So what’s the problem here? You know that we who oppose the GOP efforts on this issue believe this is most of the motivation, if not all of it, due to both Republican officials’ statements and the lack of evidence for any significant actual voter fraud. We know you think it’s legal for them to do so, but why are you arguing so hard against the accusation that it’s immoral for them to do so?
This reply was meant as a joke.
No, I thought I had made myself clear with my follow on posts, and was responding to your focus on the earlier post which (I thought) was a pointless distraction.
I don’t think you love to be insulted – that’s not what I was saying. I’m saying that you love these sorts of discussions and this sort of back-and-forth, like the one we’re having now about the moral issues of the GOP led actions.
Let’s see.
We’re discussing why Ohio’s action was bad. I hope you agree that we cannot say it was bad because it was bad. That’s just the line of reasoning we eliminated moments ago – agreeing that the “one-way rachet” was not a tenable argument. So I hope you agree that you can’t say any variant of, “Eliminating early voting in Ohio is bad because it constitutes the elimination of early voting.”
So here are your reasons:
-… along with statements by Republican officials that these actions will help them win elections by reducing Democratic turnout.
Did that happen in Ohio?
If it did, I completely concede the argument.
Fuck, if you wanted everything to stay all genteel and polite and shit, you should’ve stayed in the GD thread.
You already conceded the argument, because you agreed that a non-trivial amount of the motivation behind these actions is to reduce Democratic turnout and help the GOP win elections.
I’m saying that if this is true, which you have already agreed is (probably) true, then it is morally wrong to do these things.
Perhaps the Board should add an additional asterisk to the “fighting ignorance,” claim: it’s taking longer than we thought, and we have abandoned the Pit to let ignorance there fester?
I like my ignorance-fighting peppered with colorful language and humor… don’t you?
I certainly don’t see it that way.
If 150 legislators vote for a particular bill, and fifteen have dishonorable motives, I don’t agree that the bill itself can be called wrong, even though a non-trivial number of the legislators who voted for it did so for wrong reasons.
Sure, I have no problem with humor or colorful language.
Is that an example of humor?
Of colorful language?
I think nearly all the legislators who voted for this either had dishonorable motives (this hurts the Democrats) or wilfully ignorant ones (voter fraud is really a significant problem) or both. I can’t read minds, so I’m not 100% sure of this. But I’m reasonably sure this is the case, so I’m reasonably sure this is a morally wrong action.
Perhaps you should recognize that ignorance is indeed being fought here, just with the added element of freeform cursing and insults. The only difference between this forum and GD is the latter is more restrained. That can be useful at times, if we were having a discussion in good faith between rational respectful persons, but I’ve long given up expecting that from you.
Hyperbole, probably. Maybe that fits into “colorful language”.
I don’t follow your reasoning. How would any legislator believe that eliminating Sunday voting has any effect in either direction upon voter fraud?
So when you read that line, you regarded it as “colorful language?”
It doesn’t – that would fall into the “wilfully ignorant” category.
OH SoS Husted actually used this as part of his justification, though – he said “Our goal is to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat and to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity in the voting process no matter which method they choose”.
No, I scanned over it, barely thinking about it except perhaps “another SDMB poster really doesn’t like Bricker”. But it wasn’t any sort of argument or attempt at debate, so I mostly ignored it.
Remember the good old days when legislators had the good grace to manipulate elections behind the closed doors of smoke-filled rooms? Now they’re acting all publicly pious and shit, like they’re stealing elections* for America’s own good.*
Geeze, guys, if you want to assrape the voter, at least spare him the indignity of lying to him, too. It’s disrespectful.
But it’s more than that. I agree that a legislator who said, “Voter fraud is a significant risk to change the results of most elections,” is indeed wilfully ignorant.
But it’s beyond that to imagine that same legislator saying, “…and, therefore, I vote ‘yes’ to eliminate Sunday voting.” How, even in his mind, might he connect the two?
You’ve admitted that you’re not a mind reader and are not 100% sure – you are presumably simply basing your reaction on what you picture their thought process was.
So I absolutely understand you picturing someone saying, “I will vote yes to eliminate Sunday voting, because that will hurt Democratic turnout.” That’s a logical sequence of reasoning. It makes sense to imagine a nefarious legislator saying that, and acting in accord.
But I don’t see even the slightest likelihood that a legislator used voter fraud as a reason to eliminate Sunday voting. That makes no sense whatsoever, and if you’re resting part of your conclusion on that scenario, I’m going to reject it.
The OH Secretary of State used voter fraud as justification in his public statements, so I think it makes pretty good sense to apply this wilfully ignorant motivation onto the OH Republicans who made this decision.