I remember that challenge, as well as casually meeting it after I got tired of mocking you for posing it in the first place.
I don’t remember your meeting it. Did you?
I recall you admitting such, though on reflection I recognize the possibility that it was in another thread, if you’ve used the “summarize my position” tactic elsewhere. I’ll have to wait until I get home and can use a computer for a thorough search instead of a smartphone.
Not at all. When I talk about legislation that should be changed, I argue it should be changed democratically: people should support candidates that will pass anti-abortion laws.
When you talk about changing the law, you declare the law is immoral and demand its removal without the need for legislators getting involved.
It’s a reasonable burden. You don’t refute that claim by dismissing it as a write-off. It’s not simply my determination: it’s the determination of the legislature, the public, the courts. All agree. That’s not merely a write-off; it’s an army. You need to actively disprove it.
It’s certainly possible I’ve forgotten.
Mainly I was just wondering if you could offer any justification for this refinement of the common notion of eligible, beyond your own personal rationalization. I could say that that being eligible implies an understanding of current events well enough to realize that the current batch of Republicans are a threat to America, and it would be equally as valid as yours.
If they have an opinion enough to put a check down in favor of one side or another than they are engaged and interested enough to participate. Using myself as an example, on most ballots I leave the school board line blank because I have no children and have no idea about the candidates. No one is suggesting that voting be mandatory but putting road blocks in place to ensure that voters “want it bad enough” is discouraging. Particularly if those road blocks are specifically designed to hinder certain undesired voters more than others.
There are no road blocks designed to to ensure that voters want it bad enough. The road blocks, to the extent that they are blocks, are to ensure that the voters are who they say they are and to establish that fact in such a way that it can be proved later at trial if need be.
You took my statement and made it the predicate in a claim I never made.
Moreover, the ID procedures are not “specifically designed” to hinder certain voters. they are as neutral as can be imagined: they require every voter to substantiate his identity.
Moving the focus away from Bricker for a moment, I’d like to mention voting for school boards. Particularly for Texans who have an electedState Board of Education. Perhaps you’ve heard about the ridiculous “standards” they created for Social Studies textbooks & the questionable texts that were submitted. (Thanks to the Texas Freedom Network & other intelligent Texans, we’ve avoided Creationism taught in our public schools.)
Do you have an elected State Board of Education? This office is at the end of the ballot & many people skip it. Those who pay attention often vote for the Republican nutcases. So it’s a good idea to see what’s going on (locally, too). Because those kids will be around as we age, even if we don’t have any. And we are here to Fight Ignorance!
Now back to critiquing the Former Lawyer who is probably less charming in person than Ted Cruz…
So if there was a SCOTUS ruling overturning *Roe v. Wade *, you’d feel honour-bound to say “no, thanks” ?
The legislators have already passed the bad law. I’d be looking forward to executive veto or judicial review.
Conceivably jury nullification, way down the road and if applicable. Protest, petition and perhaps even civil disobedience if the issue was important enough.
I like democracy. I have my doubts you do, or perhaps more accurately, that you see it for everyone and not just the “right” kind of people.
Not to worry, I live in a county that is so blue we’re practically smurfs. If anyone proposed teaching creationism that person would be out on his kiester faster than you can say abiogenesis. But your point is well taken. If I lived in a state like Texas where this was an issue I would be “engaged and interested enough to participate” even in school board elections.
Please stop lying about my position. Just a few posts above this, you lied about my position on the Massachusetts state legislature flipping who assigns replacement senators.
That post was utterly untrue.
Now you lie about my declaring law by fiat. I argue for what I think is right, and, thusfar, you have failed to do the same with any level of success.
Please stop lying about my position, Bricker. I don’t lie about you. I destroy your positions with reason, don’t attack mine with bald untruths.
Cite?
Two responses:
(1) Incumbency is very powerful. That still doesn’t make unethically influencing one election somehow the same as unethically influencing all future elections
(2) The reason it doesn’t influence the “pendulum of democracy” in the same way as voter ID laws do (we claim) is two fold: (a) nothing that the MA legislature did in any way influences the elections that elect the MA legislature. If the voters of MA decided that this kind of dealing was shady they would be stuck with a senator for however long the remainder of that particular term was, but they could vote out the legislatures in the next legislature election in precisely the same way the could previously (b) special senatorial elections don’t happen very often, so even outright stealing them is a very different issue from something that affects every single election for every office in a state
But stepping back for a second… do you honestly, deep in your heart, believe that voter ID laws and MA senatorial shenanigans are SUCH similar and identical issues that any principled and honest person MUST either oppose both or support both? Isn’t that a pretty extraordinary claim? For all your talk of “well, you guys don’t just to say what morality is”, it seems like you’re just declaring by fiat that comparing-someone’s-position-on-voter-ID-laws-and-MA-senate-shenanigans-can-prove-them-hypocritical, and then having declared that that principle is correct you are applying it left and right, without ever actually arguing in support of it.
Whose fault is that?
You could have entered this thread with an attitude of “ok, here’s my position. I’m going to lay it out point by point in post #12, and then for the rest of the thread I can link back to post #12 and clarify confusion”. Or heck, after a dozen pages you could have realized that the thread was becoming a trainwreck and very carefully laid our your position in post #120 or something.
Instead you were INCREDIBLY vague about questions like whether you agreed that Republican legislators were scuzzy, whether you thought that voter ID was NO additional burden vs a TRIVIAL burden, what your evidence for that claim was, etc. I think over the course of this thread I dragged many of those details out of you, but scattered around enough different places that I’ve probably forgotten 3/4 of the details I actually discovered.
Furthermore, you’ve hardly done a reasonable job of understanding the opposing position, since you STILL claim that people in this thread are trying to impose their morality by fiat, which (practically?) no one is doing.
One further point: You’re still eliding over the connection between morality of a law and its electoral success.
Suppose there are two states that are demographically identical… same R vs D makeup, same poverty issues, same access to ID, etc. In both states identical voter ID laws of the “scuzzy” variety we’re discussing here are proposed. There’s an SDMB debate over whether those laws are “ethical”, “good public policy”, “anti-democratic”, and such… presumably you’re on one side of that argument and a bunch of us are on the other side. Then the laws are voted on and one state approves the law and the other state votes it down. Well, that’s democracy for you. But you don’t get to look at the state in which it passed and use the fact that the voters approved it as a basis for an argument that it was ever ethical to begin with, because voters in another identical state voted it down. When voters approve something that means it becomes law, and it’s at least strong evidence that it’s “the will of the people” (a tremendously vague statement). But it doesn’t make it RIGHT. And if we’re arguing on the SDMB about whether something is right and good, the outcome of such a vote is basically irrelevant.
One final point, which I’ve made infinity times (but, to borrow one of your pretentious claims, I’m just making sure that any impartial observers hear this rebuttal): yes, someone proposing a change has the burden of proof to support that claim. If I say “we should implement internet voting”, I should provide arguments as to why my proposed change is a good idea. But not all debates can be neatly categorized into either side-A-has-the-burden-of-proof or side-B-has-the-burden-of-proof. For instance, “let’s debate which of two candidates we should vote for in the upcoming election?”. Or “Obamacare has been law for 2 years… is it overall a good thing?”. And “let’s discuss a decision that very recently happened… was it a good idea?” is a great example of something where there is no obvious burden of proof.
#5079. I’m cheerfully prepared to let the entire “summarize my position” tangent return to the Island of Misfit Ploys, i.e. drop it, until and unless you bring it up again.
Again, you are using the rational to thwart the reasonable. While it is certainly true that reason depends on rationality, it is not defined by it. You cannot prove voter fraud exists to any extent that would move a reasonable person to action, so you are compelled to stretch the limits of the rational by suggesting a scenario out at the very limits of possibility
Yes, it is *possible *that fraudulent votes could tip a very, very, ultra-super-dooper close election one way or the other. Possible, but not likely. You first have to have the miraculously close election, then you must have the majority of fraudulent votes tilting in one direction, and finally, the virtually inevitable recount must not detect the fraud.
The recent experience here in the People’s Republic of Minnesota serves as a fair example. Ultra-close election in an environment you describe as “lax”. Lenghty and exhaustive recount, no fraud detected, nor even so much as hinted at.
Your supporting proposition is rational, but not reasonable. Simply because we cannot prove that the highly improbable voter fraud does not exist is no reason to assume that it does, and certainly no reason that the massive machinery of legislation simply must be brought to bear on a phantom
For support, I draw on a citation offered by our resident authority on reasoned debate and its correct conduct:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/burden-of-proof.html
You are using a similar, if not identical, argument. Clearly, voter fraud like you fantasize is very, very unlikely BUT! we cannot prove that it doesn’t exist, therefore, you are free to insist that it could. And further to insist because it could be so, we must act as if it is so!
Balderdash, sir! Tommyrot!
Our resident authority on reasoned debate and its correct conduct says otherwise.
Wait…are you saying voter fraud doesn’t exist AT ALL? That the incidence is literally zero?
That’s quite obviously not what elucidator was saying. You’re stalling again.
*You are using a similar, if not identical, argument. Clearly, voter fraud like you fantasize is very, very unlikely BUT! we cannot prove that it doesn’t exist, therefore, you are free to insist that it could. And further to insist because it could be so, we must act as if it is so!
*
Translate, please.
What am I claiming? What is he claiming?
Your answer is above from post 5079.
So why did you say this:
You knew my position, and you misstated it.