Aren’t such people likely to skip voting, even if registered?
Or did you have a specific idea in mind for what constitutes “care”, as well as some kind of metric to determine if an individual cares enough?
Welcome to the thread. 
Well, I always figured that was the reasoning, but there were always public reasons that could be stated to avoid stating the obvious. In the Oregon case, no one can clearly state WHY registration with driver’s licenses is bad, however, all the Republicans voted against it for some reason anyway.
That’s the curiosity that moved me to look, see if I could find any Oregon Republicans who would offer up a rationale. That one I noted in post 8274 (!) was the only thing I found. And that is a rationale, sorta kinda. Weak as shit, but there it is. Don’t see anything about all the others clambering to say “Me, too!”, or offering anything else.
My theory is they each flipped a coin. Exactly half said to themselves “If it comes up heads, I vote for it, tails against.” And exactly half took the opposite, heads against, tails for. All those who picked heads = yes got tails, the rest heads. Thus, the unanimity is a mathematical quirk. Sorta kinda like that super-dooper close election decided by one fraudulent vote. Hey! Could happen! Its rational, therefore its reasonable, therefore it is a valid argument.
Which reminds me, what was the name of that comic book character, way back in time, could stretch himself every which way…?
On Sunday, the PBS NewsHour had an interesting segment about voter ID laws (and related tactics) in North Carolina. Here is the full episode, I think the voter part starts about 5 or 10 minutes in.
One part I found interesting was an interview with a democratic operative who was absolutely forthright that the attempts to make voting easier (which are being rolled back and repealed by the more recent laws) were absolutely positively to gain partisan advantage, not due to virtue. It would certainly be an odd coincidence if the Democrats supported expanding voting rights due to a naked desire for partisan advantage but the Republicans wanted to restrict those rights due to some unrelated but deeply felt principle.
There was also an interview with an 80-year-old black lady whose daughter drove her over 200 miles to a DMV (or some office) because the name on her 60-year-old voter registration form (from the Jim Crow era) was her maiden name, and didn’t match her current ID. But, hey, she did get registered, so clearly it’s only a minimal inconvenience, and the system works.
Definitely worth a listen, and it does include some actual stats on voter turnout after ID laws were implemented (if you can trust the GAO).
I have no problem with either party trying to gain partisan advantage, but not at the expense of people who are legally entitled to vote except for rules on top of rules that are deliberately devised to be hard to comply with. Whether by coincidence or design, the Democratic position on voter accessibility is inclusionary, and the Republican position is exclusionary. One promotes a more perfect union, and one impedes it.
Is making it easier for more people to vote a bad thing, though? If it helps the Democrats, doesn’t that suggest that the Democrats represent the will of the majority? Bricker tried to equate partisan efforts to increase the active electorate with partisan efforts to decrease the active electorate, but I’m unconvinced.
If, for example, Democratic lawmakers make it extremely easy to get registered and cast a vote and it works against them, i.e. the larger turnout leads to Republican gains, was it still a bad thing to make it easier for citizens to vote? It seems fairly obvious to me that the contrary is true, i.e. if Republicans make it harder for some citizens to vote and even if it doesn’t help them, it was still a bad thing to do.
Of course, I’m still waiting on Bricker’s clarification of “if voting is too easy… something something something… bad stuff.” I think it may take some time.
Oh, I absolutely agree. This is not dissimilar to Bush v Gore in 2000. In that case, some people wanted to do everything possible to make sure that every vote was counted as accurately as possible, while others wanted to stop the recounting process. Those in favor of accuracy happened to be Democrats, and presumably their motivation was nakedly partisan. Nonetheless, their position was still the more correct and ethical one.
Not exactly. It’s a little more nuanced. Gore’s campaign only requested manual recounts in four counties (out of 67) that all skewed Democratic. His campaign wasn’t doing everything possible to male sure that every vote counted. It was a less high minded urge to make sure every vote that likely went his way counted.
Hi there again!
I’m curious: Have you seen the studies that show voters who get no news at all are better informed than FoxNews viewers?
(I’ll explain the relevance after you bother to answer the question.)
“It’s a trap!”
- Admiral Akbar
Yes.
Are you aware that this same poll (assuming we’re discussing the Fairleigh Dickenson 2012 poll) showed that the single worst-informed category in that poll was liberals who watch Fox News (scoring 0.81), followed by conservatives who watch MSNBC (0.85)?
No-news-at-all viewers scored 1.28, and conservatives watching Fox News scored 1.39.
NPR viewers scored 1.97.
People view NPR? Just curious.
Anyway, Bricker won’t supply factual responses to several questions that have been put to him yet he clings to his beliefs. This isn’t quite facts and ideology clashing, more like ideology claiming victory because facts weren’t invited to the game.
Fascinating! Now, about this…
So, there is “value”. How much “value”? Is it roughly the same quanta of value that accrues when we defend ourselves from the dreadful prospect of a super-dooper close election being decided by a fraudulent vote? May we assume that those people who stand in line for hours in order to vote, that those people are blessed with an abundance of civic virtue denied to their suburban counterparts? Have we hopelessly corrupted the civic virtue of the comfortable and content Republican voter?
Where should we start to offer these citizens the blessing of your Calvinist approach to civic virtue? Ban valet parking at the polls?
Of course, we are once again in the vicinity of “some”. “Some” Republicans have malign motivations in all of this. Might be two, might be twenty, might be thousands, goodness, we have no way of knowing! And there is “some” value in offering our citizens a dollop of stress and discomfort in order to access their voting rights. For many of our citizens, their cup runneth over. But its good for them, because it builds character? Does that benefit outweigh the prospect of discouraged voters simply not showing up?
Of course, it will benefit the Republican Party, but many of us here don’t see that as a net positive.
I don’t think this is true. I concede that I may have missed some questions put to me. Or have I responded but you have dismissed the response as “not factual?”
How about some links, or a repeat of these questions I have supposedly dodged?
“In addition to voter ID, Republicans lawmakers are now proposing that voters show their ‘Value’ cards with at least six bald eagle stickers to demonstrate a sufficient level of esteem …”
Yep, some people wanted to make sure every vote was counted.
Because Democrats might be naked partisan but never at the expense correct. ethical behavior. Right?
Posts 8301, 8307, 8249, 8264, the first half of 8295. You did answer 8285, so you get at least one check-mark.
In the case of 8249, I noted that your reply was non-responsive, not “not factual”.
You mean, like this? Casually tossing off insinuations about the honesty and reliability of the sources without a shred of substantiation?
“Those are liberal sources, therefore, I may ignore the question.”?
I have no idea how you could possibly get that from anything I’ve written. In the case of voter ID laws Democrats happen to be on the (in general) “right” side. That was also the case in the Bush/Gore debacle, overall. But I have never claimed or implied that that is due to some inherent saintliness or ethical superiority.
If the initial count had been Gore being ahead, I’m sure that the Democrats would have used every legal method at their disposal, and some at-best quasi-legal, to stop any further counting or recounting of any sort. But that’s not what happened.
As for the issue you bring up with military votes, I’d like to see a more neutral cite, but it certainly wouldn’t blow my mind if the actions of the Democrats in that situation were, to reuse a word that has been used a lot in this thread, “scuzzy”.