I suppose voting itself is about people’s feelings that a particular candidate is the wisest choice for the position. So, sure.
They are more frequent by an order of magnitude than your so called voter fraud cases that the legislation is supposedly designed to prevent.
But society can afford to permit people to vote without presenting ID.
But each voter fraud case weighs 10,000 fraudugrams and each case of someone who finds it too difficult to vote weighs only 0.01 suppressograms.
And since the conversion rate between fraudugrams and suppressograms is well-defined by the international scientific community, the accuracy of my position is clear.
Or, in the alternative, perhaps you don’t apply the same weight to these that I do. Perhaps the weight assigned to each is not even a matter that can be objectively assessed.
Yeah, well, “making it” and having a middle-class standard of living involves much, much more than being able to retire on something more than Social Security.
That’s not for you to declare. That’s for society in each state to determine. And they have – some have agreed with you; others have not.
You seem to think it involves a 72-inch TV.
I grew up poor.
First of all, I absolutely read Bricker’s phrasing about “The Liberal” to be referring to liberals in general, or to be more precise, something along the lines of “ahh, you are saying something that is representative of liberals in general”. If a particular liberal said that he really liked donuts, you wouldn’t say “donuts, the favorite food of the liberal”, but if he had said he liked arugula, you might. I’m a bit skeptical that Bricker intended that comment purely and entirely to refer to a single person, with no implied penumbra…
And I find that kind of statement particularly troublesome because it lets you attack without needing to defend, because you can always just say “oh, no, wait, I wasn’t talking about you, just, you know, uhh, your ilk”. It’s like when Shodan talks about “the usual suspects” without ever having to specify precisely who they are.
That said, it’s not a particularly big deal.
Secondly, on the subject of people’s success being luck vs hard work, I think we all agree that for nearly everyone (excepting lottery winners and children-of-rich-people-who-have-never-worked-a-day-in-their-life) it’s a mixture of the two. Where I disagree with Bricker is that I think there’s somewhat more luck than he acknowledges… but I don’t mean that to be insulting, or to diminish the accomplish of either Bricker or his father, both of which have led admirable and impressive lives. I do think, however, that it would be far easier than Bricker suspects to go back in and make minor changes in the circumstances surrounding his upbringing that would have hugely detrimental effects on how successful his life has been.
Which sort of leads into my third point, back to the actual discussion of voter ID laws.
Bricker likes to present it as “well, this burden is so trivial that only people who are absolutely lazy or absolutely ignorant or absolutely uncaring about voting would fail to meet it”, dividing the world in a very black and white fashion. But that’s not how it works. Among people who might be prevented/dissuaded from voting due to voter ID laws there are a wide range of reasons, including:
-laziness
-complacency
-an extremely busy life for legitimate reasons
-extra difficulty getting paperwork for logistical reasons (ie, name is unusual and doesn’t match what’s on record due to a typo)
-being very old
-not being aware that the law changed
etc.
-and most likely, combinations of some of the above
But the key point is not that I’m saying “oh, woah is me, it’s 2% harder to vote now, that must not stand!” The important part is the disparate impact. There’s no reason to think there aren’t just as many people who fit into all of the above categories among republicans as among democrats. If there was some legitimate reason to make voting slightly harder and no one thought the impact would be different between parties, then I would probably not hugely object. But the fact that this law was specifically created in order to exploit a demographic difference between two parties supporters, so that a somewhat lazy somewhat complacent somewhat busy supporter of democrats is far more likely to be affected by it than a somewhat lazy somewhat complacent somewhat busy supporter of republicans is what makes it loathsome and antiDemocratic.
Great just like a poll tax. Nothing wrong there.
And for those who feel (more accurately) that the active the disenfranchisement* of a portion of electorate by those in power who would most benefit from their disenfranchisement reduces our confidence in an ultra close (or even just very close) election by an order of magnitude more than any illusory voter fraud would? Should our concerns be taken into account or is the fact that most of them vote for candidate with a D in front of them mean that they don’t actually represent the loss of confidence that you claim to be so concerned about.
*I know Bricker in his standard lawyerly way will quibble with my use of this term since he will claim that since every voter can theoretically jump through enough hoops to vote, they are not technically disenfranchised. So please replace every instance of this word with whatever word you would use to describe the damage that poll taxes and literacy tests did to the franchise of the poor of the Jim Crow south.
Sure. But lack of confidence seems an especially vague problem to be solving.
I suspect there will be people who be unable to vote when laws of this sort are passed. I further suspect they will have less confidence that the election represents the will of the people. Is their confidence of less import?
I’ve at least seen numbers telling me what the voter fraud problem is and what the impact of various laws are or might be. I have seen nothing quantifiable regarding “Confidence” so I don’t know what to make of that.
Thought experiment:
Suppose Bryan said he liked doughnuts, and I replied, “What? The liberal eats doughnuts?”
Yes, I agree it’s poor writing on my part.
I am not going to debate the law’s loathsomeness. There is no scale we both agree upon that can be used to weigh the law and discover it is 6.8 milli-loathes.
I merely defend the law’s constitutionality and legitimacy.
And as to “anti-democratic,” I will point out that any choice to limit votes can be called antidemocratic, in one sense. But when the limitation is enacted by the majority, it becomes a democratic choice about the future qualifications of the electorate. That’s democratic.
It seems like the answer to this would be “Yes, your elected representatives have taken your concerns into account and have decided to weigh them less then the benefits of voter IDs, and thus, passed a law requiring voter IDs”
I’m curious how the people who are against voter IDs feel about a fingerprint being taken in order to vote.
Also, while I tend to agree with Bricker on this issue, I’m honestly curious, because I don’t seem to have found it in this huge thread, whether or not Bricker thinks that voter ID requirements affect more Democrat voters than Republican voters. I’m not asking about the magnitude of the effect, simply whom ID requirements may affect more.
There is a key difference between this requirement and a poll tax.
A poll tax is a burden that is unrelated to the qualifications to vote. Even a minimal poll tax is not permitted, because there is no relationship between paying money and being qualified to vote.
But requiring a photo ID is related to assuring the identity of the people who vote.
In a representative democracy, your concerns are taken into account: they were raised during debate before these laws were passed. But in a representative democracy, your concerns don’t outweigh everyone else’s concerns.
I think you meant “to assuage public anxiety about the results of a vote…”
Assuage means to reduce.
Sure, but we’re still free to pit the politicians and media who whip up fake “concerns” about voter fraud and gin up support for ill advised “solutions” that probably are more honestly described as being designed to suppress Democratic voter participation. Aren’t we?
I welcome correction on this point, but the only serious proposal I have seen on this came from a New Mexico Republican, and his proposal failed to garner support from Democrats OR his fellow Republicans. In addition, generally left-leaning think tanks such as the EFF have expressed opposition to the use of fingerprints.
In most areas, I suspect there is a disparate impact. That is, these measures affect the poor more than the wealthy, and as a general rule, that’s a fair proxy for Democratic-leaning.
But the same statement is true about Election Day in general. The wealthy have an easier time getting off work, traveling to the polling place, paying for parking, and any other incidental costs. That does not invalidate the system of collecting votes in precinct polling locations.
Which is part of a middle-class standard of living in the sense of being a thing any middle-class family can easily afford if they want it.
Sure. But that’s the kind of choice that costs them other opportunities, especially when they decided they can “afford” it by looking at the monthly payments on their store credit card.
Sorry. No one needs a giant TV just because others have giant TVs.
Yep. Typo. And since both are words, a typo not caught by spell check.
Of course. Who’s stopping you?