Any idea why left-leaning think tanks would be against fingerprints? Not too worried about an answer, just curious.
Thank you for your answer. I agree with your thoughts regarding Election Day in general.
I would have thought “uhh, what? what an odd thing to say”. However, if you had said “oh, sure, the liberal eats arugula”, then I would have read that not just as you commenting on what type of leafy green Bryan liked to eat, but invoking the larger stereotype. Which is how I read the actual comment in this thread.
I don’t believe that accurately reflects your position in this thread. You have not been just saying that voter ID laws are constitutional and legitimate, you have been actively supporting and cheering for them. Which is what bugs me. If your position had simply been “some in this thread have claimed these laws are illegal or invalid, I disagree for the following reasons” I wouldn’t have objected. But instead you’ve been (a) supporting the laws, claiming that you are glad that they exist, and (b) talking a lot of trash about it
So literacy tests, which (unlike poll taxes) have a clear relevant connection to the ability to vote, are not antiDemocratic as long as 51% of the populace is in support of them?
Oh, and one final point concerning the “in the chance of a very close election” claim… Florida 2000 was the closest and most consequential election I think any of us will see in our lifetime. I don’t remember in any of the post-election furor ever hearing someone bemoan their lack of confidence about how much in-person voter fraud might have occurred, which would be assuaged by the existence of voter ID laws. On the list of things that would similar elections less controversial and build confidence, voter ID laws is still nowhere near the top. Which makes your claimed justification ring hollow.
Which of these scenarios is more likely:
-Trump beats Hillary in Ohio (assuming Ohio is one of the states with new voter ID laws) by a few thousand votes. Demographic studies suggest that that’s well within the likely number of voters affected by the voter ID law, and dozens of really heart-wrenching stories start coming out about the poor 90 year old woman living in a nursing home who got her daughter to drive her 12 hours across the state to get a copy of her birth certificate but they showed up on the one thursday of the month when the records office was closed, etc, etc, and there is widespread belief on both sides that the election was decided by these voter ID laws and the faith of the citizenry in the democratic process is irreconcilably damaged
-The vote in Ohio is decided (either way) by just a few dozen votes, and whichever side lost is all ready to get up in arms and claim that the election was stolen. But their outrage is assuaged by the voter ID laws which give them great confidence that, if nothing else, at least the people who showed up to vote were who they claimed they were. So, guess it must have all been above board and correct, well played, yay democracy!
A related question would be to ask who are the people who are at risk in terms of “voter confidence”? Who worries that the election results may be skewed by imposters? Like, say, undocumented immigrants bused from place to place to cast false votes?
Well, Republicans, yes? For the most part, them. Who totally believe that America is, at heart, a conservative country, center-right in its opinions. And who are left trying to explain how it is that they lose elections, when the country as a whole agrees with them. Whatever could it be, this mechanism that thwarts the will of the people?
Stands to reason, far as they are concerned, that the Dems oppose this stuff. There they are, got all those buses rented for Election Day, and their schemes are overturned! Which is to say, that this is not so much about “voter confidence”, as it is about Republican voter confidence.
Got a nickel says most of them know this sort of shit ain’t kosher. But they tell themselves they are just getting some of their own back. They know the Dems are cheating, because they know that the people don’t agree with them, so the election results simply have to be bogus.
So not only is the applied cure partisan, the very concept is partisan, from the git-go! Like the Holy Roman Empire that wasn’t any of those things, “valid neutral” is neither valid nor neutral.
Incidentally, doughnuts >> arugula.
“I’m not going to debate the issue,” does not mean I don’t have a preference. It means that I regard my preference, as well as the opposing one, to be immune to debate, since it rests on fundamentally different postulates.
The current framework is not by any means my vision of an ideal one – but I regard it as a reasonable start, and better than no identity verification. But the REASON I feel that way is the relative weights I assign to the competing value propositions in play. And you, my worthy opponent, assign those weights quite differently.
Not quite. But literacy tests are not per se unconstitutional. They are forbidden by statute, and a majority could certainly decide, quite reasonably, that a basic level of knowledge was necessary before you cast a vote. So from a conceptual standpoint, no.
However, this is the kind of thing that triggers the moron brigade to galumph around the SDMB screeching, “Bricker wants to impose literacy tests!” I am not unaware of the invidious use to which literacy tests were put, and that history would certainly weigh against my support for real-world literacy tests as opposed to the pure theory of the concept.
You didn’t hear anyone say that Florida would have turned out differently if there were no voter fraud?
Both are very unlikely, extremely unlikely. I can’t decide which is more likely. The vote count portions of each story make (A) more likely; the “dozens of stories” business makes (B) more likely.
It might have been drowned out by the greater number of people blaming the Illuminati.
So, really, its all just a matter of ground assumptions, there is no actual objective standard. Its all just, like, your opinion, man! So, even though it appears to us that you have argued bitterly, relentlessly, and furiously…you really didn’t, because you aren’t really arguing.
Well, OK, then. What we have here, is a failure, to communicate. Glad that’s all settled out, then.
Nitpick: Plasma TVs are out- nowadays it is LCD smart TVs.
I think the key observation in this debate is that the voter ID laws have been enacted mostly in the states that imposed voter restrictions on black people during Reconstruction. The impulse to restrict the black vote comes from the same place (geographically and intellectually), and voter ID laws ought to end up on the wrong side of history along with their predecessors. Just have registered voter rolls at polling places and cross people’s names off as they vote, and forget voter ID laws until actual voter fraud can be shown to be a real, quantifiable concern.
I agree with 'luci that the “concern” addressed by these laws is partisan in nature, and is in fact manufactured. This isn’t a “concern” the general public spontaneously fretted about. No, certain media outlets started blaring the “concern” from all channels and the intended target audience picked it up like they do so many foolish notions.
I say this as somebody who deferred gratification for years. I too used plank-and-cinder block shelving and used secondhand furniture, working two jobs for years out of the lousiest apartment you ever saw and driving a [del]15[/del]20-year-old car until I could pay off every penny of my debts. Then I continued to live cheaply while I saved and invested, slowly magnifying my money until I could make a downpayment on a very nice place in a nice part of town, with dough in reserve to stave off foreclosure risks- LCD TV on the mantle above the fireplace paid for with cash, along with all the furniture, a nice place to cavort hedonistically with my twangy-voiced, gun-owning and until-this-cycle-GOP voting hot gf.
I don’t expect to persuade Bricker to my views. Mainly I want to collect my Bricker points for escaping poverty properly, to assuage the concern that I don’t get my due respect around here. Although maybe luck was the main factor in my modest success- I am, after all, tall, white and attractive 
I hope the former outweighs the latter…
Kickin’ his ass there, 'luc.
Kicking his ass here, boss.
No.
Wow, you got incredibly lucky! Think how much further you would be in the class scale if you had put some effort into it!
Well, about 25% of the posts in this pretty-darn-lengthy thread are yours (elucidator and me are the #2 and #3 contributors and you have more than us combined), so what are you up to? Arguing? Not? Something else?
Like most poor people, I could not resist the siren’s song of gratification.
Sometimes when poor people resist sirens, we get car-chases.
Or waxy build up in our ears.
Depending where you live, it can be safer to just give in to avoid getting shot.
I have more posts than you because I have patiently and steadfastly repeated my points each and every time they are misstated.
Here, for example, I clearly said that I was not debating the proposition that the Voter ID scheme was loathsome. I equally clearly said that I was debating the legitimacy of the measures.
Yet predictably elucidator seizes upon the words “not debating” and seemingly develops amnesia concerning any other words that might have appeared close by.
Often, the Idiot Brigade triumphs because it’s exhausting to fight against this kind of tactic. In this thread, I resolved to simply answer every misstatement, every misrepresentation, every bullshit distortion, with a reminder of the truth.
Pages and pages went by with people trying to paint me as claiming that voter fraud was widespread. Months and months of that tactic were used.
And just a few days ago, you did the same thing, only with a “prediction” that I might respond to your post with an observation about voter confidence in an ultra-close election.
Yep. Because everyone here knows rhetoric. You can’t play that kind of game. We’re not fooled by your lies.
The only workable excuse would have been that you blundered, and that you intended to indicate only one specific person, but flubbed, clumsily, and stupidly used language that refers to an entire class. For some, that might work, but you are such a studied master of shades of connotation, it doesn’t wash. For you, stupidity is not a believable excuse. You’re evil.
It’s being infringed.
In effect, it’s being removed, if the person in question wants to vote but finds he cannot.
If someone is in a wheelchair, and the voting site does not have access for him, is his right to vote “removed?” No. But, at the same time, is he able to vote? No.
That’s the kind of thing you’re arguing in favor of.