No, it’s not. I get that you believe it to be true, but it’s not true.
He wasn’t arguing. He was simply pointing out the fallacies, errors, and, of course, hypocrisies in the arguments of others. Since he realized from the beginning that no such debate was possible, given our lack of shared presumptions, he dedicated himself to a Socratic procedure of instruction and correction. For 178 fucking pages.
Ha!
Oh, you’re being serious. Let me rephrase. HA!
You could have quit after your first post, then. Who’s been arguing that the legislation is technically invalid, i.e. it doesn’t have all its i’s dotted and t’s crossed? Passing legislation is what legislatures do (essentially at their own discretion) and signing bills is what executives do (essentially at their own discretion) and if the laws have a “rational basis” (in the legal sense) but not a rational basis (in the usual sense), they’re still on the books and will stand until repealed, amended or struck down by the judiciary.
If you truly were doing what you describe, your first contribution could have been a simple description of the legislative process and every subsequent post (assuming they were needed, and under this approach you’re allegedly taking, they wouldn’t be) could just be a link back to the first one.
You’re obviously lying, though, as demonstrated by every testy impatient shot you’ve taken at “liberals” in this thread, most if not all of them pretty damn lame.
Please to name the roster of this illustrious group, o patient and steadfast one.
Really? I must have missed them because I know you know that voter fraud isn’t widespread. I know that you know the voter fraud (or to be precise, vague concerns about voter fraud) are merely the justification stuck on bad law designed to bias elections. Please note that I say “bad” in the sense of irrational, morally reprehensible and counter to the principles of democracy, and not that the legislation is legally invalid, i.e. it was not voted on correctly or published correctly or some other technical issue.
Yes, the paper-thin rationalization you’re embracing in support of this legislation is well-established, alongside your willful blindness to the cardboard-thick negatives it creates, and your utter disinterest in comparing the two.
And if upheld by the judiciary?
How many links to posts in this thread describing Voter ID laws as an unconstitutional poll tax will it take for you to admit that even though the law was upheld as not being a poll tax, people still called it a poll tax?
You would think so. How many times in this thread did I remind readers of Crawford v. Marion County?
How many links would it take to posts in this thread that attribute to me a belief in voter fraud, then, before you acknowledge that this happened?
I don’t agree that my rationalization is this, and specifically that your weighing of the negatives is the correct one.
You know this. According to your suggestion above, I have only to link back to posts in which I have said it.
Yes, Doctor Quizmaster, if upheld, and until it is repealed, amended or struck down by a later and/or higher judicial ruling.
People are free to call it whatever they want; they don’t need my approval. I can see why it looks like a poll tax and has several aspects in common with a poll tax, and I assume the fact that you bring it up means you’re about to cite a judicial ruling that it is not a poll tax, so that’ll be the official line for now.
I’ve no idea. How many times did you say something stupid about liberals? Are we keeping score? My point being that your performance in this thread is clearly not the calm rational exercise in education you have indicated. Heck, if you wanted to present a dry factual accounting of the status of various voter ID bills, laws and court cases in the U.S., you could start a GQ thread.
I’d do it for you, but it would be a bit too obviously done so for the main purpose of showing how full of crap you are because I’m confident you’d blow your cool (if you ever had any to start with) sooner or later. It’d be fun to watch, I admit, but possibly inviting accusations I was provoking or even trolling you, and my reasonably good standing on this board is more important to me than devising strategies against someone who is wrong (!) on the internet (!)
A few might be interesting. I’d say to those people “Hey, dope, Bricker isn’t stupid enough to believe voter fraud is real, he’s only saying it’s a concern to some people as an excuse to bias elections under the pretense of protecting elections. He almost certainly doesn’t believe the obvious lies spread by Republicans - he just hopes others will.”
I look forward to enlightening those who possibly haven’t interacted with you as much as I have.
i know that you say your rationalization is based on something substantial (while simultaneously claiming that the problems created are less so). I have simply concluded that you are lying when you do so (or if I was feeling generous, that you have decided that you’re simply going to believe what you’ve chosen to believe, all counter-arguments irrelevant, all counter-evidence determinedly unrecognized). You can decide to keep telling me that you’re not lying in the hopes that I’ll believe it, but there are other approaches I could suggest.
For what it’s worth, I’m fully prepared to recognize that the effect of the laws might not actually swing (or even significantly affect) a single election. It was enough for me to know that several proponents let slip that this was the intent, coupled with a complete lack of evidence that such laws are needed (the trump card, really - I hate useless laws), for me to take an opposing stand.
Of course, the issue is academic for me personally, as I’m not American and in fact live in a democracy where election procedures are not nearly as prone to procedural rigging, i.e. a sane and reasonable and responsible system, relatively speaking.
Does your country require an ID to vote?
Yes, and an ID requirement in and of itself is not the issue.
What purpose does needing an ID to vote in your country serve?
Exactly! A more relevant question might be: how hard was it to get a suitable form of ID? I’m guessing you didn’t have to drive to the county seat and fill in a document that’s only available on certain days, where there wasn’t a clerk at the window to receive your form.
This thread wasn’t started to Pit voter-ID laws per se, but those which are burdensome, and especially those which are asymmetrically burdensome.
(I, personally, have seen more voters denied their right to vote by malfunctioning voting machines than by demands for ID. But I’m not a poor voter in a heavily red state where the registrar of voters has deliberately made it difficult for people to get suitable ID.)
No one else is, either.
If you’d like details of how Canadian elections are run, the Elections Canada website can help you, but a straight-up comparison of the Canadian and American electoral system isn’t quite apples to oranges. It’s apples to being hit in the face with a brick and told you’re a fag.
Yes, since in a heavily red state, the registrar of voters wouldn’t bother to deliberately made it difficult for people to get suitable ID.
In a swing state, though…
I checked a box on my tax return authorizing my information to be shared with Elections Canada and a few weeks before the vote, I was mailed a card announcing that I’d been registered and would I be so polite as to inform them of any discrepancies (i.e. someone on the card had since moved out) and otherwise toodles, see you at the polling station, which is about four blocks north of my address, and to which I eventually went with one of the twenty or thirty pieces of acceptable identification in a voting process that took about 10 minutes and was all very civilized and low-key.
My guy lost (indeed his entire party went from power to opposition) but c’est la vie.
We know you all speak French, beaver boy, no need to make a big deal out of it.
IN which swing state, specifically, does the registrar of voters control the distribution of IDs?
Is there anybody here who didn’t know he was gonna do that? Right down to “specifically”?
There’s always going to be that one bug remaining in the system!
(“The regime should abolish the people and appoint a new one in its place.” Bertolt Brecht.)
It frightens and disturbs you when I pierce the comfortable vague assertions with demands for specifics. Right? I mean, you all just know what it is really true, and it’s just rude to ask for specifics, especially when the underlying claim simply isn’t true…but it should be. It’s rude to highlight that pretense, isn’t it?
Sorry, you don’t get to be taken seriously when asking for a “specific” answer since you’ve ducked too many that were given to you that were not obviously disingenuous stalls for time. I’ll throw in one later in this post that I’ve asked previously but can’t recall getting an answer.
Clearly, Trinopus was speaking somewhat fancifully - the person in charge of issuing voter IDs in any particular state is not likely to have the actual title of “registrar of voters”. That some Americans in some venues find the necessary ID difficult to get (from whatever the relevant authority is) is a matter of record, coupled with the continued lack of a good reason why the new ID is even necessary - the reason you have cited remains insufficient, though unfortunately not so for the legislatures who mandated such requirements, for reasons they state publicly only when their guards are down.
A question I have for you is this: What specifically do you think will actually happen, or even what do you think might happen in the worst possible case, if voting became easier and Americans began (by whatever standards you care to pick, if they are measurable in some sense) to view voting with reduced esteem (however you wish to define the term)? Further reduced voter turnout? Celebrity candidates with no more qualification than some appearances on a popular reality show? Debates that turn into actual beauty contests with runway walks or “Yo Momma So Fat” insult contests?
There’s a particular reason the “esteem too lightly” happens to resonate with me, but I’ll hold off elaborating after seeing how much traction, if any, the above paragraph gets.
And I’m not actually sorry.
I was thinking of the county level, at least here in California. Here, the position of County Registrar of Voters is an appointed position, and, specifically, in San Diego, the person occupying that post has very unpleasant political associations with the Republican Party. To be dead honest, I do not trust the son of a bitch. However, San Diego political lines are so very broad, even the most dishonest Registrar conceivable could not alter the outcome of a major election.
(This is the bastard who tried to foist computerized voting machines on us, said machines failing to function and having to be discarded. We’re back to ink-and-paper ballots, although they are machine-scanned, thus leaving room for more criminal manipulation of the totals.)