But I think women might be rightfully outraged if an elected official was deliberately changing longstanding election laws and policies in order to exacerbate naturally-existing obstacles, and thus put women at an even larger disadvantage when it came to voting.
Seriously, is there any argument you’ve made in this thread that could NOT be used to support poll taxes and literacy tests in the Jim Crow south?
Poll taxes:
-skin in the game, “esteem too lightly”
-legitimate neutral function of providing funding for the election process
Literacy tests:
-neutrally applied to all
-legitimate neutral function of ensuring that anyone who is voting actually can read the ballot
But my religion does not work in a vaccum either. You cannot urge me to accept one tenet into social policy while refusing to accept them all. It’s similar to the condom issue: my religion forbids the use of condoms, but in the context of a monogamous martial relationship. You cannot apply ONLY the rule against condoms in the context of a varied and polygamous sexual life.
Well, I personally disfavor reducing polling place locations, all things being equal, and I disfavor shorter poll hours on Election Day. But I favor Voter ID laws. Must I remain silent on the latter point?
Perhaps. But I could also argue that we don’t give legal rights to cows now, just like in the jim Crow days, and 100 years from now, an archivist will look back on your casual attitude towards eating the flesh of a living creature as horrifying.
That doesn’t make my argument true. It makes it an excellent example of argumentum ad ignoratiam – neither if us knows what the future will bring, so therefore I am right.
Sure. * Bigger and older humans don’t necessarily trump younger and more dependent humans. Rights must always be justified and ethically grounded lest they become a tool of tyranny.* And a vast, vast majority of people don’t understand that secular, logical, reasoned point either. So, stop abortion, then let’s talk.
I think your position on abortion is even more reprehensible, but I do not demand that my view become the law by fiat.
So if you’re simply arguing why legislatures should change the law, then I agree you have every right to that positions and opinion. But your compatriots in this thread are more than open to the idea of changing the law by other means. They call it unconstitutional, when it’s been found otherwise. They inveigh against its legitimacy. That’s not simply arguing for legislatures to act.
How did you get from the actions of a few legislators and judges to “society as whole” ?
In any case, that wasn’t the point of the illustration - it was to demonstrate that if enough elected officials adhere to an undefined standard (i.e. “do you have enough ‘skin in the game’ to earn a chance to do something which is already legal?”), they can put as may arbitrary barriers in place as they want, until some judge finally decides the burdens are unreasonable, using his or her own arbitrary standards.
Ideally, of course, the legislators wouldn’t be doing this in the first place - putting up barriers for no real reason, then making up specious justifications, i.e. we have to prevent voter fraud or pregnant women need to be made aware via ultrasound of the nature of their pregnancies so they can make an informed choice.
I’d personally prefer they (and you) be honest about the motives. Yes, they want to bias elections in their favour. Yes, you want women to be guilted out of choosing to abort. You insult our intelligence by pretending otherwise.
Well, I have repeated roughly 18.975 times the statement that even rational restrictions on the right to vote are invidious if they are unrelated to voter qualifications. A poll tax is unrelated to voter qualifications.
A literacy test has a bad reputation, to be sure, because in practice the same standards were not applied to all takers. I would not, however, object to a theoretical test that could establish some basic understanding of the issues and candidates while remaining scrupulously politically neutral – but since I cannot imagine any scheme in real life could ever create and maintain such a test, I disfavor literacy tests also.
A MAJORITY of legislators is how a democratic republic expresses itself as a whole. The basis of our national government is that sovereignty rests with the people, who exercise it via their elected representatives. That’s how I got to it.
If enough legislators – that is a majority – craft a scheme that enough judges approve, then yes.
That’s how it works.
That makes your side of the argument easy, eh?
OK, right back at you. You know that these protests are simply dismay at the loss of those dozens of illegal votes that might put the Democrat over the edge. You insult our intelligence by pretending otherwise. Granted, you’ve made some arguments that suggest you don’t hold this view, but I see now I can disregard them by handwave. So: wave.
So now we’re down to “dozens of illegal votes?” That’s quite a change from the shockingly high number of illegal votes that proponents of these laws usually state.
So, can you provide evidence of these “dozens of illegal votes,” and that they are overwhelmingly Democratic? And for that matter, likely to put any candidate “over the edge?”
I’m amazed and affronted at the whole “skin in the game” argument as a justification for setting hurdles for potential voters to jump. Overcoming those hurdles, expending that additional effort, isn’t the “skin” in this game. The real “skin” is something that we all share already, that being the outcome of the elections. The consequences of our choices is the real ownership stake we citizens have in our own society. The assertion that some additional “skin” should be charged of citizens is an abhorrent attempt to divert attention from the actual situation.
We are able to make our own decisions, based upon our own prejudices and proclivities, once we get into the voting booth. Consequences then apply. But consequences also apply when some of us are unable to get into the booth to make those decisions. When that happens for genuinely neutral reasons, I think it fair to judge the effect as also neutral. But when one group or another puts their thumb on the scale in a manner that has not-neutral effects on who is, and who is not able to get into the booth, we aren’t talking about skin in the game any longer. We’re talking about cheating. And that just plain sucks, no matter who does it.
By that standard, the whole republic hasn’t weighed in, just several of the states. Not that it really matters - an argument from popularity won’t morph into truth no matter how long it waits in the chrysalis.
Well, make it harder for us - either stop telling lies or stop telling such transparent lies.
Except I don’t believe that you believe that I believe that. I do believe that you believe that the voter-ID strategy is meant to bias elections in favour of Republicans and not to address voter-fraud. I don’t believe that you believe voter fraud poses a genuine threat to the election process.
The alternative, where I believe that you genuinely honestly believe that voter fraud is a real concern and Republican legislators are acting to save democracy, is less flattering to you - it would mean that I believe that you’re a complete idiot.
Instead, I believe you’re willing (happy, even) to use deception to serve your ideological ends, and that you resort to childishness when this earns a cool reception instead of an enthusiastic one. I might be persuaded to believe that you genuinely believe the United States would be better off if Republicans, heavily influenced by Christians, could take and keep power indefinitely and run the country along more theocratic lines. This is my honest opinion of you, guided as it is by the limited interaction this form of communication allows.
I’ve vaguely gathered what your honest opinion of me is over the years, and that your opinion is heavily mingled with some liberal caricature you cannot help but summon when you respond to my posts, and it is permanently trapped in the pigeonhole you’ve built for it. I don’t take it personally - I’m certainly not the only poster to this board so categorized - your mental pigeonholes are crowded places, I’m sure.
By the way, Democrats have engaged and no doubt currently are engaging in similar shenanigans to bias elections, all the more reason no elected official should have this kind of oversight.
PPS, you were looking for a rhyme with “I.D.” and came up with “absentee”? Among the literally thousand-plus options, that’s what you chose, to invoke a concept that undermines all your alleged concerns about voter fraud by referencing a practice known to be many times worse? What’s your follow-up, an ode lamenting Roe V. Wade where you say your anger is like a coat-hanger?
No, I disagree. Those are lofty and aspirational goals, to be sure, but utterly without real world foundation.
I do favor the restriction that no change in voting procedures should occur without an intervening election. So if any change is truly perceived as a “thumb on the scale,” then the current electorate, unburdened by that proposed change, can reject the legislators who offered it up.
I suspect that part of your antisocial behaviors are due to a sour grapes effect from being excluded from the kind of social interaction you crave for. You hate weaker people and build up a delusional superior persona to insulate yourself from the pain of being alone. But your shield is twisting you. Making you into what you pretend to be. I don’t think you’re Ted Cruz evil, but you’re close.
What I’m saying, Bricker, is that I’m willing to take one for the team, and rehabilitate you into a functioning member of society, by letting you play in our Mutants and Masterminds game. It’s PL 8 and set in the DC universe, so think of what you want to play, and I’ll work with you to generate a character.
We chip in for snacks, so hopefully that doesn’t reek too hard of socialism for you to enjoy yourself. Fly on down to Honolulu with a d20 and some pennies for Hero Point counters, and we’ll get you sorted out.
By that standard, the whole republic hasn’t weighed in, just several of the states. Not that it really matters - an argument from popularity won’t morph into truth no matter how long it waits in the chrysalis.
[quote]
(1) Every state is separately sovereign, and every state is itself a democratic republic. See US Constitution, Art IV (“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…”)
(2) For those states that choose not to have Voter ID… guess how I feel? Perfectly content. They have decided they don’t weigh the consequences of an ultra-close election as highly as they do the ease of ballot access. And since that’s how they voters feel, I would never demand that they change to accommodate my different weighing of the issue. That’s how someone who believes in the idea of a democratic republic acts.
(3) There is no absolute truth here, metamorphed or otherwise. You cannot weigh your concerns on a scale and show they outweigh mine.
You’re right about that. You broke my cunning code.
You’re wrong here. It was a good run while it lasted, being right.
Gosh, Bry-bry, after you informed me you’re sure I’m lying, you complain that my view of you is mingled with a caricature?
Let’s think hard about how that might have happened.
If it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it, sure. W. H. Auden I am not.
I have played champions, and I loved it. But as I grow older, I no longer have six hours for each round of combat.
Seriously though, M&M has a fantastic system, and is very fast and easy to play. It could, I suppose be a bit faster, but the fact that you can throw down and have a fun superbattle in half an hour makes it more conducive to good roleplaying than Champions, where you have to see battles as set pieces you need to create the adventure around.
But if you’re running a Champions game, I’ll be right over.
Well, I have asserted that The Right tends to be the advocate for aristocratic interests in today’s world, and that “21st century aristocrats are not bound by national borders.”
The election of Obama seems to have driven The Right in America buck wild, motivating them to all kinds of nefarious, obstructionist schemes to strip the will of the people out of public policy making, to be replaced solely by the whims of their Aristocrat sponsors. Not being limited by national boundaries, wouldn’t they also seek to tilt things rightward in Canada? Maybe, but honestly I was answering your question as if it pertained to America by mistake, and now I am cobbling together some post-hoc justification to cover that up. Maybe you ought to toss a barb at me.
But it is worth pointing out that the Voter ID phenomenon is in fact a creature of The Right, and Canada elected the hard-right Stephen Harper as PM in 2006. Maybe Canadian right-wingers are just as drawn to gerrymandering and voter restriction as their American counterparts? Maybe Canadian voter-ID laws are a consequence of the rightward shift in Canadian politics? Because 21st century Aristocracy will be a global affair?
But now I am just speculating, without much insight into what is going on in Canada. Ekers probably could answer you better. Maybe you ought to toss a barb at me.
Why not allow mind-read votes from all citizens? If the idea is to have a representative democracy and fair elections, it solves all problems. With mind-reading voting there can be no question of voter identity, and also no hanging chads or uncertainty about the will of the people- everyone votes, and everyone, regardless of wealth or other status, does it with exactly the same expenditure of zero effort (aside from making up their minds in the first place).
What interest is served by doing anything to make voting more difficult in a situation where there is zero suspicion of voter fraud? Why hold on to 18th century techniques when 21st century ones are so far superior?
