I Pit the ID-demanding GOP vote-suppressors (Part 1)

[Bricker]

@MaxTheVool

Actually, his real answer is likely to be “well, the court has ruled, and I respect its ruling”, or words to that effect. Which, while obviously far less objectionable on the surface, is in an insidious sense kind of worse. In that his position to begin with wasn’t “well, I like some stuff about voter ID laws, but am troubled by other parts, let’s see what the courts say”. It was “I love these laws, they’re great, they’re the law of the land, I know that none of them present an undue burden, and you guys can suck it”.

When one of these laws are found unconstitutional, his response SHOULD be “gee, that shakes my confidence that many of the other similar laws, proposed at around the same time by similar people for similar reasons, are just fine… and it provides some level of evidence that maybe the impure motives that I’ve acknowledged many of the framers of these laws probably possessed might have found their way into the laws themselves”, or something like that. Which, so far, he has not (as far as I know) done.

Let me know if I’m needed here, after you and septimus tire of writing my responses.

[Trinopus]

@Bricker

Let me know if I’m needed here, after you and septimus tire of writing my responses.

Strongly as I disagree with you, yeah, this is a valid point. “Here is what my antagonist would say” is not a logically valid form of argument. It’s Rush Limbaugh’s sole rhetorical stock-in-trade, and who the hell wants to be like him?

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@Bricker

@elucidator

Looked at from that point of view, the Counselor need not have a problem. He has retreated into a bunker of insisting that he is only concerned with the validity of voter id laws. He doesn’t need to take any position on these other legal embellishments.

Yes, that’s certainly a recent retreat for me, huh?

From 2012, in this very thread:

@Bricker

My point is very simple: with no ID requirement, anyone can show up, give the dog’s name, and vote. With. Photo ID requirement, the task is more complicated, and gives an excellent chance of being able to successfully convict the person that tried.

“…and that’s why I support the cities efforts to stop our homes from being trampled every day by stampeding colossal mega-jackals, too!”

@Bricker

Let me know if I’m needed here, after you and septimus tire of writing my responses.

[elucidator]

…It’s Rush Limbaugh’s sole rhetorical stock-in-trade, and who the hell wants to be like him?

Shit, lots of people, mostly guys screaming over AM radio.

Just saw a TV smart guy opining that what was most interesting about this case is the way intent was inferred. Things like early voting, Sunday voting, etc. that had nothing at all to do with voter id. But were predominately identified with minority voting. These restrictions did not enjoy the shelter of “valid neutral justification”, and, taken in the round, gave away with malign motives of the Republicans.

[Bryan_Ekers]

I missed this earlier.

@Bricker

In example: suppose that some enterprising court clerk had (before same-sex marriage was generally legal) used a law that said, “Marriage licenses shall be issued to both partners upon the payment of fees,” to marry same-sex couples. This would be following the letter of the law while ignoring its spirit, but few people here would have objected to the tactic.

What if it’s not ignoring the spirit of this particular law but observing the spirit (arguably the letter) of a higher law, i.e. the 14th Amendment?

[raventhief]

@Bricker

Yes, that’s certainly a recent retreat for me, huh?

From 2012, in this very thread:

Did I miss it,or did he not say it was “recent”? IS it a retreat from a previously held position, or you only objecting to the idea that it’s a “recent” retreat?

[elucidator]

In all fairness, I do recall a long expedition into the wilds of “It helps make prosecution easier!” for many a page. But, that one fell by the wayside, dwarfed by the sheer immensity of “valid neutral justification”.

So? What you cannot seem to grasp here, Bricker, is that you were having your own private argument. But you wouldn’t stick to it. More to the point, you wouldn’t let the rest of us stick to it. For us, it was about using the law to suppress voting rights, hindering, obstructing, and how that really wasn’t kosher. You know, like it says in the title of the thread.

Several times, many of us stipulated that there was nothing wrong with voter id just in itself, it depends on the purposes to which it is used. Nothing wrong with a hammer, long as its for nails and not skulls.

We also pointed out the same thing this court pointed out: that the intent of the legislators was on full display with other suppressive legislation. I don’t recall that argument had much effect on you, but it appears it has had some effect on this court. Those guys are lawyers too, right?

[Bricker]

@raventhief

Did I miss it,or did he not say it was “recent”? IS it a retreat from a previously held position, or you only objecting to the idea that it’s a “recent” retreat?

It’s not a retreat. It’s been my position from the beginning of this issue.

[ElvisL1ves]

One of several.

Including that these restrictions were “reasonable”, not racially or partisanly motivated, and intended to fix a problem that doesn’t exist, and entirely legal.

How does it feel, after all these years, to realize how categorically and comprehensively wrong you’ve been?

[elucidator]

…North Carolina’s 2013 election law was advertised as preventing voter fraud. Instead, it has been exposed as fraudulent lawmaking – voter suppression in the guise of voting protections…

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article92737297.html

This is what we were talking about. Note how neatly it fits the premise established by the OP, in the title of the thread. That however valid, neutral, and justified voter id might be, if it is used to a pernicious end, the law loses that legitimacy.

What you were talking about, Counselor, was just about everything else but. A two hundred page hijack. You went for page after page, trying to disprove the argument that there was no voter fraud worthy of the name, the Ramon Cruz Gambit. Failing that, you re-discovered your dedication, and declared that none of it really mattered, that if so much as the shadow of possible voter fraud existed, then the divine principle of voter confidence was in jeopardy! Amongst other lengthy expeditions into the jungle of You Guys Are Wrong!

None of which had any bearing on the central issue. Which was, to review for Time Umpteenth, that to pervert a legitimate principle for an illegitimate purpose was wrong, and should not have happened.

What are you telling us now? That you never took those fanciful excursions? None of that ever happened? That you spent two hundred pages telling us something that did not matter?

General Jubilation T. Cornpone, leader of Cornpone’s Defeat, Cornpone’s Rout, and Cornpone’s Utter Humiliation.

[elucidator]

Meanwhile, back in Wisconsin…

Federal Appeals Court Strikes Down North Carolina Voter ID Requirement

A federal appeals court decisively struck down North Carolina’s voter identification law on Friday, saying its provisions deliberately “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision” in an effort to depress black turnout at the polls.

The sweeping 83-page decision by a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upended voting procedures in a battleground state about three months before Election Day. That ruling and a second wide-ranging decision on Friday, in Wisconsin, continued a string of recent court opinions against restrictive voting laws that critics say were created solely to keep minority and other traditionally Democratic voters away from the polls…

Sorry, Counselor, didn’t mean to interrupt. You were saying?

[ElvisL1ves]

More specifically,

In particular, the court found that North Carolina lawmakers requested data on racial differences in voting behaviors in the state. “This data showed that African Americans disproportionately lacked the most common kind of photo ID, those issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV),” the judges wrote.

So the legislators made it so that the only acceptable forms of voter identification were the ones disproportionately used by white people. “With race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans,” the judges wrote. “The bill retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess.”

The data also showed that black voters were more likely to make use of early voting — particularly the first seven days out of North Carolina’s 17-day voting period. So lawmakers eliminated these seven days of voting. “After receipt of this racial data, the General Assembly amended the bill to eliminate the first week of early voting, shortening the total early voting period from seventeen to ten days,” the court found.

Most strikingly, the judges point to a “smoking gun” in North Carolina’s justification for the law, proving discriminatory intent. The state argued in court that “counties with Sunday voting in 2014 were disproportionately black” and “disproportionately Democratic,” and said it did away with Sunday voting as a result.

“Thus, in what comes as close to a smoking gun as we are likely to see in modern times, the State’s very justification for a challenged statute hinges explicitly on race — specifically its concern that African Americans, who had overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, had too much access to the franchise,” the judges write in their decision.

Or maybe they just “esteem it too lightly”. :rolleyes:

What do y’all say, is **Bricker **a liar or merely a dupe?

[Evil_Economist]

@ElvisL1ves

More specifically,Or maybe they just “esteem it too lightly”. :rolleyes:

What do y’all say, is **Bricker **a liar or merely a dupe?

More importantly, it’s been proven the sponsors of this law deliberately conspired to prevent minorities from exercising their constitutional rights. That should fucking well be a felony.

[elucidator]

Yeah, I saw that stuff about the NC legislators researching their proposal. And left “fingerprints”! Either they were dumber than a sack of wet mice, or they figured it just wouldn’t matter.

Imagine them playing Clue! “It was me, in the library, with the candlestick! I win!”

[davidm]

Holy crap! It’s almost like they put on white hoods, stood up, and declared “yeah, we’re doing it to stop them ******* from voting. Try to stop us!”

[iiandyiiii]

Bricker, do you except that in this NC instance, based on the evidence, it’s reasonable to believe that the legislators were motivated by the desire to make it harder to black people to vote? If so, how does this affect your opinion on the law?

[elucidator]

Again, let it be noted, that if voter id laws were done the right way, they might have been a good thing. A voter outreach and registration program to deliver voter id for instance. A card that could be accepted for any public need, or taken as positive proof that the bearer is a citizen.

And if our Republican citizens cringe in fear of voter fraud, we can easily lift the burden from their timid shoulders. Facts, apparently, aren’t enough.

And, of course, register a whole bunch of new voters. Actually, kind of like that part.

And if that was what they wanted to do, they could have done it. They didn’t, because…they didn’t want to.

Think maybe that whole “more registered voters” part is what they didn’t like? Yeah, me too.

[Leaper]

@iiandyiiii

Bricker, do you except that in this NC instance, based on the evidence, it’s reasonable to believe that the legislators were motivated by the desire to make it harder to black people to vote? If so, how does this affect your opinion on the law?

Hasn’t he said before that legislator intent doesn’t matter to him, as long as it’s legal?

[Bricker]

@iiandyiiii

Bricker, do you except that in this NC instance, based on the evidence, it’s reasonable to believe that the legislators were motivated by the desire to make it harder to black people to vote? If so, how does this affect your opinion on the law?

The problem with answering this question is that “the legislators,” are not a single composite mind.

The bill passed because many legislators voted for it. I do not believe that every single favorable vote was received from a person who intended to make it harder for black people to vote.

I do believe that some of the legislators had that in mind.

But what they had in mind is not, in my view, particularly relevant. I think the law means what the text says, and not what we speculate some legislators might have been thinking when they passed it.

I certainly accept this decisions, as I hope you will accept any future appeals that get a different result. Will you?

[Trinopus]

Define “accept.”

Obey the law? Yes.

Stop filing lawsuits against? Not a fucking chance in hell.