Who is it again who esteems the right to vote too lightly?
And in the need for voter ID and all these voter ID laws to make sure the elections aren’t tainted. :rolleyes:
Congratulations, Bricker! You helped Donald Trump get elected!
From your link:
So the study includes a substantial set of respondents (enough to classify as “often”) who actually had valid ID and could have voted, but did not merely because they thought they didn’t have the right ID?
Yeah, six gallons of I-don’t-care to that one. You cannot seriously argue you oppose a law because people mistakenly believed something about the law.
Or I guess you can, in your world. Thank God you don’t control the real world.
Hold up a second there, big hoss! Which variety of citizen is more likely to believe that? A subset of citizens who lack that form of “voter confidence” that assures them that they are the preferred citizen, voting in “first class” with the best accommodations in ease of access and facilities? Or people who are not a bit surprised to find that a major political party will twist itself into legalistic pretzels to justify putting barriers and hoops in their path?
Would it surprise you that persons of the brownish complexion would find that more likely? Would you like us to pretend that its their own fault?
See, that’s the side of “voter confidence” that you strenuously ignore. People who are suppressed and insulted by their state legislatures, people for whom “equality before the law” is little more than an empty slogan. Not as bad as “liberal hypocrisy”, of course, but a close cousin to same.
Out of curiosity, if someone started up a misinformation PAC, intentionally meant to send the wrong information to voters, giving them incorrect information about voting times, places, and eligibility requirements, would you actually have a problem with that, or would you consider it a public good, in that people stupid enough to fall for such things aren’t choosing leaders or policies?
Don’t be a better Bricker than Bricker. One is quite enough.
Study finds many Wisconsin voters are morons. Texas ones, also.
Badly phrased. What kept them from voting was their own ignorance. Any clue on how many of these people actually showed up to a poll and asked? Any of them ask friends or relatives who actually managed to vote? Call their congresscritter, or call the local news channel? Make any kind of effort?
On the plus side, 2,976,150 were not too stupid to vote!
Could have been Democrats, could have been Republicans. Trumps victory could have been wider.
If all the ‘nearly 17000 voters’ went for Hillary, she still would have lost.
But at least 25000 Wisconsin voters could have swung the election had they not voted for people who were not even on the ballot in the larger states and a ZERO chance of being elected even they were.
I’m a Democrat. And these 17000 Wisconsin voters (and the 25000 who voted ‘other’) can go jump in one of Wisconsin’s beautiful lakes.
So should we take this post as an argument in favor of an intelligence test that you’d like to see in place before people can vote?
It’s tempting, no?
Not necessarily a public good, but not a ill that requires suspension of the First Amendment.
Several years ago, I offered the following analogy: if I announced that I was placing a voodoo curse on anyone who voted for the Democrats, and the measurable result of that threat was that 5,000 voters chose to not risk it and not vote, what if anything should be done?
I hesitate to ask this, but is there no longer, in US jurispudence, the concept of “disparate impact”?
For this analogy to work, it needs to be equally crazy to believe in an official-seeming public announcement about voting times, places, and eligibility requirements …and voodoo.
Make it sound more legalistic - compare the reasonable assumption that an official-seeming (but misleading) announcement about voting is true, versus the reasonable assumption that an announced voodoo curse (even if we grant that the Bricker-analog announcing the curse sincerely believes it to be real) is true. How many court rulings have hinged on the definition of “reasonable” ?
At the very least, I don’t see voodoo-Bricker making any reasonable claims for 501(c)(3) status.
No, that’s not a true statement.
But it’s REALLY confident sounding!
I’d argue that the analogy works as long as each belief is considered by society to be unreasonable.
But more to the point, why do you imagine you can simply declare conditions to be true?
Sure. Labor law codifies disparate impact as actionable, to pick one example.
Why do you ask? Are you arguing it has some impact here?
Or are we just making conversation about stuff?
Why not? Voodoo is a syncretic religion; religious groups and churches are eligible for 501(c)(3). The only danger I might face is if a substantial portion of my activities were dedicated to thwarting Democrats. As along as it was a side note to my usual zombie raising, why would a 501(c)(3) be out of reach?
There are (as others have pointed out) many flaws with this analogy.
But ignoring them, here’s my question for you: So you live in a town which is close to 50/50 split between liberal and conservative. And there are a lot of believers in voodoo in this town. And most of them (everyone knows) are liberal-leaning.
So before an election, the conservative mayoral candidate exactly acts out your hypothetical… and then narrowly wins the election.
So someone then goes on the SDMB and starts a threat entitled “I pit the voodoo-cursing GOP vote-suppressors”, describes what happened, and calls the Republican candidate lots of nasty names.
How do you respond?
On further research, I see Trump trying to gut the Johnson Amendment, and I guess it’s not strictly an endorsement for any specific opponent of Hillary Clinton if one says the election of Hillary Clinton will unleash voodoo rapture or whatever, so my version of “reasonable” and an American court’s version of “reasonable” is likely to vary, and increasingly so in the near future.
Depends on the tone of the attacks.
To a tone of simple vitriol, one in which it seemed clearly accepted that the mayor’s practice was lega, I’d probably respond by agreeing that his conduct was poor.
To a tone of outraged whining that had a subtext of demand that the mayor’s practice be somehow legally blocked, I’d probably respond with scorn and contempt.
There are no laws against something like this? I’m not saying there are or are not, I’m wondering if there are. It seems like falsely advertising the voting times and polling places would be somewhat illegal.