Trying to finish me off, aren’t you, John? I’ll get you for this, I swear…
Working on the Sabbath?!
Okay; I laughed. That, is some impressive thinking, you have a brilliant future in the GOP Department of Pretense.
Well, I looked into it. Mostly with an eye to finding someone Pubbish who would offer a rationale. A couple of points in passing. Numero uno, this is entirely Florida, best as I can tell. so I’m not that surprised to see so little comment upon it, since voter madness has a quite run amok in the Dangling Penis State. Numero two-o, a statistic I had not actually run across, suggests that fully a third of Florida’s black and hispanic voters took advantage of Sunday voting to cast their ballots. Which is a lot more than I expected.
The only Pubbie spokesgit mentioned in my Google search was Marco Rubio, in the midst of a stirring defense of the integrity of blah blah blah, he says this:
*referring to the voter registration restrictions that the League of Obama Bitches…ah, Women Voters…objected to.
Note, please, a couple of disconnects: first, he is pleased to announce his party’s abiding concern with increasing voter turnout: “And so Sunday voting and, you know, early voting was built in, in order to hope to increase voter participation…” We are heartened to hear it!
BUT!..“The cost-benefit analysis of the first week of voting was really not - was really not cost effective.” Please note: he has shifted the topic from Sunday voting to the “first week” of voting and offered us the conclusion, without any actual numbers, that it was not “cost effective”.
One has to wonder if he had the same facts at his fingertips that I do, to wit: the huge proportion of black and hispanic voters who voted on that one day! Maybe that extra week wasn’t very “cost effective”, but it sure seems like the Sunday part was. Looks kinda like they strove to increase voter turnout and, to their shock and horror, succeeded.
Now, about those numbers: best source appears to be :
U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, (D-Jacksonville) on Friday, June 15th, 2012 in a press release
Politico did a fact check on those numbers, available here:
Their conclusion:
With a capital “T”, which I take to mean extra-special true, rather than just being factual.
So, I guess you could say that the Republican position is that Sunday voting isn’t “cost effective”, but no actual substance has been offered to support the suggestion, and only Rubio has actually said it (so far as I can tell). Seems to me that if a third of any major demographic group is using Sunday voting effectively, and not so much the other “early voting” opportunities, then Sunday voting is very cost effective, and the others, not so much.
My opinion remains unchanged: this is a baldly cynical effort to suppress the demographics likely to vote Dem. If anyone has a rational basis for a rebuttal, I’m off the Google now, so its all theirs!
Aside: Jesus fuck a shit soufflé , but election day in Florida is going to be a napalm clusterfuck of galactic proportions! I endeavor to remain both sane and sober, but interesting times call for tough choices…
Well, sure.
Except that I don’t agree the numbers said that.
(1) In 2008, “33.2 percent of those who voted early on the last Sunday before Election Day were African-American, while 23.6 percent were Hispanic.”
(2) In 2008, 33.2 percent of African-Americans that voted, voted on the last Sunday before Election Day.
See the difference? Your quote said (1). You concluded (2).
Read the Politifact.
Anything else?
That’s still not saying what you’re saying it’s saying.
There is a difference between these two statements:
33% of African-American voters are early voters. (Your claim)
33% of early voters are African-American voters. (The cite’s claim)
Put another way.
There may have been only 500 voters who voted early. 166 (33%) were African American, and 118 (24%) were Hispanic.
Or it may have been that black and hispanic voters crushed the local polling places under a tidal wave of melananin-affected complexions! And the resulting damage ruined the cost effectiveness of the program!
Of course, I have no evidence of such a thing, so my conjecture might reasonably be regarded as blowing smoke. That would be fair, I’d have to admit.
And he retreats to the bullshit.
I have no idea what the numbers are. But apparently Rubio said the early voting wasn’t cost effective. The numbers you post don’t address that claim. They show that early voting was proportionally used by a good number of black voters but doesn’t address the Rubio claim at all. If only a small number of voters used the system, it doesn’t make sense to keep funding it.
Can’t you just say, “OK, good point, let me find put how many voters were involved?” Why retreat to the crush-the-polling-station crap?
How about 2.62 million Florida voters in 2008 who cast early in-person (EIP) votes in the general election? That’s out of approximately 8.3 million total votes in Florida, which works out to over 30%. And that’s not counting the 1.87 million who voted by absentee ballot. So in 2008, over half of Florida voters cast their ballots prior to Election Day.
Those numbers are on page two of the link above, which was one of the links in the Politifact article supplied by elucidator. Was pretty fucking easy to find for me, but then, I’m not trying to create an impression that the system was poorly used in order to make Rubio and the GOP seem reasonable.
Yeah, thing is, voting isn’t cost effective. There’s no real way to spin a profit from it, which is abhorrent to the GOP. In fact, a few guys in the South hit on a method of making it less mired in government inefficiency, but turns out some people weren’t too happy with that (though it technically didn’t disenfranchise anyone and I’d like to hear a retraction from anyone claiming it did). You know, Gadaffi hit on the same thing. Consensus based direct democracy at a regional level, devolution of power and Libya avoids costly elections. Bada bing, bada bam, highest quality of life outcomes and GDP in Africa. Only one drawback, brutal suppression of the population.
Though maybe Rubio was discussing a new metric with which to interpret the data: votes for the GOP reduce the deficit (except when they’re cutting taxes, but that increases taxable revenue according to Patented Hans-Hermann Hoppe and a skip technology). Thus, any votes benefiting the Democrats are not cost-effective.
Hilarious.
But even acknowledging that voting as an activity is not cost effective, suppose we learn that collecting 55% of the votes on Election Day cost the state $3 million, and collecting 45% of the vote in pre-Election Day voting cost $9 million. (Figures made up to illustrate the point).
And just to illustrate the mindset of these who shriek and wail about GOP vote suppressors, we have good ol’ Harvard University political science professor Stephen Ansolabehere, who was an “expert” witness for the Justice Department as they asked the federal courts to uphold their attempt to stop the Texas Voter ID law.
Ansolabehere testified that the Texas law was more likely to affect Hispanic and black voters than white ones, and had a list of he scope of the problem: 1.5 million Texas residents without photo ID that would be disenfranchised with no remedy.
On cross examination, Texas pointed out that Ansolabehere’s list included Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison ®, former president George W. Bush and former senator Phil Gramm ®.
Um… now, I can’t say I ever got a paycheck from Harvard, but his analysis sure seems like it might be … um … a bit biased towards including lots of names. Without all that much regard for the accuracy of the claims he’s making.
Then let’s hear the actual numbers. And even then, here’s an interesting counterpoint – what if, of that 45%, a considerable number could not voter on election day?
I have no idea what the actual numbers are.
But since I am not advancing any claim, I don’t bear the burden of providing them.
Well, sure you are, you are claiming we are wrong.
So, anyway, if some academic douchebag presents bad evidence and poorly run studies that prove the sun rises in the East, does it stop doing so? Because some guy fucks up his statistical sampling, this makes us wrong?
Well, OK, then, as long as you’re merely projecting some sort of mindset and not actually suggesting this has any bearing on the argument. Far be it from me to scold someone for a bit of pointless snark, after all. Long as you’re not pretending its anything more, hell, freak freely…
No link offered, gotta do it myself. Google that weirdass name (Ansolabehere) and Texas, bound to hit. Number one is Breitbart. OK, no fucking way. FoxNews second. Well, that’s a step up. Thats where this little nugget of courtroom hilarity ensues, so drum roll please, my first and last citation of FoxNews…
(I feel dirty now, and not in the good way…)
Texas’ attorney faces tough questions from judges on final day of voter ID case
Seems the court didn’t close up shop after the Perry Mason moments above. Because:
So, however good it may have felt to stick pins in the Feds evidence, they don’t actually need any evidence, because of the technicality lawyers call the burdock of proof. After a while, they got to the point where they start asking questions.
Gotta hand it to the boy, he had an answer! Yessiree, Bob, no flies on him!
.
As a recovering Texan, I can offer this rejoinder my rock solid anecdotal affirmation. Texas is fucking huge, with tiny dollops of not much surrounded by endless expanses of nothing at all. Many’s the time as a child we would drive two-three hours to picnic with relatives for a while, then drive two-three hours back. Partly why the words “speed limit” are given the same authority as “suggested serving”.
But note the vast bulk of insinuation in that one word: they “select to live in a place that requires them to travel long distances”. Its a matter of free choice, you see. They selected to live in Texas, hence, the responsibility is entirely theirs!
Hence it follows, as the shovel follows the elephant, that the burden in obtaining the needful ID was a result of their own free choice, and Texas stands ready to defend that free choice from tyrannical federal intervention! OK, he didn’t actually say that part. But the rest of it, yeah.
Take that, Florida! You just try and out-crazy Texas, you just go on and try it!
Oh, I’m done with the Google now, anybody else needs it…
Texas is huge? Bub, you don’t know what huge is.
Now, this was interesting. I support voter ID laws, so long as they’re free and not a material burden. Someone needs to answer this question, ISTM.
Can’t they have a voter ID drive and set up stations in key locations that minimize this? That kind of thing? If voters don’t get ID because they can’t be bothered, I have no sympathy. The process needn’t be completely pain-free. But this sounds different (and wrong).