Or we could make election day a two-day period, always on the weekend. Nobody observes Sabbath both days.
I don’t know much about it, but the only “honest” reason I can think of is to save money. But that could be an excuse rather than a reason.
Personally, I think everyone should do what CA does and offer the option to vote by mail. I know that some states (OR, for example) have instituted that as the only method. But if you at least offer the option, then you get weeks in advance to vote, and you can do it in the comfort of your home (or wherever). I’ve been doing it that way for over a decade.
It’s probably already been mentioned in this thread, but I would think that instead of demanding an ID card for voters, the focus should be on preventing election fraud at a much higher level. Generally speaking, a few (or a few thousand) illegal votes makes little difference in an election. Somebody spiking the ballot boxes or “losing” ballots or suppressing voting in any number of ways is much more likely to affect outcome.
Are you for fucking real?
This is not a “Big Government” solution. It never has been, it never will be. It’s a matter of going to your LOCAL driver’s license office and getting a DL or alternate state issued ID. In Texas, it costs $25 and is good for six years; that is in no way an economic hardship.
Our next federal election comes up in November. It’s now June. Somehow, I have the feeling that if I didn’t have a DL and I wanted to vote, I could find a way to get my butt out to the DPS office in the next 4 months.
And I’m sorry to bust your utopian bubble, but the problem does exist. A lot of it could be cleared up by the states’ purging dead people off the voter roles, but ghods forbid that should happen. The federal government is currently suing Florida to prevent them from taking dead folks off the list, and is refusing them access to necessary databases to validate others who are suspected illegals on the list. One has to ask why our current administration is so damn desperate to keep dead people on the roles, and why liberals in general so desperately support them in doing so.
Really?
Here is what I said:
And here is what I was responding to:
Why is it that only my statement is so low rent and unworthy?
Government-issued identity documents required by law for voting in federal and state elections ARE a “Big Government” thing, pretty much by definition.
It’s rather silly to argue that it somehow ceases to have any “Big Government” impact just because you obtain the document itself at a local office.
Shoot, by that “logic”, federal income tax isn’t a “Big Government” thing either, because I get the tax forms at my local post office or library. See folks, all very small-town and self-sufficient! No Big Government here, no sirree!
If it does, then you should be able to show some evidence of it. Nobody so far has offered a shred of factual evidence supporting the claim that American elections are affected by any discernible level of voter fraud: i.e., violations that would be prevented by requiring individual voters to exhibit a state-approved identity document when voting in person.
Note, since there seem to be a number of posters here confused about what actually constitutes voter fraud, that the above statement does not deny the existence or documentation of various other kinds of electoral fraud, such as electoral officials mishandling ballots or tampering with voter rolls.
But those kinds of frauds will not be checked in any way by the proposed voter-ID laws. So please get rid of the mistaken notion that news stories about instances of those kinds of frauds constitute evidence that voter-ID laws would be a good thing.
ETA: Simulpost confusion–this post responds to bricker.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
The “I’m not touching you!” defense.
Given that you can tell the glaring difference in the post/response, there’s little left but to write you off as wholly disingenuous. I’d held on to a scrap, but you pretty much killed it.
How many mistakes, if any, do you think have been made in this process in Florida so far? To your knowledge, is the “federal government” the only entity expressing concern or moving to stop the purges? If not, who else?
Say, Bricker, as long as you’re here, want to take a crack at explaining why those “sunday voting” restrictions are such a good thing, and how, no , really, they are not about making things tougher for black voters, but really about something just totally good and wholesome!
Because there is no right vote in the Bill of Rights. Although the 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments refer to the “right” to vote as something that may not be denied or abridged for specified reasons (race/creed/color, sex, and age-if-over-18 respectively), nothing else in the Constitution expressly declares that voting is a constitutional right, as distinct from a privilege afforded under qualifications set by State law.
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. wants to change that, but his proposed voting-rights amendment hasn’t gotten any traction yet.
No, my position is that as long as we can more or less reliably associate a voter with his registration, it’s all good. I favor extended voting; I have no problem whatsoever with Sunday voting and don’t agree with its elimination. If it’s a cost issue, I suppose I understand that some early days have to be eliminated, but I’d choose by past usage records.
If it were to develop that a given state can only afford eight days of voting, then I’d look at the previous records when 14 days were allowed see what time period garnered the most use, and keep that.
Was that done here?
I forgot, you’d already stipulated your agreement that this was a transparent Republican ploy to win electoral power by underhanded means. I do forget that you have occasional moments of integrity. A pity they are but moments, and fleeting…
The federal government is concerned that the so-called dead people might not all be dead. How many legitimate voters is it reasonable to disenfranchise in order to achieve the goal of purging illegitimate names of the list? Furthermore, you still have yet to show recent instances of persons showing at polls to vote under these names. If an erroneous name shows up as a voter, but no one casts a ballot as them (which would result serious legal consequences should they be found out) it doesn’t change the final result.
Because liberals apparently remember that literacy tests / poll taxes were historically used to disenfranchise minority voters, and are concerned that this is another grasp at the brass ring, so to speak.
As for the “why is one side so gung-ho” dispute:
So far, as noted by several posters, nobody has shown any evidence that individual voter fraud actually occurs on any detectable level. There simply is no significant number of documented instances of individuals spontaneously casting ballots in polling places who are not legally allowed to vote.
Neither has anybody disputed the estimates that on average nationwide, several percent of registered voters (and a higher proportion of eligible voters) lack a government-issued identity document of the sort that voter-ID laws mandate. Moreover, nobody seems to contest the claim that people without such identity documents disproportionately tend to be minorities and/or poor and to vote Democratic.
So we’ve got one side of the debate complaining about an alleged problem whose very existence they can’t even document, and asserting that it requires a solution that will make voting more difficult and/or expensive mostly for voters on the other side. This is a textbook case of a situation where the proposed solution will create more problems than it solves—but since the resulting problems will be suffered by their political opponents, the proposers don’t care.
(By the way, Bricker, I’m surprised that you lump “convicted felons” in with “illegal aliens” as people who are assumed to be not legally entitled to vote. I trust you know that not all convicted felons are permanently deprived of their voting rights? In fact, AFAICT, there are only twelve states whose laws impose permanent disenfranchisement as a consequence of a felony conviction.)
Why let facts get in the way of a good slur?
Gee, no one’s ever brought this point up before. What a zinger!
My answer is: under the current system, how would we know? Even if we identify a person, we simply claims he wasn’t the one that cast the ballot. With the possibility of a conviction being virtually non-existent, how would you expect to see any such numbers?
My further answer is: in Florida in 2000, the fate of the White House turned on 537 voters.
When you say “no significant number” has ever been documented, do you mean that there’s never been a documented question about a number of improper voters that could have swayed an election with a margin of 527?
These measures make sense in order to avoid a repeat of Florida, tainted with accusations that go nowhere. If 2012 has Florida teetering by 600 votes, and then its proven that 400 non-citizens voted… what is the remedy? We can’t assume they all voted one way and punish the winner, can we?
What would you recommend, in that situation?
Well, the general tenor of the discussion has been on Florida, where the deprivation is more or less permanent – only the Governor and the Executive Clemency Board have the power to restore those rights. But you’re absolutely correct – convicted felons should be lumped in with illegal aliens only where convicted felons are unable to legally vote.
That we solve that problem with a patient and sincere effort to clarify. Which does not include using it as an excuse to screw over voters who cannot be relied upon to vote Republican. Which you already know.
Of course, you’d much prefer to pretend that the argument is about the validity of voter id laws.
And, this whole “Sunday voting” thing simply reveals, in stark contrast, a situation that has nothing whatever to do with voter id, but simply moves to hassle black voters. It has nothing whatever to do with voter id, or fraud, or felons, or illegal aliens. Only about a demographic that is consistently Democrat leaning.
Whether or not someone voted in a given election is public, correct? If deceased or illegal person voted, there would be a record that someone voted under their name.
Here in California, you have to write down your current address when you vote. Handwriting analysis plus testimony from the poll workers saying that they saw you vote should be enough for most sane juries, in my opinion.
If Florida is teetering by 600 votes and 400 of them are proven invalid, there is still a margin of 200 votes for the winner.
But I admit, it would be easier and more fair to the candidates to deal with 400 citizens disenfranchised (remedy: give them provisional ballots at their polling place and do an investigation into their legitimacy if the number of provisional voters exceeds the margin of victory) than 400 illegitimate voters voting (remedy: revote for the district in which they cast their ballot if the number of illegitimate voters exceeds the margin of victory).
:dubious: That’s it? So, you’re all eager to implement a proposed solution to an alleged problem whose hypothetical existence you admit not only that you haven’t documented, but that you can’t document?
You’ve got no evidence of the existence of a voter-fraud problem, and you claim that it would be impossible to produce any such evidence, irrespective of whether the problem really exists or not. Hmmm. You know, usually Republicans seem to like to think of themselves as opposed to increasing government regulation to solve hypothetical problems which nobody has found any evidence of.
The ostensible effect of the voter-ID legislation you support—namely, to rein in voter fraud—would by your own admission be completely undetectable, because you haven’t shown (and according to you, can’t even show) that any such voter fraud exists.
Whereas the practical effect of such legislation—namely, to make a significant minority of registered and eligible voters (who disproportionately vote Democratic) disqualified from voting unless they individually undertake the effort and/or expense of obtaining a government-approved identity document—would be a non-negligible reduction in the number of Democratic ballots cast.
The profound difference in the ostensible and actual effects of such measures makes it pretty clear what motives are really actuating their proponents.
Bricker, how would it be known if someone voted with a fake voter ID?
ETA: You just described how we would know under the present system: we ask someone if they cast the ballot. If they say they did not - Boom, fraud detected! That’s not so impossible, now is it?