I guess he could make the claim that there is no risk of computer viruses because only a few people have ever been charged with the crime.
Yes.
And?
I didn’t acknowledge that was “the problem.” in fact, I have specifically said that bot confidence was the problem. I didn’t acknowledge that the problem wasn’t solved.
People have actually had direct experience with computer viruses.
Concerted efforts to find fraudulent voters have turned up essentially 0.
Otherwise, your analogy is spot on.
So, I’m the dishonest debater because I should have anticipated that you’d eventually give up on the issue of actual fraud and fall back to the issue of confidence?
Jesus, you can’t even be honest in your accusations of dishonesty.
Gee, could it be because it is so difficult to detect and to tie back to the perpetrator? Kind of like I was alluding to in my analogy?
And the reason most people know about computer viruses is because of the anti-virus software that tells them there is a problem. Otherwise, they wouldn’t know there was one. Which could conceivably be the case with voter fraud because of the lack of a reliable detection method.
It is possible, or are you so far over the edge that the possibility eludes you?
It’s actually pretty easy to detect. You take a decent sample size of the electoral roll that were marked as having voted and survey them to ascertain if they really did vote. That won’t tell you exactly which votes were fraudulent but will indicate how many were.
You are thick, I guess. Dense. Stupid.
We did all this in the first part of this thread. Even Bricker gave up on the idea that detection of fraudulent votes would be difficult. (Although who knows if he’s re-changed his position on that.)
Rather than be repetitive, I suggest you re-read the thread. Or you could just stick with Skip’s post above. That might be less challenging for you, since it would reduce the amount of reading required.
Sure, it will tell you which votes were fraudulent - the ones cast by the people who say they didn’t vote!
The problem is one of false positives, really. Some people may say they did not vote when they did, due to problems with cognition and recall. Your identified rate may be slightly inflated.
When we’re talking in the range of .00004% to .0009%, it won’t make that much difference.
In that particular sample yes, but not when extrapolated to the entire population of vote.
If he hasn’t got time to get a photo ID, when will he have time to vote?
You don’t quite understand. You need to prove that it is an onerous burden on a significant number of people. Citing a few bogus statistics from a lberal propaganda mill doesn’t come anywhere close to doing that.
Ah, yes, I see your point now.
Sounds great. Anyone doing it? It still doesn’t mean that people will be convicted as you have no idea who may have committed the fraud, so conviction rates are not a useful indication of prevalence.
Which is where Hentor the Idiot fails in understanding when I said, “difficult to detect and to tie back to the perpetrator”.
Yes, efforts to assess the level of voter fraud have been undertaken on multiple occasions in a variety of venues.
I agree with you that conviction rates are not particularly germane to the issue of prevalence. In fact, if you’ll recall the beginnings of this thread, and the GD thread that sprouted around the same time, I repeatedly made this point to Bricker, who kept wanting to bring convictions into the discussion.
As long as we agree that voter fraud would not be difficult to detect, we’re in accord.
You’re under the impression that the two take the same amount of time and effort to accomplish?
Gee, that’s a toughy! Howsabout that voter fraud is so insignificant that it does not require any major effort to deal with? That it certainly does not qualify as a “neutral justification” to support underhanded partisan skulduggery, as you have claimed. That the simple fact of its rarity is quite sufficient to answer hysterical claims of injury to “voter confidence”. Which, connecting the dots, would lead us to the realization that voter integrity and confidence have nothing whatever to do with what is a blatant attempt to bugger the Democrats at the polls.
As well, your dreadful scenario of an election so close that voter fraud may reasonably have some effect is a rationalization posing as a reasonable argument, the attempt to elevate something just barely possible to the level of the plausible.
And finally, that your so called “neutral justification” is little more than an effort to use a sophistic rationalization in place of a reasonable concern. And, realizing the putrid and disgusting partisan nature of these efforts, you would denounce, renounce and condemn them if you had even a smidgeon of integrity.
About covers it.
Sorta kinda an aside: Google Coleman Franken election fraud. It appears that there was an effort on the part of Republican supporters of Coleman (whom you may have forgotten, but is the only human known whom Garrison Keillor actually hates) to prove that votes cast by felons provided the difference in voting. Leads off with FoxNews, natch.
The Google search provides an avalanche in a minor key, and I haven’t given it enough attention to give you a complete précis, but I live here, and don’t recall much of anything about this. So far as I know, there was no outbreak of voter hysteria about the confidence, etc. and it sank beneath the waves without so much as a ripple.
So far, the most important point suggests that the Republicans poring over the voter rolls misunderstood sentencing, in that some persons convicted of a felony were sentenced to loss of voting privilege, but the sentence was later amended to probation without such loss. But I’m not going to pretend to having read very single report on this, as so many links lead to sites that make Fox Gnaws appear positively centrist, and I do not wish to soil my beautiful mind. Too much. A little is ok.
At any rate, the skies did not fall and the supplies of Cream of Mushroom Soup were never at threat. (That last is an in-joke, trivial, and if you don’t live here, you most likely won’t get it, and aren’t missing much of anything…)
Quite forgot I meant to answer this. Yes, “disenfranchise” has a very specific meaning, and if you intend to bricker it by sheltering in semantic precision, that is your right.
But if the question isn’t actual disenfranchisement, if it is simply a matter of hindering a certain class of voters for a partisan benefit, does that somehow become legitimate, simply because it doesn’t actually forbid anyone to vote?
For myself, using the power of the legislature to promote and ensure one party’s electoral success is disgusting and literally un-American. It ought not even be contemplated by men of integrity, much less acted upon. If the Republicans cannot win without stooping to such, they should not win.
Depends what you mean by legitimate. Certainly, it’s legal, which is one relevant meaning here.
Here, of course, you’re using another meaning of “legitimate”. The problem here is that most politicians aren’t “men of integrity” - that’s why we need laws that control their conduct. Most people don’t have the level of integrity you suggest - to avoid doing something legal for the benefit of both themselves and the cause they support, even though it’s immoral.
Don’t take this as being a “but they do it too” type post, as I think that overall the Democrats have more integrity than the Republicans, but still nowhere near enough to meet your standards.
I don’t necessarily disagree with anything you’re saying here, but… what does this mean as far as how we should actually react to the issue at hand? Throw up our hands and say “ah, well, people are corrupt, life sucks”?
That’s the problem I’ve been having as well. Trying to find a ‘neutral’ source amid the noise. ‘Voter Fraud’ ends up with so much paranoid ‘opinion’ that finding actual information is difficult.