Demographics of Florida as of 2000: 30.4% white-Hispanic and black.
According to the OP, more than half of the rejected voters are black and Hispanic.
But Bricker sees nothing worth investigating.
And all of this hoop-jumping is intended to do what? Prevent people from registering and voting multiple times under different names?
And that’s not happening, is it? I therefore conclude that this speculation is simply alarmist, not realistic.
Of course, if you have a cite of someone registering multiple times under multiple names in different precincts, and voting multiple times, then that will put this law in a different light. If you can provide evidence of it happening many times, more than the number of people who will be disenfranchised by this law, I might even agree with you. So, I anxiously await your cites of rampant voter fraud necessitating this new law.
At the very least, you gotta admit the timing is a little suspicious. It goes into effect 2 months before a presidential election? They couldn’t have started in July? Or waited for January?
Bricker, I often enjoy your posts. You post the stuff I don’t have time to look up. And you are often a voice of reason in a crowded room of shouting. But on this issue, you’re ignoring the larger picture.
The prevention of voter fraud is a solution in search of a problem. As explained well already, the voter fraud to be avoided is de minimus while the potential disenfranchisement is not.
So the question is why do we, all of a sudden, put all of this effort into solving THIS particular problem? You know that society makes trade-offs in which laws to enforce. Why is this one now (and not done when it should be in the middle of our leaders’ terms) all important?
The AGs felt pressure in 2006 for not leaping up and taking this on.
You may be right on the specifics, but the question, again, is why do it now? It just seems like a bad political play. Let’s have an election and then devote ourselves to voter purity.
And in the meantime, why don’t we say that the default position is that everyone gets to vote (non-provisionally) and then when the recounts happen, THEN, you purge the 1 in a 1,000 illegal votes. Isn’t that just as fair? Wouldn’t that assuage the worries of the folks who think that there’s a real problem here?
On an issue as important as this, shouldn’t the State have the burden of proof?
flip,esq
This dispute isn’t really on point. The Ohio GOP sought to force the Ohio Secretary of State to provide data for their use in evaluating registered voters and challenging those that looked suspicious. The Ohio Secretary of State, a Democrat, said that she couldn’t produce the data within the tight timeframe the GOP demanded. She was ordered by a court to do so anyway, and then the US Supremes voided that order.
The US Supremes did NOT say that the GOP challenge was voter suppression, or illegal, or even wrong. Just that the lower court should not have ordered the OhSecState to work on such a tight timetable.
And the OhSecState has said she’ll produce the requested lists, just not on that tight timetable.
So how does any of that relate to what I’m saying?
OK, I want to see a specific citation that shows a hypertechnical “exact match” happening somewhere. You say it’s happening, in contravention of the law? Where, exactly?
Well, Dangerosa has made that claim, yes, but without any actual specifics to back it up. He’s merely said that it’s happening.
Yes, I agree. And I have no problem with “further investigation.”
Here’s the thing, though. I have no problem with saying that we have an official language, and it’s English, and that’s how the government conducts its business. My father came here from El Salvador speaking only broken English, and he made it his business to learn the freaking language. So the mere fact that when voter registration doesn’t match, the letter advising the would-be voter of a problem arrives in English. That’s the language of the country.
I would certainly not object if they chose to put it in Spanish, too. But failing to do so does not constitute “voter suppression.”
The timing would have been much earlier.
But they were enjoined by the lawsuit challenging the law. Once the lawsuit was disposed of, the enforcement of the law could begin. So, no. The lateness of the law is a direct result of opponents challenging the law (and losing!).
Again – the law was passed. It was challenged, baselessly. But that challenge delayed its enforcement.
So now you’d have us further delay the law’s effects? That means that a group of people can overturn the will of the electorate (as expressed through its elected legislators) by filing baseless litigation and delaying? That hardly seems right.
No – because there’s no system in place to show who cast what ballot – a necessary component of the secret ballot box. Once you’ve voted, we can’t “undo” your vote in a recount.
That’s the idea of the provisional ballot: if there’s a question, you get to vote, but we don’t count it until it’s clear you’re entitled. If you are, then your vote counts; if you’re not, it doesn’t.
The only person that could possibly have a problem with that scheme, it seems to me, is the person that wants ineligible voters to cast effective votes.
What does this even mean?
A law is presumed valid if the state can articulate some rational basis for its actions. I don’t get to come into court and beta a traffic ticket by saying that the speed limits on the road would really be just as safe 10 mph higher, and demand that the state prove it’s choice of speed limit is correct.
No, the state shouldn’t have the “burden of proof.” The state satisfies its burden by enacting a law through majority vote of its legislators and signed by its governor.
Then you’re wrong. I have a problem with that system, and I don’t want ineligible voters to cast votes. I have a problem with it because it is harder for a poor person to prove they are eligible, for a variety of reasons stated in this and other threads.
Also, doesn’t a provisional ballot destroy the secret ballot? Obviously your name must be attached to your ballot if it is to be validated later. So it seems that a believer in secret ballots could also have a legitimate problem with this scheme.
Here (the same article - I believe - I already linked to).
I think my favorite part is this (bolding mine):
Newsflash: EVERYTHING is harder for a poor person.
I’ve been poor. Very poor. As in, ketchup sandwiches tonight poor.
The key question is: does anything about this system make it impermissibly hard for a poor person?
Now, if you said “Hey, they guy has to take off work to go stand in line for six hours to prove his identity,” then you’d have a point. But all he has to do is send in a copy of his ID. Sorry – that’s not impermissibly hard.
It depends on how they’re handled. If the process does not include a sealed ballot with ID info outside and a vote inside that’s not examined during the verification process, and not opened and counted until it’s been removed and mixed in with the others, then I’d surely have a problem with it.
The board of elections? You know, the people who’s job it is to run the elections. And if the problem is bias in the board of elections or that they’re helping one party over the other, you change the board to make it non-partisan.
Bricker:
Is it your opinion that “voter fraud” is a serious problem, one that needs to be addressed by drastic means? Can you offer any evidence that this is so?
Is it your opinion that the efforts of Republicans to install themselves as “poll watchers” is motivated by civic virtue? Or is it more likely, as I suggest, that they are attempting to introduce more “hassle” into the voting procedure, as a means of suppressing a Democratic leaning voter turnout.
And even given the legality of such, would it not be a clear example of using the letter of the law to pervert, corrupt, and bugger the *spirit *of the law?
And if so, aren’t you and I duty bound to resist. TG, IANAL, but it seems you are more duty bound than I, as a sworn servant of the law.
There’s nothing drastic about these means. We’re not asking for DNA tests or retinal scans.
I agree with you that they’re using legal means to help the vote count trend their way. And that’s exactly what ACORN is doing: using legal means to get the vote count to trend THEIR way. These guys don’t challenge voters from Republican areas? ACORN doesn’t register voters from Republican areas.
How is it that ACORN are noble souls, and these guys are perverting and corrupting?
Nicely evaded! But, as I’m totally sure you know, the thrust of my question is the threat of “voter fraud”. Is it a real problem of grave concern, or a chimera? In further answers, you may presume that “drastic” means a solution out of proportion to the problem, i.e., curing a toenail fungus by amputation.
Thank you, counselor, the witness may step down, no further questions.
Oh, you want to talk about ACORN? Haven’t we already got a thread or two about ACORN, and their dread menace to the Republic? I suppose we might, if you like, but all I was after was your admission, as above.
Protecting the rights of the rich and powerful is less onerous and more profitable than protectng the powerless and poor. You’ve probably noticed that. Should it occur that the citizens of the Hamptons and Aspen are oppressed and despised, and ACORN refuses to come to their aid, let me know and we can both sing a chorus of condemnation. And I might even loan you my umbrella, as protection from the pig flop falling from the sky…
The set of problems we’re talking about here, e.g., insufficient supplies of voting machines and insufficient numbers of polling places in certain neighborhoods, is but one instance of poor neighborhoods getting the last and the worst of everything – a problem for which the Pubs are marginally more to blame than the Dems, but which exists in jurisdictions with nonpartisan local governments.
Then you set it up to make sure it doesn’t by adequately funding the cost of election workers and voting machines, and you provide free governmental ID for the purposes of voting to those people who can’t afford driver’s licenses. I mean, to some extent, the poor are always going to have more of a burden, but you can do things to minimize that.
I would approve entirely of the first sentence, and the second is the Democratic position generally speaking. I’m just not optimistic, is all. It’ll happen if and only if the Obama candidacy portends a much broader and deeper political groundswell, one giving high priority to the particular problems of the poor, which and whom Obama has hardly mentioned this year.
No one said ACORN is noble souls. But let’s assume for a moment that both of these views are basically true:
-ACORN is trying to register as many new democratic voters as possible, which is 100% legal
-EvilRepublicanConspiracyCorp™ is trying to put as many 100% legal roadblocks in the way of voting as possible, motivated NOT by a belief in the sanctity of balloting and fear of voter fraud, but out of the cynical (but probalby correct) belief that any time you make voting harder, the number of voters will decrease, and the reduction will come disproportionately from minorities and the poor, who tend to vote democratic
Do you honestly, deep in your heart of hearts, believe that those two actions are morally and ethically equivalent?