Neatly done! Wild exaggeration disguised as modesty!
A) I notice you are using my idea from about six Voter ID threads ago that this could be solved via community means (I think I used county level because that’s where most of the social welfare resources are). I’m glad a Democrat has decided to reach across the aisle and support the SD Republican plan.
B) Why has this never been organized by Democrat controlled states? Take a state like Washington. Heavily Democrat and the Dems have been in control for a while. Lots of rural areas and some poor urban areas. Seems perfect to have a drive to register/ID every eligible & willing voter.
Maybe for you, but it’s not the standard laid out in Crawford, and I am pretty confident that the Supreme Court will step in and reject this attempt to craft this standard as law. Crawford did NOT require that underlying documents were truly free of charge.
I would also support thumbprinting. It strikes me as a very cost-effective way of ensuring accountability.
Why hasn’t it been done or even (AFAIK) proposed?
Note that thumbprints and photo logs would not ensure eligibility to vote, only accountability after the fact. Seeing as you would support this, it seems that your argument is much less to do with making sure that only eligible voters are able to cast votes, and much more to do with ensuring that fraudulent votes are able to be discovered after they are cast. Would you say that was an accurate depiction of your concerns?
Not a Democrat. Conservative wing of the extreme left.
So does that mean we still do not have a Dem to buy in on ensuring every legal resident (including legal foreign nationals) has the necessary ID to work and function in the US? So it’s up to Pubs and Libertarians? :eek:
Wouldn’t count on the libertarians. Getting the Dems unified is like herding cats, doing it with libbies would be herding hummingbirds.
Well, I see them as two sides of the same coin. By ensuring that fraudulent votes are able to be discovered after they are cast, with sufficient confidence that the caster can be prosecuted, we can assume the the deterrent effect of such a scheme would be such that only eligible voters actually cast votes.
In other words, my method for ensuring that only eligible voters cast votes is to ensure that we can reliably detect and punish the non-eligible voter who tries.
Gosh, with reliable deterrents in place, we could cut voter fraud down to…well, next to nothing! Man, talk about your valid neutral justifications! Why, we might even, some day, arrive at a place where voter fraud is no problem at all!
Hmmm. You’ve already conceded that “the cases of illegal votes are likely small, tens or hundreds at most in most cases”, so why is it that you think we need a method for ensuring that only eligible voters cast votes?
I mean, if the current method already has the result that you are looking for, why do we need a different method? Of course, I’m separating the two issues (casting of votes & accountability), but I’m curious because your personal argument always seems to hinge on “confidence in the voting system”, but you seem to readily acknowledge that the actual number of fraudulent votes is unlikely to change much, if at all. If what really bothers you is “confidence in the ability of prosecutors to successfully prosecute voter fraud”, why don’t you just argue that? Your argument comes off as somewhat disingenuous when you frame it as “confidence in the voting system” rather than “confidence in the justice system”, IMO.
You gotta stay on your toes with the Counselor, his zircon-encrusted parsing tweezers are wonderful instruments, capable of the most minute slicing.
“Voter confidence” is a neutral justification. If even the possibility of voter fraud exists, then it becomes a valid neutral justification. Hence, these laws have a valid neutral justification, and therefore all other considerations become moot.
They are legal, and constitutional, and his team wins, so neener-neener.
As well, it applies to motive. No doubt some Republican legislators are aware of the partisan advantage to be gained, and are engaged in a sordid and unseemly buggering of the voting system. Doesn’t matter, there’s a valid neutral justification, and that wipes the board clean. So long as there is any valid neutral justification, the motivations of the enactors is irrelevant.
That is some catch, that valid neutral justification.
Are you not moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this logic? Do you not let out a respectful whistle?
Well, it does elicit a musical burst of wind and vibration, delivered by a pink, round, bodily orifice. Close enough?
I recommend puckering tight until the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has the chance to weigh in. Who knows, maybe they will decide that the right to vote is as deserving of protection as, say, the right to own a handgun, the right to an abortion, or the right to keep the police from finding a dead body in your basement without a warrant, instead of the protection to which your choice of deodorants is entitled.
Dunno. The guy who decided this used very similar arguments, even down to the actual phrasing, yes? So clearly there is at least one Republican in robes who is willing to be swayed by such faultless logic. Of course, he didn’t base his decision entirely upon that, there was also the matter of the plaintiff’s credit cards. I remember you explaining that to us.
Because of the unusual cases that create far-lasting results.
Florida in 2000. Washington State in 2006.
Maybe. And if so, that’s the way Pennsylvanians want things. If so, good for them.
I somehow doubt that the opposite result will be greeted with equal equanimity.
I hate to say it, but thumbprints and photos may have a deterring effect on voting as well. Any slight opportunity cost to voting will reduce the likelihood of voting. In this case, each vote will take slightly longer, leading to longer queues. There’s also the marginal cases of voters will physical disabilities which’d make taking a thumbprint impossible, in which case both measures would need to be available at each polling station.
Given a substantial impact of voter fraud on elections or widespread desire for measures to combat voter fraud (as Bricker is happy to point out often), I accept that such measures would be preferable to obtaining ID, since they incur lower opportunity costs (travel times are restricted to one day, for instance).
Of course.
What we need is a fleet of government run shuttle buses, air conditioned, and with a snack bar, to pick people up and drive them… no, no, not drive, CARRY them, on a Lay-Z-Boy type recliner, into the polling station.
Would that be OK? Or would the cushions have to be of a certain softness?
Full of illegal aliens, driven by a CASA volunteer, with state of the art forgery equipment? Works for me.