As a libertarian, I think if the voting laws require a one-person one-vote rule, steps need to be taken to make sure that the one person listed is actually making the one vote.
As a libertarian, you should be more concerned that citizens are not being prevented from voting by an unjustified law.
I don’t see proving that you’re eligible to vote “unjustified”.
It is unjustified if there is no widespread abuse by fraudulent voters.
There are steps that are already taken to ensure that. I have no idea why you think that there aren’t any.
As a libertarian, you should be less disingenuous.
You can play semantic games and say that you hinged your opinion on the word “solely,” but that would be as transparent as justifying naughty playground activities on what the first graders did during their recess.
There are dark elements manoeuvring to disenfranchise swathes of the opposition. They play lip service to spectral imaginings of voter fraud and twist logic and reasoning to avoid starkly stating their motivations. That “of course” you don’t believe that these nasty efforts are motivated by voter fraud—and that you justify it because some other people did something wrong that had the same effect—suggests a duplicity and disdain for democracy.
That those the Republicans would disenfranchise—for belonging to a different political party—are among the poorest and least-represented citizens makes the effort that much more loathsome.
Not adequate.
How did you arrive at this conclusion, if we have no idea how many fraudulent votes are being cast?
It is not a “semantic game”. There can be several reasons.
Ooooh. Scaaaary. They require an ID that you can go and get for free. If someone cannot get off his ass and do that ONCE I question his willingness and desire to vote.
Oh by the way I can tell you “there are dark elements manoeuvring (sic) to commit wide spread voting fraud” because there is no ID check requirement. Carries about the same panache. And is just as true (or not true).
The same way you arrived at the conclusion that this will disenfranchise a lot of people when you have no idea how many people have no ID, are registered to vote and intend to vote.
You’ve already made it clear that the boogeyman of voter fraud is an excuse to subvert democracy. That the dissemblance is in the guise of protecting democracy makes it all the more pitiful.
- Absentee ballots
- boter picture ID does nothing to address the absentee ballot fraud
- main issue was not being sent out in a timely manner (just a coincidence that overseas and military voters tend to make up the majority of absentee ballots), but given the wonders of the internets this should no longer be any kind of significant issue
- you haven’t shown that there is widespread absentee voter fraud. Heck, many if not most localities don’t even count absentee ballots unless the results are very close. This may be changing given that States like Oregon are moving toward increasing the absentee voting.
Net net, the requirement for voting ID has jack squat to do with solving for absentee voter fraud, even if this is any kind of serious widespread issue, which has not been shown to exist.
- Felony voters
- This is a States Rights issue, with different Sates setting different rules. Wikipedia’s overview:
[WIKI QUOTE] Prisoner voting rights is a state issue, so the laws are different from state to state. Some states allow only individuals on probation and ex-felons to vote. Others allow individuals on parole, probation and ex-felons to vote. As of July 2007, fourteen states, eleven of them in the South, ban anyone with a felony conviction from voting for life, even after the person has served the sentence, while only two states, Maine and Vermont, allow incarcerated individuals to vote.[28]
According to the Sentencing Project, 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of a felony conviction (“felony disenfranchisement”).[29] The number of people disenfranchised amounts to approximately 2.42% of the otherwise-eligible voting population.[citation needed] This is in sharp contrast to European nations, like Norway, which allow ex-felons to vote after serving sentences and in some cases[30] allow prisoners to vote. Prisoners have been allowed to vote in Canada since 2002.[31] [/WIKI QUOTE]
It only takes 5 minutes of internet searching to discover that not allowing convicted felons to vote historically was used to disenfranchise blacks.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appealsrecently ruled that Washington State’s disenfranchisement of incarcerated felons was, in fact, racially discriminatory, though the case is being appealed and might be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Net-net, care to cite felony voter fraud that is impacting elections?
-
As a self identified Libertarian (or is it libertarian), how would you like to see felony voter rules be laid out? The present mishmash state rules where places like Vermont allow felons to vote from jail or Kentucky that makes it a lifetime ban, or something inbetween.
-
In a similar vein, what would you do with North Dakota? You don’t have to register to vote in North Dakota. You going to force North Dakotans to register at the point of a gun or what?
**Terr **- I can’t help but notice a trend.
If you bothered to read the next sentence after the one you quoted, you would have understood my point and wouldn’t have had to post this lengthy irrelevancy.
Irrelevant? Your sentence: “There is fairly widespread voter fraud with absentee ballots, felons voting, etc. Why wouldn’t there be widespread voter fraud using other methods? It is very difficult to prove it, once it happens.”
Your first sentence is not proven. And my points stand including the one about voter ID not doing jack shit to fix the purported issue.
Your second sentence is “prove God doesn’t exist”
Howsabout you answer my questions instead of dodging and weaving? Take it as an opportunity to educate an independant regarding libertarians and their actions. Thanks in advance
In California, anyone may elect to register as a mail-in voter. Even if you are not a mail-in voter, a complete sample ballot with information on your polling place is delivered to you. (And in Oregon and Washington, it’s a vote-by-mail system. Not sure about other states.) Obviously you can’t mail order an ID card. I get the impression that the states with voter ID laws don’t have unrestricted vote-by-mail registration. And yet, allowing people to vote by mail would eliminate the argument that the ID is an undue burden.
Also, there are typically far more polling places than DMVs.
Also, polling places are typically open until 7pm, while DMVs are not.
Also, have you been to the DMV lately? It’s not as though you simply have to get there, fill out a quick form, and be on your merry way. Getting an ID card takes a significant amount of time and is quite an inconvenience. Voting typically doesn’t take as long (and if it does, that’s a big problem).
Also, DMVs are underfunded and may not be able to efficiently handle the increased load. And while I don’t have a cite for this, I suspect that none of these voter ID laws include significant DMV funding increases.
Also, there is nothing stopping them from slashing DMV funding, shutting down DMV offices, reducing hours, instituting furloughs, etc. and doing it in a way that disproportionately affects areas that tend to vote for their opponents. This is particularly true if one party controls the legislature and the governorship, but also true in states where the governor has the line-item veto at his or her disposal.
Your own cites from further up thread (the ones I debunked in post #47) indicate otherwise, as all of those meager instances of impropriety were discovered AFTER voting had taken place.
Your arguments carry no weight when your own cites refute the point you are arguing in favor of, yet you persist in this tactic.
You still feel this way?
So if you believe that this is an attempt at voter suppression then why are you defending it?
No his position seems to be that voter fraud exists, and mostly on the Democratic side otherwise Democrats wouldn’t be objecting to the voter ID rule so vehemently.
I thought we had at least some idea of how many people didn’t have IDs.
Those that were discovered, yes. But how many were undiscovered? All you have to do is vote in place of someone who doesn’t show up to vote and since there is no ID check there is no way to stop you or to know that it happened.
That’s not the question I was answering, so that is not the correct characterization of my answer.
Very vaguely, and out of those you have to find out which ones are registered voters and out of those which ones intended to vote. And out of those you finally have to find out which ones would refuse to get the ID in order to vote. In the end you will probably find a couple. Especially considering that in most states, the easy way to register to vote is by using your picture ID, otherwise you have to jump through hoops.
But since you really have no idea how many such people there are, all these claims of “disenfranchising wide swaths of population” using ID check are baseless.
If you would restate them without trying to “debunk” strawmen that I didn’t claim (like “voter ID not doing jack shit to fix the absentee ballot fraud”), I would.
In general, you were asking, for some reason, whether I would be pro-state-rights in this matter. The answer is I obviously would be. So if North Dakota wants to allow anyone off the street to vote, have at it. But if South Carolina wants to require ID check, they should be able to do it.