Let’s go to the quarry and throw stuff down there!
You honestly don’t realize how ridiculous this argument is, do you? I mean, you really think you’ve made a valid point here.
There’s also no way to know how many people who attempted to break in to your house were unsuccessful; does that keep you awake at night as well?
Let me say that I find this to be spectacularly unpersuasive.
And please clarify—are you claiming that such voter fraud as described above is rampant, or at least significant enough to change the outcome of elections? Or are you claiming that it might have happened once or twice, here or there? Because I’m seeing this as the most certain way to be detected as fraudulently voting.
How could someone possibly know that another would not “show up to vote”? Watch their house? But they might have voted by early or absentee ballot. Get them in a conversation wherein they state “I’m gonna sit this one out”? What if they change their mind? Poison their dog or cause them some other critical emergency on election day that they will have to deal with rather than spend time voting? It seems the only way to be certain is if the voter was actually dead, as in the old style (and probably greatly exaggerated in modern mythology) “dead vote” in places like Chicago. And even if you were absolutely, unambiguously positive that this voter would not show at the poll, and that this voter would have voted contrary to your wishes if s/he had shown up, you still have to present yourself in person to the poll workers who may or may not know that other voter personally. And you certainly cannot present yourself multiple times at the same precinct lest you be recognized as having already been there, so you’d have to go through this kind of charade of investigation, substitution, and fraudulently voting in different precincts all over the state. But if a single correct person, through some chance, does actually come to vote only to find that you have already identified yourself in his/her place, the fraud is instantly discovered. “News flash!! Joe Blow shows up to vote, but finds that Joe Blow has already voted!! Voter fraud rampant in the county! Film at 11!”
C’mon, you can’t possibly be arguing that this kind of thing is at all common, let alone that it has any effect on elections, because clearly it does not or it would be all over the news. There just isn’t any way to pull it off and the failures of attempt would be too glaringly obvious. Absent this kind of substitutional fraud, there isn’t any valid justification for the picture ID requirements.
So, let say you want to commit voter fraud effectively. First, you have to have a target, let’s say a district where ten thousand bogus votes will move the election from Sen. Throckmorton to challenger Buttmunchkin. You know from analyzing voting in the district that ten thousand bogus votes will probably do the trick.
First off, you need money. Quite a bit of it, as you will see as our plot unfolds. That part might not be so tough, contact the Americans for Wholesome Goodness.
Now, you need volunteers. Committed volunteers, true believers. Say, about a thousand of them, rough guess. And lets assume an easy target, like the People’s Republic of Minnesota. Where voter registration is quite lax, same day registration, just show up with any sort of utility bill or public recognition of your name and address. And someone registered to vote in the same district who will testify to your residence and citizenship. Bingo! You vote, that very day.
All righty then, you are all set. Election day, bright and early. You have a thousand volunteers, each supplied with ten different polling places to attend to, each with the required lax documentation, and each with ten co-conspirators, one for each district assigned, ready to back up your bogus voter’s lies. Oh, my, the numbers are getting a bit thick, aren’t they? Now, you need eleven thousand firmly committed co-conspirators, not one of who will ever rat you out. Because it will only take one, won’t it?
So, all you need do now is a bit of scheduling, some logistics. Transport each of your volunteers to each of their assigned locations, to meet as scheduled with their bogus verifiers. You can start at 7 am, you must be finished by 8 pm, when the polls close. Gonna need cars. Or buses. Transport, at any rate, ready to whisk your conspirators from polling place to polling place, ten polling places in thirteen hours.
Schedules getting a mite tight, isn’t it? Its not at all unusual for a voter to wait up to an hour or more, even if already registered. So, you need to have a very careful schedule, whip into the first polling place, do your thing, jump into the waiting car, and off to the next. Which should be located very close by, can’t waste any time in traveling.
So, in theory, then, and with proper planning roughly as complex as the invasion of Normandy, you might very well achieve your goal. So long as none of your eleven thousand volunteers shoots his mouth off, or rats you out. Not one, mind you. One is all it would take.
And now you hope nobody notices the rather dramatic departure from expectations. Hey, the polls were wrong, Buttmunchkin wasn’t actually behind in the voters minds, he was several thousand ahead! Son of a gun! Rich white guy who want’s to cut food stamps wins the inner city and campus votes handily! Wow! Who’d a thunk it?
And nobody investigates this extraordinary result. You better hope they don’t. Or at least be sure that all eleven thousand of your co-conspirators are immune to pressure, and too committed to the cause to crack under interrogation by a Fed. 'Cause this is a Federal rap.
Well, I guess you could use the classic Bolshevik-Leninist “cell” structure, where a set of conspirators only know each other, and one of them knows their “contact”. Worked for them, except that the Bolsheviks were fanatics, and the prospect of exposure had dire consequences.
See where I’m going here, Terr? The conspiracy you dread is virtually impossible. The numbers, the logistics, the money, all present daunting prospects which must be refined and scheduled to a very sharp point.
And what if it snows? Happens a lot around here in November. Don’t forget, snow tires on all the vehicles, crucial point. Put that on the list.
Balderdash, sir! Tommyrot! Did you even think about this?
Oh I see, you are right. You were asked if you think voter fraud is what was driving the Republican attempts to impose a voter ID requirement. You said of course not. I must have incorrectly assumed that you were agreeing that this was a case of voter suppression. In fact you seem to defend the voter suppression bits of it at some point or another by pointing to cases of voter suppression by pointing to alleged Democratic cases of voter suppression.
So if you were not saying that you think the Republicans are engaging in voter suppression, then what exactly are did you mean when you said that there were reasons beyond voter fraud that was driving Republican efforts to impose a voter ID requirement?
Not to mention all the other shenanigans that seem to be going on at Republican state houses across the country.
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.
I thought we pegged the number at between 6 to 11% of the population.
So, what is your position?
Take a stand big buddy. and quit hiding behind “the point is moot” defense
First, yes, I concede that it wasn’t you I was responding to. It was JRDelirious. If you don’t feel that going to the DMV for a free ID is too much of a hassle to vote, then we agree. If you side with JRDelirious, then my arguments still stand directed towards you.
Second, Terr makes an excellent argument. If I can vote using my dead grandfather’s name, who would ever complain about it so that the fraud is discovered? I think that it is terribly disingenuous to say that there is no evidence of voter fraud when the system is so lax that voter fraud could occur in every election on a wide scale and nobody would be the wiser.
Do you know someone in the community who has died in the past 8 years? (varies by state) If so, you can go vote in their place. Any committed activist can double his vote. And no I don’t have evidence that this has happened because with no ID laws in place, there is no way anyone could tell that it EVER happened.
An ID requirement is a small, reasonable step to ensure identity. Look at the many other places that require it with far less consequences if fraud would happen.
I am also with Terr in that if you don’t have an ID in this modern world, or you can’t be bothered to take a trip to the DMV to get a free one, you have no business voting. And attempting to allow such people to vote is such obvious pandering by Democrats to people on the public dole to go out and vote for more Democrats to keep the public dole coming to them.
Not hard working people who are trying to get by. Those people would need to present ID at their jobs. These are people who do nothing but suckle at the government teat and want more. It is shameful that the Democrats have sunk to the level that they can’t win by getting votes of semi-responsible people in society. No, they need to drag a homeless guy on a crack binge out of his cardboard box and wheel him to the voting booth.
Like its been mentioned before, to me at least, it is worse to deny a vote than the let one be fraudulently cast. Before you or someone else wants to change the status quo, maybe the question should be asked: how many instances of voter fraud are ID laws supposed to catch? How many happen now? Because we know for sure there are people without IDs and mandating it will affect them, so there had better be a damn good reason to do it. To be a sport, I’ll answer your question: I don’t know. I have no idea how many people have no IDs and no records, but I know its more than zero. Lets not get off-track though, answer my question above
Sometimes bad people can do good things, probably on accident. And good people can do bad things. Images of firehoses on innocent protestors in the 50’s and 60’s helped turn public sentiment against the racists, even though it probably helped their immediate needs of intimidation. I don’t have much faith in the intelligence of racists. Had they gotten more power but humanized slaves more, it would have been an unintended consequence. Still, that’s all speculation. My contention is that it would have humanized blacks more
It may or may not. Your wild speculating is counting on the fact that with 2/5th more power, the south would have not attacked the north and touched off the Civil War. In fact, with more power, they might have been bolder and attacked earlier, thus the war would have ended earlier (remember, more votes doesn’t mean the south would have had more of the industry that the north used to win the war), and civil rights would have been on a faster pace. That is why you are just as wildly speculating as I am, however this still gets us nowhere with respect to the comment I made to OMGABC: it was a valid point to tie his attitude towards racism in general and disenfranchisement specifically, and I stand by my comment. Going over a history lesson of the south doesn’t actually address why you don’t think my comment about his opinion being worth 3/5th of a real opinion is parallel to SC’s stupid law
We were talking about the 3/5th compromise and how the 14th Amendment, section 2, removed that
Why? So you can wildly speculate with no substance that it would have been impossible? I may as well say that blacks would have developed super power and took back the south and renamed it New Africa. It doesn’t matter. You and I will never know because history’s already set, but I feel it would have helped matters
“Beware of unforeseen consequences”
I’m sorry, I thought you said “AFTER” they got the vote. Rereading your post again, that’s a funny way to spell “before”
But if you really meant and wrote “after”, then my point stands. The voting rights of women developed parallel but not identical to blacks. Its besides the point in the context of this argument really
Came about? I thought we were talking about the consequences thereof, and how they espouse similar disenfranchisement of a specific minority group, and how a descendant of that minority group posted a stupid opinion without being cognizant of history, and how I called him out on it? Would you like to rehash the Mason-Dixie line compromise too?
I would like to say how brave it is that you are fighting against voter fraud in your state, with so much going around you, despite the fact that in your world, death isn’t reported and zombie hordes roam the streets. If only I could be so brave just to live, to LIVE even!, in a movie-like apocalyptic landscape knowing my reanimated flesh wanders the thoroughfares for 8 years (varies by state) terrorizing my former loved ones, and that even in the face of doom and yearly brain-eating propositions that creep ever closer to ratification, that I could put aside my shotgun and makeshift chainsaw for a few minutes each November and cast my ballot for who I think should be the county’s district 41st 8th superior judge! If only!
Apparently no one that is anti-voter ID law has ever walked into their polling place to find that they have already voted.
I have.
So explain to me how it is not a violation of MY contitutional rights when I am not allowed to vote after someone else used my name to vote?
Did you build that straw man all by yourself? How long did it take you?
“Recently?” Bullshit.
Your quote is at least two years out of date.
The decision in the Ninth Circuit was a 2-1 decision by a three-judge panel, and it was against the weight of all other federal decisional law in the country:
In Simmons v. Galvin, the First Circuit upheld felon disenfranchisment. So did the Second in Hayden v. Pataki. The Third Circuit doesn’t seem to have heard the issue. The Fourth rejected the idea in Howard v. Gilmore. The Fifth is also silent; the Sixth rejected the idea in Wesley v. Collins, pointing out that felon disenfranchisement laws are explicitly constitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Finally, in Johnson v. Gov. of Fla., the Eleventh Circuit also rejected the claims of a class action by felons challenging Florida’s disenfranchisement law.
So the full Ninth Circuit reheard the case last year, and overturned the earlier incorrect decision.
The cite is Farrakhan v. Gregoire, 623 F. 3d 990 (9th Circuit 2010).
Why not cite a local news report for your story?
Not that it makes any difference. You could have been struck by lightning, that doesn’t mean it’s common. Your anecdote is worthless. Provide data, please.
Yes.
Once upon a time while I was walking outside a little bird flew over me. And while in flight it took a shit, and that shit landed in my hair. (It was long enough ago that I still had hair.) There are literally thousands of birds around all the time, and I believe all of them shit regularly, and I am outside commonly throughout most of every day. And you know, to this day I still don’t wear a hat. I know, I’m an idiot, because look, it happened once, so it must be happening thousands and thousands of times!! But somehow neither I nor anybody else can tell that it EVER happened.
As both ’Luc and I suggested upthread, this kind of voter fraud is practically impossible to implement and absolutely bound to be discovered if it occurs on any scale larger than that one little bird shitting in my hair.
I mean really, committed activists doubling their votes? Really? Aren’t activists usually young? And probably brown skinned, maybe even speaking with an accent? Do you really envision one such going to the local precinct and declaring himself to actually be now-deceased 87 year old Walter Whitebread? Given the glaring incongruity should any poll worker actually have known Walter either socially from the neighborhood or even from previous elections, or happen to have heard about Walter’s apparently timely demise, this sounds like a charade with a, shall we say, rather low expectation of success. Hardly the makings of a national conspiracy, at any rate.
But it is here that we see the real reason for these efforts. The real reason, and thus the need for all the obfuscatory rationalizations, is a desire to disenfranchise Democrats and such other notorious dregs of society as those identified here. We just can’t have those welfare queens and crack addicts voting now, can we? Time to take back America for us Real Americans ™, yeah boy!! Especially after that last Presidential election, amirite?!?!
Could you provide a cite for this claim in this GQ thread?
So loss of constitutional rights are only important when widespread?
[QUOTE=Snowboarder Bo]
Did you build that straw man all by yourself? How long did it take you?
[/QUOTE]
Do you know what a strawman fallacy is?
The argument againt voter ID laws is that it disenfrachises voters that for whatever reason do not have a government-issued ID. Yet that argument ignores that people are also disenfranchised when they cannot vote because someone has used their name for that election.
So Snowboarder Bo, explain how that it a strawman to the argument on the fairness of requiring ID to vote?
“All-in-all, a great person, a great woman, just a wonderful person” is how Alexis Guidry described her mother to Local 2 Investigates.
“As far back as I can remember, they’ve always voted in the election,” Guidry said of her parents.
The March 2008 Primary was no exception. Voting records show Alexis’ mom, Gloria Guidry, cast her ballot in person near her South Houston home.
“It was just very shocking, a little unsettling,” said Alexis Guidry.
It’s unsettling because Gloria Guidry died of cancer 10 months before the March Primary.
“She’d be very upset,” Guidry said when asked what her mom would think.
…
Texas Watchdog compared Harris County’s voter registration roll with the Social Security death index and found more than 4,000 matches – registered voters that, it appears, are already dead.
Some of them, like Henderson Hill’s late wife Linda, voted postmortem.
“I would like to know who did it, myself,” Hill told Davis.
http://articles.sfgate.com/1997-10-05/news/28556899_1
In all, the analysis found 1,824 dead people whose names had never been erased from The City’s file of about 412,000 eligible voters.
Only a handful were recorded as voting from beyond the grave in The City’s most recent election, the extraordinarily close June vote on a new stadium for the 49ers.
But critics say The City may be leaving itself wide open to voter fraud by failing to cull ineligible voters from the rolls. Because California voters are not required to present identification at the polls, casting a fraudulent ballot can be as easy as walking into a polling place and signing another’s name.
Chances of getting caught are low to begin with, and they decrease further if the person whose name is forged can’t complain.
I think we could both agree that the least loss of constitutional rights is what we want, right? Okay, so if ID laws would keep more people from legitimately voting than would illegitimately vote, they are bad, right?
Which is why we need information. We know for a fact that voter ID laws will keep some number of people, primarily the poor and the young from voting and having their rights. We need to know how much actual fraud there is.
Yes, I do. Would you like me to explain it for you, since you don’t seem to understand what it is? Okay: a strawman fallacy is when someone misrepresents their opponents position (or outright falsifies it) and then argues against it.
And that’s what you did. No one ever claimed that “it is not a violation of MY contitutional rights when I am not allowed to vote after someone else used my name to vote”. Yet you came in here all full of bluster and tried to use that as a position that people had taken.
And you’re still doing it:
You are first simplifying people’s arguments against voter ID laws, then conflating your truncated explanation of people’s opposition with an argument that no one has made in this thread, claiming they are they same, and then further claiming that people are arguing against your conflated point.
That’s a strawman.