SC voter ID law shot down

[Terr]

@China_Guy

So, what is your position?

1. absentee ballots are not an issue these days?
2. absentee ballot fraud would not be fixed by requiring voter ID?
3. Fraudulent felony voters are skewing election results in a widespread way? Cite would be nice
4. The problem that voter ID would solve is the unproven possibility that it would prevent widespread voting fraud that might exist but no one has made any kind of reasonable case for?
5. none of the above, my position is …

Take a stand big buddy. and quit hiding behind “the point is moot” defense

1. Yes they are
2. No they won’t
3. They are voting, in serious numbers. Whether they actually decide who wins is debatable but that’s not the question
4. The US Supreme Court and the Seventh Court of Appeals disagree (see my post below)

Any more questions?

[Saint_Cad]

@Snowboarder_Bo

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.
That’s a strawman.

Nope. A strawman would be for me to misrepresent your point to something like, “You think anyone should be allowed to vote. Even illegal aliens. I’m a citizen and . . .”

WIn fact, I was very true to your point - that no IDshould be required to vote. I merely pointed out the unintended consequence that no voter ID law could (and in my case has) lead to voter fraud by voting under someone else’s name.

So for a strawman I have to misrepresent your position. How exactly did I do that? What did I claim your position was?

[Terr]

@CannyDan

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.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/275069/not-race-card-hans-von-spakovsky

The claim that there is no voter fraud in the U.S. is patently ridiculous, given our rich and unfortunate history of it. As the U.S. Supreme Court said when it upheld Indiana’s photo-ID law in 2008, “Flagrant examples of such fraud . . . have been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and journalists.” The liberal groups that fought Indiana’s law didn’t have much luck with liberal justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the 6–3 decision. Before being named to the Supreme Court, Justice Stevens practiced law in Chicago, a hotbed of electoral malfeasance.

Some opponents have tried to narrow down the argument, claiming that voter ID can stop only impersonation fraud, and that this particular type of fraud is rare or nonexistent. But as the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals pointed out in the Indiana case, the relative rarity of prosecutions for impersonation fraud can be “explained by the endemic underenforcement” of voter-fraud cases and “the extreme difficulty of apprehending a voter impersonator” without the tools — a photo ID — needed to detect such fraud.

[Terr]

@Damuri_Ajashi

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.

Wrong. Look at the post again.

[Terr]

@Damuri_Ajashi

I thought we pegged the number at between 6 to 11% of the population.

…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.

[Terr]

http://missouri.watchdog.org/5937/dead-voters-in-missouri/

From the 4,294 potential dead registered voters a check was made between the death date and the date the last ballot was cast. This resulted in 281 potential “dead voters.”

[CannyDan]

@Terr

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/275069/not-race-card-hans-von-spakovsky

The claim that there is no voter fraud in the U.S. is patently ridiculous, given our rich and unfortunate history of it. As the U.S. Supreme Court said when it upheld Indiana’s photo-ID law in 2008, “Flagrant examples of such fraud . . . have been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and journalists.” The liberal groups that fought Indiana’s law didn’t have much luck with liberal justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the 6–3 decision. Before being named to the Supreme Court, Justice Stevens practiced law in Chicago, a hotbed of electoral malfeasance.

Some opponents have tried to narrow down the argument, claiming that voter ID can stop only impersonation fraud, and that this particular type of fraud is rare or nonexistent. But as the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals pointed out in the Indiana case, the relative rarity of prosecutions for impersonation fraud can be “explained by the endemic underenforcement” of voter-fraud cases and “the extreme difficulty of apprehending a voter impersonator” without the tools — a photo ID — needed to detect such fraud.

You cite a blog on a conservative magazine. The quotes you offer are assertions and have no cites themselves, thus there is no way to judge their accuracy or context. Once again I am substantially less than convinced.

[Bricker]

@Terr

But as the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals pointed out in the Indiana case, the relative rarity of prosecutions for impersonation fraud can be “explained by the endemic underenforcement” of voter-fraud cases and “the extreme difficulty of apprehending a voter impersonator” without the tools — a photo ID — needed to detect such fraud.

@CannyDan

You cite a blog on a conservative magazine. The quotes you offer are assertions and have no cites themselves, thus there is no way to judge their accuracy or context. Once again I am substantially less than convinced.

Why is the Seventh Circuit’s decision, which is referenced specifically, so easily dismissed?

Here is the relevant passage:

@Crawford v. Marion County Election Bd.

But the absence of prosecutions is explained by the endemic underenforcement of minor criminal laws (minor as they appear to the public and prosecutors, at all events) and by the extreme difficulty of apprehending a voter impersonator. He enters the polling place, gives a name that is not his own, votes, and leaves. If later it is discovered that the name he gave is that of a dead person, no one at the polling place will remember the face of the person who gave that name, and if someone did remember it, what would he do with the information? The impersonator and the person impersonated (if living) might show up at the polls at the same time and a confrontation might ensue that might lead to a citizen arrest or a call to the police who would arrive before the impersonator had fled, and arrest him. A more likely sequence would be for the impersonated person to have voted already when the impersonator arrived and tried to vote in his name. But in either case an arrest would be most unlikely (and likewise if the impersonation were discovered or suspected by comparing signatures, when that is done), as the resulting commotion would disrupt the voting. And anyway the impersonated voter is likely to be dead or in another district or precinct or to be acting in cahoots with the impersonator, rather than to be a neighbor (precincts are small, sometimes a single apartment house). One response, which has a parallel to littering, another crime the perpetrators of which are almost impossible to catch, would be to impose a very severe criminal penalty for voting fraud. Another, however, is to take preventive action, as Indiana has done by requiring a photo ID.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@Saint_Cad

Nope. A strawman would be for me to misrepresent your point to something like, “You think anyone should be allowed to vote. Even illegal aliens. I’m a citizen and . . .”

WIn fact, I was very true to your point - that no IDshould be required to vote. I merely pointed out the unintended consequence that no voter ID law could (and in my case has) lead to voter fraud by voting under someone else’s name.

So for a strawman I have to misrepresent your position. How exactly did I do that? What did I claim your position was?

WTF? Dude, you quoted it in your post, which was me quoting you. Then I explained that no one had ever claimed it, which no one has. Which is what a straw man is:

A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position. To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the “straw man”), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.

You are making up a position that no one has advocated for and then arguing that it’s wrong… but no one here ever said it was right.

So: did you build that yourself? How long did it take you?

[The_Tao_s_Revenge]

You know what, I really wish this was in the pit so I could tell you what I think of you personally. Your views are the kind of fungus that rots the tree of liberty.

@jtgain

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.

First off in your abrasive, snap judgementalism you reveal yourself to not know what the fuck you’re flapping your pie hole about. It’s not a simple god damn trip to the DMV (which can be very far away), it’s also a trip to the Social Security Office, various trips to get various admissible records from a restrictive, arbitrary list, because Republican jackasses, such as you probably voted for, also meddled in state affairs for getting an ID with the Real ID act. Republicans support states’ rights my ass.
When I lost my ID and had to get a replacement it was over a 100 miles of travel back and forth to procure the necessary papers to present. That’s not an onerous hardship to you? Keep in mind many don’t have transportation. You’re basically saying anyone who doesn’t have access to long distance transportation shouldn’t vote.

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.

So it’s your position that everyone who lost their jobs due to the recession is a “homeless guy on a crack binge”, or is that a delusional slur against all Democrats?
Could you please define just who this group “sucking on the government teat is”? Unless you’re some kind judgmental jackass, are you going to claim all the unemployed receiving support through social programs, including retraining for a new job are “sucking on the government tit”? How about people too old to work? Are Social Security recipients “sucking on the government tit”?

I bet you are, aren’t you. In your pixie world no one ever has ever suffered bad luck, bad health, victimization, or otherwise suffers due to forces beyond their control. If you honestly believe that, then you’re deluded.
If you don’t then you’re advocating innocent people suffer to advance your hate filled agenda .
However since you want to be judgmental, maybe you’d like to reinstate the poll tax, and have literacy tests before voting too, since you apparently feel you should be dictator about who should and shouldn’t vote. Do you want literacy tests and poll taxes?

If you don’t want poll taxes why do you feel inflicting transportation struggles of more than 100 miles on folks is different?

Further given your bigotry against social programs, I should inform you SCHIP funded my appendectomy when I was 15. Was either me or my mother a “homeless guy on a crack binge”?

Would you prefer the government didn’t intervene, and left me to probably die? Do wish I would have been allowed to die?

[Terr]

http://web.archive.org/web/20080612042908/http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/06/09/dead-voters-still-showing-up-on-election-records-puzzling-officials/

ane Drury voted last year in an election in Stonington, Conn. The only problem is, she died eight years ago.

Her daughter, Jane Gumpel, thought someone must have goofed.

“I was surprised because this is not possible,” she said.

But it did happen. The town clerk’s record clearly shows Drury’s vote, marked by a horizontal line poll workers put next to her name. And it turns out Drury isn’t the only voter who apparently cast a ballot from the grave.

…

Journalism professor Marcel Dufresne of the University of Connecticut led a class investigation into dead voters and said his group of 11 students discovered 8,558 deceased people who were still registered on Connecticut’s voter rolls. They said more than 300 of them appeared somehow to have cast ballots after they died.

“We have one person who appeared to have voted 17 times since he died,” Dufresne told FOX News.

…

But ballots cast in the names of the dead were counted in her state and in others. In the 2004 governor’s race in Washington state, officials confirmed 19 votes were cast by people who were dead. Republican Dino Rossi lost that election by only 133 votes.

=================================

Here’s the funny part of the story:

“Yet Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz is adamant that “actually no dead people voted.””

Of course dead people didn’t vote. Dead people CAN’T vote. People voted in their place.

[Terr]

A blast from the past

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Cc9QAAAAIBAJ&sjid=19AMAAAAIBAJ&pg=4199,1367854&dq=dead-people-vote-democrat&hl=en

“Where the Dead Vote”

[China_Guy]

@Bricker

“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).

Guilty as charged counselor for doing a quick internet search and not bothering to try find the most up to date article. Would have been nice if the previous poster that was making uncited assertations had actually provided cites so I didn’t have to go look myself. So, appreciate the correction (and not being snarky btw).

[Terr]

Hundreds Will Be Voting From The Grave - News Story - KRXI Reno

OAKLAND, Calif. – A KTVU Channel 2 investigation has found hundreds of Bay Area people who are legally dead may have voted in at least in one election after they passed away, raising questions about government incompetence and voter fraud.

…

Channel 2 found that in the last eight elections during the last 10 years 232 people with death certificates had voted after they had died – some more than once.

==========================

Of course, election officials maintain that all these are “bookkeeping errors”.

[Terr]

http://www.wftv.com/news/news/dead-people-voting-throughout-florida/nFCnL/

Dead People Voting Throughout Florida

Branch’s mother Marjorie died in 2004 but someone voted for her in 2006. Branch had tried to get his mother removed from the voter rolls.

County records show James Santiago voted in the 2006 general election. He too, was dead. His wife, Joann, sees this as an open invitation for voter fraud.

[China_Guy]

@Terr

Dead Voters Still Showing Up on Election Records, Puzzling Officials - America\’s Election HQ

ane Drury voted last year in an election in Stonington, Conn. The only problem is, she died eight years ago.

Her daughter, Jane Gumpel, thought someone must have goofed.

“I was surprised because this is not possible,” she said.

But it did happen. The town clerk’s record clearly shows Drury’s vote, marked by a horizontal line poll workers put next to her name. And it turns out Drury isn’t the only voter who apparently cast a ballot from the grave.

…

Journalism professor Marcel Dufresne of the University of Connecticut led a class investigation into dead voters and said his group of 11 students discovered 8,558 deceased people who were still registered on Connecticut’s voter rolls. They said more than 300 of them appeared somehow to have cast ballots after they died.

“We have one person who appeared to have voted 17 times since he died,” Dufresne told FOX News.

First, we will just accept at face value that self reported instances of voter fraud to FOX News is as it appears.

Second, no one is contending that there is absolutely zero voter fraud in the US. We are saying that you haven’t shown it is a significant issue that voter ID would fix.

Here, let’s take your example. Connecticut had 8,558 deceased people who were still registered on Connecticut’s voter rolls with more than 300 actually voting somehow in 2008. From the Connecticut Secretary of State website (PDF warning), there were 1,960,827 registered voters as of Nov 8, 2011. Let’s round up to 349 voters and assume that the number of registered voters in 2008 and 2011 is close enough to not worry about. The math works out to:

0.01780% fradulent dead voters voted out of the registered voters or
0.05775% fradulent dead voters voted out of the actual voter turnout

I’ll let you do the work of finding a Connecticut result in 2008 that 349 votes could have swung the other way

One would also presume that concerned citizens like yourself in Connecticut (and other States) are involved in getting the zombies taken off the voter rolls in a timely manner. That would solve this particular issue without disenfranchising anyone.

[CaptMurdock]

All right. Let’s assume that statistic is true, that in the last eight elections there were 232 fraudulent votes. (What’s the voting population of California again…?) So, okay, let’s pass a voter-ID law in California. Every eligible voter has to have a state approved ID.

Of course, due to various constitutional amendments, the state IDs (discrete from the driver’s license) now has to be free. You going to explain to the state of California the lost revenue in application fees that they can no longer collect?

So, after all this, let’s say that there are 233 real, eligible voters who were not able to vote because they, for some reason, could not get a valid ID. Would you say the law is fair?

What if it’s 234?

235?

How many would it take before the law becomes wrong?

[China_Guy]

Question for anyone championing the voter ID. Do you also champion a national photo ID for every citizen (maybe expand to permanent resident)?

IMHO one single national photo ID required for every citizen makes a lot more sense than a mish mash of different State requirements. It would also solve requiring a seperate voter ID, drivers license, social security card, fishing license, age proof to buy booze, ad nauseum.

I’d really would like to understand what the difference is between a national ID that would solve multiple issues versus State by State variable requirements that clearly could dis-enfranchise voters.

[Terr]

@China_Guy

Second, no one is contending that there is absolutely zero voter fraud in the US. We are saying that you haven’t shown it is a significant issue that voter ID would fix.

“No need to assume. There isn’t one. The best efforts of the party whose interests would be served by another round of voter suppression have** failed to produce even one instance anywhere**.” - ElvisL1ves, upthread.

I’ll let you do the work of finding a Connecticut result in 2008 that 349 votes could have swung the other way

So the criteria is whether the votes “could have swung it the other way”? Is that the criteria for the number of registered voters who have no ID, intend to vote, and cannot be bothered to get one, even if it’s free? Can you show me that there are more than 349 of such in Connecticut?

Apart from which, those 349 were the ones that were found. How many were not found? (See that Seventh Appeal Court decision again upthread).

[Terr]

@China_Guy

Question for anyone championing the voter ID. Do you also champion a national photo ID for every citizen (maybe expand to permanent resident)?

No.

IMHO one single national photo ID required for every citizen makes a lot more sense than a mish mash of different State requirements. It would also solve requiring a seperate voter ID, drivers license, social security card, fishing license, age proof to buy booze, ad nauseum.

These are all state matters.

I’d really would like to understand what the difference is between a national ID that would solve multiple issues versus State by State variable requirements that clearly could dis-enfranchise voters.

The Constitution. 10th amendment.