And you haven’t shown us voter suppression, you’ve shown possible instances of voter fraud, which is an entirely different thing.
A dead person’s vote isn’t suppressed because someone else voted in their place.
That’s what ElvisL1ves was referring to. He said there was not one instance of voter fraud that could be fixed by ID check. Read his post again.
The workers admitted to voting fraud charges against them, yet never said what motivated them to fake at least three votes, two of them cast in the names of dead people.
" I’ve changed my mind on voter ID laws — I think Alabama did the right thing in passing one — and I wish I had gotten it right when I was in political office.
When I was a congressman, I took the path of least resistance on this subject for an African American politician. Without any evidence to back it up, I lapsed into the rhetoric of various partisans and activists who contend that requiring photo identification to vote is a suppression tactic aimed at thwarting black voter participation.
The truth is that the most aggressive contemporary voter suppression in the African American community, at least in Alabama, is the wholesale manufacture of ballots, at the polls and absentee, in parts of the Black Belt."
Or, ya know, we could just compare the voter registration rolls with the Social Security death index and solve the “problem” of dead folks voting the easy way.
I know, that’s just crazy, a photo ID is so much more secure. I mean it’s not like there’s anyone out there with a phony driver’s license. :dubious:
CMC fnord!
And yet the sentence you quoted was about voter suppression.
I see where you’ve made numerous posts against voter ID laws. I mean, you use different words than that, but your meaning is quite clear.
:rolleyes:
(Missed the edit window because of a phone call.)
ETA: You seem to be under the impression that you can overwhelm us with the sheer volume of blog entries and anecdotes you post. Since I’ve already shown at least one of your “sources” to be unreliable (and that’s a charitable description), you might want to rethink your strategy.
You have yet to show that this is a problem any more pernicious or persistent than the problem of Nobelium that I described earlier in the thread. As has been the case for all the years that I’ve ever seen this idea being pushed, you are trying to solve a problem that simply does not need solving. It’s as though you are proposing Elephant Patrols or mandatory vaccinations for unicorns.
Even NPR, the broadcast wing of the Comintern? Even they? I reel in horror! Proof positive that hundreds…maybe several hundreds!..of instances of voter fraud have been tracked by the sharp eyed sleuths at RedState and Fox. What, Free Republic is on vacation?
But, point taken. Whoever said there were no such instances were wrong, there were several! The problem then advances from non-existent to minuscule. Maybe house to house searches are in order, in the scruffier neighborhoods? Hey, we could round up all the guns, too! What’s that you say? Your “cold, dead hands”? Well, if you insist…
No it wasn’t. Read it again.
I see now why I didn’t grasp the logic, I wasn’t drunk. I told a drunk friend about it, and he explained it to me. See, there is a problem with voter fraud. A small problem, an insignificant problem, but a problem nonetheless. And this isn’t really the best solution, because there really isn’t a “best” solution to an insignificant problem, how would you measure? Relative to what?
So the Republican solution to the problem is just as valid a solution as any other. The fact that it is a nasty and underhanded way to score political points by fucking over the electorate is not relevant to its value as a solution! Considered just as a solution, it is as workable as anything else. Judging it as a dastardly trick removes it to another set of considerations, issues like justice and fairness, which are not really a direct part of the problem/solution paradigm.
So, as a solution to a problem that barely exists, its perfectly workable, since you will most likely never know any difference. The other stuff is extraneous, unless you want to drag justice and fairness into it. You can’t get insights like that without good Irish whiskey. Maybe the SC legislature is totally full of shitfaced systems analysts. Would explain a lot.
Yeah, yeah, I’ll give you back your laptop when I drive you home, you’re drunker than my dog. Give me your shoes, you’re too drunk to walk.
I absolutely disagree that the improper casting of a ballot has no other ill effect.
The Supreme Court opinion upholding Indiana’s voter ID law quotes the Commission on Federal Election Reform, Report, Building Confidence in U.S. Elections § 2.5 (Sept.2005), a report generated by a commission hardly chaired by biased conservatives: former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III.
When a voting system has no safeguards to ensure only qualified persons cast votes, it undermines confidence in the valdiity and integrity of the outcome.
Does denying the vote to people without ID, who are otherwise qualified to vote, not also undermine confidence in the validity and integrity of the outcome?
Not in the same way.
What you call “denying,” is not really denying. The state is giving photo IDs, at no cost, to those people wishing to vote. Because this option is availoable, and becvause the barriers to getting the ID are slight, those people that don’t vote because they don’t have an ID fall more into the category of choosing not to vote, which does not undermine confidence – since in our system we do not make voting mandatory.
Now, you may complain that the barriers to getting the free photo ID are greater than slight, but the fact of the matter is: the Supreme Court disagrees with you, and they are the ones who get to decide these things.
So as a matter of law, when a state offers free photo IDs and requires a phot ID to vote, they are within constitutionally permissible bounds.
Counselor, we are quite aware that injustice can be perfectly legal. But thank you for once again, tirelessly, pointing that out to us.
Perhaps we should make getting federal aid (or better yet, poverty in general) a disqualifying factor in voting. Perhaps we can elminate federal, state and municipal emplyees while we’re at it. We don’t want these bloodsuckers to influence the outcome of elections when they might be trading their votes for fat government paychecks.
Do you think there would be more people denied the vote on election day because of what you are talking about or because of the ID requirement?
So you don’t think the standard under section 5 of the VRA is ultimately different than the standards under section 2?
I don’t know the details of the South Carolina law, but lets assume it has all the bells and whistles that the Indiana law had. In the Indiana case, the Supreme Court upheld the law in a plurality opinion despite admitting that “the record contains no evidence that the fraud [a voer ID requirement] addresses—in-person voter impersonation at polling places—has actually occurred in Indiana” because it has occurred in other parts of the country and because other types of voter fraud has occurred in Indiana. The Court showed deference to the state in this case despite evidence that the law was intended to reduce voting among the poor (who were disproportionately black and Democrat) because the law was facially neutral and addressed purportedly legitimate state concerns so they ignored the fact that the underlying motivation was intended to reduce voting among the poor. The opinion seems to assume that the burden of getting identification is light while at the same time acknowledging that it will reduce voter participation among poor voters. But the court gets to a favorable ruling because on the alw because they ultimately defer to the states discretion in this case where the burden seems reasonable to them.
I’m not sure that the case would have gone the same way if Indiana was one of the Jim Crow states. Doesn’t section 5 provide more discretion to the Justice department than section 2? Don’t you cast a more jaundiced eye at these laws coming from states that practiced a century of segregation?
Under section 5 the special states must demonstrate that a proposed voting change does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of discriminating based on race or color and in some cases language. The burden of proof is on the covered jurisdiction to establish that the proposed change does not have a retrogressive purpose. If the supreme court finds the same probable intent of the law in South carolina that they found in Indiana, shouldn’t they find that in the case of one of the special states.
How about you try restating what you meant now that I have taken a couple of cracks at trying to decipher what you were trying to say. Because it seems pretty clear to me (and in similar cases, the Supreme Court) that voter suppression is what motivates these types of laws.
No, I don’t I just have to show you that they are ELIGIBLE voters.
Appeal to authority fallacy. The same authority that in Breedlove v. Suttles okayed poll taxes even though they disenfranchised the poor.
Also, swearing to god, are you going to claim with uncrossed fingers, that you personaly feel the burden of transportation to get a Social Securety card (just one of the requirements for an ID) from a Social Securety office is slight (keep in mind anyone who doesn’t have ID by legal definiton doesn’t drive and Social Security offices can be 40 or more miles away with no connecting affordable public transportation)?
Then in order to prove electoral fraud I just have to show you that there are dead voters on the rolls.
(omitted)
No. As Nizkor’s excellent page points out:
The Supreme Court of the United States is in fact not only a legitimate authority on the meaning of the Constitution, but the ultimate authority thereon.
Talking about my personal feelings in this forum is a waste of time.
I’m talking about what the law is. I have no interest in discussing what the law should be, as I’m happy with what the law actually is. You’re more then welcome to claim that this is some nebulous miscarriage of justice. But as it relates to the voter ID laws and their constitutional infirmity, or lack thereof, the issue is settled. That’s all I care about. You may whine and bleat 'til the cows come home about how it should be different. Go right ahead.
No.
In the sense that the law grants the Justice Department the power to nullify changes in voting procedure in former Jim Crow states, yes, of course the Justice Department has more discretion. But while other changes might earn my jaundiced eye this one, fuinctionally identical to the Indiana one approved in Crawford, does not.
But perhaps I’m wrong. Sure seems like someone here, or multiple someones here, would want to take up and win the bet I offered.
This pattern repeats itself almost endlessly on this board. Bold (or dire) predictions accompany the discussion of some proposed change. But no one wnats to actually be accountable, either by wager or subsequent retraction, for their predictions. I remember a debate about Virginia’s same-sex marriage amendment in which several folks claimed that, if passed, the Virginia amendment would legalize domestic abuse among unmarried couples, because of the way it defined marriage. And of course, after the fact, when no such instances of legalized abuse came to light, did the principal proponents appear to shamefacedly acknowledge their foolish predictions? No, they did not.
So it will be here. Everyone is willing to flap their jaws now about nonsense. No one is willing to do anything that might make them accountable for their predictions.
This is meaningless jabber.