Sorry, but that would be a lie.
I don’t know, but it would present problems. The pre-2000 purge of the Florida voter rolls involved checking out-of-state records and produced a lot of false positives, owing to similarity of names. The only sure solution would be a national database, based on SSN, continuously updated to reflect each voter’s changes of address; which would be hard to sell, as we’re seeing resistance even to the idea of a nationally standardized form for driver’s licenses.
Er… not exactly. But we’ve gotten our terminology mixed up a bit here. Are we speaking of evidence that:
A. Arguments were made in the previous thread; or
B. Arguments exist for the underlying issue of voter fraud ?
As to (A), linking to posts that in turn link to now-dead references is sufficient; it shows that at the time, there were arguments made and not refuted, which contradicts BrainGlutton’s assertion that the issue was unchallenged in those threads.
Proving (B) does indeed require that I resurrect those links or provide new ones.
You see the difference?
I’d adopt a modified version of that argument: less evidence exists of such fraud because some fraud of that type is not detected.
Yes. My fault for ambiguity. I meant the latter.
Okay. I agree with this. But I think it leaves us in a particularly challenging constitutional pickle in which we attempt to weigh the burdens placed on some versus unquantified and perhaps unquantifiable benefits.
As a participant in that thread, I’d like to make clear: the resistance is not to a “standarized form for driver’s licenses”, but to the RealID legislation as it was passed/mandated. The theoretical question of a national ID (in some form) is less contested, although your point is well-taken.
Moderator’s Warning: RTFirefly, please don’t accuse other posters of lying in Great Debates. That is against the rules.
That said, Weirddave, I don’t particularly want to hear about this personal issue between you and RTFirefly in this forum, either.
My apologies - while I was a participant in the recent debate over “you are a liar” and knew of its resolution on 12-21-07, I wasn’t aware until now of last week’s amendment to that decision. Now that I know of it, I’ll gladly abide by it.
Well, if you’re not exercising your right to vote–why not let somebody else use it?
A bit more seriously–if you show up & see somebody’s used your vote–you’ve got evidence of voter fraud. If somebody tries to use your name after you’ve voted–ditto!
Okay - devil’s advocate, how can you prove your claim of fraud? How can you prove you are who you say you are? How can you get voting officials or the police to listen to a claim in the first place?
Well, the easy answer is producing an ID - but remember that there isn’t a requirement in this scenario to bring one to the polls.
But there is a requirement (in my state, anyway, and I assume other states are similar) to bring proof of residence when you register to vote. That’s not a terribly high standard, but its nevertheless a standard of ID that you’ve used once to become able to vote, and you, as the wronged voter, could presumably easily produce this again.
In other words, there’s already a requirement to establish yourself as an eligible voter. Why add another layer to that standard, at least without good evidence that there is a widespread problem? I’ve read the examples in this thread, and they seem to amount to little more than anecdotes (IMHO), not good evidence.
I once went to my polling place after work to vote. I had to fill out a provisional ballot because I had apparently voted earlier in the day.
This is a key point. Until someone uncovers evidence of systematic fraud, there’s just not a well-defined problem to solve. There are certainly cases of voter error–voting in the wrong precinct might be the lion’s share–but there’s no evidence folks who do this shouldn’t be given the benefit of the doubt.
The heart of the argument for me seems to rest on which is the greater harm: Allowing an ineligible person to vote, or denying an eligible voter (in the real world, any system you put in place, no matter how diligently scrutinized, is going to have elements of both). Given the enormous number of voters in most any election (at least in comparison to even the suspected cases of fraud) I would think the harm caused by the ineligible voter would microscopically affect only the outcome; my guess is laws and customs regarding lawn signs have a bigger impact.
Denying suffrage may have a similar low-impact on the outcome, but there’s the additional harm to an individual’s sense of civic duty. My thumbnail guess is that–given the small scale of the so-called problem–any modification at this point would snare about as many legal voters as illegal ones. Given the additional harm done to the civic pride of eligible voters, it’s just not worth it.
Here at ScotusWiki is a good impartial summary of the Crawford v. Marion County Election Board case.