The Republicans try to help with keeping felons from voting. Felons voting is illegal. However, each state defines felon (and voting allowance) differently. Republicans are happy to err on the side of counting too many felonies, as they believe that felons typically vote Democrat.
The Democrats tried to help with keeping absentee ballots from being improperly counted, especially when they come from military sites. Democrats are happy to err on the side postmark rules, as they believe that active duty military members typically vote Republican.
Now, what I find interesting is that the photo ID does NOTHING about absentee ballot fraud issues. There is an inherent contradiction in allowing absentee ballots AND requiring photo ID at the polling place. (or maybe not a contradiction as much as a loophole).
No, that isn’t a fair re-write. There is a legitimate difference between selective enforcement of a law, and breaking a law. Don’t you see the difference?
Not in intent, which you failed to capture in your post. You portrayed the Democrats as crusaders for all that is right, while the Republicans were evil law breakers. Sorry - both sides used the letter of the law to disenfranchise potentially legitimate voters.
Now - do you have a link that shows that someone was convicted of a crime in regards to the felon lists, or are you just extrapolating?
Why anyone would be in favor of people being able to vote without showing a government-issued photo ID is beyond me.
I think it is an issue that should be beyond debate.
“Let me get this straight: You want to vote for the next president, but you can’t exactly prove who you are? Get the hell out of here!”
If people are so concerned about low-income people not having ID’s, why don’t they run some get-your-photo-ID drives in poor neighborhoods, just like there are some voter-registration drives?
Say, why don’t we use Zimbabwe as a cite for how amd why we should fight voter fraud in this country!?
I have no objection to requiring ID. I just think the timing of the ruling could create some problems, given how soon Indiana primary is and how long it takes and the possibly roadblocks that oould be created for those who try.
No. That’s not right. The Democrats were selectively using the law, which required postmarks. This reflected political bias, because they did not try to discount all overseas ballots, but the law they sought to enforce was perfectly valid. That doesn’t portray them in a good light. But it doesn’t suggest that what they sought to do was illegal.
The Republicans were not “using the letter of the law.” They knowingly disenfranchised legal voters while allowing the enfranchisement of felons they purportedly wanted to stop.
The fake list was scrapped before the election when it was revealed how wrong it was by Democrats. So their attempt failed, but the intent was clear.
Look around you, it’s actually rather redundant. In the Republic of Gondour, every man (the women’s-suffrage movement was just getting started when it was written) has one vote, but a man can be awarded extra votes based on wealth and/or education. But what’s the point? We already live in a society where the rich and the educated wield political influence far out of proportion to their numbers. Even more so than in Twain’s time, the “Gilded Age.”
The nature of the list. It had a tiny proportion of Hispanics relative to the well-known statistics with regard to Hispanic felons. And it has a higher proportion of African-Americans. That’s a pretty convenient coincidence to explain without there being some knowing intention, don’t you think?
Selective enforcement is when you only apply the law to some people for whom it applies. But the list includes names of people who aren’t felons. If you concede that they were picking and choosing names (as you would be with the above argument), then you concede that they picked voters who could not legally be disenfranchised.
Why is it a weak distinction? One is an unsavory but legal tactic. The other is illegal. Seems pretty important to me.
And can I get all the conservatives on record arguing that selective enforcement is bad. I’ll happily take that argument to other threads. I happen to think its bad, but I’m surprised to learn that conservatives think so, given their support for things like racial profiling.
Actually there is some very damning albeit circumstantial evidence. See here and here.
But apart from that, the threats are in no way equivalent.
“Voter fraud” means the possibility that some people, not legally eligible to vote where and when they plan on voting (perhaps because they are not citizens, perhaps because they have felony records in a state where that is a disqualification, or perhaps just because they didn’t remember to change their registration when they last moved), will run the risk of arrest and criminal conviction, perhaps even deportation, just so they can vote – and get nothing, personally, in return but the enhanced possibility of a desired electoral outcome. Just to state the problem is to see the improbability. For this to matter, you would have to have a lot of people doing it in a very close race. And pols have enough of a challenge just getting the eligible voters to turn out. “Vote early and vote often” was a tactic used of old by well-organized urban political machines that hardly exist any more.
Whereas “black box voting” involves the possibility that some partisan hacker or some dishonest or suborned elections-office worker can change the result of the election with a few keystrokes.
