I don’t think this is the first time liberals have said that the voters make bad choices (the re-election of Bush in 2006 is one I remember). But I don’t think I have EVER heard liberals say we should limit the vote in some way. I think liberals are still happy about the register everyone approach.
Yeah - it’s a shame I had to direct it to a reasonable right winger. 
I’m sure you realized the post wasn’t 100% serious. But generally, do you think there is widespread electoral fraud occuring? My impression would be that unlilke voter supression, it is a limited thing, and extremely rarely would it affect the outcome of an election. But that could be based on the paucity of proven claims of electoral fraud (or a liberal media conspiracy to hush them up, but that I doubt too). It’s possible, I guess, that electoral fraud is rampant and unchecked, but then my solution would be to use the existing laws against it before trying to pass new ones. Kind of like my view about gun control.
ACORN was dishonestly destroyed, yet people still bitch about it. Amazing. Registering voters is not illegal. The idea that the more voters we get, the closer the government will be to a reflection of the country, is easy to defend. Why should the powerful have a greater representation?
If we only had the elitists vote, we would have the financial system we have now. They are already overrepresented. I would like to see mandatory voting.
Instead of mandatory voting, or voter ID cards, what about some sort of “truth in advertising” law that covers campaign commercials?
“Senator Bob voted 147 times to raise your taxes.” Really? 147 votes? Or were 147 votes required as part of the procedure for one bill that only loosely had anything to do with taxes?
What if we applied the same rules to campaign commercials that apply to the pharmaceutical industry?
“Voting Republican may result in higher taxes, lower freedom, dry mouth, insomnia, longer lines at the airport and in certain rare cases torture and death.”
Sorta. Good case made for that harmony, in any event. I suspect the reason I’m not entirely persuaded has to do more with my own preconceptions than with any dearth of logic from your end.
My father was an immigrant from El Salvador, who came to this country with little more than the shirt on his back. My childhood was not one of privileged circumstances; to the contrary, we were quite poor.
So the supposition upon which your analysis is based is not accurate.
As to its substance: in my state, voter ID cards are free and can be mailed to the voter. I’m unaware of any state that requires ID to vote and does not have some similar provision.
You can’t use logic to persuade someone away from a position they didn’t use logic to arrive at.
If we presume that there should be some barriers to vote, or that the system is such that people who perhaps should not vote or do not value voting highly enough do, doesn’t that in and of itself provide value to an opposing, or even agreeing, vote?
I mean, if I try and look at it from the perspective of a person who believes in some barriers to vote, or who believes people who vote do not esteem it highly enough, then I would be highly motivated to vote in order to attempt to balance out the effects of such people. My vote has value because not only does it attempt to have some political influence, it also has value in counteracting the notion that voting has no value. Whereas if voting is made more of a hardship, if I am convinced that people must make considerable efforts in order to vote, then it is less important that I personally vote because there are already like-minded or like-efforted people doing so, just as I might less interested in voting if I believed my party of choice was about to win in a landslide.
I suppose if the Republicans wanted to undercut the Dem advantage amongst the poor and disadvantaged, they could promote policies and laws that favor the disadvantaged. Boy, that would sure stick it to the Democrats, wouldn’t it? Lets just keep that idea amongst ourselves, wouldn’t do to let that get out.
There are efforts to make online voting foolproof. It has not happened yet. Online voting might be more democratic, but it still excludes the poor. Probably does increase the voter pool, and that would give us better representation.
Republican Spin Machine Activated: See? The Democrat party wants to prevent us from helping the poor.
Bricker has been over this before. From his point of view it is better to disenfranchise 10,000 people than to let one invalid vote go through. Disenfranchising people is not illegal, but illegitimate voting is. From Brickers point of view it is much better to follow form, than to get the right answer.
That’s a little unfair. Bricker will certainly slant his arguments in favor of the conservative benefit, but mostly by focusing on the illegality of fake voters, as if the legality of the issue were the all-consuming importance. I very much doubt that he has ever flatly favored disenfranchising anyone. Of course, he almost never flatly says anyting, without leaving himself a trap door escape hatch.
Sam, this is a remarkable and startling claim. I would suggest that you should support it with specific cites that demonstrate its truth.
That falls under the broad category of liberal hypocrisy, and liberal hypocrisy is a central truth that does not require citation.
I think it’s a bit dishonest to frame it in such a way. In my opinion, he is saying it is much better to follow the letter of the law, than to let the dishonest folks go unimpeded.
How exactly you figure voter fraud (or the potential of it) gets you to the right answer is beyond me.
Bricker, the underlying documentation required to get that “free” voter ID can cost considerable time and money for the impoverished. Far from being a minor inconvenience, it may pose an almost insurmountable obstacle for some persons. A photo ID, for example, requires traveling to the DMV. A voter in a rural area who doesn’t already have Photo ID, who lives far away from the county seat (where the DMV tends to be) who doesn’t have a car and doesn’t have access to public transportation is pretty much shit out of luck, isn’t he?
Why, this little problem could be fixed so easily! I am sure that the Republicans would leap at the opportunity to provide such documentation on an “outreach” basis, to bring as many impoverished and underprivileged potential voters to the polling place as possible! The same way they so vigorously promote equality of the polling places, so that an inner city dweller has precisely the same access and convenience as his suburban counterpart! No doubt about it!
Me? Tequila and bongwater, why do you ask?
For a more detailed outline of the burdens faced by those who don’t already have the required documentation to vote (an estimated 6-10% of the voting age population don’t have a state issued photo ID), read Justice Souter’s dissent (Warning: PDF file) in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181 (2008).
As the number of voters increases, the amount of noise in the vote increases, but the amount of signal increases faster. We’re trying to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of elections.