The GOP could achieve its desired ends more honestly by simply bringing back the poll tax.
BTW, election administration appears to be an area where Lind’s Law applies with fierce force: “The lower the level of government, the more crooked and inefficient the public employees.”
You appear to not understand the issue.
True or false, if I pass a law that says that all gun owners must sit comfortably in an isolation box for five hours before voting, no one is kept from voting. True, right?
But in the actual universe in which we live, fewer gun owners would vote, right?
But we’ve discussed this before.
. . . with a gun, one bullet, and a loudspeaker playing dirges . . .
“Another one shot the loudspeaker? This is getting expensive!”
A very valid objection.
So the question then should be: “Is the proposed burden reasonable?”
Waiting ten hours to vote is not reasonable, but requiring that people get a free ID is reasonable.
And if it takes ten hours to get the free ID?
Or if it takes a day off a minimum wage job? Or if it takes several iterations of paperwork taking several hours to fill out?
“Free” does not equate to “reasonable”. A lot of people don’t have picture IDs that you would need to get a voter ID. A lot of them don’t drive and never have, not too uncommon in the larger cities. So they have to round up their birth certificate (not too easy if you happen to have been born in another state), which takes time and money. Then they have to get to a government office (perhaps having to take public transportation to do so) , perhaps taking a day off work in order to do so. Can’t afford to take a day off work without pay for your “free” ID? Sucks to be you, you can’t vote. Trying to juggle two jobs to make ends meet? Gotta find the time to get to an office open maybe 9-4 M-F. Don’t have a checking account so you can mail a check to the county of your birth for a birth certificate? No ballot for you, you slacker! All this to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. If you’re going to put up these restrictions, at least be honest about it. State that the purpose of your law is to elect Republicans or to keep minorities from voting. Hiding behind a fig leaf of concern about fraudulent votes doesn’t fool anybody.
I really don’t think that’s the question. Let’s knock it down to 5 hours sitting in the box. If sitting comfortably in a box for 5 hours effectively solves some hypothetical problem of voter fraud, a problem that was incredibly rampant and was destroying our democracy, then I’d consider it perfectly reasonable. Likewise, for an old person who can’t drive, getting to the DMV for a state-issued ID might be a 5 hour ordeal, and if it were solving a massive voter fraud problem, then I’d be all for making them do it.
So it’s not a question of what’s reasonable, it’s a question of risk versus reward. What’s the risk of demanding a photo ID? The risk is millions of people not voting. What’s the reward? Stopping 10s, maybe dozens of fraudulent votes.
The idea is dead on arrival. It’s basically not even worth trying to figure out how to cheaply get IDs to people who need them because the reward is so small in the first place.
This is why you’ve fallen back on “voter confidence,” because you can put whatever value you want on it. Preventing dozens of instances of voter fraud might not be worth inconveniencing millions, but instilling confidence in hundreds of millions of voters is surely worth something, right? Except as I’ve already pointed out, it’s cheaper and more honest to simply educate voters about the rarity of in-person voter fraud. There’s no sense in writing legislation that simply allows others to perpetuate a lie.
Just to be clear before we go into these weeds - you are acknowledging the fact that photo ID requirements will keep legitimate voters from voting? You withdraw your previous assertion?
I acknowledge that waiting ten hours would keep legitimate voters from voting.
If the photo ID requirement keeps a voter from voting, that’s an unreasonable choice on the part of that voter, and I don’t agree the law should bend to accommodate his unreasonable choice.
And I don’t agree that such a law should be created by those who would hope that such a thinning will benefit their own party.
It’s interesting that you say I’ve “fallen back” on voter confidence. That’s been my argument from the beginning.
And no amount of education will erase reality: the problem with the rare cases is when they intersect with the rarer event of a razor-thin margin. That’s where the issue of voter confidence in the result comes into sharp relief. If an election is decided by 1 vote, as happened in Alaska in the 2008 US Congessional race, then it’s obvious that even one illegal vote could have changed the results. How do you propose to “educate” the electorate to forget about that?
Yes, you’ve made that clear. But your agreement is not necessary; the law gets created by some of those people anyway, and as the Supreme Court has correctly observed, the motives of the people who vote for the law are not as particularly relevant as the actual effect of the law.
So your belief is consigned to the dustbin of history, from which you keep attempting to retrieve it and reanimate it, like a shambling zombie from a George Romero epic.
If an election is won by 1 vote, making it harder for ten thousand people to vote could sway it too.
In fact, it will sway it thousands of times more than voter fraud.
Why do you support cutting off a leg to treat an stinky toenail?
Let’s put those goalposts back yet again. I said nothing about the motives of those whovote for such laws-I distinctly used the word “created”.
But your “solution” is far worse than the supposed problem you’re claiming you want to solve.
You’re saying there’s a problem because some elections may have a dozen votes that are questionable and this could effect the outcome of the election. But the proposal you support will almost certainly affect thousands of votes and have a far greater effect on the outcome of many more elections.
But I don’t think I’m telling you anything you don’t already know.
When you phrase it like that, you fall into the “disenfranchise” trap, “preventing” legitimate voters. Will it discourage legitimate voters who might otherwise vote if it weren’t a total pain in the butt?
A lot of our fellow citizens are ambivalent about voting, they don’t see it as doing any good. The bulk of those citizens would likely be inclined to vote more leftish than rightish. They want change, they want progress, but don’t see the hope. Put an obstacle in their path, they will shrug and give up.
I am not the target of these efforts, I’m a fucking fanatic, I will goddam vote! Always have, every damn time. The target of these efforts are those potential voters who are already discouraged.
When its phrased like “disenfranchise”, it gives aid and comfort to the Forces of Darkness. Sure as shit, they will come back with a bland question like “Well, how many are disenfranchised?”. And if we are honest, that number is pretty small. Make it look like the sacrifice is worth it for the golden grail of voter confidence.
For the voter who is as crazy as me, it isn’t an insurmountable burden, so they get to move the debate to that standard. (As you may have noticed, they love that!)
So far as I’m concerned, discouraging legitimate voters is far worse than blocking legitimate voters, because there are so many more of them.
In addition to Lobahan’s point, I’d say, how do voters currently cope with the knowledge that there are hundreds or thousands of cases of undetected mail-in voter fraud in every election? Why aren’t the Republicans banging that drum?
Suppose that voter has to wait ten hours somewhere to obtain the ID he needs in order to vote. You’ve created the same burden but you’ve moved it far enough away from the voting booth that you can claim it’s not relevant.