Really. There’s no possible formulation you can think of that can be used as the basis for legislation with the aim of making election results more accurate without making them more difficult for voters?
How about we pass UHC for all US citizens and then we require that you show your healthcare card to vote? Each side gets something they want…
Heh, I would have thought that objections about taking the fingerprints of every person daring enough to try to vote would generate an upswelling of protest from conservatives. They’re typically the ones most interested in privacy issues, I’d thought.
Though I do admit that I, liberal as I am, am a little creeped out at the idea of the feds getting everybody’s fingerprints.
Though to be fair, the concept of voting does inherently assume that all voters can be verified as residents with voting rights. Which means screw privacy with a rusty hand rake, I suppose. Fair price to pay?
There’s very little indication that it’s possible to make election results more accurate, because there’s no non-hallucinatory source that suggests voter fraud is occurring in any significant amounts.
So we can’t expect much on that front.
I’m not sure I can. I think Democrats will resist measures that allow accurate identification of voters and Republicans will resist measures that allow ease of voting.
From what I hear, the Dems and the left have an ongoing concern with not hindering people from voting. The notion that they want to “resist measures that allow accurate identification of voters”? Can you quote one of them on that?
Like maybe Joe Biden saying “Boy, we really got to resist this accurate identification stuff!”?
What I hear them saying is that they don’t want any legal means applied to prevent voting, or otherwise hinder voting to gain partisan advantage. But that isn’t it, then? Well, shit, news to me! And they told you all about it? No fair!
Granting generously that your opinion of Democrat motives is accurate, perhaps this comes down to basic philosophy - what is worse:
- Someone is denied a right.
- Someone is given a benefit they didn’t deserve.
I personally find (1) more offensive, and I can tolerate some amount of (2) if that’s the price of minimizing (1). The Republican motivation you describe (again, generously assuming accuracy) is so preoccupied with preventing (2) that they’re indifferent to any amount of (1) that happens along the way, at least until it starts to look embarrassing in the media at a level beyond what one can casual dismiss by saying “fake news!”
Of course, in practice, the goal isn’t to resist making voting easier; it’s very specifically to make voting harder - for people who are probably going to vote in a way you don’t like. Republicans are certainly not alone in seeking this. Personally, I see it as an inevitable corrupting effect when elected officials are allowed to set the rules for elections.
Using the first premise, he is allowed to insinuate a motivation he is apparently unwilling to actually state. The notion that Dems don’t want voters identified is silly without some other motivation, he suggests an ulterior and unethical motivation without actually making the accusation.
He has already stipulated that “some” Republicans are, indeed, motivated by unethical goals, to advantage their own party. The other Republicans who “went along” do not share this blame, they are innocent? And how many such innocent dupes, misled by scoundrels? We are not advised.
Of course, the victims of this civic villainy are free to amass the power of the votes they cannot cast to alter the power structure. So, the system works, in much the same way that Steven Hawking can dance.
Which is to say, theoretically.
I personally find that (1) does not accurately describe any option in play here. No one is being denied any right.
The choice is between:
- Someone’s voting is made slightly more difficult.
- Someone ineligible do to so casts a vote.
It was never about denying a right, simply making it more difficult to exercise it. Harassing and hindering are less vile than actually preventing, but that doesn’t make it kosher. Making one participant in a race carry a bowling ball is not the same as breaking his legs, but still…
In effect, it is a denial. The guy wants to vote, and can’t overcome the obstacles.
If there actually were a problem with lots of people voting improperly, the idea might have merit. To me, this is the real deal-killer: the “solution” is to a non-existent problem.
(Let’s make a law mandating kids be vaccinated against smallpox. What? You’re against that? How dare you favor smallpox epidemics!)
Oh, there’s a real problem, all right: There are too many of Those People who vote the wrong way.
It would be mighty refreshing to hear its proponents admit that, and stop the insulting, tawdry lie that it’s about masses of ineligible people voting. The secondary argument that there is a crisis of confidence in electoral integrity is also a lie, in that any such crisis is of their own fucking creation.
Just to be clear, yes, there are many who genuinely believe all that. But they’re still just swallowing lies invented by others, like Spakovsky and Kobach and the RNC and their propaganda outlets.
If you don’t know, why did you post it? :dubious:
No. If you were to learn of a guy who said, “I won’t go vote because my polling place is in a school, and I hated that school when I was a student there and swore I’d never set foot inside again,” then he also can’t overcome the obstacle. But we don’t care, because we as a society are not prepared to recognize his difficulty as a reasonable one.
And it’s just the same thing as here: we are not, as a society, prepared to recognize the complaint of a would-be voter who says, “I was daunted by the requirement of getting an ID,” when the IDs are free and there exist alternatives for edge cases.
You cannot set your own standard here. The way we create law in this country doesn’t involve your personal standards overriding the legislature, executive, and courts.
Get the legislature, executive, and courts on board.
It was a reply to someone else about the possibility of changing the way that things are done. There had been feedback before about that technique that I mentioned.
I do know that people are against that idea, and I do not understand nor agree with their reasons. You are asking me to justify reasons that I do not agree with. If you were keeping up with the thread, this would be obvious to you.
Do you have a point? If not, why did you post?
But, that is someone refusing to do something for his own unreasonable reasons. That is different from someone being prevented from doing something due to someone else’s unreasonable reasons.
If anything, it would be like saying “I can’t go vote in that school, I am on the sexual offender’s list, so I legally cannot go there.”
You made a claim about the “naysayers”, but you are unable to provide a link, or explain why inkpads would be a logistical problem.
“There had been feedback” is NOT a cite.
Balderdash, sir! Tommyrot! In the first instance, the restriction is self-inflicted, the voter himself made this problem, and can just as easily amend it. Second instance, it is imposed by the legislature to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
And who is this “we” who have rendered the judgement that the so-called hindrances are really nothing at all, can be brushed aside? Are they lying, these people who complain? Just making shit up, to embarrass the Republicans?
Yes, we know, we all saw the Afterschool Special with Just A Bill. But your “solution” is for them to secure their ability to vote by voting. You don’t see the irony in that? Seriously?
To remove Jim Crow from our laws took blood, sweat, and tears. Doctor, are you sure this is the right prescription?
These laws pretend to protect voter confidence, which wouldn’t be so bad if it were not meant to console people who believe nonsense, people who believe that HRC got three to five million illegal votes, supplied by roving hordes of undocumented immigrants, funded by Soros…
What about the “voter confidence” of those insulted by these laws? What effect might we expect from the presumption of suspicion? That perhaps these people are not held to be entirely equal? Why, yes, that does rather leap to mind, doesn’t it?