I don’t understand what point you are trying to make here, and I’m quite sure you don’t either. In the other thousand page thread, there had been brought up the idea of ink pads. I was the one to bring it back up, in fact. There were those in that thread who then turned around and complained about how difficult that would be. That you are asking me to justify their arguments is beyond ridiculous. I could provide a link, but I have no desire to peruse through the thousands of posts in that page to find it for you. Bricker, the person that I was asking and talking directly to, surely knows of them, as he participated in that thread as well. Tell you what, if he actually does not remember it, and feels that he needs a reminder as to who and what was said about it, then I’ll think about pursuing the thread to find a post or two that was shooting down my idea of using ink pads for thumbprint ID.
Is this actually that important to you? Is it important that I find the posts where people complained about it being a logistical difficulty? If so, too bad, so sad. I feel no need to find these posts for you.
If this were GQ, one could argue that only the courts can decide what is reasonable. But in GD, we can disagree with the courts. We can recognize that there is a factual answer, but we don’t have to agree with it.
If we were having a debate about Separate but Equal 75 years ago, would you tell someone that they didn’t get to decide what is reasonable when it comes to whether black and white children should be segregated into different schools?
Having said that, I think K9befriender should go back and read the post where you laid out your requirements for “reasonable” voter ID laws and tell us if he would still say such a law deprived anyone from voting. Because there is a difference between what you stipulated and some of the laws that are either out there or are being proposed, and sometimes it’s hard to tell which particular law or set of laws or proposals a poster is talking about.
Most certainly we do get to decide (and debate!) what is reasonable. You can’t tell us, “Shut up and take it to court.” We get to talk about it here, too.
And, yes, we do have a system…which is human, and flawed, and makes occasional mistakes. The fact the rulings have been made, and then overturned, is pretty much proof that the system is not error-free. It is perfectly valid for us to say, “I think this ruling was made improperly.” (Dred Scott and others.)
Yes, but do you perceive a difference in tone between, “I argue we should change the law to X because Y is in my view unreasonable,” and “Y is unreasonable, and X is the only possible answer!”
The net effect of (1) might be that one voter in a thousand finds the process too vexing. It’s not established that one vote in a thousand is being cast fraudulently. You can throw in adverbs like “slightly” all you want - the effect of the solution creates more problems than it solves, and by design if you choose to stop refusing to recognize it.
You appear to be pushing a rule that they somehow must balance out: that one guy who unreasonably refuses to vote must be matched by one illegal vote in order to enact these restrictions. Why should society accept that rule? Why can’t society say, “We weigh illegal votes as 1,000,000 times more serious than one vote lost because of unreasonable refusal to get an ID?”
Wait. There are Republican outreach programs, going door to door to register voters and supply them with ID? And these ungrateful wretches are “refusing” such generous offers? Or what? Specifically? And is there anything supporting this, outside of wildly creative mathematics?
Sure. But since this is a general-discussion debate forum, and not an actual court of law, we get to choose our tone.
Also, I think your second example can be broken into two parts. “Y is unreasonable” is not as strong as “X is the only possible answer.” Dred Scott was hugely unreasonable, but the 13th and 14th amendments weren’t the only possible answers. (Very, very good answers, to be sure, but not the only ones.) Calling out a bad court ruling is not the same as having a “only one way” view of justice.
(Also…most of us here aren’t using the latter tone. The former greatly predominates.)
We could, of course. Now, can you point to anyone, anyone at all, who actually holds such a view? (Specifically, the “million times” view.) Obviously not. No one is that nuts.
There is sometimes a “minimum necessary” principle in legislation. It isn’t a formal rule, although it is quite popular, especially among libertarians, who like the fewest possible numbers of laws. We generally frown on scrambling eggs with helicopters, when egg-whisks do the job better.
Another principle in law, held by many, is that a wrong is worse when committed by the government than when it is committed by a private individual. “When a policeman breaks the law, there is now law.” (I actually heard a judge say that.) So a governmental program, per this somewhat libertarian view, that takes a vote away from an innocent person is worse than a bad guy who votes improperly, even if is has exactly the same effect (cancelling out the innocent man’s vote.)
I have also heard more than one judge – and one law school teacher – say that it is better to let ten guilty persons go free than to put one innocent person in jail. If that is the scale of weights we want to use – and I do not disagree with it – then it is better to let ten bad guys vote fraudulently than to deprive one innocent person of his democratic franchise.
These are only principles, not legal standards, but by all three of them, I disagree with you.
You appear to be wrong. I’m opposed to laws that create bigger problems than they solve. If by some chance the problem created did “balance out” the problem solved, then I’d be ambivalent. In this specific case, the problem allegedly being solved is specious at best and we have enough proponents on record admitting that they don’t care about solving that problem anyway - their goal is very specifically to *create *problems - for voters they don’t like.
Keep grasping, though. One of these straws is sure to work for you sooner or later.
My reaction, too. Bricker’s position apparently finds it problematic to consider someone facing bureaucratic hassles. It’s easier to simply characterize that person as stubborn and thus write them off. I take it as a good sign.
Sure, of course. Just as I’m equally free to respond to the certainty-tinged declaration of non-existent rules with reminders that those rules don’t actually exist.
Right?
That’s not a view I share. But of course “tone,” is subjective for different listeners, so perhaps my reaction is hypersensitive.
For whatever it’s worth, I have a recollection of there being pushback in the Thread That Will Not Die about inkpads and their lack of usefulness, so in my opinion, and without a confirming link, I think the claim k9befriender made is a fair one.
And I with you, but more importantly than my own personal disagreement, the weight of the legislation and judicial evaluation of the Voter ID laws disagrees with you.
It’s not, in my opinion, analogous to letting ten guilty men go free. At all. But you’re welcome to that view: it’s just a minority view that hasn’t actually shaped the law in this area at all.
So we’re back at the stage where ethics and reason are irrelevant - when it comes to legislation, only procedure matters, and any judge who tries to introduce ethics or reason into the argument beyond a cold literal reading of the constitution is by definition an activist.
Ethics and reason are relevant to crafting the law.
But not everyone agrees that your VERSION of ethics, or reason, are valid. I don’t. So the way we resolve this little disagreement is by procedure, which does indeed also matter.
In other words, you don’t get to prevail just by printing an “Ethics & Reason” label and sticking it on the top of your proposed law.