I don’t understand what this paragraph means.
The event, if it happens, is foreseeable. There’s no question about that: I am foreseeing it. This does not mean I claim it’s inevitable.
Does that help?
I reject your formulation. The problem I’m discussing does exist.
And the solution I support does indeed make public confidence in elections better.
I agree that “confidence of the electorate” is not susceptible to a precise metric.
There are metrics that could provide a useful proxy. We, for example, routinely ask the pollsters to provide us the Presidential approval rating. I don’t see why a similar poll that simply asked, “How confident are you that the election results fairly count only legitimate votes and deliver a result that fairly represents the majority of voters’ will?”
Because it’s important for people to believe that the process is fair, that it counts only legitimate voters, and that the result is an accurate summary of the majority of voters’ intent. This is the tie that binds citizens to government. It is the sentiment captured by Thomas Jefferson so eloquently when he asserted that governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed. It is, in short, the entire basis for our national sovereign existence.
I don’t agree you gain nothing for it.
I don’t agree the law achieves nothing.
It’s the kind of governance that arises from our system: namely, that we elect representatives to reflect our popular will. Your question has a flavor of “the ignorant voters don’t know what’s good for them,” which is a position I reject.
I agree that both of those are worthy goals, and I support them.
What proposals for increased security for absentee voting or doing something about the lack of any meaningful verifiability for many of the voting systems we use have been advanced in legislatures? What was the result?
On the contrary, your claim that my stated reason of supporting confidence in the process is not even worthy of serious discussion is itself not worthy of discussion. Therefore, stop discussing it.
See how easy that is?
As my high school debate teacher used to remind us, a gratuitous assertion may be equally gratuitously denied.
But I’m willing to stop discussing it, since the laws have already passed and are in place. And the Supreme Court has already ruled that they pass constitutional muster. So – sure, my reason isn’t worthy. How about this one: ha, ha, ha!! The law’s in place and the courts ruled it stays. Ha, ha, ha, you lose!!!1!!!
Now THAT’s a response not worthy of discussion. See the difference?
There is no false equivalency.
Jesus, did any of you people actually study debate? Or do you have a list of fallacies and pick one that sounds like it might match?
You didn’t answer my question. But from your response, it sounds like you agree that moving the polling place does not disenfranchise anyone.
Now, focus on the next question; it’s important.
WHY? How do we know where to draw the line? At what additional point do we say that the additional difficulty disenfranchises someone?
“We?” We have done no such thing.
You may have convinced yourself of it.
No, that’s fair.
But I reject your continuation of my analogy. The spectators don’t affect the outcome in the way the referees do.
Voter ID laws will instill greater confidence in the system because, with them in place, a future highly close election result won’t be susceptible to fears that, but for fraudulent voting, it could have gone the other way.
Right now, the claim the voter fraud is not a problem rests on the fact that even though it exists, it exists in such small numbers that it’s never (so far as we know) changed the outcome of an election.
A future razor-thin election could not make that claim… unless we could say that everyone who voted had a photo ID.
Funny how these rational, evidence-based folks seem to have trouble reading certain lines of text, isn’t it?
I also have an unanswered question: why is the burden of proof on me? And, in a fun coincidence, this is the third time I’m asking it.
Bricker, still arguing for your pole tax? That’s what Voter ID laws are.
:eek: No, a pole tax would be something much worse than that!
Really?
Here is Rhode Island’s law, 17-19-24.2. Voter Identification:
Here’s section (a)(1):
The law provides that the state will issue free IDs, and a voter without such ID can use a provisional ballot.
In what way does this differ from the procedures you object to? Specifically, please.
For example, here’s
No. Not at all. A poll tax is forbidden by the 24th Amendment.
Now, maybe you’re using the phrase in some personal sense. Perhaps you have a personal belief that they are “morally” a poll tax. But I don’t agree, and neither does the US Supreme Court. While you can of course dismiss my opinion as easily as I dismiss yours, the Supremes actually get to decide the law.
And they have made it quite clear that voter ID laws are not a poll tax. Crawford v. Marion County.
I think that abortion should be considered to be murder. But you won’t find me saying that abortion is murder. Because I recognize that, contrary to my personal beliefs, the law does not agree with me.
In another thread, BrainGlutton is insisting that conservatives can’t accept facts, while liberals can. This is a good example to bring to his attention. You can’t accept what the law says.
Indiana also allows a provisional ballot. So does Arizona.
I’m not going to quote each state’s laws. Pick a state you believe has an objectionable voter ID law.
We should go with “guilty until proven innocent”. Sure, a non-zero population of people will be discommoded by being put in prison erroneously. I regard that as an acceptable consequence of being able to say that when people commit crimes, we have a system in place that ensures they will go to jail.
Such power the photo ID has, able to end abuses of the absentee voting system and rigging by election officials, two of the most common sources of voter fraud in american elections. I am very interested in learning the process by which the photo ID is able to achieve this laudable goal.
Cite for your claims regarding the most common sources of voter fraud?
In the ideal, every citizen’s vote is equal. We know that isn’t true, but we are working on it. It follows, then, that every citizens access to voting ought to be equal as well, in a rough and practical way.
It doesn’t have to be a question of disenfranchisement to be taken seriously. Making it more difficult, less convenient for ones political enemies to exercise their rights still isn’t kosher, still isn’t a level playing field. True its not as bad as out and out disenfranchisement. And dysentary isn’t so bad as smallpox, but I want neither.
It came from an online article I read somewhere. Who knows, maybe voter impersonation is one of the top 3. Here’s some data dug up by the RNLA. http://www.rnla.org/votefraud.asp I don’t really feel like going through each link and determining whether producing a photo ID at the poll would have prevented the crime. This article claims to have done some fact-checking on the study. Their conclusion is that photo IDs would not have helped in many of the cases and the few that it would have are statistically insignificant.
It’s the kind of governance that comes from ALEC, an organization that the people did not vote for.
In any case, I reject your implication that anything desired by the voters is automatically acceptable. Voters do not have the right, at least ethically, to make it more difficult for others to vote any more than they have the right to restrict the free speech of others. If you want to categorize that as an elitist attitude, that’s your right, but it’s a bullshit categorization.
Frankly, I don’t understand what all the fooraw is about.
In the last 30 years or so, I have not voted WITHOUT showing an ID. I simply walk in, hand them my DL, they look me up in the book, I sign by my name, I go vote.
What the hell is the problem with requiring everyone to do that? The only reason that I can see for anyone to object to it is that they want people voting fraudulently. By requiring display of a voter id at the polling place, we eliminate the dead folks that show up to vote. We eliminate most live folks who show up to vote multiple times, and if we included the requirement that they provide a fingerprint to vote, that would eliminate them as well.
What’s the downside to this?
It seems to me that there are three issues at play in this thread that could be said to cast doubt on elections as a true measure of the will of the people:
Human factors and technical issues. These are the kinds of things that happened in Florida in 2000; butterfly ballots, hanging chads, ambiguous markings, absentee deadlines, recount rules, etc. What would you say the accuracy of a modern U.S. election is, 99.99%, maybe? That’s one error in ten-thousand votes. With 5.8 million total votes between Bush and Gore, that’s an uncertainty of 580 votes. Want to increase confidence in election results? Put your effort into pushing that number closer to 100%
Voter fraud. At worst, this is a small problem, and voter ID laws would not prevent all the fraud.
People who would vote, but can’t because of voter ID laws. We’re human beings, and the things we create are never perfect. Our elections aren’t 100% accurate, and attempts to identify ineligible voters won’t be either. There are reports coming out of Florida right now of eligible voters being wrongly sent notices that they’re to be stricken from the roles. And somewhere there’s a person who can’t spare the time off work to go across town to get a certified copy of his birth certificate so he can wait in another line to get a voter ID with his picture on it, even if it is free. I doubt there are very many people in those situations; a mere handful. But you’ve said that the voter ID laws will restore confidence in those elections with a razor thin margin, and so it’s fair to say that the negative effects of those laws will also come into play in those same razor-thin elections. Would you disenfranchise 100 eligible voters to prevent 99 cases of fraud; and if so, why should that give us more confidence in the results as a measure of the will of the people?
I don’t understand why someone would ignore point #1, endorse point #2, and dismiss point #3.
And as has been mentioned in another election-related thread: