Let me get you to repeat this. You’re saying a fee the government charges someone to vote (ID and supporting documentation fees to get it), are not poll taxes?
This isn’t some fuzzy life begins line. This is factually a barrier that disenfranchises voters.
If one boxer knees the other in the testicles in a Queensberry rule match, does that cease to be a below the belt foul if the ref doesn’t call it?
In other words instead of citing a body known for ruling raciest segregation wasn’t discriminatory (Plessy_v._Ferguson), you have to explain why requiring some voters to pay fees to vote isn’t a poll tax. Sometimes the supreme court gets things wrong.
Further your abortion example is a nonstarter anyway. The supreme court never ruled on whether abortion is murder. It ruled on privacy rights.
In my state, at least, the new law is disenfranchising people. I’m not talking about it making it more difficult. I’m not talking about having to walk 250 feet instead of 50 feet. I’m talking about requirements that they are unable to meet.
I know what the likely response to this will be. Oh, that’s a shame but it’s only a few people. It’s statistically meaningless.
That is the ultimate in big government thinking. Sacrifice a few to protect the greater good. That’s now how we do things is this country. Individual rights are paramount. We don’t just dismiss people as “outliers”.
The Pennsylvania constitution guarantees the right to vote. These good decent hardworking Americans are having that right yanked away from them. Apparently so that the rest of us can experience some warm fuzzy feelings of confidence.
Honestly, I’m appalled at the arguments being put forth by certain individuals in this thread. The Republican party has become a cancer in this country.
If the government charges a fee for an ID, and you need that ID to vote, that is a poll tax.
But that’s where the line is drawn.
In other words, if the ID itself is free, then the mere fact that there may be incidental expenses does not create a poll tax. A poll tax doesn’t arise because someone needs to take a bus ride to get the ID, any more than it would t you have to take a bus ride to get to the polling place.
So I would oppose any voter ID scheme where the state did not provide free IDs. But supporting documentation? No, as long as there’s a reasonable list of acceptable documentation. (A state that insisted on a notarized long-form birth certificate would not be reasonable.)
The problem you raise in step 4 is a legitimate one. And yes, I would. But I’d go further – since the position is political, the mere fact that we forbid such overt mixing of advocacy and neutrality is foolish. I would support a scheme to have the election process itself run in every state by as neutral an authority as can be found – maybe a board appointed by the state supreme court, or even better a pool of people selected by the state supreme court, ten names, with the board composed of three names drawn at random from that pool.
As to point 1 – again, I agree. Measures that move that number closer to 100% are the right idea. And I’d support such measures.
With respect to point 2, I have already responded that my argument is not based on the number of current cases.
Finally with respect to point 3, I don’t believe it’s appropriate to simply weigh the effect of the number of people affected. Instead I weigh the reasonableness of the measures imposed.
Sigh. That should read "That’s **not **how we do things is this country. A righteous rant ruined by a typo that reverses the meaning. Maybe a mod can correct it.
Why doesn’t Ms. Lee sign an affidavit that she has no photo ID, provide two proofs of residence, such as a deed, lease, tax bill, or utility bill, and get her ID that way, as allowed under Pennsylvania law?
As I pointed out earlier, that is a problem with the undelying voter registration requirements. Voter ID laws do nothing to address those; the point is to prevent people who aren’t registered from voting. If you want to make sure voters are citizens, the time to ask them to prove it is when they register, not at the last minute. The former is a sensible restriction designed to prevent fraud. The latter is a veiled attempt to exclude a number of votes at a stage when it’s too late to do anything about it.
It doesn’t matter if there is “rampant” fraud or only a little bit. How do you know that the Republican demographic isn’t benefiting from fraud? It’s a safe bet that the population of people who are registered to vote probably needed some form of identification in order to do so. Are you not aware that voter fraud is actually a crime? Unfortunately, people from both sides will and have resorted to dirty tricks for partisan purposes (e.g. Watergate). Electoral fraud on that scale by high-level officials and electoral fraud at the level of voting when you are not an American citizen are crimes only different in their degree.
I think it’s important to realize that there are many aspects of life that are systemically unfair, and that in that case, questioning the system and fighting for change is almost an obligation on the part of the people; i.e. racial “literacy tests.” But in a case where the system is truly fair and impartial, the law needs to be upheld in that case, and that means that the law needs to be enforced.
To say that voter fraud is a partisan issue is absurd. If identity theft is a crime, then misrepresenting yourself or voting on behalf of someone else is also a crime.
25 PS 3050 even provides that a person who can’t do that is still entitled to cast a provisional ballot.
I haven’t read the ACLU’s court brief, but I suspect they contend asking someone to sign that affidavit is too burdensome, or traveling to a PennDOT office to deliver it and get the free ID is too burdensome.
All of this could be better analyzed if we had the most recent statistics on the confidence of the electorate. Go a long way to convincing me of the necessity for all of this if we could just have a reading on the Electorate Confidence Index. Assuming such a thing exists, of course. Bricker?
So if the same laws were rewritten for voter ID, but to require them at the point of registration instead - you would be OK with it? We would have to re-register everyone to get started, and the people who are going to be hurting now would still be hurting for a lack of identification.
When we went to the voter-ID system in the 1980 election, everyone who was already registered was grandfathered in: if you were already a current-status voter in the Elections Commission’s system (voted in the prior 4 years), you got the picture ID with just minimal evidence that you are the Mr. Juan Doe from Upsala Street who votes at the Huyke Middle School.
One thing we need to figure out is exactly what is the primary issue a legitimate voter-ID system is suposed to address: Multiple voting? District poaching (people claiming to have moved to an address in another district in order to swing it)? Voting by noncitizens? Voting by ineligible citizens? Franchise misappropriation (someone else votes in your name)?
As it stands, most state IDs are historically not considered “proof of citizenship” and most proofs of citizenship (passport, COLB) are not proofs of residence.
Even here, with our standardized official voter ID, it is merely proof-of-registration and a LOT of the info you are supposed to give upon registration is presumed in good faith: e.g. nobody crosschecks “1060 W. Addison” on the spot. Parties CAN challenge addresses on the published voter list BUT only BEFORE close of registration, so that the challenged voter has time to respond or correct the address. Not at the polls themselves.
We do provide a system of free-of-charge sworn/witness statements for the purpose of covering for some missing documents; HS students who will be18 in time for the next electoral event may get registered in a voter drive at the school the previous semester using the info on their school records if they (or their parents, if not quite yet 18 during the drive) so authorize.
In our local experience, which of course YMMV as to how portable it is to other places:
District poaching has been noted as a real issue. Now, you can’t outlaw someone who is a valid registered voter properly filing a change of address cutting it tight to the close of registration, State ID does nothing to prevent it if you remember to change address on that ID too. But honestly it’s a PITA to do this in enough numbers to really change results Over There w/o hurting your results Over Here (ticking off your own party’s candidate Over Here) and getting caught (just happened, in the primary). We also have the converse issue of people NOT changing their address and continuing to be registered to vote in the family homestead years after leaving. These ARE all eligible voters, voting only once, just that the address on the ID does not match reality.
The ID card so far has done nothing to prevent franchise misappropriation because the key factor there is not individuals showing up to take your place but crooked poll workers manipulating the list, by marking off your name to block you from voting, or, more commonly, holding off on it and at the end of the day marking dozens of no-shows as having voted to make it square with an inflated tally (or even actual old-school stuffed ballots). If there’s no recount nobody ever notices.
Voting by noncitizens here is not considered of significance by our Elections Commissioners because on the one hand of course the law-abiding noncitizens will not do it and endanger their status; and on the other the risk/benefit equation is not worth it for the illegal noncitizens to call attention to themselves in this manner (someone obviously not from here, going to a government office with skeevy papers) for so little payoff. An* indocumentado* needs to take chances to get a hot Green Card/SSC/DL, not a hot voter card.
Since the only “citizens, over 18 years of age, residents of PR” who are ineligible to vote here are those deemed mental incompetents by the Court (we eliminated the disenfranchisement of convicts in the early 80s) there seems to be no stats on ineligible citizen voting.
Notice the part that I’ve highlighted. Ms. Lee was born in Georgia so the PA DOH will not have any record of her birth. Presumably that would halt the process at that point and she wouldn’t be able to obtain ID.
If the tighty-righty clan is truly sincere about the sanctity of voting, they could fix it easy enough. A voter outreach program, a pointed effort to get people registered who are not. If, after all, this is not just a partisan ploy to suppress an undesirable voter from soiling a booth.
All kinds of non-partisan volunteer groups would be glad to help out, little tiny ACORNS blooming all over the place! Lots and lots of brand new voters, with rock-solid ID. Shit, Republicans, what’s not to love?
Instead, you have new laws to hamper such efforts. Just for example:
It isn’t necessarily about forbidding the exercise of civil rights as it is making the road a bit more uphill. They are expecting very tight races all over the place. So an effort to nibble away at the other teams chances is worthwhile. As a tactical political move, it is sound. They even have a pious bloviation to offer, protecting the sanctity of the voter rolls! And the confidence of the electorate, which has suffered so much lately. What with ACORN, and all.
And like most brilliant tactical political maneuvers, it is crystalline cynicism.
Maybe a mod can correct it.