The principle, as distinct from the policy, I think.
Voter ID Laws: Necessary to combat rampant fraud or subtle subjugation of the Democratic demographic
Two things: that the result is nevertheless an antidemocratic and regressive restriction of voting rights, and that the problem he claims it addresses is not real but something invented by his own party’s electoral tacticians and spread by its propagandists. Is that not clear to you?
IOW, an actual *admission *that you have no basis in fact whatsoever to think that the problem you so transparently and piously decry actually exists, or that the thought even occurred to you until your party leadership told you about it. So hy not just say so, in the cause of fighting ignorance and all that? :dubious:
No, not when the link is to a concern over poll taxes, a concern the poster said Bricker refuses to accept, when I recall him specifically acknowledging that concern.
BTW, Elvis, don’t you ever get tired of this condescending schtick? I’d imagine about 99% of the board is.
Huh? Who am I condescending to with that? :dubious: Please expound.
The question about what **Bricker **refuses to accept is perhaps a bit broader than the asker intended, isn’t it? Much of this thread has been about exactly that.
Clearly what’s happened is, top Republican politicoes like Karl Rove have observed that Presidential elections are very close of late, and thus that practices like vote caging, formerly only useful on the local level where very close votes sometimes occur, can also be useful at the federal level. The result, a campaign to make voting more difficult for the poor, who tend to vote Democratic by a large majority. The method, gin up a cry of vote fraud, or fear of vote fraud. No evidence of vote fraud? Shout it louder. Point out that it’s a good thing to prevent vote fraud no matter HOW vanishingly small the statistical evidence of it is! Pull out emanations and penumbra like “confidence in the electoral system.” Every little bit of not counting Democrats might prove decisive in the triumph of Republicanocracy!
This is so clearly, so obviously, so transparently what is going on that I am left all agog that anyone has the never to pretend otherwise. Well, I would be, except for 2000, and everything that has happened since.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if they sought to cage that other large group that votes overwhelmingly Democratic … women.
There’s something dissatisfying about that assertion, Bricker. Let me see if I can tease it out. I’ll begin by excising the negative portion of your sentence (I may use parts of the excision later):
Someone reading this sentence could be forgiven for thinking that it implies that public confidence in the integrity of the voting system needs to be shored up. If one drills down another level, one might be forgiven for thinking that it implies that the integrity of the voting system itself needs to be shored up.
Is it your opinion that the integrity of the voting system itself needs to be shored up? If it is, I’d be grateful if you would share that with us, and provide your reasons for believing so.
Is it your opinion that public confidence in the integrity of the voting system is in need of shoring up? Again, I’d be grateful for both your answer and the reasons you have for holding the opinion. Your responses will assist me in determining whether I can now be satisfied with your opinion as quoted above, or whether I have more work to do in that regard.
Thank you.
Did you notice how all of a sudden, Mittens is totally about education?
“That’s not the real reason! THIS is the real reason !”
So if your rhetorical technique is simply to deny what I’ve said, and assert that your favored explanation is the true one, I can understand why so many states have passed voter ID laws.
You’re free to imagine whatever you please.
But guess what? While you sit there, with your hands clamped tightly over your ears, intoning “La la la la I will not listen,” the laws have passed, been challenged in court, and have survived. They exist. If you believe the most effective strategy to reverse that *fait accompli *is the one you’ve chosen, I enthusiastically support you.
I’m assuming you’ve read my further responses in this thread. Have they shed no light on the question you now ask? In particular, posts 22, 27, 29, 46, and 47, read together, should make the questions you are now asking clear.
Well to be fair, that’s not voter suppression or vote caging, that’s just pandering, a time-honored and perfectly legal political technique.
Sorry, I went the lazy man’s way; read the original assertion, made my post on a word processor, started reading the thread, decided that i needed to take my nap (I work tonight), and submitted the post.
I thank you for the road map, and will check that out now.
And you’re unwilling to recognize that drawing the line there arbitrarily (though quite intentionally) fails to recognize the fees related to supporting documents and the process of obtaining them, even though that is non-zero and, as we’ve seen, often far more rigorous and costly a process than obtaining the ID itself.
As pointed out, that method only works for those born in Pennsylvania and those whose birth was officially recorded. (And whose birth is more likely to have not been properly officially recorded? Let’s just all guess…)
And even if you were born in PA, if you live with family members as many young people do, or in a care facility, as many people with disabilities and senior citizens do, and thus there is no lease or utility service in your name, there is no way to sufficiently document your residence in order to satisfy this method.
You are, for the purposes of this Commonwealth, a non-identifiable person, and now, a non-voter.
For “inscrutable” reasons, the one bill that many people who don’t have a deed, lease or utility service in their name *do *have – one for mobile phone service – is specifically excluded as a proof of residence.
I appreciate this discussion, I really do. Although the introduction of a couple of blue states who have these laws make me less reluctant to blame Republicans, it is also silly to not notice that they are the ones who are most often responsible for Voter ID laws.
Additionally, while we may quibble over how many would be affected, we can all agree that there are voters who will be subjugated. Some will be so inconvenienced through fees to receive documents, taking time off work and/or finding transportation to places to pick up documentation, and even others will be completely unable to get those documents to the satisfaction of the state.
We have also seen that cases of voter fraud are quite rare and are already being detected through our current means and regulated with our current laws.
And even the Voter ID law itself can easily be circumvented. You really think that the blue haired old ladies at the voting places will be able to better scrutinize IDs than the bouncer at a college bar or the guys at the local casino?
As for the nebulous Voter Confidence, we cannot put a number on it, even one we might debate over. It is merely a theoretical construct, one which can reasonably be questioned simply by asking the populace if they have confidence in a system if people who have voted for decades are now no longer allowed to. And a study published by the Harvard Law Review also puts this idea into question. Though those two arguments may be imperfect, so is the notion to begin with in my opinion. Voter confidence was at it’s lowest in 2000 when hanging chads and Supreme Court rulings undermined that confidence; never has there been even close to that kind of criticism because people showed up at the polls and it was determined that a rogue impersonator beat them to it.
Often times, people who are proponents of the the death penalty are asked if there is an acceptable number of men or women put to death for crimes that they actually did not commit because it is undeniable that innocent people have been put to death. We need to ask proponents of Voter ID the same question.
This isn’t death, but it’s a fundamental right in this country, one that our servicement died to help protect. We already don’t have enough voter participation but to have people unable to vote when they want to - even just a handful of people - you should have a damn good reason for this. I don’t see Voter Confidence as a damn good reason and the evidence for existing fraud is also not nearly enough to away me that elections need special protection beyond what we already have.
So, to summarize – you now at least weakly concede you were incorrect when you claimed some sort of fundamental difference between the voter laws passed by D-controlled legislatures and those passed by the evil overlords in R-controlled legislatures (even though you avoid explicitly acknowledging the inaccurate claim). And as for the other arguments,you announce you’re just not convinced.
Well, as far as I’m concerned, that’s fine. This is an issue on which reasonable people may disagree. You may well be right that on balance, we harm more than we heal by requiring strict voter ID. I don’t agree, but I acknowledge the possibility.
But we have a system in this country to resolve such conflicts. We elect leaders and vest in them our jointly-held sovereign power to make law. That’s what has happened here.
Bricker,
I think you’ve totally misrepresented John_Stamos’_Left_Ear’s comments, but I’ll let him defend himself.
You’ve also failed to address my most recent post on PA’s new law and how it appears that signing an affidavit will not be sufficient in the case of Ms. Lee and most likely many others.
Can you dispute that it will disenfranchise Ms. Lee and possibly others? If not, do you see any other recourse for these individuals? If not, are you willing to disenfranchise these individuals in order to boost the confidence of everyone else?
I am trying to find the legal authority that animates the text you quoted. So far as I can tell, this is an invention of some entity other than the legislature; some regulation implementing the law.
And I agree that if there is no reasonable recourse for Ms. Lee and others similarly situated, the regulation or law needs to be changed so that there is.
That text is from the official PA DMV website at http://www.dmv.state.pa.us/voter/voteridlaw.shtml, the same site where you linked to the affidavit. I would think that they’d get it right, but obviously I can’t say that with 100% certainty.
But look at the affidavit: http://www.dmv.state.pa.us/pdotforms/voterid/VoterAffirmationNoProofofID.pdf
Look at what it’s affirming. It affirms that they are a registered voter and that they do not have the ID required to vote under the new law. If the purpose of the affirmation is to obtain ID for voting even if no records exist, then why isn’t it affirming that they are a citizen and legal resident and meet all of the legal requirements? It strikes me as simply a statement justifying the need for the state to do a records search.
Why not write laws that:
-
Do not require photo I.D. but assumes anyone who shows one are presumed to be valid votes. These votes immediately go into a “valid” category
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For anyone who does NOT show a photo I.D., also require a fingerprint. These votes are placed into a “suspect” category UNTIL they are checked against all other “fingerprint” votes and other databases like the S.S. death index to ensure there is no duplication, at which point they are counted
This would, it seems to me, combat part of the problem of voter fraud; at least multiple votes by the same person.
As for these assertions that there is no problem, I think it is well illustrated that there is, given facts like S.C.'s attorney general’s assertions of 900 dead people voting.
Besides, I don’t understand how a system that doesn’t require one to prove one’s identity could be producing evidence of voter fraud to begin with, how anyone could EXPECT a system with no proof of identity to CATCH the fraud.
Let’s say we remove all manner of identifying who makes a withdrawal from bank accounts. We remove I.D. requirements, written withdrawal slips, cameras in the banks. Now we come along and find our bank accounts drained. We complain.
“I’m sorry sir, you must have made a mistake and spent all your money.” The bank manager says.
“I am sure I did NOT,” you say. “Someone else must have.”
“No, sir, there is no evidence there is any kind of problem with fraudulent transactions at this bank,” the manager says.
“That would be because you do not make any efforts to identify those seeking withdrawals.”
“Why should we take steps to solve a non-existent problem?” the manager asks. “As I said, there is no evidence that anyone has been accessing an account that does not belong to them. You’re just trying to spend your money and have it too.”
“I’m closing my account and going somewhere that will keep my account secure.”
“And we’ll be glad of it, since you just want to keep people without I.D., mostly disadvantaged minorities, from being able to use banks. We do not need racists like you around. You need to start being fair to the minorities around.”
Of course no bank would stay in business long like that.
Sure the laws have been passed, but that does not mean they are good laws. It just means that the Republican legislators, prolly with help from ABLE, drafted laws that gave good legal cover for their actions. And speaking the truth as I see it isn’t really a legal strategy. Just sayin’.