My point is that there’s plenty of room for common ground here if the issue is approached in good faith. I’m sure there are many Republicans who would like to use ID to reduce turnout, but I bet that if Democrats offered to support an ID requirement that was phased in and made it free for all, there wouldn’t be a problem.
But then again, Rhode Island isn’t known for machine politics. Even if voter fraud isn’t the huge issue it once was, the idea of having clean elections is anathema to the descendants of Tammany Hall and Daley types.
Ah! So, faced with the rampant corruption of Democrat machine politics and the resulting crisis of voter fraud, the Republicans had no choice? Is that what you would like to imply but haven’t the nerve to actually say?
It’s a common sense measure to insure the integrity of elections, akin to making sure voting machines can’t be tampered with. Democrats are terrified of voting machine tampering even though like in person voter fraud, it’s a non-existent problem. But it’s still something that should be safeguarded.
Jimmy Carter and Jim Baker got together a commission not too long ago which recommended common sense, bipartisan voting reform. It included a voter ID requirement. The reforms should be adopted.
Arguing with you is increasingly akin to a game of Dodgeball. You imply things you are not willing to support, asked a direct question, you answer a different question more to your liking.
For instance, you offer us Rhode Island’s sensible and reasonable program to introduce voter ID to its population, as if it proves something. And it does, it proves that it could have been done sensibly and reasonably. It still would remain a cure in a futile search for a disease, but it could have been done.
Which leads directly to the question of why it wasn’t done that way elsewhere. And the sensible answer is that it wasn’t done because the Republicans of those other states did not want a sensible solution, they wanted a solution that offers them an undeserved electoral advantage. And that’s what they did, as well as loading onto that legislation repulsive and brazen restrictions towards that end.
All of which you steadfastly ignore. You blithely pretend the elephant is not in the living room and when he fills the room with a peanut-scented blast of rectal methane, you blame the dog.