Th state has a law that allows for this dispute to be resolved in 30 days. Even if they wait until after the election it only will take 30 days to resolve it.

There are numerous posts in this thread defining disenfranchising and yes it applies to situations where the actions are rendering a persons vote less effective. ie allowing those a vote who should not vote renders someone vote as less effective in that it cancels out a legitimate vote.

Bob, how about the guy who is a legal citizen, who has already been purged once and sent in all his proof of citizenship, and now is being asked to do so again?

How about the Voting Rights Act where it says these kinds of purges aren't to be conducted within 90 days of a federal election?

From Scott's earlier purge attempts this summer:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/02/us...ge.html?_r=0#h[TFih,4]

Not only is the wikipedia definition flawed because it only discusses disenfranchising the right to vote whilst people can be disenfranchised of any right and it adds in the "less effective" language that no respectable dictionaries do, that isnt even what it means by "less effective or ineffective".

It also doesnt cancel out a legitimate vote at all. It will cancel out a small fraction of one percent of legitimate votes. In this case we are talking perhaps 35 voters in a state of 19 million, of which around 8 million will vote. That is 0.0004375% even before we try and consider that these ineligible voters can be cancelling themselves out thus making their effect much smaller.

Again, this isnt a problem. Too many people voting is illegal and it should be prosecuted fairly like any other crime but if just one person is disenfranchised of their right to vote the measure has failed.

What Florida is doing is presuming guilt asking people to prove innocence in order to keep a constitutionally guaranteed right, arguably the most sacred right of all. There is a reason the justice system starts at a presumption of innocence then works forward to proving guilt for any other crime on the books.

No question the Gov messed up on the guy who is a legal citizen.

As for everyone else, I think all parties are in a dificult spot. My guess is that like those cited in the article a lot of the 39 are voting and are not eligible but really do not know better. But if a lawyer was representing one of them, he would be wanting the matter cleared up. The worse thing that could happen for one of them is to break the law by illegally voting in a State where the govenor is trying to make a name for himself on cracking down on voter fraud.

So would it be better to let them vote, find out they committed a crime and pursue criminal charges that could get them a jail sentence and could stop them from becoming citizens? Because I am guessing that is where Scott will go next if he is shut down. Because I doubt ignorance of the law is probably not a good defense.

No what Florida is doing is saying we have a legitimate reason to believe that you should not be on our voting rolls. To protect your due process rights you need to provide evidence you are eligible to vote. Because Florida has a duty to protect the accuracy and integrity of the voting system as well. Really do you believe a state can not challenge anyones right to vote ever?

The issue isn't with verifying that votes are legitimate, it is with the fact that the proposed methods will prevent orders of magnitude more legitimate votes than illegitimate ones and they are pushing to have them implemented mere months before the general election.

The motivation behind these rules clearly isn't to prevent voter fraud, it is to prevent more Democrats from voting. They might be trying to sell it as fraud prevention, but it isn't. I don't hold it against voters who buy into what they are saying, it all sounds very reasonable. Why shouldn't we verify all of the votes? Everyone wants a fair election. That just isn't what they are after and it isn't what these hastily passed regulations will accomplish.

Oh, so now you care about voter disenfranchisement? Because these laws are disenfranchising THOUSANDS of citizens that will not register to vote, not have the proper ID, etc. that otherwise would have voted.

To Republicans, 40 non-citizens voting is DISENFRANCHISING THE INTEGRITY OF AN ENTIRE ELECTION, but thousands of (minority) citizens being disenfranchised is THE NECESSARY PRICE OF MAKING SURE THE ELECTION IS SAFE. You guys are priceless.

Goofy,

You're misunderstanding. Illegal people voting makes his vote count less. Disenfranchising poor minorities makes his vote count more. Disenfranchising minorities AND stopping a few illegals = great success!

Not sure what "these laws" are. You seem to want to lump in a lot of laws together. Not sure I want to know but I will ask anyway what is Goofy and Wookie's position in regards to if a state knows or has reliable information that a large % of the 40 are voting illegally:

A. Should they ignore (after all it's only 40 and we only believe there were 10 cases ever)
B. Verify they have the right to vote.
C. See which ones vote and open a criminal investigation.

I take it your both against using the federal data base to purge voting rolls as well?

"These laws" = voter ID in PA, registration changes + roll purging in FLA are the ones I'm most familiar with.

B. But if you're purging citizens from the voting rolls and challenging them to prove they can vote, you're ****ing up and have lost all credibility that you're trying to maintain the integrity of the election or whatever BS you're spinning.

I'm against things that keep citizens from being able to vote.

Now that I've responded to your post, are you going to respond to mine? 1,000s of citizens not voting that otherwise would have is just the eggs you have to crack to make the omelette of preventing 40 votes that shouldn't be cast?

Don't look now, but here's the GOP committing voter fraud

So a State can verify a person has a right to vote, but not by asking the person for proof that they can vote. So if the State and federal data bases show they should not vote what then? just not let them vote; allow them their due process rights to proove they are eligible to vote or are we back to A just ignore it? Becuse it appeared to me in scanning the article there was 1 citizen, and several noncitizens and a whole bunch of unknowns.

Any way did not realize you needed a response to your post thought it was more of a statement. But as for PA, I really doubt there is enough time to inact the id law this year. I also was shocked they are pushing ahead with it but maybe those from Dmv convinced him otherwise. I do not think that it really helps the Rep party by rushing the implementation of these laws.

If state and federal databases are shown to be unreliable, then they should not be used to strip people's right to vote. Since this process has tagged citizens as being noncitizens, the databases being used are clearly unreliable.

The house majority leader in PA disagrees with you.

Yeah well he did not call for advice. Just do not see a good long term outlook for taking this position. You really do not need mass people filing provisional ballots with the cameras rolling.

"clearly unreliable" or not perfect as cited by the article big diference. To me it's looking like of the 39 it's going to be at least 50% accurate and maybe 90%.

guy shouldn't be allowed to vote anyway

i'm glad the government is protecting the rights of it's citizens

Enjoyed Jonathon Tobins comments concerning the first ladies recent speech on voting rights and voter ID laws.

"Left Turns Voting Rights Into a Farce"

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/20...-into-a-farce/

From the article:

Pure evil. Will remember never to take anything by that Tobins guy seriously.

Almond, you "enjoyed" it in the "lol this guy is such a tard" sense and not because you thought it was good, right?












Right?

I'm having the same argument with the conservatives on the mailing list I'm on. They are all smart guys, but on this issue seriously cannot process basic logic. It goes something like this:

them: Voter Fraud!

me: Please show me one case of voter fraud that would be prevented by Voter ID laws.

them: No, what I meant is that we can´t even settle on what types of fraud are actually being committed, so it would be impossible to determine only those measures that both prevent the problem and are "commensurate" with the extent to which it occurs. Voter ID laws, in principle, are defensible because we can be 100% sure that they will prevent at least one kind of voter fraud.

me: I'm really not interested in how many different kinds of voter fraud you can imagine and demand solutions for. Also it doesn't even come close to passing the smell test or basic common sense that voter impersonation would be going on in anything other than an extremely rare or accidental basis. And yet we know there has been fraud on absentee ballots. But let's ignore that altogether and focused on the imagined kind of fraud that just happens to disenfranchise poor and minorities.

them: a) Are voter ID laws inherently a bad thing? No, this is 2012, showing an ID before voting is quite sensible. b) Are republican activist groups pushing fast ratification of voter ID laws as part of a calculated, multi-pronged strategy to gain the best possible electoral odds? Yes. Also, the sky is blue and water is wet. c) Does the answer to question b) change the answer to question a) in any way, shape or form? No.

me: So again, your position is that it's ok to disenfranchise people, to solve a problem that doesn't exist, because needing an ID to vote just feels right. Even though this system has worked fine for 200 years (at least with respect to not requiring IDs), and none of us would even be having this conversation if FNC hadn't started running bi-weekly "Stealing Your Vote" features as coordinated cover w/republican leadership for the ALEC initiatives to reduce minority voters across the country.

them: Voter fraud!

And then one of them posts this:

And my reply:

At which point not only does it appear he's not trolling. It appears that all the conservatives in the list actually believe his claim that this article, and "El Macho" actually bolsters his cause. I'm still not 100% sure he's not trolling, but I know the dudes agreeing with him aren't.

Suzzer, send a reply in a few days saying you met a guy in a bar at the weekend who told you about how he helped commit some of this fraud. Give him a black sounding name like Carl and make up some quotes. Just go wild.

Then a few days later tell them you made it all up and say they were stupid for believing your story just like they are stupid for believing the other stories.

Also a lot of elected local democrats in Rhode Island believe in "El Macho" as well. Which is why I believe the Carter and Baker Commission favored an Id law. At some point it's not about how much or how small a problem but rather people having confidence in the system. If a large % of the population feels a election (even if we are talking about a small local election) can be stolen, then something needs to be changed. Clearly there were 3 local Democrat officials (of only 3 they quoted) who believe they lost elections to fraudulent votes. At some point whether you believe there is a problem or not, does not a State have a duty to at least have some minimal controls to be able to verify that no one loaded up a bus of out of state voters and gave them names of fruadulent registered voters to vote under. Because whether you believe in El Macho or do you really believe there are controls in place to stop an el MAcho situation from happening?

Is it not also disenfranchising for a politician and his supporters to campaign and believe the other side stole an election?

I agree that some of the implementation of the laws has been rushed but I really believe that if the Dem were concerned with the integrity of the voting system the discussion would be about a fair way to clean up the voting rolls and to get everyone on the rolls a ID.

It's the modern conservative movement in a nutshell!: if some crazy ******s believe moronic conspiracy theories, disenfranchisement happened, by definition. What actually happens in the observable world is secondary to what people believe, even if it's completely unproven.

Some liberal 'realists,' perhaps with access to a dictionary or maybe in possession of a high school diploma, they might say disenfranchisement happens when people have their right to vote revoked. The Fair and Balanced UnSkewed definition of disenfranchisement, though, is if some people think a bus of ACORN black panthers voted 45 million times somehow. When will we stop this incorrigible and abject disenfranchisement of white people, disenfranchised by their own fantasies? Only when we arbitrarily purge the rolls of the old handicapped and welfare freeloading blacks and require blacks to present a notarized copy of their mortgage payments in person at the one registrar's office 75 miles from their house to get a voter ID, for fairness, to make white people think the system isn't rigged against them, as they have historically rigged it against blacks.