No.

If a police officer locks you in jail for no reason, are you at fault for getting locked up in any way, shape, or form?

I mean, you could have bribed him not to lock you up, or ran and hoped he didn't shoot you in the back. Plenty of options to escape being denied your constitutional rights, right?

I'm not taking about hypotheticals anymore in this thread, only real life. Sorry

Nice cop out. But you don't think anyone in real life has ever been jailed for no reason?

Jules22,

A question: While you were thinking hard about how silly and trivial it is to get an ID, and thinking how none of it seems to make sense, and posting this,

did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, this ISN'T the worst voter oppression republicans can muster, and that just getting a CURRENT ID is only the tip of an insidious iceberg?

Required reading, like the bare minimum of a primer:

https://www.thenation.com/article/wi...e-in-november/

http://theweek.com/articles/659599/f...ready-disaster

Put another way, if you find yourself thinking a group is complaining about something insubstantial, and it all just doesn't sound quite right, one of the first basic checks is to consider that there might be more substance to the complaints, more to the overall story, and that you might have to restate your initial thinking.

This is, like, CriticalThinking101.

The voting restrictions don't keep every person from any particular class from voting or even most of them. Elections can be close and keeping some modest percentage from voting can make a difference.

Dunno if the analysis has been done on how big an effect voter ID requirements have, but I would guess it's quite a bit lower than felony disenfranchisement and the criminal justice system is extremely stacked against blacks and poor people generally.

What I would suggest is instead of clutching pearls and posting articles from the nation clutching pearls DO SOMETHING. Support a charity that registers the indigent to vote maybe. But to just whine is pretty much doing what R's want, they would probably light the country on fire just to hear liberals cry about it.

If I felt as strongly as the two opinion articles you posted did, I would probably go out and commit an act of revolutionary violence. However I don't feel that strongly, as you can probably tell from my prior posts. I certainly wouldn't sit at home and pout about how mean republicans are cuz that ain't changing a goddamned thing ever

"They don't want us to vote, you know what would really show them? We stay at home and don't vote then pout about the results on facebook"

I would consider the state of our criminal justice and prison system to be 1000x more outrageous than some dumb law about needing an ID to vote. Maybe that's why I'm kind of salty on this issue, bc a lot of democratic get real frothy about this issue but where the frig are they on the real systems of oppression?!

Ah yes. Good Ole whataboutism. Remember everyone, we can only ever focus on one issue at any one given time.

You should probably join us in the Law & Order thread. There is a lot of anger about all of these things. How do you think they got to be law in the first place? If African Americans had really had the right to vote from 1870 to now, their politicians would dominate the South. It's likely the entire fabric of our laws, especially the mass incarceration system, would be completely different. How do you think they keep these systems in place? Millions of African Americans can't vote because of a previous conviction, even many that have served their time and are free people again.

By the way the Voter ID's are not free in practice. You have to take time off work, get a ride or use public transit, scrounge up however many documents which can often cost quite a bit to replace if you can't find even a single one, and in Wisconsin they even refused federal court orders to give out free Voter ID's and just told people that asked for them that they wouldn't be able to vote anyway.

https://www.thenation.com/article/th...story-of-2016/

This isn't a fringe issue, it's THE issue. Right now the software of our democracy is broken because it's intentionally designed to not reflect the will of the people. We need massive protests until that software is corrected--but we know that Trump is going to break it even more. As long as the software of our democracy is completely broken, our system of government will never reflect the actual will of our people.

I will join you in fighting to fix what you term as the "broken software" of our system right now by getting rid of the filibuster.

Hi, ACLU supporter here and this is a big issue to them. Since I AM doing something, is it cool if I tell you how wrong you are here? Is that alright? Please let us know.

I feel like this is just code for "I wanna smoke weed legally."

I donate to ACLU 2x a year, can that cancel your derision of me? Probably not I guess

I live in California and already do that 😎

Honestly I get it from a policy making POV it's an easy one to point out republicans hypocrisy on and it is easily prima facie classist which can be easily put as racist to since most AAs and minorities are in lower class.

I hate to sound like a RW curmudgeon but is it possible democrats expect too little from poors (let's set aside the race issue as inflammatory for the moment). I dont expect most of you to budge on this but as a formerly poor and current minority I just don't see how you can decide the easier route to success is a series of political and legal challenges vs "hey dummy these *******s don't want you to vote let's get you an ID and prove em wrong! Ps vote clinton"

It's easy and perhaps inspiring to look at this as an issue to be overcome with force and will, but the simple fact is this: if you enact some hurdle to voting, however large, some % of the population affected by that hurdle will not vote. It's not about expecting too little from the poors and minorities, it's about acknowledging the basic math of how incentives work in society.

Why should we put up with any of these bull**** hurdles?

Like, having just read a part of Between The World And Me where TNC talks about how horrific it is that black people have to be told from birth that they need to be twice as good just to be on equal footing with white people and then they still might just get senselessly gunned down by a police officer - I'm pretty sure he'd have some choice words for you with this "let's rise up and overcome yet another institutional barrier to our basic rights, we'll really show them" stuff.

Expecting that poor people lack the resources (money, transportation) and time (taking off low-paying jobs) isn't expecting too little. It's recognizing facts.

Christ almighty wtf are you even talking about? Ignoring the absurdity, how is this even a logical response behind my reply to you?

The value of an individual vote externally is zero. No individual vote will decide the election. It makes no difference who one votes for. The value of voting is entirely internal. It's worth something to the voter because they like doing it.

For something with 0 external reward, even a tiny cost makes quite a difference for cost / benefit. "People should be willing to climb any mountain to vote" makes no sense. But that's what you're saying.

He clearly didn't read the 2 articles I posted, much less ein's followup.

I just don't know how to combat this.

guy: hurr durr state IDs wats the big deal?

me: Well, they are a big deal, but let's ignore that for now. If we accept they're no big deal, there are still more, and more insidious, voter suppression tactics ou there. Here are 2 succinct articles to read.

guy: but hurr durr state IDs wats the big deal?

The reason why I'm not meandering is that I already stated I find restricting voting access via ending early voting closing polls earlier repugnant. I'm not sure what else you want from me 5ive?