I can't speak for the rest of them, but I've got exactly 60 days left to avoid getting any infraction points. I'd rather not go out arguing with FlyWf about some inconsequential derail.

Wookie, your argument seems to be we should make it as easy as humanly possible to cast ballots, and I just don't agree with that.

You think voting is too important to have any barriers.

I think voting is too important to NOT have any barriers.

Haven't we been trying to get rid of barriers to voting for like 100 years?

OP's source is ROLLING STONE. nuff said.

And Coca Cola used to contain cocaine 100 years ago. So?

Are you equating women's suffrage with vote fraud?

Nope just too busy figuring out where to send donations to the group suzz told us about American Legislative Exchange Council sounds like they are doing some good work.

Still think id's are a reasonable request that everyone can comply with, though if they choose not to thats their decision. Glad the Supreme Court agreed with us.

OK, let me ask you and like-minded people a few things:

1. Preventing one citizen from voting legally is:

[ ] Worse than an ineligible person voting
[ ] Equal to an ineligible person voting
[ ] No big deal. Stopping 10 citizens from voting is worth it for stopping one ineligible voter.
[ ] No big deal. Stopping 100 citizens from voting is worth it for stopping one ineligible voter.
[ ] No big deal. Stopping 1000+ citizens from voting is worth it for stopping one ineligible voter.

2. Which of the following are important barriers to place on voting?

[ ] citizenship
[ ] natural born citizenship
[ ] voters must be employed
[ ] voters must be white
[ ] voters must be male
[ ] voters must take a written test on US government
[ ] voters must own land
[ ] voters must pay federal income taxes
[ ] voters must drive cars
[ ] voters must fly on planes
[ ] voters must purchase alcohol
[ ] voters must pay a fee in order to vote so that only the people who really want to vote and who are informed will vote
[ ] voters must have graduated from high school
[ ] voters must have graduated from college
[ ] voters must have gun licenses
[ ] voters must have served in the armed forces

I just think you can stop ineligible people from voting without stopping an underprivileged citizen from exercising their right.

I'd prefer that we could start a "I am the disenfranchised" campaign just like this "I am the 99%" one so we could put some faces to these so-called disenfranchised voters who don't have or cannot obtain an ID.

Or like I said, purple thumbs. I'll wear mine proudly.

First question assumes that someone is stopped from doing something. No one is "prevented" from anything. Everyone can comply if they choose to do so some may not choose to get id.

*Some easy way for an individual to prove citizenship/state to verify it would be nice. No, I don't know what that would be; before this thread I thought DL would do the trick, but apparently it's racist or classist in application (though not in intent, at least not by me).

Third time in the thread:

That qoutes a statistic of people w/o id. Now how many of those can not obtain id if they wanted to? who are those people?

I have a warehouse employee who didn't get a drivers' license until he was 24. His mom took him to and picked him up from work for 18 months before he got one and bought a car.

That doesn't mean he couldn't have went and gotten a photo ID any time he wanted to.

The 21 million no-ID stat is useless.

I don't have any blue pens on my desk right now. That doesn't mean I cannot EASILY go get some.

I don't have a steering wheel cover. What's stopping me from going to get one? Especially if the state is offering to buy me one?

So I frankly don't care how many people don't have a photo ID. They can all go and get one on the government dime.

Ah yes, they just have to comply. Rich people have no problem complying, poor people have a comparable much more difficult time, meaning that some of them won't. No big deal, though, I mean, they just didn't comply, right? It's their own fault that they never had a reason to get a valid photo ID before.

And yeah, budgets are getting tight. Guess we better close some precincts in poor neighborhoods. It's not preventing anyone from voting. They will just vote across town. Rich people have no problem complying with that. The open precincts are right near them. And it's exactly the same for the poor people! They go to exactly the same precincts and vote in exactly the same polling booths! What could be more fair than that? People have to comply during these tough times.

Let's think of some more ways we can get people to comply with new standards!

Congrats on the ease with which you can drive to Staples and buy pens. You're middle class!

If you really can't figure out how it's harder for a poor person, you need to think some more.

Poor people already need a photo ID to obtain state benefits. So income is no excuse.

You might have a point about truly homeless people who are off the grid entirely, but they are a minuscule part of the populace, and we can handle that separately.

How poor you talking about Wookie? It seems like your taking it down to living in a card board box level. Is that who we are discussing?

Because a lot of those who qualify as "poor' still have access to transportation and a lot more time on their hands then other folks.

Adding an hour's bus ride each way on top of the already long time it takes to filter through the DMV makes the trip look a ton less attractive, esp. if the only benefit in it for you is to get to vote.

And what documentation are you supposed to bring to the DMV if you're an 80-year-old poor southern black person who's lived w/o ID for the last 60 years? I still am waiting for any answer to that. You think it's going to be easy for that person to dig up their birth certificate? Wanna bet the republicans find a way to make that process really tricky and onerous as well? All they have to do is lay the right people off to increase the wait times. Nothing like calling some state office and getting a busy signal all day long.

Or a poor black person born and raised in the lower 9th ward of New Orleans. Many of those birth certificates were wiped out in Katrina.

Not sure if you were responding to me or not, but I work on a farm. Celebrating MLK day, especially taking off for it, is a foreign concept to me.

But Wookie, if they don't want to jump through all these hoops to vote, clearly they don't deserve the ability to exercise their democratic rights!

I'm surprised celebrating it would be foreign to you since most news outlets make a pretty big deal of it each year, not to mention a fairly large group of the populace. Taking it off I could understand as I don't think most places do.

M2B are you in AZ?

^He must live in a racist state if doesn't celebrate MLK!

AZ doesn't recognize MLK day.