hahaha, do you poast on city-data.com as "All American NYC" or "ErikCortez"?

They aren't constitutionally guaranteed. But there are laws against discrimination. Obviously all these places that require ID just want to keep minorities away.

Some questions for opponents of Voter ID:

- Should the possibility of undetected voter fraud, or possible fraud in the future count for nothing?
- Suppose that some time in the future, incontrovertible evidence showed that an election result was swung by massive voter fraud among illegal immigrants. Would you support some form of Voter ID legislation then?
- How easy should it be to vote? After all, there are other inevitable burdens to voting. Suppose Republicans proposed to reduce the number of polling stations on cost grounds. Is this inevitably partisan disenfranchisment?

I am not saying these particular laws are necessarily good (from my limited information I'd oppose them), but the debate over them is not quite so simple as "u want to stop blacks from voting!1"

How are illegal immigrants going to get on the voter rolls in the first place? Please explain.

WHAT PART OF "THEY ARE ILLEGAL" DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND??????

Crazy idea, but maybe there are ways to secure elections that dont disenfranchise millions of Americans?

Meh. Its almost like they should make a giant database of when I get a social security card and if I vote they take my word for it, checking later if I am a real person.

Im kinda torn on the districting issue tbh. On one hand, it is obviously artificial and can be easily manipulated (sounds like the beginning of every boondoggle in my lifetime). On the other hand, if implemented well can give representation to people who otherwise unlikely to receive representation equal to their % of the population.

I have no doubt that even if something as innocuous as Wookie's suggestion of an Iraqi finger dye system were implemented people would come out and say it disenfranchised service-industry people because working with a dyed finger cut into waiter's and bartender's tips and cooks wouldn't be allowed to handle food with a dyed finger.

LOL

You forgot to say you were putting them on ignore and reporting them for being anti-american.

b

Wait...are you actually claiming that the republican strategists who are payed millions to come up with strategies like this are so stupid that they don't know what is obvious to politards after 5 seconds of internet searching? That requiring photo ID to vote will result in way more poor legal voters being unable to vote than illegal immigrants who are now suddenly foiled in their quest to commit voter fraud. I mean, it's pretty trivial that they would have to research that because if it was the case that large levels of voter fraud was going that could be prevented with ID checks they would mention that.

No, but before you pass a bunch of measures that target your opponents' supporters you should be able to provide at least a couple of examples of occasions where it's actually happened. So far, of all the people who have voted in the past elections, literally hundreds of millions of people, provable fraud has happened in like 0.007% of cases.

Illegal immigrants can get ID if they want it. Hell, all you have to do is go to a liberal state such as New Mexico and presto, driver's license. Somehow that hasn't opened the floodgates for illegals to start voting, though.

What about the idea that the burden of proof should be on a naysayer to prove that someone isn't eligible to vote, rather than on the person to prove that they are? Why is that such a horrible idea in the land of the free?

It should be the easiest thing to do in the country. Otherwise how can you truly call it a democracy?

LOL at the notion of Republicans doing anything for reasons other than strategic.

Yet that is the direct result of the policies. What are we supposed to think?

I like the idea of compulsory voting and 2 day elections. At least most voting frauds like requiring ID in the country where many people don't have one won't happen.
I wouldn't fine people severely for not voting and allow the to opt out if they won't (but still opting out should require some effort). It seems that there are some quite civilized countries which employ the idea:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Compulsory_voting.svg

I find what GOP is doing disgusting.

In other words, "No, but yes".

My point was that even if there's no evidence that significant voter fraud exists, the fact that it might be happening undetected or could happen in the future is a reason to take measures against it, much like how you don't plan for terrorist attacks solely on what attacks have already happened. That's not to say that those measures couldn't go too far (and we could argue that the current legislations have), but it's a debate worth having. Giving zero weighting to any circumstance we don't have evidence of happening doesn't make for smart cost-benefit analysis.


The scenario in which widespread voter fraud might occur would probably involve a level of organisation that currently does not exist. Perhaps a future politician will be corrupt enough to orchestrate an extensive voter fraud in order to be elected. We could relying on prosecuting him after the fact, but prevention has a number of advantages.


Because it's much easier for people to get ID than it is for polling operators to do background checks on everybody.

Imagine applying the same logic to alcohol sales. How would you ever "prove" someone was underage? Hire a private investigator to hunt down their birth certificate?


How easy? Should there be fifty polling locations on every block? Should voters be granted courtesy limousine rides to the polls? Should every voter be paid $1,000 compensation for their time?

No matter what you do, some voters are going to be naturally "disenfranchised". If you don't support the above proposals, you implicitly accept that there are trade-offs between ease of voting and other factors. Again, this doesn't mean that the trade-off implied by Voter ID legislation is fair, just that we should at least recognise the nature of the trade-off.


Unlike Democrats, who are pure of heart?

I don't believe for a minute that Democratic politicians opposing these bills have no partisan considerations in mind. They might still oppose them if there was no net partisan impact, but I'm quite sure their level of opposition is significantly enhanced by their selfish interests. (It's the same but vice versa for Republicans).

That we evaluate policies by looking at more than some of the costs and consider whether there be situations where the benefits exceed the costs, even if they don't in these particular cases.

ACORN, ldo

GlOlP


I hope that looks better on a computer than it does on my phone (android suck it suzzah!)

+1

No, I'm saying that any change to voting requirements, regardless of how trivial, would get decried by someone. The comment was pretty str8 forward and it was independent everything else I'd argued in this thread.

Regardless, I think you're overestimating the intelligence level and reasoning capabilities of the average state/local politician by a wide margin. Especially when it comes to enacting legislation that has popular support from their even less intelligent constituents. Take Alabama, it's a state that's full of bigots who are obsessed with making sure illegal immigrants don't take over their state and make everyone have to choose whether they want their automated phone prompts in English or Spanish. It's completely plausible that they could enact legislation there designed to assuage concerns over illegal immigrants voting in elections, despite the fact that Hispanics in general have extremely low voter turn out, without any kind of greater GOP voter suppression strategy conspiracy coming into play. I'm not saying this is for sure the case, I just don't think voter suppression is nearly as obvious an explanation as Phill et al were saying and I think when those types of accusations are frivolously made it is distracting and damaging in the greater scheme of things for a number of reasons. I certainly don't think the fact that allegations of voter fraud turned out to be inaccurate is nearly the damning piece of evidence many of you guys seem to think it is.

When states arent taking university IDs and are banning voting on a Sunday, exactly what conclusion should be drawn other than manipulation of voting demographics?

Semi-relevant but my student ID in New Zealand couldn't be used to buy alcohol (on or off campus).

There are probably going to be fringe examples where some IDs arent acceptable identification for various things. However to take a "principled" cutoff against any student IDs tells you all you need to know.

Up untill my last year or so @ UF our student IDs were little more than a higher quality laminated printout. Not exactly the hardest thing to forge and certainly worthy of concern if you were a partisan follower of a political party who *believe* their opposition spends tons of time and money gerrymandering districts and trying to think up all sorts of ways to tilt elections in their favor including getting as many ineligible voters to vote illegally as possible.

This undoubtedly is an attempt to alter the voter base, disenfranchising a part of the electorate in the process.

The funny part is people somehow think the Democrats don't engage in similar tactics when convenient.

Lol.... guess you can make this accusation without any evidence at all. But if somebody wants to claim something about the republicans they better have a rigorous proof that could stand up in a court of law. Nice consistency. But I'm thinking I've also reached the Suzzer point in this conversation and doubt you are being serious so I'll end it here.

There's no question that when liberals are in charge they do stuff like allowing more time for early voting. So yeah, both sides are aware of which side of the turnout bread they want buttered...


but one side is "disenfranchising people" and the other is "making it easy for people to exercise a fundamental right." I'm comfortable making a moral judgment call there

Democrats have never hesitated to disenfranchise when it suited them.

Military personnel for example.

It just so happens there aren't a lot of Republican voting blocs that's easy to target. But then I am sure someone is trying to figure out how to make it harder for evangelicals to vote.