The GOP war on voting - Page 52 - Politics and Economics

I never suspected it would cause chaos or anything, just thinking that a big portion of the forced votes would be basically meaningless or random. I'm open to being wrong on that, I just don't have a lot of faith in the unwilling voter after listening to many of the willing voters.

I get what you're saying, but I don't see why *truly* randomly distributed votes is a problem. We would expect that over a large sample, in the US, they would distribute 50/50 between the two major parties. The real or subconscious fear I suspect you have is that dumbasses will coalesce their support around the uh, 'wrong' candidate or party. So I don't think you're afraid the votes would be random. You're afraid *they won't be*.

Once we all agree that's true, you understand the GOP's voter suppression game imo. They know that increasing the barriers to voting *won't* have random effects because the people who tend not to vote or won't go to great lengths to do it *don't* have random partisan allegiances. Your comment sort of accidentally hit upon like, the whole thread and the whole discussion and the whole phenomenon, imo.

Last edited by DVaut1; 08-22-2012 at 11:01 PM.

08-27-2012 , 09:57 PM

#1277

vaya

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I was thinking about this today, and I think my new favorite bit of cognitive dissonance that Republicans must implicitly engage in to support voter ID laws is this: that widespread voter impersonation is easy to engage in, yet for some reason only Democrats do it.

08-27-2012 , 10:10 PM

#1278

goofyballer

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They can also believe Republicans do it (when in reality nobody does it) - they can outwardly pretend to care about the problem of stopping everyone from engaging in voter fraud, while they all know their goal is just to disenfranchise minorities.

08-28-2012 , 08:42 AM

#1279

vaya

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Quote:

Originally Posted by goofyballer

Well yeah, whenever they're being careful about what they say they just refer to voter impersonation in the abstract and say that preventing it is a good thing (never mind the downside to doing so). What they really believe though is that voter impersonation for some unknown reason is being carried out on a large scale by Democrats and not Republicans.

08-28-2012 , 08:51 AM

#1280

FlyWf

It's the other way

Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 58,097

Yeah the GOP does it because they think it's good for them. They might be lying to themselves about why, though, because I sincerely do believe a lot of them drink the fraud koolaid.

But, remember, these people don't know how voting works. So there's no contradiction. They think ACORN was letting Mickey Mouse and dead people vote.

08-28-2012 , 08:58 AM

#1281

Benholio

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I can't blame the average voter for accepting the ostensible reason for voter ID laws. It is a totally intuitive thing. They are ignorant, maybe, but not malicious. The policy makers, on the other hand, get no such defense.

08-28-2012 , 03:02 PM

#1282

vaya

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http://www.thestate.com/2012/08/27/2...l#.UD0VHtZlSVA

Quote:

During morning testimony, state Sen. George "Chip" Campsen III cited examples of fraud that he took into consideration while drafting early versions of South Carolina's law. These included vote buying, voter rolls indicating a woman who showed up at the polls had already voted, and press reports of voters being registered in both South Carolina and North Carolina.

But under questioning from Justice Department attorney Anna Baldwin, Campsen, a Republican, said the examples he gave did not involve the type of fraud that requiring photo identification would address.

"None of the examples you gave in your testimony involved incidents of impersonation?" Baldwin asked.

"Correct," Campsen answered. He also said he could not find cases of voter impersonation in South Carolina, but added that the state lacks the tools to root them out.

Quote:

Testimony showed the Senate version had included as much as 12 early voting days and identification rules allowed using federal, state and county employee identification cards to vote.

"All of these things were in the bill and all of these things make it easier to vote," said Garrard Beeney, a private attorney representing several groups opposing the South Carolina law.

The law South Carolina hopes to enact is far more limiting. It requires voters to show a driver's license, a state ID issued by the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles, a voter identification card with photo, a passport or a U.S. military ID with photo. South Carolina does not allow early voting days without an excuse for being unable to vote on election days.

08-29-2012 , 01:58 PM

#1283

suzzer99

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World

Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 99,986

Going Undercover at the GOP's Voter Vigilante Project to Disrupt the Nov. Election

Quote:

Englebrecht didn’t say she and her husband live outside Harris County—where Houston is located and is more populous than 22 states. They run an oil services company worth millions. She has a record of disrupting public meetings going back to 2009, Haver said, when pre-Tea Party activists disrupted that summer’s congressional town hall meetings. Englebrecht didn’t say that she and her husband this year started a new company with the provocative name, Plan B Firearms . Acccording to Tea Party Web sites , "Plan B" refers to the steps "patriots" might have to take if Obama gets re-elected.

Quote:

I might have been the only one in the room to realize that most of her anecdotes—if they were true—probably have little or nothing to do with padding elections. They could just as easily be explained by bureaucratic bungling, bad poll worker training, confusion by voters who don’t understand what they got in the mail or other factors. These problems also are not solved by stricter voter ID laws. In some counties, election administration can be as drab as polling places are chaotic. But that’s not a political conspiracy.

Her war stories continued. They were low-rent compared to later speakers, who described a full-throated U.S. Justice Department conspiracy to ignore discrimination against white voters, or Fund telling people that they should enjoy bullying liberals because they were doing God’s work. “Your opposition are cartoon characters. They are. They are fun to beat up. They are fun to humiliate,” he intoned. “You are on the side of the angels. And these people are just frauds, charlatans and liars.”

Quote:

Drawing on the power of Internet organizing and Tea Party networks, they’ve developed an infrastructure where they "crowd-source" analysis of voter registration records, using software and vetting standards they created. True the Vote will take various state databases, starting with voter registration lists (which are always in flux as people register, move and die), driver’s license databases and jury lists, and look for inconsistencies. If they don’t like the way a person’s signature varies from form to form, it is flagged as suspicious. If they see that too many voters are registered at an address, it is flagged. If a driver’s license has a different address than a voter registration form, it is flagged. Their research team then seeks to turn over these names to county or state officials, who they urge to investigate—and, of course, remove ineligible voters from the rolls.

Quote:

It’s important to understand why True the Vote feels victimized and how that affects its politics, whether its results are amateurish or not. In Wisconsin, election officials give the benefit of the doubt to the voter when assessing voting documents and deciding disputes. That is true in many states. True the Vote takes the exact opposite approach. If there are any doubts, then in True the Vote’s world the burden of proof immediately shifts to the accused, not the accuser, to defend their voting rights. And if proof is not forthcoming, they believe that person’s voting credentials should be revoked.

Moreover, True the Vote’s assessment—and this is the case in its voter registration program and poll watcher trainings—is based on what they want to see in the law. But that’s not the same as what actually exists in the law. This split leads to a predictable collision between what they think they see, and what they think should be in law, and how local election officials process the same information and officially react to it. A Wisconsin Government Accountability Board report issued in May assessed their vetting of recall petitions. It concluded they “created results that were significantly less accurate, complete, and reliable than the review and analysis completed by the G.A.B.”

08-30-2012 , 12:01 PM

#1284

MrWookie

Don't Call Me Meredith

Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 94,159

Random dudes in Florida proposing sweeping new legislation to kill vote fraud once and for all.

Quote:

I outlined a scenario, “I’m a gun owner. I go to the polls. I have my gun. So, how does it work? There’s this guy who looks like an illegal alien, and he looks pretty shifty ...”

“And you shoot him,” Stevens said, cutting me off.

http://www.alternet.org/election-201...illegal-voters

08-30-2012 , 12:40 PM

#1285

miajag

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http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...w-struck-down/

Quote:

A federal appeals court in Washington has struck down the Texas voter ID law which required photos for voters at the polls, saying the law amounts to racial discrimination.

08-31-2012 , 12:41 AM

#1286

rjoefish

Got Out the Vote

Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 31,086

My hard right buddy brought up voter ID for the first time after the local news ran an ad for a story they were about to do. His argument for it was 'if they don't have an ID they probably aren't voting anyways so who cares if they're disenfranchised...'

08-31-2012 , 12:24 PM

#1287

TalkingDonkey

RIZZAHHHHHH

Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 17,137

Judge sides with Obama campaign, restores early voting in Ohio

09-01-2012 , 10:26 AM

#1288

fatkid

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Quote:

Originally Posted by TalkingDonkey

Judge sides with Obama campaign, restores early voting in Ohio

Ok, so have any new repulican voter laws in any states been enacted yet? How many more states are trying?

09-01-2012 , 12:50 PM

#1289

suzzer99

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World

Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 99,986

Pretty decent article that sums up the facts in an easy-to-digest way: http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/31/opinio...html?hpt=hp_t3

(IE - send it to your boomer relatives if the topic comes up)

09-01-2012 , 01:04 PM

#1290

FreakDaddy

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Haven't read the whole thread, pretty long, but I assume someone has also talked about scrubbing voter lists? And the GOP in Florida was already ruled against a few months back as not having a right to scrub the predominately African American and Latino vote in Florida.

This is standard practice every election by the GOP (never really talked about much), but after the Gore election (in which the SOS Katherine Harris was instructed to scrub minority voters in her state and did in huge numbers), the democrats have been trying to fight back and challenge these scrub lists more... but still not enough imho.

09-01-2012 , 01:22 PM

#1291

einbert

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Quote:

Originally Posted by fatkid

Ok, so have any new repulican voter laws in any states been enacted yet? How many more states are trying?

Yes, it's already affected Florida heavily. The Florida legislature decided it would be funny to make it virtually impossible for third party groups to register voters, it was finally struck down but the damage has surely already been done:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...tration-limits

Quote:

Florida restrictions on voter registration groups, passed by the state’s Republican lawmakers and governor, will probably be permanently blocked by a U.S. judge who earlier said the rules were probably unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle in Tallahassee said yesterday he would grant an Aug. 10 request from both Florida and voting rights groups for a permanent injunction blocking the rules as soon as a federal appeals court dismisses the state’s appeal.

Hinkle ruled May 31 that conditions the state had imposed on groups signing up voters are probably unconstitutional. The League of Women Voters of Florida and Rock the Vote sued to overturn the laws. Hinkle said the plaintiffs and defendants both requested a permanent injunction “resolving all issues among all parties.”

Fights over voting access are intensifying in swing states, such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where both Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns see a possibility of victory. Voter cases are also under way involving Alabama, Texas and South Carolina.

Plenty of courts have upheld these ridiculously unconstitutional laws, though, somehow.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics...-voter-id-law/

Quote:

A Pennsylvania judge upheld the state’s strict voter ID law today, rejecting civil rights group’s claims that the law will disenfranchise thousands of voters.

The ruling is a victory for Gov. Tom Corbett, who signed the voter ID law in March, and state Republicans, who pushed the law through the GOP-controlled legislature. Not one state Democrat voted for the law.

Corbett advocated for the law because he said it “protects a sacred principle, one shared by every citizen of this nation.”

Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele, whose department oversees elections in Pennsylvania, said in a statement after the ruling that the court’s decision “will reinforce the principle of one person, one vote.”

Take a look at the kind of wonderful states that are passing these laws, the common theme? Republican ran legislatures and/or governorships.

Why we don't have some kind of special court system specifically to deal with ******* legislators who believe it is their position to intentionally disenfranchise voters is beyond me. Strike them all down today and make sure none of it is effective in November.

This also shows a huge gap in a philosophy like that of Ron Paul's--when you leave freedom and civil rights issues to the states, you'll find that some states value liberty and equality a lot more than others.

09-01-2012 , 01:24 PM

#1292

Riverman

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Yeah this is basically Exhibit A why 'leave it to the states' is a really dumb idea.

09-01-2012 , 01:39 PM

#1293

[Phill]

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Riverman

Yeah this is basically Exhibit A why 'leave it to the states' is a really dumb idea.

The evidence against states rights and for the federal government protecting the vulnerable is so vast im pretty sure exhibits dont use letters anymore and they had to move to hanji.

To paraphrase Ron Paul "states should have the right to abuse minorities' rights, that is why its called freedom bitches".

09-02-2012 , 08:28 AM

#1294

awval999

Election Monitor.

Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 6,269

The problems you liberals run into is that you scream voter fraud every election you lose.

jeb bush stuffed the ballot box in florida, katherine harris!!111111
diebold machines are switching votes!!!111! kerry won the exit polls!!!!111!!!
voter id
SCOTT WALKER how did he win? THIS ISN'T WHAT DEMOCRACY IS SUPPOSED TO LOOK likeeee

!!!!!1111!!!!!

09-02-2012 , 08:30 AM

#1295

awval999

Election Monitor.

Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 6,269

look at that damn map. the american people don't want 3rd party's registering voters and they want photo id at the polls. they want voting reform. it's just the way it is.

09-02-2012 , 09:55 AM

#1296

TeflonDawg

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 5,933

Quote:

Originally Posted by awval999

look at that damn map. the american people don't want 3rd party's registering voters and they want photo id at the polls without insta-wrecking voter turnout. they want voting reform. it's just the way it is.

fyp

I can't believe this thread is still going. Rs want to gain votes, Ds don't want to lose votes, and neither side gives a damn about implementing a structure which eradicates the effectively non-existent voter fraud in a way that doesn't decimate voter turnout in any reasonable manner, legal or otherwise. This happens every election, and every election nobody stands up and says let's stop being ******ed and solve the problem (if you want to call it that). This is how you know neither side literally does not give a ****. It's just bickering back and forth over votes and literally nothing else. There's nothing else to discuss...

09-02-2012 , 11:15 AM

#1297

einbert

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I love your logic there TeflonDawg. One side is trying to manipulate the system to disenfranchise voters, the other side is trying to defend the right to vote. BOTH SIDES OBV CORRUPT LOL DEMOCRACY LOL VOTING

09-02-2012 , 01:14 PM

#1298

MrWookie

Don't Call Me Meredith

Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 94,159

Quote:

Originally Posted by awval999

look at that damn map. the american people don't want 3rd party's registering voters and they want photo id at the polls. they want voting reform. it's just the way it is.

At one point, a whole lot of people just wanted slavery. You could look at a damn map and see it, too. After that, segregation. Just the way it is?

09-02-2012 , 01:16 PM

#1299

Case Closed

self-banned

Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 19,112

Quote:

Originally Posted by awval999

look at that damn map. the american people don't want 3rd party's registering voters and they want photo id at the polls. they want voting reform. it's just the way it is.

Why is that?

09-02-2012 , 07:14 PM

#1300

neg3sd

banned

Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 3,335

Quote:

Originally Posted by rjoefish

If they don't have an ID, they have a lot more problems than the need to vote.
All the money spent by the far left complaining about voter ID laws could have put to use to help these people get IDs.

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