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 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
He's arguing that it's okay if voting is nearly impossible because our voter turnout is terrible and unstable dictatorships have it harder, you know... like it says in the Constitution.

No, more that it's OK to raise unnecessary, artificial roadblocks to address statistically nonexistent problem with the very real effect of disenfranchising people, because people in third world countries have a different set of challenges which aren't really salient to the US, but are hard for them.

I think. The old "it's OK to do gakky things, as long as it's worse somewhere else" routine.

 Ouze wrote:

I think. The old "it's OK to do gakky things, as long as it's worse somewhere else" routine.

DakkaDakka OT, at least it's not 4chan!

I feel like a lot of people aren't watching that video. They argue the Sam point that it debunks, that there is significant fraud and that it can be prevented with these laws. All evidence points to almost no fraud and the numbers that it occurs in are minuscule. The number of voters that would have this ability to vote made at the very least more difficult outnumbers that more than 1000 to 1. Afghanistan isn't the United States, the situations of everyday people are very different and to make it seem like if you aren't going to catch a bullet trying to vote then you should be able to overcome any challenge in your way in order to vote is naive.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
I don't get the problem with voter ID. How hard is it to get any sort of official ID in the US if you are a legal citizen?

First, why bother commenting in a video without watching it? I mean, this was covered within the first like, 3 minutes of the video.

Second, one of the things he didn't speak to in the video was the expense. I needed to get my birth certificate a few years ago after my original got lost. To get a birth certificate for someone born in NYC, one needs to only pay the $15 fee, plus a $8.30 processing fee (lol, what was the first fee for). Of course, they can't mail it through the mail - they have to send it UPS only, which is another $15. So, nearly $40 for my birth certificate.

If I didn't have a driver's license, which of course people with ID don't, all I'd have to do is take a day off work to sit around the DMV, because my DMV isn't open on the weekends. Then pay another $10 fee.

These are real hardships for people who are just barely keeping the lights on and buying ramen and peanut butter. It's a day of work off, along with another 8 hours worth of wages at minimum wage.

It's absolutely undeniable that people will and are disenfranchised by these laws; and it's also undeniable that the problem that it's trying to address is statistically non-existent. However, I guess this is one example of commonsense legislation to make the nation safer at the cost of some of our rights that some of us are OK with.

Anyway, when we start getting into how people need ID to live anyway, and how you can't buy X without an ID, and so on, I point you to the link that D-USA posted above, because there is generally no new information or ideas ever to be had in these comments, I only piped in because John Oliver never mentioned that getting the paperwork for the ID is, in my opinion, surprisingly expensive.

Then those people must not have a job either. You are required to provide two forms of identification to be legally employed.

Anybody who can't provide an ID probably can't get a job either. Or they're not even going to bother voting, because hey thats a day they have to take off of work if the polling place is a good distance away(I think voting days should be mandatory days off of work IMO).

So sure, IDs might cost money to acquire, but you literally cannot function in our society without them.

They MUST not have a job. Its not like you could be employed and then lose your ID or have it destroyed in say a flood/fire, or have it stolen. People never misplace things. Those things absolutely never happen.

Wow. You didn't think this argument through did you?

 Nostromodamus wrote:

They must not smoke, drink or live in buildings either. Or drive cars. Or collect welfare.

How many employers provide some form of "ID" card? Or local colleges? Neither of them are "government issued" (unless the employer is the DoD, or other fed/state agency), but I have seen/heard them used for welfare smoking/drinking and even living.

I personally am of the opinion that the voter ID laws, as typically written are most definitely designed to discriminate against groups of voters without actually appearing to discriminate.

Someone on page 1 mentioned a number of European countries... don't many of them have FREE IDs available? I never had to get an actual German ID, but it was in the same office/building as the birth certificate office in my town, and it was open more than the banks.

As the video points out: there are a number of designated offices that sell IDs (with the exception of drivers' licensing, there shouldn't be any money exchanged), but how effective are they really if they are only open on the 5th Wednesday of the month, or other ridiculous situations like that? It is that kind of opening hours scheme that directly impacts the poor (and in this case, that disproportionately affects blacks and latinos)


I would be "OK" with a Voter ID law IF they fixed all the other problems surrounding the acquisition of an ID in the first place, but because Republicans love to waste money in other ways, the IDs won't get fixed, so I will continue having a problem with this.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, the number of places that I have used my library card before joining the army, was ridiculous. There's literally NOTHING behind a library card but the sharpie writing of your name, and 3 or 4 lines of information... When I got mine, it was just a file card index with my name, address and my parent/guardians name (for late fees obviously)


How does that prove anything, and yet for situations like when I got my driving permit, I used that library card, and it was valid as one of my forms of ID

11%.

11% is the difference between reality and people's common sense.

Because 11% is the number of eligible voters in the US who lack the photo ID these laws require. And 0% is what lots of people like to think that number is, based on their 'common sense' understanding of what ID people must have.

But people ignore that number, or never even bother to try and find out what that number might be. Because they've got common sense dammit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
I would be "OK" with a Voter ID law IF they fixed all the other problems surrounding the acquisition of an ID in the first place, but because Republicans love to waste money in other ways, the IDs won't get fixed, so I will continue having a problem with this.

Yeah, if a law like this came with an attached budget to provide basic photo ID free of charge to everyone who needed it, then it'd be okay. But of course, who'd bother to put up money to fix a voter fraud issue that doesn't exist?

But that's never even been considered, because the real reason behind these laws have nothing to do with vote fraud.

 whembly wrote:
Fun fact - - I just got married.

Congratulations!

Can't believe I'm the first to say it in this thread

For anyone pursuing the disenfranchises minorities/racism angle;

The reason it's a problem to require ID to vote is because of the reason why the law was implemented.

Also, that list is wrong as several things on the list you don't actually need an ID for.

Most jurisdictions in the United States have some sort of identification requirement for voting already. Even if it's just to check you off a list of registered voters for that district at the local polling place, before handing you a ballot. If you, for some reason, are not on the list you need to produce a valid State I.D. and a voter registration card. But you have to vote in the area you are registered in, even if you don't reside there anymore, until you get your voter registration updated at the Board of Elections.


Voting has never been just a "walk-in and do it affair". They do have to confirm that it's actually you and that you can still vote.

 oldravenman3025 wrote:

Most jurisdictions in the United States have some sort of identification requirement for voting already. Even if it's just to check you off a list of registered voters for that district at the local polling place, before handing you a ballot. If you, for some reason, are not on the list you need to produce a valid State I.D. and a voter registration card. But you have to vote in the area you are registered in, even if you don't reside there anymore, until you get your voter registration updated at the Board of Elections.


Voting has never been just a "walk-in and do it affair". They do have to confirm that it's actually you and that you can still vote.

Which is a big part of the problem with these laws.

They do NOTHING to stop the voter fraud that they claim that the laws are intended to stop. "Illegal immigrants, people stealing identities, etc" won't be stopped by having to produce a valid ID if their names are already on the voter registration rolls for a county.

I use ID to vote in Irelandistan. Makes sense to me. The voting area is run by locals who should know me, but I've moved and need to update the area I'm registered to vote in.
Next time they won't know who I am and the ID will be relevant.

I don't see when this is even a thing. Why would 11% of burgers not have an ID? I know a lot of you don't have passports, but you have licences for those guns, right?

 =Angel= wrote:
I use ID to vote in Irelandistan. Makes sense to me. The voting area is run by locals who should know me, but I've moved and need to update the area I'm registered to vote in.
Next time they won't know who I am and the ID will be relevant.

I don't see when this is even a thing. Why would 11% of burgers not have an ID? I know a lot of you don't have passports, but you have licences for those guns, right?

Despite what you might think, there aren't too many poor people with guns--or at least not necessarily legally purchased guns. You might have some heirloom guns that people don't have licenses for or older folks that have firearms but no driver's license.

What you need to understand about these voter ID laws? They're not strictly "You need ID to vote". When laws are passed, they often have other things folded into the bill.

Here in NC, Voter ID laws also removed the following:
Preregistration for teenagers who were coming up on their 18th birthday done at your high school, during school hours. We did that twice a year--once during the fall and once during the spring. That's how I was registered to vote by filling out the paperwork during my junior year of high school before school let out for the summer as I have a summer birthday and turned 18 by the time the November elections came through.
Reduction or removal of early voting sites. There was a lot of discussion when this happened here in NC as African-American churches tended to use the church vans(used for community outreach programs, events, etc) to go and pick up elderly members of their congregations to take them to vote on Sundays before or after church. A lot of elderly people either do not drive or are ineligible to obtain a driver's license because of poor eyesight, hearing, or medical conditions like Alzheimer's.

Not present in the bill but a part of the current suit against NC by the NAACP is the reduction of operating hours and locations of the NC DMV and a reduction of locations that offer the "state issued ID cards" which are considered valid for voting purposes as an alternative to driver's licenses.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 oldravenman3025 wrote:

Most jurisdictions in the United States have some sort of identification requirement for voting already. Even if it's just to check you off a list of registered voters for that district at the local polling place, before handing you a ballot. If you, for some reason, are not on the list you need to produce a valid State I.D. and a voter registration card. But you have to vote in the area you are registered in, even if you don't reside there anymore, until you get your voter registration updated at the Board of Elections.


Voting has never been just a "walk-in and do it affair". They do have to confirm that it's actually you and that you can still vote.

Which is a big part of the problem with these laws.

They do NOTHING to stop the voter fraud that they claim that the laws are intended to stop. "Illegal immigrants, people stealing identities, etc" won't be stopped by having to produce a valid ID if their names are already on the voter registration rolls for a county.

Oh, I agree that it won't stamp out "old school" fraud. In fact, we used to have a saying in my County in North Carolina: "The graveyards are full of registered voters". And some of the big farmers around here used to take truckloads of black farmhands to the polls to vote, promising them a bottle of liquor if they vote the way their boss wants them to (later on it was a bottle of cheap wine/case of beer and a nice bonus on their paychecks).


Even after the regulations came about regarding how far hawkers had to be from the polling lines and electronic ballot machines, when you shook hands with some of the same crooks (or their crooked descendants), when you pulled away you might find a twenty dollar bill in you palm and get a wink. Or course most folks I knew still voted for who they wanted to, and kept the money.


That kind of fraud can't be solved with requiring you to present your I.D. every time you vote. But my thing is, unless they come up with some sort of revenue-raising scheme for dedicated voter I.D. cards, I don't see the big deal (other than the fact that it's kinda pointless). Most folks have a driver's license. And if they don't, State I.D. cards are cheap, and can be acquired at the DMV License Office with minimum hassle. I just don't see the fuss over supposed "disenfranchisement" with these new regs as being anything more than making a mountain out of a molehill.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Despite what you might think, there aren't too many poor people with guns--or at least not necessarily legally purchased guns. You might have some heirloom guns that people don't have licenses for or older folks that have firearms but no driver's license.

What you need to understand about these voter ID laws? They're not strictly "You need ID to vote". When laws are passed, they often have other things folded into the bill.

Here in NC, Voter ID laws also removed the following:
Preregistration for teenagers who were coming up on their 18th birthday done at your high school, during school hours. We did that twice a year--once during the fall and once during the spring. That's how I was registered to vote by filling out the paperwork during my junior year of high school before school let out for the summer as I have a summer birthday and turned 18 by the time the November elections came through.
Reduction or removal of early voting sites. There was a lot of discussion when this happened here in NC as African-American churches tended to use the church vans(used for community outreach programs, events, etc) to go and pick up elderly members of their congregations to take them to vote on Sundays before or after church. A lot of elderly people either do not drive or are ineligible to obtain a driver's license because of poor eyesight, hearing, or medical conditions like Alzheimer's.

Not present in the bill but a part of the current suit against NC by the NAACP is the reduction of operating hours and locations of the NC DMV and a reduction of locations that offer the "state issued ID cards" which are considered valid for voting purposes as an alternative to driver's licenses.

Those sound like far more serious issues. I understand ID being required but if the cards are hard to get then that causes problems.
Pre-registration sounds like a good scheme. Was there a rationale for stopping that?
Early voting sites allowed you to bring your church's infirm to vote on the Sunday before polls opened officially? That sounds weird.

 =Angel= wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Despite what you might think, there aren't too many poor people with guns--or at least not necessarily legally purchased guns. You might have some heirloom guns that people don't have licenses for or older folks that have firearms but no driver's license.

What you need to understand about these voter ID laws? They're not strictly "You need ID to vote". When laws are passed, they often have other things folded into the bill.

Here in NC, Voter ID laws also removed the following:
Preregistration for teenagers who were coming up on their 18th birthday done at your high school, during school hours. We did that twice a year--once during the fall and once during the spring. That's how I was registered to vote by filling out the paperwork during my junior year of high school before school let out for the summer as I have a summer birthday and turned 18 by the time the November elections came through.
Reduction or removal of early voting sites. There was a lot of discussion when this happened here in NC as African-American churches tended to use the church vans(used for community outreach programs, events, etc) to go and pick up elderly members of their congregations to take them to vote on Sundays before or after church. A lot of elderly people either do not drive or are ineligible to obtain a driver's license because of poor eyesight, hearing, or medical conditions like Alzheimer's.

Not present in the bill but a part of the current suit against NC by the NAACP is the reduction of operating hours and locations of the NC DMV and a reduction of locations that offer the "state issued ID cards" which are considered valid for voting purposes as an alternative to driver's licenses.

Those sound like far more serious issues. I understand ID being required but if the cards are hard to get then that causes problems.
Pre-registration sounds like a good scheme. Was there a rationale for stopping that?
Early voting sites allowed you to bring your church's infirm to vote on the Sunday before polls opened officially? That sounds weird.

The rationale is that Raleigh claims, frequently, that the State is "broke". We got lectures on that crap all the time when I worked for the DOC/DOP.


So, there has been a lot of cuts in services and consolidation. We were merged with two or three other agencies before I left, and their were so many cuts and shortages, it wasn't funny.


Raleigh probably rationalizes it along the lines that they are not needed because of mail-in/absentee ballots available nowadays.

You need legal id for doing many things from driving a car, renting a house, buying a gun or such.

What makes voting special. ?

Just issue a cheap id card via a ploce station etc

 Kanluwen wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I'd say voting is far more important than government recognized marriages. I would, in fact, say that it, and the first amendment, are our most important rights.

Then if you believe it's so important, then you should champion VoterID laws as it's meant to prevent bogus ballots cast by foreigners, impersonators and frauds.

As always, how many bogus ballots are actually cast in elections?

What methodology would you propose to ascertain if a voter has fraudulently voted via fraudulently representing his person?

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
For anyone pursuing the disenfranchises minorities/racism angle;

Fine let's not directly peruse that angle, despite the silliness of your picture argument. The plain truth is the voter ID laws are intended to win the republican party elections, nothing more nothing less. That is their sole design and purpose and no matter if they achieve that through disenfranchising minorities, gaining the favor of leprechauns, or some other mechanism that's still the point of them. Skip to 9:45 in the video and hear that from the horse's mouth not mine. I'm not the one claiming the republicans are passing these laws to create election conditions favorable to them, they are.

Then I ask you. If as they themselves happily admit and directly state: The laws are made to swing elections in their favor and do work to swing elections in the favor by what mechanism do they operate?

Let us assume they are rational actors: When they pass these laws to help them win elections, they have cause to believe before passing them that doing so will achieve the goal they state they have for these laws. Regardless of the actual mechanism by which these laws swing elections their in favor, they must have one in mind. What would you guess they have in mind for the mechanism when they pass them? What facts or evidence might lead them to think this mechanism will be effective?

Except I don't buy that they actually would cause that. You say people will get disenfranchised. Yet in order for that to be true they must also be unemployed and a ton of other things, and my guess is that someone who that applies to probably isn't going to be voting anyway as they have much bigger problems.

You need for people to have been voting who no longer will be able to vote for claims of disenfranchisement to be true.

Irony here is that people who don't like the idea of voted ID are usually the same people who want massively invasive background checks for gun ownership.

 =Angel= wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Despite what you might think, there aren't too many poor people with guns--or at least not necessarily legally purchased guns. You might have some heirloom guns that people don't have licenses for or older folks that have firearms but no driver's license.

What you need to understand about these voter ID laws? They're not strictly "You need ID to vote". When laws are passed, they often have other things folded into the bill.

Here in NC, Voter ID laws also removed the following:
Preregistration for teenagers who were coming up on their 18th birthday done at your high school, during school hours. We did that twice a year--once during the fall and once during the spring. That's how I was registered to vote by filling out the paperwork during my junior year of high school before school let out for the summer as I have a summer birthday and turned 18 by the time the November elections came through.
Reduction or removal of early voting sites. There was a lot of discussion when this happened here in NC as African-American churches tended to use the church vans(used for community outreach programs, events, etc) to go and pick up elderly members of their congregations to take them to vote on Sundays before or after church. A lot of elderly people either do not drive or are ineligible to obtain a driver's license because of poor eyesight, hearing, or medical conditions like Alzheimer's.

Not present in the bill but a part of the current suit against NC by the NAACP is the reduction of operating hours and locations of the NC DMV and a reduction of locations that offer the "state issued ID cards" which are considered valid for voting purposes as an alternative to driver's licenses.

Those sound like far more serious issues. I understand ID being required but if the cards are hard to get then that causes problems.
Pre-registration sounds like a good scheme. Was there a rationale for stopping that?

None that made any sense. There were some claims about it being something that "students can do on their own time; they're at school to learn".

Early voting sites allowed you to bring your church's infirm to vote on the Sunday before polls opened officially? That sounds weird.

Early voting sites were open to everyone who was eligible to vote, not just churches. It was a smart way to ensure that you didn't have absurdly long lines on voting day or that people who might not be able to get off work or out of school to vote would still be able to.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Except I don't buy that they actually would cause that. You say people will get disenfranchised. Yet in order for that to be true they must also be unemployed and a ton of other things, and my guess is that someone who that applies to probably isn't going to be voting anyway as they have much bigger problems.

You need for people to have been voting who no longer will be able to vote for claims of disenfranchisement to be true.

Irony here is that people who don't like the idea of voted ID are usually the same people who want massively invasive background checks for gun ownership.

As the person who posted this topic, I'd disagree. Because I have no real opinion on the matter of gun laws at this point.

 Grey Templar wrote:
You need for people to have been voting who no longer will be able to vote for claims of disenfranchisement to be true.

So your argument is that it would be legal to ban all those who are currently minors from ever voting until 2100?

 jhe90 wrote:
You need legal id for doing many things from driving a car, renting a house, buying a gun or such.

What makes voting special. ?

Something about the constitution or some such rubbish i guess

literally every thread ever on this topic hits exactly the same beats, at this point maybe Lego can just write a script to automate it and save us a lot of hassle

I can definitely see why they ended the program that Kan is referring to. Young voters tend to swing Democrat, so of course Republican-controlled Raleigh would make it more difficult to get them registered to vote.

 Laughing Man wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
You need for people to have been voting who no longer will be able to vote for claims of disenfranchisement to be true.

So your argument is that it would be legal to ban all those who are currently minors from ever voting until 2100?

So your argument is to misconstrue Grey Templar's argument in order to support your position?

Voter ID laws are the sort of public policy proposal that's just laughably dumb. It's smart politics, as there's a clear benefit to the GOP to enact these laws, but in terms of actually benefiting the state or the people, they're just awful.

First off, the benefit is negligible. Every study conducted by every group that's looked into voter fraud finds it to be essentially non-existent. I suppose you can try to spin "it increases faith in the legitimacy of elections," but so would simply telling people that voter fraud is almost undetectable, no?

Second off, the consequence is pretty notable. As Sebster pointed out, 11% of the population doesn't currently have state issued ID, for a variety of reasons. I don't know how many of them vote, but I'm guessing there are more people that otherwise would vote, but don't have ID, than there are people that commit voter fraud.

At it's base, democracy is about rule by the people, and the mechanism for that is voting for representatives and executives. From a big picture perspective, the goal of a democracy should be to increase the number of voters. The reality is that hardly any voters are what you'd call informed. White, black, rich, poor, highly educated, or illiterate: most people are voting, even for higher office, for pretty tenuous reasons. However, there is something about the "wisdom of crowds," where biases and tribal voting offset in the mix, and something approaching a consensus emerges.

Voter ID laws aren't racist, but they definitely put a thumb on the scale for the GOP, because people without ID are overwhelmingly likely to be one or more of the following: poor, an immigrant, a minority, or disabled - all groups that tend to vote democrat.

I can see why this plays well. It's a classic call to fear, followed by the promise of law and order. It involves getting to feel smugly superior to those that do not drive or work legally. It's a good tactic.

You guys do know that in 2000, Bush narrowly won Florida by 537 votes... right?

Voter fraud may seem like a small issue, but keep in mind that it could "swing" an entire election if the votes are close.

Every single voter who wants to vote should prove that they're doing so legally.

At the end of the day, it's sad that this is a partisan issue, rather than defining the framework of meaningful voting practices.

 whembly wrote:
You guys do know that in 2000, Bush narrowly won Florida by 537 votes... right?

Voter fraud may seem like a small issue, but keep in mind that it could "swing" an entire election if the votes are close.

Every single voter who wants to vote should prove that they're doing so legally.

At the end of the day, it's sad that this is a partisan issue, rather than defining the framework of meaningful voting practices.

There is no evidence that in person voter fraud (the kind voter ID laws would prevent) is even as common as 500 times in an election though!

The real problem is in people registered that shouldn't be, due to either residency in another state, lack of citizenship, or death. That's at least a tangible and real problem, and while I feel the efforts to clean that up is equally partisan, I think that providing some proof of citizenship isn't out of line when registering to vote.

Voter ID laws are designed to prevent the achingly uncommon practice of voter impersonation, which even the right wing news forums I browsed couldn't come up with more than isolated instances.

As I said before, 31 out of over 1B cast.