Originally Posted By ecdc <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/14/whites-are-more-supportive-of-voter-id-laws-when-shown-photos-of-black-people-voting/">http://www.washingtonpost.com/...-voting/</a> Repeat after me: voter ID laws have nothing to do with race. Voter ID laws have nothing to do with race....
Originally Posted By Dabob2 The Reagan-appointed 7th circuit judge Richard Posner just eviscerated the rationale for voter ID laws, and called them what they are - attempts at suppressing voting, especially by black Americans. <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.salon.com/2014/10/13/gop_voter_id_law_gets_crushed_why_judge_richard_posners_ruling_is_so_amazing/">http://www.salon.com/2014/10/1...amazing/</a> "If you read just one top-to-bottom dismantling of every supposed premise in support of disenfranchising Photo ID voting restrictions laws in your lifetime, let it be this one " (snip) "If there was ever evidence that a jurist could change their mind upon review of additional subsequent evidence, this is it. If there was ever a concise and airtight case made against Photo ID laws and the threat they pose to our most basic right to vote, this is it. If there was ever a treatise revealing such laws for the blatantly partisan shell games that they are, this is it. His dissent includes a devastating response to virtually every false and/or disingenuous rightwing argument/talking point ever put forth in support of Photo ID voting restrictions, describing them as “a mere fig leaf for efforts to disenfranchise voters likely to vote for the political party that does not control the state government.”" (snip) "This opinion, written on behalf of five judges on the 7th Circuit, thoroughly disabuses such notions such as: these laws are meant to deal with a phantom voter fraud concern (“Out of 146 million registered voters, this is a ratio of one case of voter fraud for every 14.6 million eligible voters”); that evidence shows them to be little more than baldly partisan attempts to keep Democratic voters from voting (“conservative states try to make it difficult for people who are outside the mainstream…to vote”); that rightwing partisan outfits like True the Vote, which support such laws, present “evidence” of impersonation fraud that is “downright goofy, if not paranoid”; and the notion that even though there is virtually zero fraud that could even possibly be deterred by Photo ID restrictions, the fact that the public thinks there is, is a lousy reason to disenfranchise voters since there is no evidence that such laws actually increase public confidence in elections and, as new studies now reveal, such laws have indeed served to suppress turnout in states where they have been enacted." (Posner): There is only one motivation for imposing burdens on voting that are ostensibly designed to discourage voter-impersonation fraud, if there is no actual danger of such fraud, and that is to discourage voting by persons likely to vote against the party responsible for imposing the burdens. "And remember, once again, this is written by Richard Posner, the conservative Republican icon of a federal appellate court judge — the judge who wrote the opinion on behalf of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals approving of the first such Photo ID law in the country in 2008, the very case that rightwingers from Texas to Wisconsin now cite over and over (almost always incorrectly) in support of similar such laws — now, clearly admitting that he got the entire thing wrong."
Originally Posted By TP2000 Ah, yes, the soft racism of Liberals. They apparently feel that Blacks are unable or unwilling to go get a valid State ID card of some sort (not necessarily a driver license) that is required to travel by airplane or train, buy a shirt with a credit card, buy beer at 7-11, or do any of the other dozens of normal activities that require a person to show valid government ID to complete a transaction or have access to goods/services. But for everyone to show an ID card proving who you are before you cast your ballot? Yeah, that's racist. Cause it's just too hard for Blacks to go get an ID card that everyone else has to have to exist in society. I'd bet all my Supremes records that Blacks are just as smart and just as able to go get a government ID card as any other race or ethnicity in this country. I'd also bet that almost all Blacks over the age of 16 already have such an ID card in their wallet, and would be happy to show it to the poll worker on Election Day before they got their paper ballot.
Originally Posted By planodisney My brother-in-law and my wife's cousin are both here visiting from Brazil and we were watching msnbc and a story about voter suppression came on and the asked me to explain. I told them that the issue was making showing a picture I.D. Mandatory when voting. They thought I was joking. The percentage of those living in poverty is vastly larger in Brazil and picture I.D. Is mandatory in Brazil to vote. Voting is also mandatory and participation is close to 100%. Doesn't it just make that you would have to show a picture I.D. To participate in something of such importance. Perhaps we need to study why it is virtually impossible, according to the left, for minorities to get a picture I.D. In the U.S. Yet in a place much more dysfunctional and less organized like Brazil, it isn't a problem, and has never been considered an issue of voter suppression.
Originally Posted By planodisney Let me just add one more thing. As 2 people who have the impression that the U.S. Is a place of structure and organization, they are still absolutely blown away that a picture I.D. Is not a mandatory requirement to vote. It's as if it shattered their belief that the U.S. is run so much more efficiently than the 3rd world they reside in.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Ah, yes, the soft racism of Liberals.<< Ah, yes, the du jour talking points from conservatives that, aw shucks, those nasty liberals think black people are too stupid to get an ID. I've seen this one going around, I wonder if Hannity just posted this to FB so his fans could copy and paste it. Of course, the argument isn't that blacks are incapable of getting an ID, but that, thanks to white supremacy and suppression that still has significant residual effects today, minorities are more likely to be poor, and poor people are more likely to struggle to get an ID. It's not hard logic to follow, unless you happen to be a conservative. Conservatives trying to paint liberals as somehow racist on this point only end up showing (as usual) their own ignorance and, of course, their own racism. They have to portray getting an ID is a really straightforward, easy thing to do, so how insulting is it that liberals think minorities can't do it, right? But getting an ID is only straightforward and relatively easy (wait, I thought government bureaucracy meant that doing stuff like this was a pain...I'm confused...) if you have easy access to transportation, disposable income to get an ID, the education and skills necessary to apply for an ID, etc. Working two jobs might make it difficult to go to a government agency to get an ID. For rural voters especially, getting an ID can be tricky if government offices are far away. Even urban dwellers can really struggle if they don't own a car. Also, poor people are more likely to have less stable living conditions; my wife and I keep our important documents in a filing cabinet in our office at home. How many poor people have that luxury? They might lose a birth certificate in a move that's then required for them to get a state issued ID. Of course, it's all just a big fat coincidence that the people most negatively impacted by voter ID laws happen to be Democrats. Now, all of that might neither be here nor there if voter ID fraud was a significant problem. But it's not. There's precisely zero evidence that voter ID fraud is a rampant, or even a miniscule problem in the United States. Congrats, conservatives, you just "fixed" a problem that doesn't exist. But of course, the real issue is that conservative ideas suck so bad that they have to prevent people from voting to win. Classy.
Originally Posted By ecdc Sorry for the lengthy post, but as we all know, an immutable law of the Internet is that the amount of explanation needed to refute B.S. is many times greater than the amount of explanation to spread the B.S.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Voting is also mandatory and participation is close to 100%.<< You don't even understand how you just refuted your own argument, which is kinda awesome. The entire point of voter ID laws in the United States is to ensure that only a certain class of people choose to vote. If we create an environment where people have to jump through several hoops to vote, and voting isn't mandatory, then people will likely just not vote. It's already a challenge to get even educated, well-off citizens to understand the importance of voting. Of course, a poor person without a car and without the money to buy an ID can still choose to do so, we've just instead made it extremely difficult to do so. And there's no consequence for them not voting. But in your example of Brazil, voting is mandatory. People now have a motivation (presumably some sort of punishment) to go vote. If voting in the United States were mandatory and the punishment for not voting were such that people would be willing to jump through those hoops, they would do so. It would be a burden to them, but they would do it. But...funny thing...when people have no benefit to accepting a burden, they tend not to do it. None of which even gets into the Brazilian system for issuing IDs. Are they free or is one required to pay for it? Are they issued at birth? Do they need to be renewed? Are they obtained through mail or do people need to travel to get them? Are electronic-based IDs acceptable? Are these nationally issued IDs, because here in the U.S., conservatives frequently flip out over the idea of a national ID. Are they photo IDs? Are they easily forged? Do they have barcodes or unique identifiers on them (again, conservatives here would freak out and we'd get to listen to O'Reilly talk about the government tracking us)? Maybe before you start going on about how if Brazil does it, the U.S. can do it, you should enumerate if there are any differences between the nations.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox You don't need to apologize, ecdc. Your post was spot on. Here's the deal, conservatives: It's unconstitutional to require voters to pay money in order to vote, i.e., the poll tax. Being required to show a SPECIFIC form of I.D. that WAS NOT FREE for the voter to acquire is a form of a poll tax. These photo I.D. cards require a birth certificate or valid passport to obtain. There's the rub: no one can acquire a passport nor a copy of their birth certificate for free. Every single county office in this country charges a fee for obtaining copies of official documents such as birth certificates, death certificates, marriage licenses, divorce documents, etc. And many county offices charge through the nose to get copies of these documents, and require those copies to be obtained in person. What if your county is massively large, as is the case for most counties in Texas and California, and you live 50 miles from the county seat. How do you get to the county seat without a car? You have to travel there by bus or taxi in order to get that document in person. That's not cheap. Then there's the cost of getting your birth certificate copy on top of the travel costs. Doesn't matter if the DMV I.D. card is free. You had to shell out lots of $$$ just to have the necessary document to even apply for the photo I.D. This is a poll tax. Period. Requiring specific forms of I.D. that cannot be obtained without payment for the necessary government-issued documents in order to get that I.D. is wrong. Make the entire process free of cost, from getting the birth certificate to the I.D. itself, and then make your stupid argument for voter I.D. Otherwise, call it was it actually is: another Jim Crow obstruction to keep poor minorities who vote for Democrats from voting.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Excellent points, ecdc. <Ah, yes, the soft racism of Liberals. > Posner is FAR from a liberal. He has written countless opinions that warm the hearts of conservatives everywhere. And he wrote the first decision in the whole country allowing for photo ID being a requirement to vote. But a funny thing happened. He saw how this worked out in practice, as opposed to just in (conservative) theory. And he realized he was wrong and changed his mind. Would that more conservatives could do the same when presented with the evidence. Every state that has imposed these requirements (or attempted to) effectively disenfranchised 10s of thousands, or 100s of thousands of legally entitled voters (depending on the size of the state) who simply DO NOT have the kind of ID the state pols impose. This is not an accident. This is WHY these laws are written the way they're written. They're INTENDED to make voting more difficult for 10s/100s of thousands of the "wrong" voters, hoping to discourage at least a great enough percentage of them that they can swing elections. They say they're to prevent in-person voting fraud, but every election expert in the country knows this is a non-problem. Meanwhile, 100's of thousands get effectively disenfranchised. Posner sees this. He knows the rationales, and once bought them himself. But he now sees what they're really for, and had the guts to say so (and to say he had been wrong.) Where I live, we have a better form of voter ID than a photo ID. It's called a signature. Your signature when you vote has to match that you provided when you registered (when you did have to prove citizenship.) This is better/stronger than photo ID. ask any college kid who wants to drink: it's possible to get a fake photo ID, if someone was really really intent on in-person voter impersonation (which again, almost never freaking happens.) Much easier than becoming an expert forger instantly. If I wanted to pose as John Smith and showed up at the polls saying I was John McNefarious, I'd have to a). know that John McNefarious hadn't already voted that day, or I'd be busted on the spot; b). take one look at John McNefarious's signature and be able to forge it instantly. That's just not going to happen. So my state already has a quite effective safeguard against in-person voter fraud. Why don't conservative pols like this solution? Because it's free, and it requires no jumping through hoops. The whole POINT of these voter ID laws is to impose hoops and/or cost to a certain number of people, who they then hope will just give up.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox Once again, ecdc makes a great point about the conservatives hatred for a national I.D. system for every citizen. Most conservatives are demanding voter I.D. laws for every state for every election. But those same conservatives are wholly against a national database for documenting every citizen which would generate the I.D. cards to be used by those citizens to vote. Really? Everyone who votes should be able to produce a valid I.D. proving that they are a legal citizen who can vote... but the government has no business keeping a database of those citizens and giving them I.D. cards to use at the polls in order to prove that they can legally vote. WTF?!? So... by your own admission... you do not want every citizen to have government-issued identification proving that they are indeed legal citizens. Why should the burden of proving citizenship fall to the individual citizen and not the government? Why shouldn't the government provide that proof of citizenship to the citizen for free? Especially when you're demanding that all citizens should provide proof of citizenship in order to vote? Here's the reason: Conservatives do not want every citizen voting in elections. Just ask Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation: <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://crooksandliars.com/2007/06/07/paul-weyrich-goo-goo-syndrome">http://crooksandliars.com/2007...syndrome</a> <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPsl_TuFdes">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...l_TuFdes</a> Go ahead, conservatives. Deny that Paul Weyrich isn't spelling out in this speech what the GOP has been pushing for since Reagan was President. The conservatives fully well know that they can only win when most voters don't vote. So anything they can do to make voting damned near impossible for all but the top 30% of the country helps to secure their victory at the polls. Our nation should be doing everything it can to make the voting process more accessible and easier to participate in. Not the other way around. But if we did, then the GOP would be DOA in no time.
Originally Posted By KongKongFuey Whites suppoRt voter ID laws. That's great and a very good start. Let's hope that blacks, Latinos and Asians do too. Whites should be applauded for leading the Way.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 That's just dumb. These laws address a problem that doesn't exist. Instances of actual in-person voter fraud can be counted on the fingers of one hand in most years. Meanwhile, 100s of thousands when you add up the states are disenfranchised or have to jump through hoops or pay what amounts to a tax to keep the franchise. Hmmmm... 10's of thousands deprived of their most basic right as citizens or taxed, all to "fix" something that isn't broken. Only someone not very bright, or hoping to discourage the "wrong" voters from voting would applaud that.
Originally Posted By KongKongFuey Not everyone dEserVes to vote anyway. 18 discriminaTes against those who are 15 Drunk drivers(most of them) get to vote but those who stole a bike and are felons don't get to vote CoNServed people can't vote either but nonconserved can If someone can't figure a way to get an ID do we really want tHem helping to steer the USA car? I don't want them !driving! Our national caR.
Originally Posted By KongKongFuey And tens of 1,000's who don't have skill set or desire to have an ID is fine by me that they don't help make pOLicies and laws. I want those with positive drive and desire to help shape and enforce laws for all of Us.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 You've missed the point. ALL citizens are supposed to have the right to vote. And yet some people get these forms of ID as a matter of course in their lives, others don't. The expense involved in getting them is trivial to some, not at all trivial to others. So it's not a level playing field for what's supposed to be the ultimate level playing field as an American (the right to vote). Posner saw this and demolished all the arguments used to support it.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox The Constitution is not an a la carte menu. You cannot pick-n-choose those aspects of civil rights you like and ditch the rest. Either everyone has equal and free access to the voting booth, or no one. Allowing only a small segment of society the power of the vote trashes democracy at its core. Anyone who defends voter suppression in any shape or form is a traitor to our nation.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip I think banning the requirement of a government id is a backwards approach to the problem. Unfortunately, that seems to be the way the government faces many issues. The problem is not requiring an id to vote. The problem is that they can be somewhat difficult to get. It would benefit everyone if they made it easier to obtain an id. Keep offices open later so work hours are not an issue for people. Put them in a greater number of locations so it is easier to get to one. Missouri has accomplished this to a large extent by out-sourcing license offices to private industry. They are open considerably longer hours than government offices are and have more locations. Make the first photo id (no driving privileges) no cost to anyone asking for one. I agree that no one should have to pay for something that is required to vote. Of course fees for other licenses would remain the same or even increase slightly to cover the expense of free ids. It would seem a low cost to pay to insure everyone has the right to vote. It would also help poor people get a photo id which is useful/required for many things other than voting. But as usual, liberals would rather legislate from the bench than work to solve the actual problem.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 First of all, it's not only liberals who "legislate from the bench." And half the time when that phrase is used, it's used incorrectly. Insisting that all people are treated equally under the law is the 14th amendment, and insisting on that is not legislating from the bench. But more to the point, in-person voter impersonation is not an "actual problem" - it's a non-problem. It simply almost never happens. Allowing for free ID's for other purposes - I'm all for that. But tying it to voting is attempting to "solve" a problem that doesn't exist: and the real motivation behind these laws is voter suppression, not solving any actual problem (as the decidedly non-liberal justice Posner points out).
Originally Posted By ecdc >>But as usual, liberals would rather legislate from the bench than work to solve the actual problem.<< First, huh? Second, there is no problem. That's just the point. The problem isn't widespread fraud, the problem is requiring an ID to vote. Third, I'm not opposed to requiring ID in theory, if it were easy to obtain an ID. But it's not, especially if someone is poor or lacks access to transportation.
