Wisconsin Voter ID

Ziggurat said:
Every time this issue comes up I point out that for all the complaints of mass voter disenfranchisement the Democrats can never find any.



Because it increases public confidence in the integrity of the voting process.

One of the problems with voter fraud is that it's actually pretty hard to prosecute. Another problem is that if the political process ever does become corrupted by voter fraud, there's little we can do to reverse the process. Politicians who have been elected through voter fraud will not have any incentive to crack down on it, quite the reverse, they'll do what they can to protect it. So being proactive in preventing it with rather simple measures, which most of the rest of the world already uses, seems like really not that big a deal. The vitriol with which such measures are opposed is not commensurate with the burden it actually imposes.
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Want to stop real voter fraud?
End district gerrymandering.
District diddling does far more to destroy public confidence in the integrity of the voting process than non-existent voter impersonation.
 
SezMe said:
This makes me feel bad, Zig. If I'd only known you were in search of such evidence, I would have immediately provided it. Go to the examples section. EVERY SINGLE INSTANCE of voter caging is Republicans doing it to the Dems.

You're welcome.
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Huh. I thought you'd be able to figure out I was talking about voter disenfranchisement due to voter ID laws.

Guess I was wrong.
 
The Wisconsin ruling is worth reading, since in fact it provides several concrete examples of people whose votes were suppressed (I think this is a more accurate term for what these laws do than disenfranchisement)--they were witnesses to the case.

The people that nobody can seem to find examples of, it turns out, are those committing in-person voter impersonation fraud. The court positively identified only one example of voter impersonation fraud in Wisconsin in recent history, and it involved absentee ballots.
 
Ziggurat said:
Because it increases public confidence in the integrity of the voting process.
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This was already addressed by others. Also the lack of public confidence is largely due to republicans lying over and over about voter fraud.They don't get to fabricate a problem and conveniently fix it by pretentiously harming their opposition political party through unnecessary vote laws.

Again it is really simple. You do not make voting laws unless they are needed.

Why is voter ID needed?
 
Grizzly Bear said:
I don't know about you but I generally carry my ID wherever I go because well... I have a car I drive from point "A" to point "B" and where I'm from, driving requires a form of ID to show that I'm licensed. I'm not going to cry foul about having to pull it out of my wallet one extra time so I can spend a few minutes to cast a ballot on a vote.
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And since every single eligible voter in the U.S. is exactly like you, I can't find a flaw in your logic.

This is 2-page long thread, so before you you swing you're interesting sarcasm on how my positions are somewhere around the irrational route, perhaps you might want to take the interest to actually read them? You might actually learn a lot about my position which will alleviate any "concerns" you have that I would support a bill specifically designed around the idea of doing wrong. But I do reserve the right to call out ridiculous arguments that blow the issue far beyond proportion, just as you reserve the right to criticize laws if you feel the justification for the law's motivation and timing should be in doubt
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You might want to read over the first paragraph of your post if you're looking for "ridiculous arguments" to criticize.
 
applecorped said:
Weeeeeeeeeee. Vote early, vote often.
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You appear to have missed the bits of the judgement where Judge Adelman found that purported instances of voter impersonation are so infrequent, if they exist at all, that "no rational person could be worried about it" and the government's lawyers could not identify a single instance of known voter impersonation.

Unabogie said:
The judge is exactly right. If you start with a law designed to stop a crime that virtually never happens, yet it puts a burden on millions of Americans trying to exercise a fundamental right, then you've passed a bad law.
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Indeed. This is almost exactly the rationale that was used more than sixty years ago in the UK to strike down compulsory ID card laws.

Corsair 115 said:
Except that, in Canada at least, the list of what is acceptable ID is fairly lengthy and thus a voter has plenty of options. Indeed, a voter is very likely to have some of the necessary identification types just a natural matter of course of being a citizen. Here are the current voter ID requirements for Canadian federal elections. As that list shows, plenty of options, and a government-issued piece of identification is not required (though that naturally makes it easier).
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Fascinating. It's pretty much the same here; you bring the polling card you were sent, hand it to the clerk and are marked as having voted and issued a ballot. If you don't bring the ballot card some ID will generally be required, or you'll need to be vouched for.
Of course we also have postal ballots for those unable to attend the voting centre.

Corsair 115 said:
Why are republicans focused on fixing a problem that is virtually non-existent?
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Because reducing voter turnout and gerrymandering constituencies suits them.
 
fishbob said:
Want to stop real voter fraud?
End district gerrymandering.
District diddling does far more to destroy public confidence in the integrity of the voting process than non-existent voter impersonation.
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And this is a problem in both parties... and you'd think that the public would buy into a move to change the sorts of gerrymandering that Texas and Illinois and North Carolina (just to name three egregious examples) have been made famous for. But no one gives a damn because it's anonymous suits in the state house, I guess, and not some easily targeted bogie man group.

There are arguments for redistricting in the name of fairness. (e.g. five districts have overlapping small populations of, say, Hispanic voters, and if you make one district that encompasses all those voters, you get a better chance to get some representation for the Latino community) But for the most part, they're ridiculous snake-like objects designed to maybe give up one seat and cede it to the opposition while creating four locked-down districts for your own party. That's not the sole methodology, there are probably a good dozen gerrymandering schemes out there. They all need to be done away with.
 
johnny karate said:
You might want to read over the first paragraph of your post if you're looking for "ridiculous arguments" to criticize.
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Yes because its not like anyones ever thought about other forms of ID being made available or possessed by other people. And ID requirements can NEVER be made flexible to consider multiple acceptable forms of ID. I can see exactly why you would think my arguments are ridiculous ;)

I think those are things that can be addressed if or when the laws are drafted.

And +1 to foolmewunz. I do believe voter shiuld eventually be addressed regardless of rarity. But I forgot about the gerrymandering problem. Id be willing to defer to addressing that with higher priority
 
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Ziggurat said:
Yes, they are. In fact, the Wisconsin law in question does exactly that. For example, here's the provision which makes ID's available for free:

"343.50 (5) (a) 3. The department may not charge a fee to an applicant for the initial issuance or reinstatement of an identification card if the applicant is a U.S. citizen who will be at least 18 years of age on the date of the next election and the applicant requests that the identification card be provided without charge for purposes of voting."

There are other things it does as well to make ID access easier, such as making university photo ID's valid for voting.
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Wisconsin also shut down all the offices where you could get an id in democratic voting districts citing "budget cuts" at the same time they passed that id bill.

This put the burden on voters in those districts because now they have to travel an hour or more to reach a driver's license office.
 
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mumblethrax said:
I wonder who is more likely not to have a valid photo ID:

a) A middle-to-upper class person who can seriously entertain ideas like renting her own apartment, buying a condo, or taking up tennis (I'm omitting picking up prescriptions, since you don't need a photo ID for that in many states, including Wisconsin)

or

b) Someone who lives in poverty, going from one crisis to the next, barely making ends meet, with a personal history of instability, who relies on friends, relatives or public assistance for their survival

Hint: the answer is b).

These comments are Romneyesque in their inability to imagine how life proceeds for people on the margins of our society.
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What I took from that post is that Democrats believe that unstable people with a history of poor long term planning will vote Democrat.
 
Grizzly Bear said:
Yes because its not like anyones ever thought about other forms of ID being made available or possessed by other people. And ID requirements can NEVER be made flexible to consider multiple acceptable forms of ID. I can see exactly why you would think my arguments are ridiculous ;)
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I think your argument is ridiculous because you are basing a justification for this law on how it personally affects you without considering the other 300 million people with whom you share this country.

Not everyone is you. And not everyone has the same options and capabilities as you. Maybe consider how an unnecessary law might impact those without the advantages and good fortune you take for granted.

I think those are things that can be addressed if or when the laws are drafted.
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I think not drafting unnecessary laws in the first place might be simpler.
 
Giz said:
What I took from that post is that Democrats believe that unstable people with a history of poor long term planning will vote Democrat.
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I'm not sure why you're volunteering your inability to engage in valid deductive reasoning.
 
Giz said:
What I took from that post is that Democrats believe that unstable people with a history of poor long term planning will vote Democrat.
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Giz said:
What I took from that post is that Democrats believe that felons will naturally vote Democrat.
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The problem with your thinking is that there's a huge swath of the country who live like this. There's fully 15% of the country who are under the poverty level.

http://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty/

For these people, the opportunities just don't exist. There are no jobs that are stable. For people in retail, service, or other low wage jobs, their employers expect them to work varied shifts with no guaranteed hours. That means they can't take two jobs since they can't make a coherent work schedule. This also means they can't set up reliable babysitting if they have kids. The minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Working full time doesn't even get you out of poverty.

Up until Obamacare, they didn't have health insurance.

They don't have IDs for cashing paychecks because they don't have enough money to get "free" checking and banks require minimum balances. So they pay usurious rates at check cashing places who rip them off.

They don't have driver's licenses because they take the bus. They can't afford a car or car insurance or gas. They're poor.

So yeah, these people are more likely to vote Democratic, but can you blame them? Name a single thing Republicans have proposed that will help alleviate any of these problems. Anything at all?

Oh yeah, "tort reform".
 
Giz said:
What I took from that post is that Democrats believe that unstable people with a history of poor long term planning will vote Democrat.
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And here we have the elitism that drives these restrictive voting laws nicely captured in a single post.
 
Giz said:
What I took from that post is that Democrats believe that unstable people with a history of poor long term planning will vote Democrat.
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What I took from THIS post is that you buy into the cynical victim-blaming ******** right-wing propaganda about poverty being the result of an individual's moral failure rather than of a variety of factors, while ignoring the fact that the real reason many (though certainly not all) members of the lower and working classes vote Democrat is because the Republicans very blatantly favor the rich at the expense of everyone else.

Giz said:
What I took from that post is that Democrats believe that felons will naturally vote Democrat.
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That's only because bankers don't ever go to jail. Otherwise there would be a lot of Republican voters who are convicted felons.
 
Giz said:
What I took from that post is that Democrats believe that unstable people with a history of poor long term planning will vote Democrat.
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Giz said:
What I took from that post is that Democrats believe that felons will naturally vote Democrat.
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The reality is that Democrats want everyone to vote and win elections by convincing voters that their policies and philosophies are better than the opponent.

Republicans don't want to go through the trouble of turning voters, they'd rather just not let those who disagree with them vote at all.
 
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