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SC allows Texas to use New Voter ID Law

JasperL said:
Everyone might have "ID" but about 600,000 in Texas do not have one of the narrow list of Photo IDs accepted at the polls.

And you can't show any "liberal election tampering" occurs through impersonation fraud at the polls. Republicans have tried like heck to find a problem of "voter fraud." Years of futile efforts to find a problem they could "solve" with Photo ID. So, finally, they gave up looking for any evidence of an actual problem of 'voter fraud' and just rammed through solutions to a non-problem anyway.

Texas was a hilarious example. There is no one that can demonstrate more than a handful of impersonation fraud cases in Texas, total, over a decade or more. But despite this total lack of any evidence of a problem, Texas fast tracked the photo ID rules under almost unprecedented rules reserved for "EMERGENCY!!!" legislation. What was the "emergency?" Demographic changes that are eroding GOP prospects in Texas. They're hanging on to a declining majority by their fingernails - that's the "emergency" that needed solving with Photo ID rules.
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Hardly a "narrow list" .....

Here is a list of the acceptable forms of photo ID:

Texas driver license issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS)
Texas Election Identification Certificate issued by DPS
Texas personal identification card issued by DPS
Texas concealed handgun license issued by DPS
United States military identification card containing the person’s photograph
United States citizenship certificate containing the person’s photograph
United States passport

With the exception of the U.S. citizenship certificate, the identification must be current or have expired no more than 60 days before being presented for voter qualification at the polling place
 
JasperL;1063896257]The only way to compare apples to apples in the presence of variable inflation is to remove inflation from the figures. Bottom line is you asked a question you didn't know the answer to, got caught, found out that receipts rose more than twice as fast under Clinton as under Reagan, and so are trying anything to keep from recognizing that evidence.
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that seems to be a problem with you, living in the moment is a foreign concept and the only way it apparently makes you feel better is to adjust real time money into the future value. I recognize reality, you don't. Reality is Reagan doubled GDP, created 17 million jobs, created a peace dividend, cut FIT and grew FIT revenue 60%. noticed that the 1.7 trillion Reagan debt is a problem for you but not the 1.4 trillion Clinton debt. Why is that

I'd address the Obama point but it's off topic and has nothing to do with this discussion.
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It has everything to do with the direction of the country. Obama's is wrong, Reagan got it right

I just gave you inflation adjusted revenue, and linked to the proper table.
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If you are going to adjust numbers to inflation, adjust all numbers


Intended or not, SS and Medicare were on budget almost all of the Reagan years, most of the Clinton years, the Bush years, and Obama years. And you're quoting total receipts, and growth in total receipts, then claiming that highway and bridge funding, paid for at least in part with gasoline taxes, and so aren't part of federal income taxes. Yes, but gasoline taxes are included in total receipts so what's the point?
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Yes, but the accounts were almost broke and that is the point therefore Reagan didn't have any funds to use as the outflow matched the income. Just like a liberal, one big pot of money, right? Gasoline taxes are to fund what? Why are they on budget for other items? A liberal hasn't seen a dollar they they will not spend and it doesn't matter what pot it is supposed to be in.

No, most were not reversed. The capital gains tax rates came down in 1997, but the bulk of the tax rate increases in the 1993 bill were left in place.
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Do you realize how irrelevant tax rates are? Effective rates matter, that is what people pay. Congress lowered the tax rates in spite of Clinton's rhetoric and he signed them. now you want to give him credit for what Congress did

And you can't complain that I don't go through every tax bill in the Clinton era, when you first ignored everything in the Reagan era post the big tax cuts in ERTA 81, including the biggest tax increase in history the very next year with TEFRA 82.
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Reagan increased USE taxes not Federal Income Taxes. If you didn't use the product you didn't pay the taxes. Everyone who earned income got a tax cut. what a novel idea, keeping more of what you earn

Finally, yes, I know that all that's good is the result of republicans and all that's bad is caused by democrats, but we are talking about taxes here, so let's limit the discussion to that and not bring in the Contract on America unless relevant.
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If you want to talk taxes, why is it that liberals only want to raise them? Liberals want to give tax cuts to people who don't pay taxes. You call that a taxcut? I call it a handout
 
longview said:
What about any evidence of the 600,000 Texans without a valid ID?
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Read the court opinion and the transcripts. Several people compared the list of registered voters with lists of those with photo IDs, those were subject to discovery, cross examination, presented in court, subject to perjury rules, etc. And those estimates by independent researchers were largely consistent - all showed several hundred thousand registered voters had no acceptable Photo ID.

Texas didn't bother to try to estimate the number, and no one made a claim in court that the number was approaching zero.

See the difference?
 
JasperL said:
Read the court opinion and the transcripts. Several people compared the list of registered voters with lists of those with photo IDs, those were subject to discovery, cross examination, presented in court, subject to perjury rules, etc. And those estimates by independent researchers were largely consistent - all showed several hundred thousand registered voters had no acceptable Photo ID.

Texas didn't bother to try to estimate the number, and no one made a claim in court that the number was approaching zero.

See the difference?
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There is a big difference between an estimate, and actually producing
someone who cannot vote because they do not have an ID.
If the estimates did not exclude people who have died, got married,
or had other forms of valid ID, it did not account for the error in the process.
The fact that the opponents could only produce one person who claimed
she did not have an id, says much about how overstated the problem is.
 
JasperL said:
Everyone might have "ID" but about 600,000 in Texas do not have one of the narrow list of Photo IDs accepted at the polls.

And you can't show any "liberal election tampering" occurs through impersonation fraud at the polls. Republicans have tried like heck to find a problem of "voter fraud." Years of futile efforts to find a problem they could "solve" with Photo ID. So, finally, they gave up looking for any evidence of an actual problem of 'voter fraud' and just rammed through solutions to a non-problem anyway.

Texas was a hilarious example. There is no one that can demonstrate more than a handful of impersonation fraud cases in Texas, total, over a decade or more. But despite this total lack of any evidence of a problem, Texas fast tracked the photo ID rules under almost unprecedented rules reserved for "EMERGENCY!!!" legislation. What was the "emergency?" Demographic changes that are eroding GOP prospects in Texas. They're hanging on to a declining majority by their fingernails - that's the "emergency" that needed solving with Photo ID rules.
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As you've already been shown by previous posters there are multiple forms of ID that are acceptable. What other ID would you suggest be acceptable?

Look, we live in a society where ID is used to verify the person's identification for nearly everything in life from buying a beer, to getting an assistance payment from the state. The common sense thing here is that if we want to protect our voter integrity from fraud, or illegal voting, that we require a simple proof of identity to cast a ballot.

If you think that the absentee system is being abused then we can address that, but for now we are talking about voting at the polls. Now, if you want to say that the voter registration card should be enough, when it displays no picture, or anything that would prove that someone else is using another's card then I don't know what to tell you.

As for it being provable, I really don't know how we would prove enough cases to make liberals agree that ID is required...Further, the past is nothing like what we see today with the absolute flood of illegals entering the country, and groups like LaRaza, and MeCha working to muddy those waters...
 
Conservative said:
that seems to be a problem with you, living in the moment is a foreign concept and the only way it apparently makes you feel better is to adjust real time money into the future value.
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I'm missing the point. Adjusting figures for inflation allows us to compare apples to apples.

I recognize reality, you don't. Reality is Reagan doubled GDP, created 17 million jobs, created a peace dividend, cut FIT and grew FIT revenue 60%. noticed that the 1.7 trillion Reagan debt is a problem for you but not the 1.4 trillion Clinton debt. Why is that
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You're just throwing out stats. If you want to compare numbers to Clinton, that's fine. But if you're not willing to accept the notion that gains caused by inflation aren't real gains, then we can't have an honest debate.

And the big difference between the debt record of Reagan and Clinton is Reagan increased the deficit from what he inherited, and Clinton inherited a very large deficit and reduced it every single year until we had a measured "surplus."

"You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter...."

It has everything to do with the direction of the country. Obama's is wrong, Reagan got it right
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OK, Ronnie is a political Saint. What we're talking about is the notion that tax cuts pay for themselves. We will always have different ideas about appropriate or desirable spending levels. That's a good thing IMO. What I object to is the notion that if conservatives want to increase government spending, they can pay for that spending with a tax CUT, or that tax rate cuts require no difficult choices on spending cuts. It's just false, a lie, cowardly, fiscally stupid, etc.

And to be complete, of course I accept that tax increases reduce economic growth, and tax cuts (if paid for with spending cuts) increase economic growth.
If you are going to adjust numbers to inflation, adjust all numbers

Yes, but the accounts were almost broke and that is the point therefore Reagan didn't have any funds to use as the outflow matched the income. Just like a liberal, one big pot of money, right? Gasoline taxes are to fund what? Why are they on budget for other items? A liberal hasn't seen a dollar they they will not spend and it doesn't matter what pot it is supposed to be in.
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You are including the payroll taxes in the total receipts, and using large increases in payroll taxes to 'prove' that cuts in income tax rates paid for themselves. I'm not objecting to the payroll tax increases. They were necessary.

Do you realize how irrelevant tax rates are? Effective rates matter, that is what people pay. Congress lowered the tax rates in spite of Clinton's rhetoric and he signed them. now you want to give him credit for what Congress did
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Tax rates matter, which is why when Clinton raised them, taxes reached a record level of GDP. And Congress lowered capital gains rates in 1997 - income tax rates stayed at 39.6%.

Reagan increased USE taxes not Federal Income Taxes. If you didn't use the product you didn't pay the taxes. Everyone who earned income got a tax cut. what a novel idea, keeping more of what you earn
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TEFRA 82 was a major income tax INCREASE. The biggest in history at that time. This is just part of the historical record.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Equity_and_Fiscal_Responsibility_Act_of_1982

If you want to talk taxes, why is it that liberals only want to raise them? Liberals want to give tax cuts to people who don't pay taxes. You call that a taxcut? I call it a handout
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We can debate policy on another thread.
 
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longview said:
There is a big difference between an estimate, and actually producing
someone who cannot vote because they do not have an ID.
If the estimates did not exclude people who have died, got married,
or had other forms of valid ID, it did not account for the error in the process.
The fact that the opponents could only produce one person who claimed
she did not have an id, says much about how overstated the problem is.
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The several estimates took all that into account, subject to discovery, cross examination, etc.

The state produced no estimate at all.

And I think you misunderstand the role of that 'one person' or handful of people. The first barrier to any lawsuit is to establish someone, anyone, with standing. That person was only intended to serve that role. The court couldn't possible make any decision on whether opponents could or could not produce thousands of individuals to parade through the court as witnesses. No court would allow that kind of "proof." It would be a waste of time and money.

The estimates indicate that the opponents produced a list of 600,000 who didn't have acceptable photo ID.
 
j-mac said:
As you've already been shown by previous posters there are multiple forms of ID that are acceptable. What other ID would you suggest be acceptable?

Look, we live in a society where ID is used to verify the person's identification for nearly everything in life from buying a beer, to getting an assistance payment from the state. The common sense thing here is that if we want to protect our voter integrity from fraud, or illegal voting, that we require a simple proof of identity to cast a ballot.

If you think that the absentee system is being abused then we can address that, but for now we are talking about voting at the polls. Now, if you want to say that the voter registration card should be enough, when it displays no picture, or anything that would prove that someone else is using another's card then I don't know what to tell you.

As for it being provable, I really don't know how we would prove enough cases to make liberals agree that ID is required...Further, the past is nothing like what we see today with the absolute flood of illegals entering the country, and groups like LaRaza, and MeCha working to muddy those waters...
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I'd respond, but you don't seem to pay attention to them, so why bother.

I will mention that the "flood" of illegals today is lower than at any time in decades. And the fact is (almost) no illegal is stupid enough to show up at the polls, impersonate another voter, risk a felony and guaranteed deportation, to cast ONE vote.
 
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JasperL said:
I'd respond, but you don't seem to pay attention to them, so why bother.
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I don't understand why you think it is unreasonable for someone to verify who they are when they vote, so yeah, that's what I am asking you...Why bother indeed, unless the whole thing is centered on not being able to verify for the purposes of voting illegally.

I will mention that the "flood" of illegals today is lower than at any time in decades.
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This claim is not entirely true, and has been debate in here rather vehemently...

"Morton also announced the implementation of new restrictions on how the agents and officers working under him could use their authority to enforce immigration laws. They were told to curtail the use of detainers, or immigration holds, which give ICE officers the opportunity to question and take custody of illegal aliens identified after arrest by a local law enforcement agency. This directive built on an earlier memo, issued in June 2011, which ordered ICE agents not to arrest certain broad categories of illegal aliens, including minor criminals, long-time residents, students, parents, caregivers, and a long list of other excepted categories for whom there was otherwise no statutory basis for special treatment. These and other directives have been euphemistically characterized as “prosecutorial discretion.”

This report examines data from a collection of mostly unpublished internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE statistics, to provide an alternative evaluation of the administration’s record on immigration enforcement that is based on raw statistics rather than pre-packaged press kits. These statistics show that, contrary to what is commonly believed, in fact immigration enforcement in the interior has slowed significantly in the last few years. ICE is arresting and removing noticeably fewer illegal aliens from the interior now than was the case five years ago, and even two years ago. Its focus has shifted away from interior enforcement in favor of processing aliens who are apprehended by the Border Patrol."

Deportation Numbers Unwrapped | Center for Immigration Studies

So, at best the numbers are purposely muddied.

And the fact is (almost) no illegal is stupid enough to show up at the polls, impersonate another voter, risk a felony and guaranteed deportation, to cast ONE vote.
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You're right, they wouldn't have to, what with all of the liberal "sanctuary cities" and sanctuary DL, and ID laws put in place over the last decade....Consider this report....

""We don't know how widespread this problem is because elections offices don't keep track of where non-citizens live," Pierrotti reports, "So we decided to do something that they'd never tried to do before: We found them on our own." The investigation began by examining state forms on which residents had declined jury duty by checking a box indicating that they weren't US citizens, and were therefore ineligible to serve. Pierrotti then cross-referenced those results with local voter rolls, identifying at least 94 people who were registered to vote in the state of Florida. Next, he visited some of these people at their homes, where they admitted that they weren't citizens and professed ignorance as to how they were registered to vote in the first place. But voting records confirmed that they'd exercised their "right" to vote that, as non-citizens, they do not actually possess. The NBC 2 team interviewed a number of these illegal voters on camera, including a Jamaican national who simply attested that he was a US citizen on a voter registration form, and -- voila! -- he joined the American electorate. It was a felony, but it was that easy. And if a news crew hadn't connected the dots, no one would have ever known. This passage in the report is crucial:


REPORTER: County supervisors of elections tell me they have no way to verify citizenship. Under the 1992 "Motor Voter" law, they're not required to ask for proof.
HARRINGTON: We have no policing authority. We don't have any way of bouncing that information off of any other database.

REPORTER: The only way supervisors of elections can investigate voter fraud is if they get a tip, so that's what our list became.

HARRINGTON: It could be very serious. It could change the whole complexion of an election."

Fraud: Local NBC Investigation Discovers Dozens of Illegal Voters in Florida - Guy Benson

So please don't tell me that people that aren't supposed to vote aren't doing so...We have to start somewhere.
 
JasperL said:
The court that heard the evidence overturned SB14.

And that evidence can be persuasive, but not sufficient to cause the next court to strike SB14, obviously. The number affected isn't presumably the ONLY factor on which the decision rests.
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The law stands. QED
 
JasperL said:
QED? You're not half way through the proof yet.....;)
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I was often criticized for rushing through my work.:mrgreen:

If the court was willing to let the law stand for the election then I conclude they don't have a problem with it.:rock
 
JasperL said:
A) Dead people voting democratic.... :lamo :2rofll: Seriously, you right wingers need to find different material. This one lost it's appeal for the non-crazy share of the population about the same time these new-fangled things called "computers" were invented and went into widespread use to track voter registrations, voting rolls, etc.
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Your credibility is damaged even more than your false narrative. :poke

850 voters in NYC are officially 164 years old
By Carl Campanile
October 22, 2014 | 1:54am


A single Bronx voter listed in official records as being 164 years old led Board of Elections officials to review their files — where they turned up another 849 New Yorkers who were supposedly alive when Abe Lincoln was president.

The stunning discovery came after The Post reported last week that the birth date of Luz Pabellon, a spry 73-year-old who has been living and voting in The Bronx since the 1970s, was recorded as Jan. 1, 1850.​

Full article... http://nypost.com/2014/10/22/850-people-officially-over-164-years-old-nyc-board-of-elections/
 
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Deuce said:
The vast majority of voter fraud occurs via absentee ballots. Not "on the street," but certainly not at the official polling place and none of these will be caught by voter ID laws.
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Once again, liberal talking points fail to pass the smell test.

Cook County ballot box tries to cast GOP votes for Democrats

By Contributor / October 22, 2014 /

CHICAGO — Early Voting in Illinois got off to its typical start Monday, as votes being cast for Republican candidates were transformed into votes for Democrats.

MACHINE ISSUES: Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan had trouble voting for himself on Monday when early voting started in Illinois.
“I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” Moynihan said. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.”

The conservative website Illinois Review reported that “While using a touch screen voting machine in Schaumburg, Moynihan voted for several races on the ballot, only to find that whenever he voted for a Republican candidate, the machine registered the vote for a Democrat in the same race. He notified the election judge at his polling place and demonstrated that it continued to cast a vote for the opposing candidate’s party. Moynihan was eventually allowed to vote for Republican candidates, including his own race.​
 
Deuce said:
The vast majority of voter fraud occurs via absentee ballots.
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You're correct... You sure do know your voter fraud.


OCTOBER 22, 2014 10:26 AM
James O’Keefe Strikes Again
The guerilla filmmaker has exposed how voter fraud is both easy and condoned in Colorado.
By John Fund

Many liberals are adamant there is no threat of voter fraud that justifies efforts to improve the integrity of elections. “There is no real concrete evidence of voter fraud,” tweeted Donna Brazile, former acting chair of the Democratic National Committee, this week. “It’s a big ass lie.”

James O’Keefe, the guerilla filmmaker who brought down the ACORN voter-registration fraudsters in 2010 and forced the resignation of NPR executives, politely disagrees. Today, he is releasing some new undercover footage that raises disturbing questions about ballot integrity in Colorado, the site of fiercely contested races for the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, and the governorship. When he raised the issue of filling out some of the unused ballots that are mailed to every household in the state this month, he was told by Meredith Hicks, the director of Work for Progress, a liberal group funded by Democratic Super PACS.: “That is not even like lying or something, if someone throws out a ballot, like if you want to fill it out you should do it.” She then brazenly offered O’Keefe, disguised as a middle-aged college instructor, a job with her group.​

Full article with video... James O
 
JasperL said:
And the fact is (almost) no illegal is stupid enough to show up at the polls, impersonate another voter, risk a felony and guaranteed deportation, to cast ONE vote.
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Oh Really? Want'a bet?


DMV search of records turns up ineligible N.C. voters

Tuesday, October 21, 2014 / 8:25 pm
Bertrand M. Gutierrez/Winston-Salem Journal

The voter rolls kept by the State Board of Elections contain 145 names that belong to a certain category of ineligible voter – immigrants in the U.S. under a federal program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, according to elections officials.

Earlier this month, State Board of Elections officials sampled about 1,600 of the 10,000 names, Lawson said. They cross-checked the names against a U.S. Department of Homeland Security database, known as SAVE, and found that 94 percent of those 1,600 are in fact U.S. citizens, Lawson said. Still, if 94 percent are U.S. citizens, then 6 percent are ineligible. If that percentage holds against the whole list of nearly 10,000 names, then about 600 people on the voter rolls would be ineligible to vote.​

Full article... DMV search of records turns up ineligible N.C. voters - Winston-Salem Journal: State
 
BringIt said:
Once again, liberal talking points fail to pass the smell test.

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These issues show up every election. I cast votes on a touch screen and I always get the feeling I'm casting a pretend vote. I think we should collect them all, crush them, then burn them, and go back to paper. If you want to steal an election, that's how it's done - just control the counting, which multiple people have shown online is simple with electronic machines.

The problem here, if there was an intentional effort to manipulate the computer for benefit of democrats, is incompetence by the hacker, whose inserted code didn't just change the internal record of the vote and made the mistake of showing the manipulation on the touch screen. He'll be fired by the operatives and hired by a more competent hacker next time. I've seen hackers do this the right way online many times.

But the obvious point is photo ID doesn't affect this at all.​
 
BringIt said:
You're correct... You sure do know your voter fraud.


OCTOBER 22, 2014 10:26 AM
James O’Keefe Strikes Again
The guerilla filmmaker has exposed how voter fraud is both easy and condoned in Colorado.
When he raised the issue of filling out some of the unused ballots that are mailed to every household in the state this month​
Click to expand...


Of course, absentee ballots is where partisans try to steal elections, so Texas puts in a photo ID requirement at the polls that pushes the elderly and disabled exempted out of the requirements in some cases from in person voting to absentee ballots, which is more susceptible to fraud....​
 
JasperL said:
Two points.

1) we have no idea if any of them voted.
2) They ALL had photo ID, by definition according to the article. Which is something that's pointed out all the time - legal, non-citizen residents legally get drivers licenses.

So photo ID does nothing to prevent those non-citizens from voting.
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To deny that there is voter fraud is to be very naive. The objection to photo ID's is nothing more than an attempt to divert from that reality. To believe that dead people don't vote is also naive and an attempt to divert from reality.

Does a photo ID prevent that from happening, maybe and probably but regardless elections are big business today and anything that puts more credibility into the system benefits the entire process. You seem to have a problem understanding that. You obviously have never been to a big city like Chicago where even the non breathing public votes. A photo ID compared to the registration roles will help in cleaning up the process. If you have a problem with Photo ID's why don't you have a problem with registration to vote?
 
j-mac said:
Yep, the argument was the emotional one that liberals were using, that people couldn't get down to the DMV to get an ID, and I just provided that if they are disabled then they get an exemption
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You can continue to be dishonest and call it emotional, but being disabled was just one reason given and if they're disabled they still have to have certain paperwork that they not have, find and get to a DMV office. I don't think the DMV makes house calls.

j-mac said:
...If they are not disabled, then they have NO excuse.
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No excuses, just facts that have been pointed out repeatedly, but facts that the true believers continue to ignore.


Why are conservatives so afraid of Americans exercising their right to vote. And don't come up with that BS about identifying themselves. There has been ID requirements to vote for a very long time. Probably the most recent was the HAVA act of 2002, signed into law by George W. Bush.
 
Conservative said:
To deny that there is voter fraud is to be very naive. The objection to photo ID's is nothing more than an attempt to divert from that reality. To believe that dead people don't vote is also naive and an attempt to divert from reality.
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I've never denied that there is lots of "voter fraud" which is the conservative catch-all term for any election integrity issue. Absentee ballots are where almost all of it occurs. And if someone wants to steal an election, it's done by people wearing nice suits making $500 or $1,000 an hour.

We've been through it all before, but part of the problem, and what makes having honest conversations about 'voter fraud' so difficult is what you did there. There have been dozens of examples where republicans claim, e.g. "HUNDREDS OF DEAD PEOPLE VOTED!!!" and it gets headlines, and then a year later it turns out that the only "dead" people who voted were a handful who died between casting a vote by mail and election day, and less than a handful of survivors who cast a vote for grandma after she died. So the first thing we have to do is debunk the myths/lies, and then we can discuss actual problems and potential solutions.

Does a photo ID prevent that from happening, maybe and probably but regardless elections are big business today and anything that puts more credibility into the system benefits the entire process. You seem to have a problem understanding that. You obviously have never been to a big city like Chicago where even the non breathing public votes. A photo ID compared to the registration roles will help in cleaning up the process. If you have a problem with Photo ID's why don't you have a problem with registration to vote?
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What's the question about voter registration? I absolutely support efforts to clean up voter registration. I've said on other threads that Canada gets it right in a lot of ways by having a national registration process, where one entity verifies citizenship, updates registration as people move from place to place, makes registration easy and automatic for most voters, etc. The way we handle the process is just terrible, inefficient, difficult, etc. But going to a Canada system would be a RATIONAL approach to solve a real problem.

But Photo ID rules are a blunt instrument to "solve" the smallest issue in elections, which is impersonation at the polls. List 100 threats to a 'valid' election and impersonation fraud at the polls will be in the high 90s, perhaps 100. And the 'solution' creates additional and significant problems of making it incredibly difficult for some voters to cast a ballot. At a minimum, any rational look at the issue would do some sort of comparison - fraud prevented versus eligible voters turned away, but Jack and I presume others say if that ratio of fraud/citizens unable to vote is 1/1,000, no problem. That's not a rational approach, unless it's a feature, not a bug, that there will be 1,000 fewer eligible voters for every case of fraud prevented, which is obviously the case.

Paul Weyrich: "So many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome: good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
 
JasperL said:
I've never denied that there is lots of "voter fraud" which is the conservative catch-all term for any election integrity issue. Absentee ballots are where almost all of it occurs. And if someone wants to steal an election, it's done by people wearing nice suits making $500 or $1,000 an hour.

We've been through it all before, but part of the problem, and what makes having honest conversations about 'voter fraud' so difficult is what you did there. There have been dozens of examples where republicans claim, e.g. "HUNDREDS OF DEAD PEOPLE VOTED!!!" and it gets headlines, and then a year later it turns out that the only "dead" people who voted were a handful who died between casting a vote by mail and election day, and less than a handful of survivors who cast a vote for grandma after she died. So the first thing we have to do is debunk the myths/lies, and then we can discuss actual problems and potential solutions.



What's the question about voter registration? I absolutely support efforts to clean up voter registration. I've said on other threads that Canada gets it right in a lot of ways by having a national registration process, where one entity verifies citizenship, updates registration as people move from place to place, makes registration easy and automatic for most voters, etc. The way we handle the process is just terrible, inefficient, difficult, etc. But going to a Canada system would be a RATIONAL approach to solve a real problem.

But Photo ID rules are a blunt instrument to "solve" the smallest issue in elections, which is impersonation at the polls. List 100 threats to a 'valid' election and impersonation fraud at the polls will be in the high 90s, perhaps 100. And the 'solution' creates additional and significant problems of making it incredibly difficult for some voters to cast a ballot. At a minimum, any rational look at the issue would do some sort of comparison - fraud prevented versus eligible voters turned away, but Jack and I presume others say if that ratio of fraud/citizens unable to vote is 1/1,000, no problem. That's not a rational approach, unless it's a feature, not a bug, that there will be 1,000 fewer eligible voters for every case of fraud prevented, which is obviously the case.

Paul Weyrich: "So many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome: good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
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Do we want everyone to vote?
People who don't know what the role of government is, what Congress and the POTUS is supposed to do, who don't know what's in the Constitution, who don't understand the issues or know where the candidates stand on them, do we want them to vote? People who watch the political ads slack jawed and uncritically, then vote accordingly, is it any benefit that they vote?

Personally, I'd just as soon they stay home on election day.
 
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