I don’t disagree with you on not making this absurdly onerous, but the concept is one I support. I support it per se, for the record, as I think an ID based voting system is, within reason, a sensible thing.
Northern Ireland did this with limited evidence of voter fraud, and for, likely, far more scurrilous reasons than this law.It did not suppress turnout, which is your concern.
I am not defending the law proposed, just noting that an area with a LOONG history of minority vote suppression has one without suppressing turnout to any noticeable degree.
Everyone agrees voter fraud is bad when it happens.
There isn’t great information that voter fraud is occurring very much.
The GOP hates government action. And they especially hate it when government action is being proposed to solve a non-problem. Because of this, and because there really is no good claim that this is a big problem, there is instant skepticism as to the motives of the GOP when there is uniform effort within the party to take a government action under these circumstances.
Couple that skepticism with the fact that some information shows disenfranchisement of minorities as an effect of voter ID laws.
Add that fact to the GOP is playing some serious hardball at the state level to win/preserve victories. (Contra the Democrats, who are just now waking up to the importance of having a strong state game.)
In view of all that, it’s not hard to surmise the GOP’s efforts with all this stuff are really about shaving off a few Democratic votes at the polls.
To be clear, NI DID have immense voter suppression, and Gerrymandering that would turn US reader’s hair white. I do think his concerns are meritorious, I do not, however, agree that voter ID is a bad idea on that basis.
If any of you want to read about some serious election scumbaggery, please watch the following short video on the city of Derry.
For those who want to learn more on recent Irish history, I leave two links to Robert Kee’s series on the matter. It is now thankfully available on Youtube.
If that were anywhere close to true we wouldn’t have had a 5 decade “war on drugs” that’s done nothing but shred liberties and put millions on the government “payroll” as prisoners to solve the non-problem of people getting high.
The reason the voter ID is so popular with so many people is it plays to voters sense of “fair play.” Why should scumbags get more than one vote?
It’s the same reason GOP wins with the anti illegal immigration message when the average GOP voter has more in common with the illegals than with liberals (work ethic and belief in Jesus/family/traditions).
I’m an independent, former Democrat and never a member of the GOP, and you can more or less run down a similar thought process about the Democrats right now. They’ve shown that facts, generating good outcomes or even simple right and wrong don’t matter nearly as much as #resistance. They’re a party of ends justify the means right now if we’ve ever had one, and the cries of disenfranchisement of these nameless minorities who will somehow be unable to clear a simple hurdle just doesn’t add up to me. It smells fishy.
To put it another way, when Democratic chiefs like Elizabeth Warren start sending smoke signals that a seemingly innocuous measure like voter ID will somehow burn the whole wigwam to the ground, my spirit guide tells me that she’s probably holding a tomahawk behind her back instead of a peace pipe.
Besides being a red herring, it’s inaccurate - love the War on Drugs or hate it, it was designed to address a legitimate public problem. But more to the point, you’re referring back to a version of the GOP that isn’t currently operative. I’m talking about the one now.
I get that 100% - I’m one of those people. But the question is - why now? What’s the urgency? There’s no new documented spike in voter fraud - so why the sudden interest in solving this “problem”?
Am I? For someone on a limited budget, if getting an ID requires spending $20 to acquire a copy of their birth certificate, and another $20 on gas to drive to the nearest DMV, is it really so ridiculous?
But only a dumb dog barks up a tree where there ain’t no squirrels.
Does anybody think that if this possible disenfranchisement were so important to the potentially disenfranchised, that they might just do what ever is necessary to get a valid I’d to vote?
Like one time I had to get to the probation office or they were going to throw my ass back in jail. So I rode my bike to the probation office, about 15 miles each way.
Since they’re not, ya know, literally being thrown in jail, they’re probably not as incentivized as you were. And the GOP is counting on that. Its the goal to just make it hard enough to vote some people just don’t
You still haven’t provided any factual information on voters being disenfranchised by voter ID laws. There is also no evidence on it directly affecting minorities, as it shows in my last article.
Yes, it’s ridiculous. A) I seriously doubt it has ever cost a person $20 in gas to go to their local DMV. Even if their car only got 10 miles to the gallon that’s still 100 miles each way. There are like 15 DMVs in North Dakota, for example and it looks like pretty much everyone lives within 100 miles.
B) You had to add another stipulation ($20 for a birth certificate) to make it sounds worse.
Spending $40 one time is not going to force almost anyone in the United States to go without food. You’re grasping.
You can continue to insult my intelligence that’s fine. If you work in or around security, you would know when a vulnerability is discovered you don’t wait until after it has been exploited to fix it. You just fix it.
Best case, the GOP stops 3M votes if we assume they all vote Dem (unlikely) and they will all show up (unlikely). Why is it automatically assumed it will only effect dem voters? There are a lot of poor white Republicans too.
Oh I’m not saying it’ll only effect Dems. While I think it’ll effect Dems more than the GOP (obviously, or the GOP wouldn’t be pushing it the way they are), I have greater issue with giving pols another lever they can freely tug on to manipulate voting blocks
I know this isn’t addressing the larger issue being discussed but I just wanted to point out that both the birth certificate costs money, and the ID will probably cost money as well. I know where I live, in South Dakota, it costs $30 just for an ID, after making sure you have all the paper work necessary to aquire one.
And, spending $40 at one time (or maybe $70?) could make people go without food, at least briefly. My grandmother lives on a reservation in ND, often goes without power or heat during the winter due to power outages (and the winter in ND and SD are usually pretty bad. I believe at one point a few years ago my hometown was literally the coldest place on earth for a couple days), and relies on a bus that comes through maybe once every couple weeks to go into the nearest town (30 miles away, yet the DMV is further) to get groceries, but the bus is often late (as in days, not hours), or sometimes won’t come at all, depending on the weather. When she does manage to get into town, she can hardly afford $40-$70 to spend at once on an ID card when there is food and supplies to be bought, and usually some single mother living nearby who she feels pity on and buys some children’s clothing for or something. She is hardly unique in this, as many others live in the same situation, including my father as a child.
(In case anybody’s thinking it, yes, it’s not the smartest idea for an old woman to live in those conditions, but she’s tough and refuses to leave her birthplace.)
So yeah, spending that amount, even if may seem extremely small to some, can be a very large task to others, and regardless of the DMV being closer than 100 miles, it can still be quite an ordeal to get to it. There are definitely those who use these things as excuses to not have to do anything in life, yes, but some would be willing to but are literally unable.
