Louis Black on voter suppression

Started by AllPurposeAtheist, October 09, 2014, 02:06:11 PM

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Hakurei Reimu

The problem is that ids cost money and take time to issue (longer if you don't have all your documentation ducks in a row), which makes it difficult to get them on short notice and if you are poor â€" which tend to be the case if you are in a minority. Your right to vote is dependent on whether or not you are a citizen, not on whether or not you have a certain card in your wallet or purse.
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Jason Harvestdancer

Yes, if you say "oh shit there's an election today I must get an ID" then it is very difficult.
White privilege is being a lifelong racist, then being sent to the White House twice because your running mate is a minority.<br /><br />No Biden, no KKK, no Fascist USA!

Hakurei Reimu

Did you miss the point that your right to vote is contingent upon citizenship and not the possession of an ID?
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Jason Harvestdancer

I got it.  So how do we know the person wanting to vote is a citizen?
White privilege is being a lifelong racist, then being sent to the White House twice because your running mate is a minority.<br /><br />No Biden, no KKK, no Fascist USA!

Hakurei Reimu

Check after the fact, using this nifty device called a "provisional ballot." Your vote can be counted immediately if you have ID, sure, but if you don't, your vote will still count.
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Hydra009

#35
Voter registration is a pretty good way of figuring out if someone is a citizen and/or registered to vote.

PickelledEggs


Hakurei Reimu

#37
Quote from: Jason_Harvestdancer on October 15, 2014, 01:55:24 PM
Both parties do it, but it is really only the icing on the cake of voter fraud.  The cake itself is a three layer cake.

Layer 1: Campaign contribution limits that hurt small parties more than they hurt the big parties.  "Getting money out of politics" has actually increased the role of money in politics.
Layer 2: Ballot access restrictions that are often MORE onerous for third parties than the big parties, complete with allowing the big parties on the ballot even if they fail to qualify and sometimes leaving third parties off the ballot even when they do qualify.
Layer 3: Gerrymandered districts, so almost every district is either Republican safe or Democrat safe to the point where inside that district the other party is as powerful as a third party.
Actually, the cake is four-layered, with the last layer being the cause of it all.

Layer 4: First past the post voting inevitably leads to two-party systems, as CGP Grey explains:



Yes, even our own voting system itself is against third parties.
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lyeman

#38
There are obvious reasons for being in favor of voter id, mostly because it seems like the most basic precaution possible. The real question is: why are some people so against it?

I watched the video, and MMPR seems like the best system, aside from giving the internal politics of political parties too much sway. I think the solution to that is to make the internal politics of political parties more rationalized, IOW in order to enter  a political party into an election, it has to have a "constitution" that is available to the public.

Also, they keep citing "minority rule" as the main problem. The way that this term can characterize the actions of the Democratic Party is a bit unfortunate.

Hakurei Reimu

You'd think that.

The vote is the one point in a person's life where the poor man is exactly as powerful as the rich man. No matter how cheap it is, the voter ID is going to cost some money. Money that will be paid by the voter, and is a cost that will be proportionately be more for the poor man than for the rich man. In short, voter IDs are discriminatory towards poor voters. The other point is that voting is a right. It is not something you take away unless you can prove that the person in question doesn't have it, just like you don't imprison people who can't prove that they shouldn't be in jail.

As such, I would approve of voter IDs if two conditions were met:

(1) The voter ID is issued on the government's dime, and
(2) A good faith effort is made to make sure that every person qualified to vote gets their voter ID.

...which is basically what Get Out the Vote projects do already, by making sure that every person who is qualified to vote to be registered to vote.

The second problem with voter IDs is that is "solving" a problem that doesn't really seem to exist: if it exists at all, by any realistic measure voter fraud is nowhere near bad enough to actually change outcomes of real elections â€" by any real measure, fraudulent votes are not a problem. So why spend money on something that is not a problem?

There's really only one answer: voter ID laws are election fraud, to shape the outcome of elections by discouraging otherwise qualified voters from voting. Such laws are proposed mainly by Republicans, and the Republicans are the party that benefits from low voter turnout. This does not speak well for them.
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AllPurposeAtheist

WTF are you two yammering on about now? Oh..subterfuge.. Carry on then.. Muddy the waters as usual..
All hail my new signature!

Admit it. You're secretly green with envy.

lyeman

Making people get ID's and proof of identity is the opposite of "muddying the waters."

PickelledEggs


Hakurei Reimu

Quote from: lyeman on October 17, 2014, 12:23:43 AM
Making people get ID's and proof of identity is the opposite of "muddying the waters."
It is when you are pretending there is a real problem that the IDs are solving. There isn't. There is no plethora of people ranting and raging about how their votes had been stolen because their names are already checked off when they haven't previously visited any polling place.

It is muddying the waters if you pretend that such a system will go off without a hitch and that everyone who is now qualified to vote (or will be by the next election) will get their voter ID by election day, and thus the current (poor) voter turnout will even be sustained. Or that a family struggling to make ends meet will be able to afford voter ID cards.

When the premises you base a decision on are false, it's muddying the waters.
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