Discussion: Voting Rights and Election Law

[MessiahDecoy123]

I like living in a country where I don't have to worry about being arrested for not having ID on my person.

There might as well be a bar code on my neck. I mean all it does is make the police officer's job easier. A police state might be safer in certain ways but it's not worth the price . Let the police work a little harder. The system doesn't need more power and instant data on every person to possibly abuse under the wrong person's watch.

 

[bell110]

Exactly. I'm amazed at how easy some people give up their rights because of something that you "should" do. Don't worry about unreasonable searches, if you don't have anything to hide, what's the problem?

 

[Thundercrack85]

I always cringe when people evoke "if you having nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."

Joseph Goebbels and the Nazis popularized that one.

 

[Kelly]

I like living in a country where I don't have to worry about being arrested for not having ID on my person.

There might as well be a bar code on my neck. I mean all it does is make the police officer's job easier. A police state might be safer in certain ways but it's not worth the price . Let the police work a little harder. The system doesn't need more power and instant data on every person to possibly abuse under the wrong person's watch.

You can't be arrested here for not having an ID...there is a law in Nevada close to this...but you would be arrested for whatever they found on your person, car, whatever they were searching for.......

I'm simply saying, it is just a good thing to have an ID on you....far less questions if you can simply show an ID. I'm sorry, but it is just stupid to think that an ID is not a good thing to have....just naively dumb.

 

[chaseter]

Is having to show id to buy cough syrup infringing on anybody's rights?

 

[The Question]

There's no practical reason for a law like this to exist and it makes it harder for people to vote.

I really don't see how it's a matter for debate.

 

[Kelly]

I don't see how not requiring people to prove who they are somehow in order to vote....is up for debate?

 

[chaseter]

It makes it harder for people to board a plane when you have to show id. How many cases in the past 10 years have there been of people hijacking planes? I guess you could say that is impractical too.

 

[The Question]

I don't see how not requiring people to prove who they are somehow in order to vote....is up for debate?

There have been exactly ten cases of voter ID fraud in the last 12 years. It's a non-issue. Voters proving who they just isn't a practical necessity.

It makes it harder for people to board a plane when you have to show id. How many cases in the past 10 years have there been of people hijacking planes? I guess you could say that is impractical too.

Not a good analogy. One plane hijacking can result in hundreds if not thousands of deaths. One case of voter ID fraud results in pretty much nothing at all.

As said above, there have been ten cases of it in the last 12 years. That did not have an actual impact on the vote.

And, ultimately, voter ID fraud is so rare that the damage that the law will do (make it harder for people to vote and skew the voting process away from an accurate democratic representation of the country) far outweighs the potential benefits.

This law will skew the vote far more than voter ID fraud will.

 

[Kelly]

There have been exactly ten cases of voter ID fraud in the last 12 years. It's a non-issue. Voters proving who they just isn't a practical necessity.

It is a practical necessity for anyone....not just for voting.

 

[The Question]

It is a practical necessity for anyone....not just for voting.

What I mean was that it isn't practically necessary for people to prove who they are with a photo ID in order to vote. There isn't a practical reason for that to be a part of the voting process.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

Yes there is. Without it you can't verify if somebody is legally entitled to vote.

 

[The Question]

Yes there is. Without it you can't verify if somebody is legally entitled to vote.

And there are exactly ten verified cases of that actually being a problem in the last twelve years.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

And there are exactly ten verified cases of that actually being a problem in the last twelve years.

Ten people that got caught. There could be countless numbers that weren't.

 

[Thundercrack85]

Ten people that got caught. There could be countless numbers that weren't.

I'd be curious to see the evidence for that. During the court case in Pennsylvania supporters of the law even admitted they couldn't find any. Let's see what you can come up with.

 

[Handsome Rob]

I'd be curious to see the evidence for that. During the court case in Pennsylvania supporters of the law even admitted they couldn't find any. Let's see what you can come up with.

How about ten incidents of voter fraud from a single person?

Mississippi NAACP Leader Sent to Prison for 10 Counts of Voter Fraud

http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/29/mi...f-voter-fraud/

. . . in April (2011) a Tunica County, Miss., jury convicted NAACP official Lessadolla Sowers on 10 counts of fraudulently casting absentee ballots. Sowers is identified on an NAACP website as a member of the Tunica County NAACP Executive Committee.

Sowers was found guilty of voting in the names of Carrie Collins, Walter Howard, Sheena Shelton, Alberta Pickett, Draper Cotton and Eddie Davis. She was also convicted of voting in the names of four dead persons: James L. Young, Dora Price, Dorothy Harris, and David Ross.

Anyone with any training in fraud prevention will tell you that in a system where one (eligible) person should cast one vote (as that person), it is a huge red flag if you can't confirm that the person casting the vote is in fact the person on whose behalf the vote is being cast. A standardized photo ID (like a state-issued one) is the best way of that obtaining that proof, given what we have to work with today.

And if you're seriously going to suggest that the only cases of voter fraud are those that have been discovered, you're being dangerously naive (or incredibly biased on a level that has only been recently seen over in the 2nd Amendment thread). The speeding analogy mentioned earlier is apt.

 

[Kelly]

This commission was put together in 2005, very little was done from their research and recommendations...it is a very interesting report....

"The electoral system cannot inspire public confidence if no safeguards exist to deter or detect fraud or to confirm the identity of voters." That was the conclusion of the bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, headed by former president Jimmy Carter and former secretary of State James Baker. The commission recommended stronger photo-identification requirements at the polls. Its logic was straightforward and convincing: Americans must show photo identification for all kinds of day-to-day activities, such as cashing checks or entering government buildings. The many photo ID requirements we encounter in our daily lives are legitimate, effective security measures. Securing the ballot box is just as important.


http://www1.american.edu/ia/cfer/report/report.html

1.3 TRANSFORMING THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM — FIVE PILLARS

The recommendations of our Commission on Federal Election Reform aim both to increase voter participation and to assure the integrity of the electoral system. To accomplish these goals, the electoral system we envision should be constructed on the following five sturdy pillars:

• Voter registration that is convenient for voters to complete and even simpler to renew and that produces complete, accurate, and valid lists of citizens who are eligible to vote;
• Voter identification, tied directly to voter registration, that enhances ballot integrity without introducing new barriers to voting, including the casting and counting of ballots;
• Measures to encourage and achieve the greatest possible participation in elections by enabling all eligible voters to have an equal opportunity to vote and have their votes counted;
• Voting machines that tabulate voter preferences accurately and transparently, minimize under- and over-votes, and allow for verifiability and full recounts; and
• Fair, impartial and effective election administration.

An electoral system built on these pillars will give confidence to all citizens and will contribute to high voter participation. The electoral system should also be designed to reduce the possibility or opportunity for litigation before, and especially after, an election. Citizens should be confident that the results of the election reflect their decision, not a litigated outcome determined by lawyers and judges. This is achieved by clear and unambiguous rules for the conduct of the election established well in advance of Election Day.
The ultimate test of an election system is its ability to withstand intense public scrutiny during a very close election. Several close elections have taken place in recent years, and our election system has not always passed that test. We need a better election system.

 

[Thundercrack85]

How about ten incidents of voter fraud from a single person?

Mississippi NAACP Leader Sent to Prison for 10 Counts of Voter Fraud

http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/29/mi...f-voter-fraud/

Anyone with any training in fraud prevention will tell you that in a system where one (eligible) person should cast one vote (as that person), it is a huge red flag if you can't confirm that the person casting the vote is in fact the person on whose behalf the vote is being cast. A standardized photo ID (like a state-issued one) is the best way of that obtaining that proof, given what we have to work with today.

And if you're seriously going to suggest that the only cases of voter fraud are those that have been discovered, you're being dangerously naive (or incredibly biased on a level that has only been recently seen over in the 2nd Amendment thread). The speeding analogy mentioned earlier is apt.

We're talking about in-person voter fraud. The fraud you just cited was done through absentee ballots, which a standardized photo ID would never be able to prevent (and isn't designed to prevent).

Photo ID would do nothing to stem fraud involving machines, absentee ballots and voter registration (i.e. 99.999% of all fraud).

So, what else you got?

 

[chaseter]

There have been exactly ten cases of voter ID fraud in the last 12 years. It's a non-issue. Voters proving who they just isn't a practical necessity.



Not a good analogy. One plane hijacking can result in hundreds if not thousands of deaths. One case of voter ID fraud results in pretty much nothing at all.

As said above, there have been ten cases of it in the last 12 years. That did not have an actual impact on the vote.

And, ultimately, voter ID fraud is so rare that the damage that the law will do (make it harder for people to vote and skew the voting process away from an accurate democratic representation of the country) far outweighs the potential benefits.

This law will skew the vote far more than voter ID fraud will.

It's a fine analogy. One case of voter fraud can change an election. We weren't talking about the consequences...we were talking about the frequency.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Let's be honest, if these ID laws were about fairness they would've been passes years, not months, before the election.

 

[The Question]

It's a fine analogy. One case of voter fraud can change an election. We weren't talking about the consequences...we were talking about the frequency.

1: No, it can't. It really, really can't. Certainly not in a presidential election. That's not how our electoral system works. And I don't think there's ever been an election above the civic level that was ever that close.

2: The consequences are absolutely important. Airplane hijackings may be just as rare as voter fraud, but they have much more disastrous results, so dealing with it ahead of time is a vastly different priority.

 

[Kelly]

Let's be honest, if these ID laws were about fairness they would've been passes years, not months, before the election.

I guess they should have started working on back in 2005 then huh?

 

[Thundercrack85]

Yeah, cause we all know it's a real problem in Pennsylvania.

Never mind that the state has never had an instance of in-person voter fraud (the only kind of fraud this law would prevent).

Never mind that the Republican majority passed it months before a presidential election.

Never mind that the state congress' Republican majority speaker and the law's chief backer bragged that it would allow his political party's candidate to win the state.

It's about stopping a very specific, incredibly rare kind of voter fraud which has never been documented in the state.

The fact that it makes it more difficult for groups who typically vote Democratic to vote is just a happy coincidence.

 

[rowan sjet]

It makes it harder for people to board a plane when you have to show id. How many cases in the past 10 years have there been of people hijacking planes? I guess you could say that is impractical too.

But ID to board a plane is already there. If you took that away, you'd have more problems right?

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

I'd be curious to see the evidence for that. During the court case in Pennsylvania supporters of the law even admitted they couldn't find any. Let's see what you can come up with.

Of course there is no evidence, because it hasn't been checked. There is no way to verify it without checking for ID. That's the problem!

Let's be honest, if these ID laws were about fairness they would've been passes years, not months, before the election.

Of course. Which is something we've been saying for weeks.