Bryan - 02 September 2012 10:49 AM

Write4U - 02 September 2012 03:05 AM

By restricting, not the power of the vote (the voters), but the power of money (unlimited anonymous amounts) in the political process.

Doubtless you’re completely safe from having to provide evidence that public opinion in favor of voter ID laws is substantially affected by unlimited anonymous spending in the political process.

No, I am not. Proof of the effectiveness of spreading lies by PACs is evident.  OTOH, proof of voter fraud is practically non-existent.
But for purpose of this discussion I find it remarkable that you would demand extraordinary proof of voter identity while not paying any attention to the hundreds of millions of dolars from ANONYMOUS sources. Should we not ask for transparency (by name) so we can ascertain the source and motive of these donors ? I’d say just a name will do.  Can the voters not expect the same courtesy in exercising their Constitutional Right to vote?

Bryan,
I’m not.  Maybe you are.  Let’s suppose that a proposed law disenfranchises 20 percent of voters yet the other 80 percent favor the law.  Why is any conspiracy at all required?

That is by definition a conspiracy to deprive those 20% (or 60%) from casting their vote. The last 3 years are proof that the republicans have expressly conspired to prevent the “majority” from passing laws.  Not only is that not democratic, I call it sedition!

TimB,
Duh Because a democratic system becomes meaningless, if the majority can take away the vote from the minority.

Bryan,
By the same token, a Democratic system is meaningless if a majority can’t take away the vote from the minority.  Democracy by definition recognizes some type of primacy for majority rule.  So address the question:  Given a majority favors a law in a democracy, why is a conspiracy needed in order to effect the law?

Bryan, how you came up with this ridiculous statement escapes me.  The majority ‘taking away” the vote from the minority? Why would a true majority need to do that, unless you can prove that the majority of voters are actually the minority who are engaged in a conspiracy to commit voter fraud. What about literacy tests, counting jelly beans in a jar?

It is the minority (Republican) who is preventing the majority (Democrat) from voting!!!
The whole point of voter suppression is to prevent a majority of the people from voting, because they are the majority. This IS the definition of “conspiracy”

You have invented an entirely new definition of majority rule and it does not sound Constitutional or even Democratic to me.
Why not, “we are in the majority now so we shall take away all your constitunional rights unless you can prove by picture ID that you pay taxes”?

Oops, I forgot, the Republican presidential candidate has not provided a full disclosure of his taxes yet!!

For a republican majority run State to demand that Obama (the sitting Democaratic President) himself must provide a “birth certificate” to claim the right to have his name appear on the ballot is a “conspiracy”.

TimB - 02 September 2012 04:14 PM

Bryan - 02 September 2012 03:01 PM

...  If you would at least join me in saying that fraud is possible then at least it will not look like you’re projecting your refusal to consider the possibility of fraud, thus turning it into my supposedly blind faith in the existence of voter fraud…

The existence of Bigfoot, and ghosts, and voter fraud is possible.

Good.  Now, before you get around to asserting that the most likely explanation for voter ID laws comes from an attempt to disenfranchise legitimate voters, what evidence should we expect to see if voter fraud exists?  This is an important question, so please address it.

But what is much more likely is that this is simply a justification for the organized efforts (that we all can directly see have occurred) by Republicans, leading up to the Presidential election, to insure that Republicans will have the best chance to win.

Okay, you got your assertion in, albeit in the form that Republicans want laws in place that gives them a n improved chance of winning.  It’s still possible that they believe reducing the chances of fraud improves their chances to win, right?

Typically solutions to a problem are put in place after there is clear evidence that the problem exists.

Right.  Think about all the elections that were fraudulently decided by flawed electronic voting with no paper trail before anyone did anything about it.

No, of course I’m kidding.  Identifying a vulnerability in electronic voting provoked appropriate responses:  Make the machines as tamper-proof as feasible and mandate the existence of a paper trail to help identify problems.  Now, back to the question of evidence for fraudulent individual votes:  What evidence should we expect to see when such fraud occurs?

In this case, the solution, which can effectively disenfranchise segments of voters, has been put in place, first.

If the voting system has a known vulnerability and that vulnerability is hard to verify with examples mostly because the system itself makes verification difficult (like the lack of a paper trail with electronic voting) should we then refrain from trying to address the vulnerability until x (you supply the number) illegal votes have occurred?

Now you, in retrospect, tenaciously attempt to justify this obviously unjust “solution”, by putting forward some highly questionable evidence that there was a significant problem to begin with.

Again, my emphasis falls on the fact that it’s hard to verify fraud.  The vulnerability in conjunction with the difficulties in verifying the legitimacy of votes is a big problem.  The contested senate vote in Minnesota serves a good example.  There is a high probability that illegal votes were cast in that election—apparently enough to sway the result depending on illegal voter preferences—and the result made the difference in which party held the senate majority.  I don’t know that the result was changed by illegal votes, and neither do you know that it wasn’t (depending on your degree of faith).  But it would clearly be bad to have a system in place that established safeguards against illegal voting if there’s any chance at all that legal votes might not end up being cast.  Right?

Speaking of those votes, do you think calling the election in Florida in 2000 prior to polls closing in the Panhandle (Central time zone) may have caused voter disenfranchisement?

Bryan, you DO know that the USA country is a Democratic REPUBLIC, (which is not strictly a Democracy) don’t you?

asanta - 02 September 2012 05:39 PM

Bryan, you DO know that the USA country is a Democratic REPUBLIC, (which is not strictly a Democracy) don’t you?

Assanta, you DO know that the USA country is a Constitutional Republic, don’t you?

Bryan,
Speaking of those votes, do you think calling the election in Florida in 2000 prior to polls closing in the Panhandle (Central time zone) may have caused voter disenfranchisement?

No, not counting votes was an exercise in disenfranchisement. Ballots that were cast were not counted at the discretion of the then Republican Secretary of State.

p.s. she was rewarded with a seat in congress afterward, with the full backing of the republican party.

Write4U - 02 September 2012 04:51 PM

Bryan - 02 September 2012 10:49 AM

Write4U - 02 September 2012 03:05 AM

By restricting, not the power of the vote (the voters), but the power of money (unlimited anonymous amounts) in the political process.

Doubtless you’re completely safe from having to provide evidence that public opinion in favor of voter ID laws is substantially affected by unlimited anonymous spending in the political process.

No, I am not. Proof of the effectiveness of spreading lies by PACs is evident.  OTOH, proof of voter fraud is practically non-existent.

Relevance to the issue at hand, please?

But for purpose of this discussion I find it remarkable that you would demand extraordinary proof of voter identity while not paying any attention to the hundreds of millions of dolars from ANONYMOUS sources.

Obviously if I brought that up then TimB would accuse me of creating a distraction.  This thread already has a topic.

Should we not ask for transparency (by name) so we can ascertain the source and motive of these donors ?

Don’t you know the motive by the cause thus supported?  The problem with transparency comes from two things:  Rights to privacy and the potential for thuggery.  Unions (for example) have been known to send members to the homes of those they oppose politically to intimidate them into submission.  Foreign donations are already illegal, and in the case of direct donations to campaigns there are upper limits.  Hopefully you’ve been all over the Obama campaign for accepting donations without CVV code verification.  It seems to me that campaigns could use that technique to borrow money, paying it back later via refund at zero interest.

I’d say just a name will do.  Can the voters not expect the same courtesy in exercising their Constitutional Right to vote?

There is no Constitutional right to vote.  States can restrict voting right as they wish within certain constitutional bounds (like stripping the franchise from felons, for example).  We have a secret ballot for a reason.  The same reasoning makes sensible limits on required public disclosure of political giving.

Bryan,
I’m not.  Maybe you are.  Let’s suppose that a proposed law disenfranchises 20 percent of voters yet the other 80 percent favor the law.  Why is any conspiracy at all required?

That is by definition a conspiracy to deprive those 20% (or 60%) from casting their vote.

If that’s a conspiracy then the conspirators are fighting a conspiracy to protect the vote for 20 percent.  You end up emptying the term of its negative connotation.

The last 3 years are proof that the republicans have expressly conspired to prevent the “majority” from passing laws.  Not only is that not democratic, I call it sedition!

Meh.  Your argument on point will suffer from extreme problems of ambiguity.  I’ll predict right now that you’d have to prominently feature the fallacy of equivocation.

Take it away, Hillary.

Given a majority favors a law in a democracy, why is a conspiracy needed in order to effect the law?

Bryan, how you came up with this ridiculous statement escapes me.  The majority ‘taking away” the vote from the minority? Why would a true majority need to do that, unless you can prove that the majority of voters are actually the minority who are engaged in a conspiracy to commit voter fraud. What about literacy tests, counting jelly beans in a jar?

The point is that majority rule is fundamental to a democracy. Don’t try to make it more complicated than that.  If 80 percent can’t amend the Constitution then they are no longer a free people.

It is the minority (Republican) who is preventing the majority (Democrat) from voting!!!

Wow, what a freakishly grotesque version of the argument.  It’s a bipartisan majority that favors voter ID laws because the idea, to those who support it, makes fundamental sense.  You need ID for jury duty.  You need ID to take a book out of the public library.  You need an ID to drive a car.  So naturally it makes sense to people even if the Koch brothers don’t bother to spend billion$ on pro voter ID law commercials during the Super Bowl.  And the idea’s even more commonsense when the government takes steps to make voter ID free and easy to obtain (as is the case in Georgia).

The whole point of voter suppression is to prevent a majority of the people from voting, because they are the majority. This IS the definition of “conspiracy”

You drifted from the definition of “conspiracy” off to the realm of giving an example of the straw man fallacy.  How would a voter ID requirement prevent a majority of people from voting?  Ridiculous.

You have invented an entirely new definition of majority rule and it does not sound Constitutional or even Democratic to me.

Dude.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-c-wilson/public-opinion-on-voter-i_b_1683873.html

Write4U - 02 September 2012 06:05 PM

Bryan,
Speaking of those votes, do you think calling the election in Florida in 2000 prior to polls closing in the Panhandle (Central time zone) may have caused voter disenfranchisement?

No, not counting votes was an exercise in disenfranchisement.

Help me distinguish between your response and some weird version of the tu quoque fallacy (A is not voter disenfranchisement because B is voter disenfranchisement).

Ballots that were cast were not counted at the discretion of the then Republican governor.

Incorrect.

p.s. she was rewarded with a nice cushy job in the administration afterward.

Florida’s secretary of state (who serves as supervisor of elections) remained secretary of state following the election, but won election to the House of Representatives in 2002 (later losing an election for senate after which she dropped significantly from public view).  The Florida governor does not appoint Florida’s representative delegation in the Congress.

Where do you get this stuff?

Show me a bipartisan majority that wishes to install New voter identification requirements which will disenfranchise a significant portion of the Democratic majority.

p.s. sorry I had the title wrong. Nevertheless she was Republican and ruled in favor of the Republicans. After years of analyzing the facts, it is clear that Gore would have won, legitimately, if it was not for stopping the vote count and disenfranchising thousands from exercising their right to vote.

Write4U - 02 September 2012 06:45 PM

Show me a bipartisan majority that wishes to install New voter identification requirements which will disenfranchise a significant portion of the Democratic majority.

The graph was right there on the HuffPo article I linked, minus your spin about “a significant portion” of the supposed Democratic majority.

When the issue was framed as keeping eligible voters fom voting the idea has 69 percent in favor with 31 percent opposed (by far the frame with the worst numbers).  By party, 99 percent of Republicans favored the idea with that same frame while 43 percent of Democrats favored the idea.  That’s a bipartisan majority.

Though if I remember rightly the Koch brothers long ago put a mind-control chip in Arianna Huffington’s cerebral cortex and they continue to control messaging from the Huffington Post right on through the present day.  So you should probably reject all the data at the link.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-c-wilson/public-opinion-on-voter-i_b_1683873.html

Got any numbers identifying the size of that “significant portion”?  Or do we get to assume it doesn’t exist unless you prove it?

Brian your arguments in attempt to justify the clearly unjust “solution” to prevent the “possible” but unlikely, improbable, and far-fetched notion that there exists some amount of voter fraud which could “possibly” (though not likely and very improbably) change the outcomes of elections, are tiresome, but more importantly, misguided.  The unjust “solution” that you are attempting to justify, is clearly aimed at disenfranchising a segment of voters who should be allowed to vote.  There can be no reasonable doubt that this is politically motivated and that the Republicans are doing it in order to gain an advantage by doing so.  You should be ashamed of so persistently taking part in this injustice by trying so desperately to justify it.

Write4U - 02 September 2012 06:45 PM

Show me a bipartisan majority that wishes to install New voter identification requirements which will disenfranchise a significant portion of the Democratic majority.

p.s. sorry I had the title wrong. Nevertheless she was Republican and ruled in favor of the Republicans. After years of analyzing the facts, it is clear that Gore would have won, legitimately, if it was not for stopping the vote count and disenfranchising thousands from exercising their right to vote.

You just don’t know what you’re talking about.  Gore would have lost with the votes from the four counties he selected, and in any case that would have represented a gross difficulty with the principle of equal protection (Gore apparently had no particular reason for challenging the vote totals in those counties other than Democratic majorities—he was fishing for votes).  The remedy for Gore fashioned by the Florida Supreme Court would have probably produced a win for Bush, adn it was condemned on equal protection grounds by seven of the nine Supreme Court justices (failed to recount overvotes).

Only via a recount that went beyond the Florida Supreme Court’s remedy did Gore have any realistic shot of winning, and that margin was well within the total number of votes that were disenfranchised from the Panhandle (early call of the election) plus a large list of apparent felons who voted illegally in the election:

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/02/us/contesting-vote-felon-voters-hundred-felons-florida-voted-illegally-newspaper.html

I’ve heard a rumor that Karl Rove has hypnotized Pinch Sulzberger as well as the entire staff of the Miami Herald, so you should probably disregard this evidence.

The reality is we’ll never know who actually won the vote in Florida in 2000.  The vote was too close and there’s too much uncertainty about both the ballots (punch card results change the more the cards are handled) and the illegality of some of the election participants.

http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the-florida-recount-of-2000/

Excuses for dismissing Annenberg Fact Check available on request.  Use PM.

Of course the bipartisan majority would vote for “voter identification” in general. But ask that same majority if they would disenfranchise a ninety year old, who has a historical record of voting for some 65 years in order to prevent a vague possibility of voter fraud.
The keyword here is NEW voter laws, introduced a few months before the elections, still without providing reasonable (note the word) evidence that voter fraud is a common occurrence.
What if the picture ID is very old and the person does not look like the picture anymore? Voter Fraud!

I say, use any identification which establishes “personhood”.
SS card, Medicare card, drivers license (note they take your picture while applying for a drivers license), proof of residence, even an affidavit by a reliable witness, should all be acceptable. It has been historically and there is no need to change this requirement for a suspicion of conspiracy to commit voter fraud.

TimB - 02 September 2012 07:08 PM

Brian your arguments in attempt to justify the clearly unjust “solution” to prevent the “possible” but unlikely, improbable, and far-fetched notion that there exists some amount of voter fraud which could “possibly” (though not likely and very improbably) change the outcomes of elections, are tiresome, but more importantly, misguided.  The unjust “solution” that you are attempting to justify, is clearly aimed at disenfranchising a segment of voters who should be allowed to vote.  There can be no reasonable doubt that this is politically motivated and that the Republicans are doing it in order to gain an advantage by doing so.  You should be ashamed of so persistently taking part in this injustice by trying so desperately to justify it.

Yes, I think you’ve put your finger right on the reason why 43 percent of Democrats favor voter ID laws when framed as limiting the ability of legitimate voters to vote.  Those Democrats are trying to swing the election to the Republicans.  It’s so obvious.

Write4U - 02 September 2012 07:12 PM

Of course the bipartisan majority would vote for “voter identification” in general. But ask that same majority if they would disenfranchise a ninety year old, who has a historical record of voting for some 65 years in order to prevent a vague possibility of voter fraud.
The keyword here is NEW voter laws, introduced a few months before the elections, still without providing reasonable (note the word) evidence that voter fraud is a common occurrence.

Read the flipping Huffpo piece all the way through and look up “framing,” for goodness’ sake.

Everyone favors voter ID laws. But I should hope that no one favors voter laws that disenfranchise a segment of the population.
Is that not what the 15th Amendment was all about? Oddly, at that time, it was the Republicans who sought to have restrictions removed.