News Aug 15, 2012 at 9:29 am

Comments

1
"According to police, that gunman involved in the deadly shoot-out at Texas A&M had multiple weapons which he fired randomly before being fatally killed."

That's a shame - "fatally" is the worst kind of killed.
2
Pretty sure that law requires everyone to show ID when they vote, not just minorities and college students.
3
So...where in the article linked does it say that the shooter was firing "randomly"?

I read, "Police would not say whose gunfire struck the six others in Monday's shootout..." & "Caffall then began shooting at other victims ... fired multiple rounds" - but the word "random" doesn't appear in the text of the source, and the quote by the chief sounds speculative.
4
I don't think it's per se unreasonable to require photo ID, but when you look at the context of the law, it's hard to credibly argue that the true purpose isn't to frustrate voting for the people most likely to vote heavily against the GOP.

In other states, voting occurs on one day, typically during business hours. For most normal people, voting is already something of a hardship, especially if you don't own a car, and/or you don't have a supportive employer.

When we keep adding hurdles that bear no rational basis to solving any real problem (all reports are that actual in-person voter fraud is vanishingly rare), we're just making it harder for regular poor and older people to vote. For a country based on "one person, one vote," cynically erecting impediments to voting (to the overwhelming advantage of one major political party of two) is about the most un-American thing you can do.

In a de-politicized system, any form of ID ought to be accepted - mail, photo, Social Security Card or whatever else. Even without ID, the person running the precinct voting should have the final call (they are potentially criminally liable for any fraud they abet). Even if someone is turned away based on ID, they should be able to cast a provisional ballot with some time frame to provide acceptable ID.

What's unacceptable about that, besides the fact that it would let more disadvantaged people without photo ID at the polls cast a vote in the country they're ostensibly citizens of?

5
Good afternoon, Steve! THANKS FOR THE HYUNARECTION!!!
6
@Colin - Limiting voting to one day's business hours seems unnecessarily inconvenient to me - I can't understand those rules.

But if you start with the assumptions that 1) voting is important and 2) every citizen has the right to vote, I don't see how you can avoid concluding that we need to make sure that citizens are the only people voting. Despite all the articles I've seen claiming the contrary, it is NOT hard to get ID. If someone doesn't have their shit together enough to already have ID, and can't be bothered to get it for the purposes of voting, then how much cogitation is that person really contributing to the electoral process?
7
@Reymont, In a democratic system, the right to vote is the most basic guarantee of a citizen. There is no rule that only smart, capable citizens get to vote.

Photo ID doesn't in any way guarantee that non-citizens can't vote. Further, it is already a crime for non-citizens to vote. I could register to vote in Oregon as a non-citizen with an address - all I need to do is be willing to lie on this page: https://secure.sos.state.or.us/orestar/vr/…

Finally, there is no evidence that non-citizens are committing voter fraud in any cognizable numbers, and as noted, photo ID does nothing on its own to solve the "problem."

Do you believe that these proposals every election year are always GOP because the GOP is the only party that legitimately cares about fraud, or is it more likely a nearly-naked attempt to disenfranchise Democratic votes?
8
@Reymont, I think assumptions 1 & 2 have been long established, but voter fraud in person is extremely rare because 1 vote, or even 1,000 votes, are inconsequential in 99.99% of government elections. Organizing 1,000 people to show up with anywhere is a logistical nightmare, and it would be impossible to keep their mouths shut if there’s a rouse.

In other words, if I were organizing a fraudulent election, having people show up to polls pretending to be someone else would probably be the least effective way to rig the election. Ask the CIA.

These asinine barriers are really about inconveniences to slow the process down, thereby limiting the total number of people who vote that day. Example: if one voting block can process 600 votes per hour (10 every minute, or 1 vote every 6 seconds), you can greatly reduce the number of people who are capable of voting at that block by taking an extra 12 seconds to check someone’s ID; so only 300 could vote in one hour. Really, you won’t even get 300 an hour, because the line is going to be so long that people are discouraged, and you would end an 8-hour day with 2,000 votes instead of the possible 4,800. Professionally I am a consultant that looks at business processes in this manner: if you take a bunch of small impediments and compound them, you have very serious efficiency problems.

A truly free state would be trying to increase voter participation, not decreasing or limiting it. I hope that more states pick up on Oregon’s vote-by-mail awesomeness. What we should be focusing on is vote-by-internet or vote-by-phone technology, which can be more dependable and more difficult to fake. There’s a TED talk on eVoting being impossible to rig, if you want to look it up.
9
Showing ID to prove that you are a citizen just isn't an unreasonable barrier to voting. That's got to be the absolute minimum level of effort we could possibly make. I can't believe we haven't required that all along. Are you awake? Are you self-aware? Are you a citizen? If someone fails any of those questions, they shouldn't be voting.

As for all the what-does-the-GOP-REALLY-hope-to-achieve-by-this comments....why not turn that lens the other way? Could the liberals be fighting these ideas because illegal immigrants are more likely to illegally vote for them? No, of course not. You're all saints, and the other people are all Machiavellian evil doers. Fie to you both.
10
I will concur with others. It is the GOP trying to disenfranchise people who would not vote for them anyway.

My take on id's for voting, based on the difficulty of establishing an ID in Oregon after my Missouri ID expired is an attempt to purge people from the rolls without actually purging them. When I established ID I needed: 1. Birth Cert (had to mail another state to get a copy which took weeks) 2. Social Security card 3. Some other Legal Document (I had to use my marriage certificate) 4. Something with proof of address. In a lot of cases it's an attempt hinder the ability to vote or to establish a "poll tax" without legitimately creating one because that would be illegal.

It has been well documented that in WI when they established the id rule, the DMV was not instructing people that they did not have to pay for a state ID if it was for voting purposes. They also severely cut back hours of the DMV offices in districts that tend to vote for Democrats.

What people should me WAY more concerned with is actual election fraud committed by the people who are overseeing them.

If you want to look into it further check out:
http://www.gregpalast.com/ Author of The Best Election that Money Can Buy
http://www.bradblog.com/
or even
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

to name a few.
11
Also never accept a provisional ballot, if you do you should have just stayed home for that election because your vote will not be counted.
12
@Raymont, in my above comments I didn't claim one side was exclusive in trying to create voter barriers. I don't vote for D's or R's, as today they mean the same thing: screwing over the average person so their cronies can stay on top. Obviously this includes supporting barriers to voting on both sides, and there’s historic evidence of this. Though, I will admit that contemporary Republicans are usually more intelligent and organized that Democrats, so they’re more capable of doing this. Further, I do believe Republicans conspire and actively disadvantage certain voters simply because poor people tend to vote for Democrats, and it’s easier to do this to poor people than middle class people.

"Showing ID to prove that you are a citizen just isn't an unreasonable barrier to voting."

It is unreasonable if only certain people have to do it (students or minorities), or if only certain areas have to do it (i.e. poor communities). The strategy of creating barriers is ineffective if applied equally to all areas and people, assuming all voting areas have the equal capability to process votes. In practice, there’s more voting booths in certain areas than other areas, for deliberate reasons.

Honestly, just look into the methods the CIA has used to rig elections in other countries. It’s actually really easy to rig the US national election, as the real decisions comes down to about one-dozen swing counties in the whole country, and several states have only one or two counties that matter. If you have the financing, you can keep an agent on your payroll, send them in to infiltrate the oversight committee for the district, stuff ballot boxes, or otherwise rig the votes. There’s pretty reliable evidence of this happening during each national election going back decades. Remember Nixon? He was paying government agents to break into the opposing party’s HQ to steal strategy documents, I simply can’t imagine a more egregious method of undermining our democracy. Do you think Nixon would have paid some of those good ole’ boys to stuff some ballots down in the swing states? Personally, I don’t think about voting fraud as theoretical, I think it’s regular business, but ID checks are not going to fix that problem.

Fie to me? Fie to you, Sir! FIE TO YOU!

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