pacino wrote:The point of the post was about taking away the right to vote. Do you think this should be done? It was not about how i worded things. Nowhere did i suggest an on-site poll tax. But, as always, this devolves into how one said something rather than thier point. Guess i aint smrt nuff for this thread. Ill bow out.

Why jump on people adding the nuance/fact lacking from your post, while you made no correction when people were debating whether such a tax would be a violation of the 24th amendment.

I apologize for working for a time and was unavle to get away to come back onto bsg.

this is why we ant have nice things

I thought I'd give you the courtesy of responding to your other points, so you wouldnt feel like I jumped all over the wording of one.

pacino wrote:Felons in iowa and florida have now lost the right to vote.

Felons can only vote in 2 states from prison: Maine and Vermont (though this source is from April 2010, it's all I could find). Richardson v Ramirez upheld the Constitutionality of preventing convicted felons from voting. Some states allow parolees to vote, others make felons wait until a certain time period after release, and a few make it permanent depending on the offense.

18% of young people and 25% of blacks do not have an id. 31 states are now pushing voter id laws to restrict voting.

18% of voters over 65 also do not have valid photo ID. This groups tends to vote Republican, no? I agree that net-net, photo-id laws would favor Republicans. However, I feel people should be required to show some kind of proof of who they are. I should not be able to go to my polling station and say "John Smith 123 Main st" because I know my friend John at 123 Main st, a registered Republican, does not feel like voting today. It would never be caught. You'd have to be stupid to be caught committing voter fraud in a state without ID requirements.

HEREare the current state requirements.

The elderly shouldnt have to show id either. We're legislating away a non-problem while creating a new one, in my view.

pacino wrote:I fail to see what i said was wrong.

NO ONE VOTES IN TWO STATES. It's a completely useless comment by that guy just to raise the ire of his base against those damn illegally votin' students. That you work so hard to 'find bs' and only see bs in the way i said it says more about you than me and how much i lie.

When I went to reregister to vote in New Jersey in 2009 after moving home from DC, I discovered that I had been registered to vote in New Jersey all along. While I didn't vote in two states, I apparently could have.

I think any state that makes having a valid photo ID a requirement of voting should have a free photo ID option for people to get. I'm not sure if that's required at the moment. But I think states should require people to have photo ID when voting. ID from state universities could count as could valid ID from public high schools if they give them out to assuage some of the young voter problems.

Certainly, though, you realize the potential unintended consequences of allowing non-state-issued ID's to function as valid voter ID's.

JFLNYC wrote:Certainly, though, you realize the potential unintended consequences of allowing non-state-issued ID's to function as valid voter ID's.

Such as?

Why not have the local Wa-Wa issue them?

jerseyhoya wrote:

JFLNYC wrote:Certainly, though, you realize the potential unintended consequences of allowing non-state-issued ID's to function as valid voter ID's.

Such as?

another revenue stream for U of Phoenix

I'm not really sure how you get from state universities to Wawa or the University of Phoenix.

I'd add public community colleges to my list though. Any public institution of learning funded partially or completely by state or local taxes where state gov't can have confidence in and oversight over the procedure the school uses to issue the photo ID.

School IDs don't usually have addresses on them so they aren't as strong of a piece of ID as a drivers license. But I think they would be a reasonable compromise if people think young voters are unfairly targeted by voter ID laws, and they'd be a significant improvement over the status quo where you just assert who you are and then get to vote.

jerseyhoya wrote:I'm not really sure how you get from state universities to Wawa or the University of Phoenix.

For the former, you could probably just walk and for the latter, just visit them online.

I know that university towns have long practiced techniques to discourage students from voting. In many university towns, the interests of students are rather at odds with the interests of permanent residents, and those permanent resident are not wild about giving students influence over the community's government. Anecdotes of suppressing student vote turnout are common, and probably date back to the establishment of the College of William and Mary.

Thus, what some of these efforts may do, by creating very clear criteria regarding what students need to do in order to vote may in fact have the opposite effect of what the sponsors intend. Places that have quite effective techniques for suppressing student voter turnout may find those techniques cannot be used or will become ineffective.

Also, some context is useful here as well--motor voter and other efforts (in Arkansas, we have early voting for two weeks prior to election day) to increase voter turnout have been the order of the day for some time now. Lengthy residence periods for voter registration are largely gone (if I recall correctly, some jurisdictions could require residency of 6 months or more back in the bad old days).

To be sure, I do think the whole "voter fraud" problem is a chimera, and the idea really is make it tougher for Democratic constituents to vote, and I oppose such efforts. I just think in the long run it will do more harm than good to the Republican party to fight on this issue.

The historical data pretty clearly show you win elections and build permanent majorities by getting new voters out to the polls.

TenuredVulture wrote:Also, some context is useful here as well--motor voter and other efforts (in Arkansas, we have early voting for two weeks prior to election day) to increase voter turnout have been the order of the day for some time now. Lengthy residence periods for voter registration are largely gone (if I recall correctly, some jurisdictions could require residency of 6 months or more back in the bad old days).

To be sure, I do think the whole "voter fraud" problem is a chimera, and the idea really is make it tougher for Democratic constituents to vote, and I oppose such efforts. I just think in the long run it will do more harm than good to the Republican party to fight on this issue.

The historical data pretty clearly show you win elections and build permanent majorities by getting new voters out to the polls.

I'm (basically) a Democrat at this point. and it seems COMPLETELY reasonable to make someone show an ID to prove who they are before they vote. Is voter fraud a rampant problem? I'm pretty sure it's not, but pacino, you can't cite cases of people getting caught because it's basically not something police/authorities are actively looking to prevent. About the only convincing evidence you can give me is that if it was such a systematic problem that involved hundred or thousands of people, presumably SOMEONE would be talking about it.

A lot of Democratic initiatives are simply too complicated/nuanced and conversely that's what's so good about many Republican proposals - they seem completely reasonable. Why shouldn't someone show an ID, you have to show an ID to get to drink alcohol, why not to prove who you are on something more important like voting? And anyone who's ever been to the polls sees how very very easy it would be to claim to be someone else. I mean, do Democrats just leave their wallet in an unlocked car in plain view and just assume everything will be okay? Just because something's never been a problem before doesn't mean you shouldn't take some steps to fix it.

jerseyhoya wrote:I'm not really sure how you get from state universities to Wawa or the University of Phoenix.

because we didn't start with state universities - and neither did you, technically

Jerz wrote: I think states should require people to have photo ID when voting

jeff2sf wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:Also, some context is useful here as well--motor voter and other efforts (in Arkansas, we have early voting for two weeks prior to election day) to increase voter turnout have been the order of the day for some time now. Lengthy residence periods for voter registration are largely gone (if I recall correctly, some jurisdictions could require residency of 6 months or more back in the bad old days).

To be sure, I do think the whole "voter fraud" problem is a chimera, and the idea really is make it tougher for Democratic constituents to vote, and I oppose such efforts. I just think in the long run it will do more harm than good to the Republican party to fight on this issue.

The historical data pretty clearly show you win elections and build permanent majorities by getting new voters out to the polls.

I'm (basically) a Democrat at this point. and it seems COMPLETELY reasonable to make someone show an ID to prove who they are before they vote. Is voter fraud a rampant problem? I'm pretty sure it's not, but pacino, you can't cite cases of people getting caught because it's basically not something police/authorities are actively looking to prevent. About the only convincing evidence you can give me is that if it was such a systematic problem that involved hundred or thousands of people, presumably SOMEONE would be talking about it.

A lot of Democratic initiatives are simply too complicated/nuanced and conversely that's what's so good about many Republican proposals - they seem completely reasonable. Why shouldn't someone show an ID, you have to show an ID to get to drink alcohol, why not to prove who you are on something more important like voting? And anyone who's ever been to the polls sees how very very easy it would be to claim to be someone else. I mean, do Democrats just leave their wallet in an unlocked car in plain view and just assume everything will be okay? Just because something's never been a problem before doesn't mean you shouldn't take some steps to fix it.

I just finished reading Caro's Means of Ascent, the volume of his 4-part LBJ bio in which he recounts in excruciating yet absorbing detail Johnson's 1948 heist of the Texas Senate primary from Coke Stephenson. In TX at that time if you won a Democratic primary you had almost certainly won the election.

Basically, it reminds me that many an election in the US has been impacted by all kinds of shenanigans, and suggests to me that if the "right" people want to steal an election, they probably have a good shot at it. Further, those who would do it are going to be at the counting end of the ballot box. "Retail" voter hijinks are not likely to swipe any election. Any voter ID gimmick more a bar to voting than to election fraud.

Smoothie, I'm not going to decide any vote for any politician by whether or not they support voter IDs. It's so far down the list of priorities for me it's laughable. But I was just weighing in on my opinion that it seems eminently reasonable to ask someone to show ID. It also seems eminently reasonable to fund whatever program we need to in order to make sure people can get the IDs they need, even if we have to go to them. EMINENTLY REASONABLE.

Because voting is a fundamental right, and purchasing alcohol and even driving a car are not.

What types of ID are these proposed initiatives requiring?