Voter ID = discrimination -- admitted

[Jolly_Penguin]

I repeat: Universal single payer health care solves this. You get a health card so you can go to the hospital. Everybody will be motivated to get one, so everybody will have one when the election rolls around.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't know what thread you think you're reading because I've already brought up a case of one of our own members.

He's not ignorant, he's not stupid. He's also never going to have valid ID because it's not worth the major effort it would take for him to get it.

You're thinking it's just a matter of going down to the DMV and getting it. So long as you already have the paperwork of life, it is. For someone who doesn't, though, it's nowhere near as simple. DMV doesn't just hand you one without some proof of who you are--other ID or a birth certificate. You have nothing and want that birth certificate? Oops--you need ID to get it unless you're doing it in person.

And that's supposing it even exists. Elsewhere on the web I ran into a woman who wanted a passport--but couldn't get one. She had been a home birth/home "schooled"/parents never got a SS# and she can't prove who she is. (Some of these fundie-Christian abusive parents who think women are simply there to be wives.) She had escaped her upbringing but was still in catch-22 hell over the paperwork ramifications.

Why do you believe it is harder for a poor person to have a valid birth certificate than a rich person?? Are you saying there are so many poor people that have babies outside of hospitals, never enroll them into school, never seek healthcare for them, never use them as a dependent to reduce their taxes (poor people try to pay MORE?)?

Birth certificates cost money. If you don't have any ID it's going to cost you even more.

Elsewhere on the web I ran into a woman...

Anecdotal irrelevance... Maybe she was one of those 'insane' ones that really should not be voting anyway. Maybe she is full of shit.

The point is what works for most people doesn't work for everyone.

 

[dismal]

The point is what works for most people doesn't work for everyone.

So, that's where the trusty old utility bill comes in and proves they are who whey say they are?

 

[Malintent]

I repeat: Universal single payer health care solves this. You get a health card so you can go to the hospital. Everybody will be motivated to get one, so everybody will have one when the election rolls around.

So you agree with me that getting an ID is not discriminatory against poor people, because they could if it would get them affordable (or free) healthcare. Right?

 

[Malintent]

Why do you believe it is harder for a poor person to have a valid birth certificate than a rich person?? Are you saying there are so many poor people that have babies outside of hospitals, never enroll them into school, never seek healthcare for them, never use them as a dependent to reduce their taxes (poor people try to pay MORE?)?

Birth certificates cost money. If you don't have any ID it's going to cost you even more.

Elsewhere on the web I ran into a woman...

Anecdotal irrelevance... Maybe she was one of those 'insane' ones that really should not be voting anyway. Maybe she is full of shit.

The point is what works for most people doesn't work for everyone.

I agree with that... the max speed limit in NY for any road regardless of driver ability, safety of car, or road condition, is 55 mph. That does not work for me. But.. too bad for me. The gun laws in NY disallow me to use a high capacity magazine at a target range... so I have to constantly reload tiny magazines, and I pay for that extra time... oh well, that doesn't work for me either...

Can you site an example of a law or procedure that works for EVERYBODY? Curious if you think such a thing even exists, if that is the reason for not requiring identification to cast a vote.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Birth certificates cost money. If you don't have any ID it's going to cost you even more.

Elsewhere on the web I ran into a woman...

Anecdotal irrelevance... Maybe she was one of those 'insane' ones that really should not be voting anyway. Maybe she is full of shit.

The point is what works for most people doesn't work for everyone.

I agree with that... the max speed limit in NY for any road regardless of driver ability, safety of car, or road condition, is 55 mph. That does not work for me. But.. too bad for me. The gun laws in NY disallow me to use a high capacity magazine at a target range... so I have to constantly reload tiny magazines, and I pay for that extra time... oh well, that doesn't work for me either...

Can you site an example of a law or procedure that works for EVERYBODY? Curious if you think such a thing even exists, if that is the reason for not requiring identification to cast a vote.

The point is that fraud at the voting booth is basically a non-issue. Thus the benefit of a voter ID law is minimal. The cost, however--we have multiple Republicans admitting the purpose is discriminatory. The downside is far in excess of the upside, toss it in the trash.

 

[Malintent]

How can voter fraud be a non-issue if we don't require IDs to vote?

It is kind of like saying that no one is stealing from Wal-Mart, as long as the inventory is never counted.

 

[dismal]

How can voter fraud be a non-issue if we don't require IDs to vote?

It is kind of like saying that no one is stealing from Wal-Mart, as long as the inventory is never counted.

"Voter fraud is a non-issue" is really more of a religious incantation than a fact based argument. There are multiple examples of voter fraud that can be cited, though you currently have to be a stumbling idiot to get caught.

http://dailysignal.com/2015/05/22/ydont-believe-voter-fraud-happens-heres-some-examples/

The 21st century beckons, but some invent fabulous stories to resist its pull.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

With voter turn out so low in the USA, why is voter fraud an issue at all? Shouldn't you all be more concerned about getting people to the polls rather than keeping them from the polls?

 

[marc]

How can voter fraud be a non-issue if we don't require IDs to vote?

It is kind of like saying that no one is stealing from Wal-Mart, as long as the inventory is never counted.

"Voter fraud is a non-issue" is really more of a religious incantation than a fact based argument. There are multiple examples of voter fraud that can be cited, though you currently have to be a stumbling idiot to get caught.

http://dailysignal.com/2015/05/22/ydont-believe-voter-fraud-happens-heres-some-examples/

The 21st century beckons, but some invent fabulous stories to resist its pull.

I noticed that Voter ID would have absolutely no effect on most of those cases. Bribing voters, absentee ballots, “assistance” that told voters who to vote for, person registered when they shouldn't have been. All of those issues would not be affected in any way by the use of IDs. Of the in-person fraud, proper screening on registration takes care of most of it. There is no evidence that any kind of voter fraud that IDs would affect happens in any significant amount, certainly not enough to affect an election.

Imagine what it would take to actually have an effect. Get 100 people to have phony registrations in 10 districts, and on election day they do a lot of driving to get to each polling place, all for a total of 900 extra votes. Logistically it would be hard to do, and to keep it a secret would be nearly impossible, let alone with enough people to have any real effect.

Of much greater effect on elections is when thousands of voters are wrongfully purged from voting rolls. Don't hear anything from the ID supporters when 50,000 people are prevented from voting.

 

[Elixir]

With voter turn out so low in the USA, why is voter fraud an issue at all?

Because if it's not an issue, the voting rights of a whole lot of people who are not likely to vote republican will be ensured.
If they could, the repugs would restrict the right to vote to uneducated white males over 40. Because everyone knows that uneducated white males over 40 should be trusted to choose our representatives.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

How can voter fraud be a non-issue if we don't require IDs to vote?

It is kind of like saying that no one is stealing from Wal-Mart, as long as the inventory is never counted.

It would become apparent that people were stealing--the computer says the stuff exists but it's not to be found.

As for the supposed vote fraud--it would sometimes come to light. Trying to register as someone who doesn't exist in the databases will raise red flags. You'll have to steal an identity--and when they also vote...

The only way to actually pull it off reliably is to vote a real identity of someone who you know isn't actually going to vote. That's the real vote fraud in this country--and it's all absentee, something that won't be covered by the voter ID measures. (Nursing homes, people voting their spouses' ballot etc.)

Now, there are repeated reports of fraudulent registrations but when you look into it it's obviously people who were paid by the registration making up fake ones to pad their paycheck. ACORN even knew this was happening and flagged the likely fakes for the registrar but they would have been in big trouble had they not sent the paperwork in. Those weren't going to make it past the registrar, nobody was going to try to vote them. It was purely a moneymaking scheme, not vote fraud.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

How can voter fraud be a non-issue if we don't require IDs to vote?

It is kind of like saying that no one is stealing from Wal-Mart, as long as the inventory is never counted.

"Voter fraud is a non-issue" is really more of a religious incantation than a fact based argument. There are multiple examples of voter fraud that can be cited, though you currently have to be a stumbling idiot to get caught.

http://dailysignal.com/2015/05/22/ydont-believe-voter-fraud-happens-heres-some-examples/

The 21st century beckons, but some invent fabulous stories to resist its pull.

Lets look more carefully.

Case #1: Campaign workers bribing voters. ID won't help here.

Case #2: Real voters, wrong address. ID might have helped but the mismatch was caught anyway, no need for it.

Case #3: Absentee ballots--the real issue with vote fraud.

Case #4: Absentee ballots.

Case #5: Short on details but again, campaign workers. ID won't help.

Case #6: Election officials.

Case #7: Not eligible to vote. ID won't help.

Note that of these 7 there is only one where a voter ID measure would have been of any help and in that one the system caught them anyway.

If that's the best the need-ID crowd can come up with we don't need ID.

 

[Jarhyn]

Despite the persistent denial from those insisting on Voter ID, the truth has always been obvious to everyone involved. It's not at all surprising that some of the Voter ID backers would forget that they're supposed to lie about the real motivations all the time when nobody but the rubes were ever fooled by it.

Republicans, the Grand Ol' Party.

Yeah, the truth is this is the 21st century and most people will think you're a batshit crazy luddite if you think it's some massive struggle for someone to get an ID.

Actually, it would make you a batshit crazy jackass to think it's easy, particularly for someone who works a regular job and has no driver's license.

Perhaps the most onerous responsibility I have as an adult is associated with my ID. I went about 4 months without a valid ID last time my learner's permit expired because between the hours of the DMV, the wait times, the locations, and my own schedule, it just wasn't possible to get it fixed. I ended up taking a vacation day (a precious thing, indeed) to get it taken care of, which was mostly wasted because some jackass at the county clerk's office forgot to stamp my divorce papers.

When you work a 9-5 job, or for that matter a job approaching 9-5, and the DMV stops seeing people at 5:00, it can be nearly impossible to get seen. It takes hours to get there from where I (and most of the African Americans in Minneapolis) live, and the license testing centers are even more of a pain in the ass; it can take hours to be seen, and if you are working more than one part time job or attending classes, there simply isn't time to fit it in in those limited hours.

You forget that it isn't just a matter of paying for the damn thing, it's a matter of getting to a DMV (not easy, often expensive), finding time to go (not easy, sometimes impossible), payment (again, not easy), and then waiting and hoping you don't have to wait outside the schedule window (the hardest part, for me).

This could be resolved by adding new service centers, particularly within close access of poor neighborhoods and changing the DMV hours of operation such that they stay open until 10:00 on Thursday and/or Friday, perhaps reducing daytime hours.

 

[ronburgundy]

How can voter fraud be a non-issue if we don't require IDs to vote?

It is kind of like saying that no one is stealing from Wal-Mart, as long as the inventory is never counted.

"Voter fraud is a non-issue" is really more of a religious incantation than a fact based argument. There are multiple examples of voter fraud that can be cited, though you currently have to be a stumbling idiot to get caught.

http://dailysignal.com/2015/05/22/ydont-believe-voter-fraud-happens-heres-some-examples/

The 21st century beckons, but some invent fabulous stories to resist its pull.

The "fabulous story" is that voter ID will prevent more than a couple minor instances of voter impersonation per election, a number many thousand of times less than the number of registered voters it will prohibit from voting.

While catching an impersonating voter on site without an ID law is difficult, discovering that an instance of such fraud occurred is very easy and would be discovered about 60% of the time that such fraud is engaged in. That is because such fraud can only happen when impersonator gives the name of a voter on the registrar at the specific location where the real voter has a 60% chance (average voter turnout) of showing up themselves and giving the same name. That would trigger a fraud report. In fact, unless the impersonator is first in line at the pollls, they run a risk that the real voter was already there and thus they will get caught, which is why all empirical evidence shows that such fraud is rare.

Studies of all known reports of potential fraud between 2000 and 2010 found only 10 instances of voter impersonation, which given the 60% chance of such fraud being reported (not the impersonator getting caught) puts the best estimate of total attempts at such fraud at 16 over 12 years, or 1.3 per year for the entire country.

That is why your link which scrounged for any fraud cases it could find did not actually find a single instance of voter impersonation at the polls, the only type that would be impacted by voter ID laws.

The infinitely more probable fraud that could actually change election outcomes is via corruption of electronic voting systems, yet the "voter ID" ideologues show no concern about this, thus revealing the only real motive is preventing poor people from voting because they disproportionately favor Democrats. The GOP is more confident in its ability to use electronic fraud in its favor, so it is doing nothing to curb it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

While catching an impersonating voter on site without an ID law is difficult, discovering that an instance of such fraud occurred is very easy and would be discovered about 60% of the time that such fraud is engaged in. That is because such fraud can only happen when impersonator gives the name of a voter on the registrar at the specific location where the real voter has a 60% chance (average voter turnout) of showing up themselves and giving the same name. That would trigger a fraud report. In fact, unless the impersonator is first in line at the pollls, they run a risk that the real voter was already there and thus they will get caught, which is why all empirical evidence shows that such fraud is rare.

Yeah. We had a teabagger here who decided to prove how easy it was to vote twice. To her great surprise she got caught.

 

[Malintent]

How can voter fraud be a non-issue if we don't require IDs to vote?

It is kind of like saying that no one is stealing from Wal-Mart, as long as the inventory is never counted.

It would become apparent that people were stealing--the computer says the stuff exists but it's not to be found.

As for the supposed vote fraud--it would sometimes come to light. Trying to register as someone who doesn't exist in the databases will raise red flags. You'll have to steal an identity--and when they also vote...

The only way to actually pull it off reliably is to vote a real identity of someone who you know isn't actually going to vote. That's the real vote fraud in this country--and it's all absentee, something that won't be covered by the voter ID measures. (Nursing homes, people voting their spouses' ballot etc.)

Now, there are repeated reports of fraudulent registrations but when you look into it it's obviously people who were paid by the registration making up fake ones to pad their paycheck. ACORN even knew this was happening and flagged the likely fakes for the registrar but they would have been in big trouble had they not sent the paperwork in. Those weren't going to make it past the registrar, nobody was going to try to vote them. It was purely a moneymaking scheme, not vote fraud.

Well, you agree you would need to "check the computer".. which is precisely equal to "counting the inventory"... I didn't mean physically touch the items to count them... the computer would count them and that is what we are both talking about....

So, common comment about that list of known voter fraud cases is that there are not many related to Voter Identification... So I ask AGAIN:

How can there be reported cases of voter ID fraud if there are no IDs associated with voting???

It is exactly like my example of a store being unable to identify shoplifting without first knowing what they had in stock and what they have in stock. (and what they sold, and what got broken, or otherwise sent back to manufacturer, etc..)

If it is hard to imagine a store not knowing these things, then you should also have a hard time imagining how we can having a voting democracy, but no means to ID a voter.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It would become apparent that people were stealing--the computer says the stuff exists but it's not to be found.

As for the supposed vote fraud--it would sometimes come to light. Trying to register as someone who doesn't exist in the databases will raise red flags. You'll have to steal an identity--and when they also vote...

The only way to actually pull it off reliably is to vote a real identity of someone who you know isn't actually going to vote. That's the real vote fraud in this country--and it's all absentee, something that won't be covered by the voter ID measures. (Nursing homes, people voting their spouses' ballot etc.)

Now, there are repeated reports of fraudulent registrations but when you look into it it's obviously people who were paid by the registration making up fake ones to pad their paycheck. ACORN even knew this was happening and flagged the likely fakes for the registrar but they would have been in big trouble had they not sent the paperwork in. Those weren't going to make it past the registrar, nobody was going to try to vote them. It was purely a moneymaking scheme, not vote fraud.

Well, you agree you would need to "check the computer".. which is precisely equal to "counting the inventory"... I didn't mean physically touch the items to count them... the computer would count them and that is what we are both talking about....

So, common comment about that list of known voter fraud cases is that there are not many related to Voter Identification... So I ask AGAIN:

How can there be reported cases of voter ID fraud if there are no IDs associated with voting???

It is exactly like my example of a store being unable to identify shoplifting without first knowing what they had in stock and what they have in stock. (and what they sold, and what got broken, or otherwise sent back to manufacturer, etc..)

If it is hard to imagine a store not knowing these things, then you should also have a hard time imagining how we can having a voting democracy, but no means to ID a voter.

If someone pretended to be someone else at the voting booth there would be a decent chance it would exposed due to the double vote. Since that's not happening we can conclude that there are very few people pretending to be someone else.

Registering to vote as someone who doesn't exist will most likely get your registration rejected by the registrar when it doesn't match a real person. If they think it's more than just paycheck padding by register-to-vote crusaders they've got an address to investigate from--again, the fraud rate will be quite low.

I still note the deafening silence from the right about the real source of vote fraud--absentee ballots.

 

[Malintent]

Well, you agree you would need to "check the computer".. which is precisely equal to "counting the inventory"... I didn't mean physically touch the items to count them... the computer would count them and that is what we are both talking about....

So, common comment about that list of known voter fraud cases is that there are not many related to Voter Identification... So I ask AGAIN:

How can there be reported cases of voter ID fraud if there are no IDs associated with voting???

It is exactly like my example of a store being unable to identify shoplifting without first knowing what they had in stock and what they have in stock. (and what they sold, and what got broken, or otherwise sent back to manufacturer, etc..)

If it is hard to imagine a store not knowing these things, then you should also have a hard time imagining how we can having a voting democracy, but no means to ID a voter.

If someone pretended to be someone else at the voting booth there would be a decent chance it would exposed due to the double vote. Since that's not happening we can conclude that there are very few people pretending to be someone else.

Registering to vote as someone who doesn't exist will most likely get your registration rejected by the registrar when it doesn't match a real person. If they think it's more than just paycheck padding by register-to-vote crusaders they've got an address to investigate from--again, the fraud rate will be quite low.

I still note the deafening silence from the right about the real source of vote fraud--absentee ballots.

Yes, the proxy issue (absentee ballots) does seem to be the serious issue, from what I have been reading about reported events.

Publicly traded companies offer proxy vote forms all the time to their shareholders for board of directors elections and the like. I wonder if fraud is as prevalent, or if they have that figured out somehow... I am out of my depth in that area.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If someone pretended to be someone else at the voting booth there would be a decent chance it would exposed due to the double vote. Since that's not happening we can conclude that there are very few people pretending to be someone else.

Registering to vote as someone who doesn't exist will most likely get your registration rejected by the registrar when it doesn't match a real person. If they think it's more than just paycheck padding by register-to-vote crusaders they've got an address to investigate from--again, the fraud rate will be quite low.

I still note the deafening silence from the right about the real source of vote fraud--absentee ballots.

Yes, the proxy issue (absentee ballots) does seem to be the serious issue, from what I have been reading about reported events.

And the voter ID rules do absolutely nothing about this type of fraud. It makes it very clear the intent is discriminatory rather than actually fixing problems.