Why we need Voter ID laws

[GeorgiaDon 340]

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Department stores are not willing to spend $10,000 to prevent $5,000 worth of shoplifting. I don't really think that we should be willing to disenfranchise 10,000 people to prevent 5,000 from voting illegally.

But if 8,000 of the 10,000 disenfranchised votes and 4,000 of the 5,000 illegal votes are likely to go to party A, it might be very much in the interest of party B to push the issue.

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[wmw999 2,166]

Well, yeah, but if you just say that, people will disagree and the discussion is over. Gotta suck them in.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[davjohns 1]

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And evidence shows, has happened.

once, twice, twelve times? I put out a threshold I believe to be meaningful, based on the simple error rate of the voting machines. It remains clear that this is a much more serious problem then rare voter fraud issues.

I provided links. One woman in LA was convicted of at least ten fraudulent votes. Another state had convicted over 50 people. Please show me evidence of those who have been disenfranchised, please.

I know it just wouldnt be right to kill all the stupid people that we meet..

But do you think it would be appropriate to just remove all of the warning labels and let nature take its course.

[davjohns 1]

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http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2012/05/world-war-ii-vet-in-broward-on-list-of-potential-noncitizen-voters.html#storylink=cpy

one example of where it is going.....

It's not that there is NO fraud. It is not worth spending millions and disenfranchising perhaps tens of thousands of voters in hopes of stopping a few hundred.

For all the right wingers - just how much of your tax dollars are you willing to spend to make voter fraud go away? An unlimited amount of money? Billions? Trillions? It's a case of diminishing returns.

SHOW ME THE FRAUD and I will show you the money.

If you are still guessing, then I expect the problem is pretty fuckin' small.

We know voter fraud is happening. We can certainly deduce that requiring ID would either eliminate or help identify it. At the moment, it is not possible to quantify it. Yet, I notice people are quantifying voter fraud as small numbers and disenfranchisement as large numbers (as you did here). May I have a cite of people who have actually been disenfranchised, please? I provided a cite to statistics showing that requiring ID in Georgia lead to INCREASED minority participation in elections. I would appreciate the courtesy of someone providing some quantifiable evidence that voter ID will disenfanchise the claimed tens of thousands. Thanks.

I know it just wouldnt be right to kill all the stupid people that we meet..

But do you think it would be appropriate to just remove all of the warning labels and let nature take its course.

[davjohns 1]

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That's really the question -- how many legitimate voters is it OK to prevent from voting, to prevent illegitimate voters?

Yeah, anyone can get ID. As long as they have time, transportation, money, and a certified copy of their birth certificate. It's a shame that there are a significant number of people for whom that's a problem.

Department stores are not willing to spend $10,000 to prevent $5,000 worth of shoplifting. I don't really think that we should be willing to disenfranchise 10,000 people to prevent 5,000 from voting illegally. It's not as clear a question, but that's really the discussion.

Wendy P.

Please fight fair, Wendy. I've come to expect that of you. Don't let me down now. I looked it up and reported earlier...the ID is free. There is not a money issue. It can be done by mail, so transportation is not an issue. I might give you a little something on the issue of a birth certificate, but I haven't verified that it is the only way to get the ID. Time? Really? Your arguments are usually better than to claim people will be disenfranchised because they don't have time to get the required ID. If they are working, they had to have ID to fill out the I9. If they are not working, they have time. And then you start throwing out numbers designed to support your argument? I know you don't have a basis for those numbers.

You know I love you. Fight fair now. :)

I know it just wouldnt be right to kill all the stupid people that we meet..

But do you think it would be appropriate to just remove all of the warning labels and let nature take its course.

[popsjumper 2]

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Potential is not the same thing as actually happening.

True enough. You sound so sure that fraud didn't play a role in that. How are you so sure?

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we best use our limited resources on actual problems, not imagined ones.

Again, true enough. And again, how do you know this is not a real problem?

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[kelpdiver 2]

post 179

[tkhayes 145]

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I provided links. One woman in LA was convicted of at least ten fraudulent votes. Another state had convicted over 50 people. Please show me evidence of those who have been disenfranchised, please.

Yes you did, and it does not show a problem worthy of consideration. 50 people ? wow...... certainly a marked percentage of AT LEAST 0.00003%

[tkhayes 145]

http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2012/mar/02/aclu-florida/shark-attacks-are-more-common-voter-fraud-florida/

[davjohns 1]

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I provided links. One woman in LA was convicted of at least ten fraudulent votes. Another state had convicted over 50 people. Please show me evidence of those who have been disenfranchised, please.

Yes you did, and it does not show a problem worthy of consideration. 50 people ? wow...... certainly a marked percentage of AT LEAST 0.00003%

And again, that was a quick google search. That's people who were convicted DESPITE the difficulty of detecting voter fraud when no ID is required. That's people who are committing voter fraud multiple times (10 that were PROVEN in one case). So, we can not logically say how bad the problem is. Your math was a cute attempt to make yours seem a rational argument, but you can not rationalize unknown numbers.

And again, please provide evidence of the numbers disenfranchised. Georgia seems to have brought more minorities to the polls by requiring ID. That seems a problem for your argument. Please address it.

I know it just wouldnt be right to kill all the stupid people that we meet..

But do you think it would be appropriate to just remove all of the warning labels and let nature take its course.

[davjohns 1]

Doing another search now for evidence of disenfranchised voters. Find the Georgia results, but I'll ignore them since they don't support you. I found an article that claimed an older woman was disenfranchised...turns out she just left her ID at home. I'm not sure I can count that.

Lots of articles that predict gloom and doom and disparage voter ID laws with no rational basis. Just lots of emotion.

One decries the disenfranchisement of transgenders and cites a poll that shows many of them don't get their ID changed. It doesn't say why they don't bother to get their ID changed. Again, hard to hold the system accountable for the failure of the individual.

I know it just wouldnt be right to kill all the stupid people that we meet..

But do you think it would be appropriate to just remove all of the warning labels and let nature take its course.

[matthewcline 0]

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Department stores are not willing to spend $10,000 to prevent $5,000 worth of shoplifting. I don't really think that we should be willing to disenfranchise 10,000 people to prevent 5,000 from voting illegally.

But if 8,000 of the 10,000 disenfranchised votes and 4,000 of the 5,000 illegal votes are likely to go to party A, it might be very much in the interest of party B to push the issue.

Don

Key word there.

Matt

An Instructors first concern is student safety.
So, start being safe, first!!!

[rehmwa 2]

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...the ID is free.

The ID is taxpayer funded - nothing is free

but maybe this is likely something worth funding, IMO - if everybody gets one, it's not preferential

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[davjohns 1]

It's late in the discussion and I apologize for missing this before; but I may have had an epiphany during my afternoon workout (I sometimes do good thinking during workouts).

I have been guilty of accepting a flawed moral equivalency in this debate. I now wish to correct it and submit it for comment.

To this point, I have personally been debating that I would much rather see someone commit voter fraud than to have someone else deprived of their right to vote. I gave it at least a 1:1 moral equivalency and really weighted it toward the disenfranchised voter. That was an emotional reaction and I was wrong. I'll explain:

1. A fraudulent vote disenfranchises someone else's vote. A fraudulent vote for Mitt Romney in the presidential election will invalidate a legitimate vote for Barack Obama. Therefore, a moral parity exists when someone is not allowed to vote due to lack of ID or someone's vote is invalidated due to a fraudulent vote. The fact that we know the name of the person not allowed to vote and the fraudulent vote disenfranchised an unknown individual is irrelevant.

2. The person whose vote was invalidated by a fraudulent vote can be presumed to have followed the rules. They registered, acquired appropriate ID (if required) and cast their vote within known parameters. The person whose vote was negated by lack of ID did not follow the rules (by definition). You can argue that it was not their fault, but at some basic level, they did not follow the rules. At this point, the moral parity begins to slip. How much and under what circumstances is clearly debatable. But there is a disparity there that must intellectually be recognized. The person whose vote in invalidated by fraud had no opportunity to make it right. The person without ID had control of the situation.

3. It is laughable to pretend that someone sets out to commit voter fraud and limits themselves to one instance per election. It can safely be presumed that one person committing voter fraud will do it on some economy of scale. I presented a link to a case where a woman was convicted of 10 counts. We can not logically know how many times she actually committed the crime. So, one person committing voter fraud disenfranchises an unknown number of legitimate voters. You can argue what that number is as long as you like. It would be ridiculous to argue the number is 1. Therefore, every discovery of voter fraud represents a greater number of disenfranchised votes than an instance of disenfranchisement due to lack of ID.

A. I think it is safe to say that everyone who gets caught in voter fraud represents some greater number of those participating in it.

B. I think it is equally safe to say that every known instance of voter disenfranchisement due to voter ID laws represents some greater number of those actually disenfranchised.

IF we allow A and B to be equivalent (for the sake of argument); and

If the logic of 1 thru 3 above are reasonably sound:

I think the intellectually honest person has to admit that the known cases of voter disenfranchisement due to lack of ID must be of a magnitude greater than the known cases of those participating in voter fraud in order for an argument against voter ID requirements to reach moral parity.

In other words; if we know of 50 people committing voter fraud, we can easily deduce that more than 50 votes were disenfranchised by their activities. If we have 50 people who could not vote due to voter ID laws, we still have only 50 votes disenfranchised.

I have done some simple and unscientific research on the web. I find cases of voter fraud conviction easily. Voter ID laws would either disuade this activity or make it easier to find / convict. The cases of voter disenfranchisement did not readily present themselves. The one case I was able to put my finger on involved a woman who merely forgot her ID and refused to retrieve it. I came across a an article about the effect of Georgia's voter ID law that said minority participation in elections INCREASED after the law.

I'm not saying this argument is conclusive on the issue. There are clearly numbers that can not be known at the moment and may be debated ad nauseum. I will say that I have become a more firm believer that voter ID laws are morally superior to systems without voter ID because this thread forced me to do some research and examine my thoughts on the matter.

I know it just wouldnt be right to kill all the stupid people that we meet..

But do you think it would be appropriate to just remove all of the warning labels and let nature take its course.

[DaVinci 0]

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still waiting for any (recent) example to prove such a claim.

And it has been provided more than once... Even Mr. Hayes provided an example of the issue in FL. Since the 2000 election was <300 votes. Your position is clearly crap.

Now you want to continue to play the BS... Play by yourself.

[DaVinci 0]

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No, that's how the discussion is couched - it's a facade. It's really about winning elections. Always has been.

You know that's why I feel the way I do? Or are you making a claim that you can't back up?

Mr. Hayes has provided the ONLY decent argument against it. As long as he is willing to admit that some elections will be 'stolen' and that he is fine with that. Then he has a consistent position.

[DaVinci 0]

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We know voter fraud is happening. We can certainly deduce that requiring ID would either eliminate or help identify it. At the moment, it is not possible to quantify it. Yet, I notice people are quantifying voter fraud as small numbers and disenfranchisement as large numbers (as you did here). May I have a cite of people who have actually been disenfranchised, please?

This is a great point. People keep claiming that fraud is such a small number but I have not seen any data that would show how many would be 'disenfranchised'.

Your other point that a fraudulent vote is disenfranchising valid votes is also correct.

[kelpdiver 2]

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still waiting for any (recent) example to prove such a claim.

And it has been provided more than once... Even Mr. Hayes provided an example of the issue in FL. Since the 2000 election was <300 votes. Your position is clearly crap.

Now you want to continue to play the BS... Play by yourself.

Try to get this through that skull of your's - Bush won. Florida is not an example of voter fraud. It's pretty fucking simple - show a REAL example. If you can.

[kelpdiver 2]

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A. I think it is safe to say that everyone who gets caught in voter fraud represents some greater number of those participating in it.

B. I think it is equally safe to say that every known instance of voter disenfranchisement due to voter ID laws represents some greater number of those actually disenfranchised.

Your general premise is likely correct, but "every" is almost certainly false. An illegal alien that votes is likely to do it once. They may have been told that they were legally entitled to vote and shown how to register. So behind them is a single entity or group directing them, but no multiplier.

But if someone really is directing other's absentee ballots, or showing up at the polling place and picking a random name, yes, I think it's fair to expect that they are casting more than one ballot. Maybe all the polling places they can walk/drive to. So sure, let's say it's 10 votes, an order of magnitude larger.

The problem remains however, that the 1% threshold of a million miscounted voters is still 2 orders of magnitude greater (100x). We're a far way off from parity still.

[rehmwa 2]

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Try to get this through that skull of your's - Bush won. Florida is not an example of voter fraud. It's pretty fucking simple - show a REAL example. If you can.

so you are contending that no voter fraud by either side occurred in that election?


I think the point was this election was so VERY close, that voter fraud definitely DID have the ability to turn in a fraudulent result either way - that would have disenfranchised every single legal citizen voter in the entire country


it's not about Bush v Gore - it's about the consequences and ability of fraud to affect fake results - it's about each fraud cancelling a legal voter's vote


Edit: so still credit to your position that fraud vs the natural error band is a good discussion

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[kelpdiver 2]

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I think the point was this election was so VERY close, that voter fraud definitely DID have the ability to turn in a fraudulent result either way - that would have disenfranchised every single legal citizen voter in the entire country

And my point is that we could debate what could happen, in which case we have a million problems to solve, or we could instead actually solve the problems WE KNOW exist.

I think you have to go back to 1960 in Illinois for a relevant event. Not exactly current times, though.

[rehmwa 2]

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go back to 1960 in Illinois for a relevant event. Not exactly current times, though.

well, pretty current for Kallend, or popsjumper anyway

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[davjohns 1]

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A. I think it is safe to say that everyone who gets caught in voter fraud represents some greater number of those participating in it.

B. I think it is equally safe to say that every known instance of voter disenfranchisement due to voter ID laws represents some greater number of those actually disenfranchised.

Your general premise is likely correct, but "every" is almost certainly false. An illegal alien that votes is likely to do it once. They may have been told that they were legally entitled to vote and shown how to register. So behind them is a single entity or group directing them, but no multiplier.

But if someone really is directing other's absentee ballots, or showing up at the polling place and picking a random name, yes, I think it's fair to expect that they are casting more than one ballot. Maybe all the polling places they can walk/drive to. So sure, let's say it's 10 votes, an order of magnitude larger.

The problem remains however, that the 1% threshold of a million miscounted voters is still 2 orders of magnitude greater (100x). We're a far way off from parity still.

I think you confused two different ideas. A. Says that if we catch one person committing voter fraud, there are certainly more that we did not catch. Kind of like speeders. B. Says that if we are aware of someone disenfranchised over ID, there are likely others we don't know about. I was just giving both sides of the coin to be fair.

I have no idea what your last argument was supposed to mean. I think you changed topics without a transitional phrase or sentence.

I know it just wouldnt be right to kill all the stupid people that we meet..

But do you think it would be appropriate to just remove all of the warning labels and let nature take its course.

[kelpdiver 2]

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I have no idea what your last argument was supposed to mean. I think you changed topics without a transitional phrase or sentence.

I've argued that the tens or hundreds of even thousands of cases of voter fraud in an election pale to the > 1% count error endemic to vote counting, which would be 1 million missed votes in a major election for the US. So even if you take your dozens of examples and multiply them by 100 for the presumed missed events, you've struggling to get a number that is even 1/10th as big.

[tkhayes 145]

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Your math was a cute attempt to make yours seem a rational argument, but you can not rationalize unknown numbers.

BINGO!

and until we do - we should NOT be passing laws that affect any of it....