NAACP Protests Racist Voter ID Laws

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Originally Posted by Thondalar

For the record, there is only a tiny percentage of people who support my candidates anyway, so I really don't have a dog in this fight either way. I just can't see anything wrong with making people identify themselves as citizens when they go to choose the people who run the country. Voting is sort of a big deal, imo. We have to show identification for lesser things every day.

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Haven't they already identified themselves though? You can't just show up anywhere in the country and cast a vote right?

What about absentee ballots? They don't show up at the designated polling station and show I.D. We would have to do away mail in ballots completely since there is no official to check your photo id against the rolls.

The type of voting fraud that a state issued I.D. would stop is infintesimal. It's just too inefficient to work and the penalty is a big fine and 5 years in prison.

This is from a 2012 article and it'll give you some perspective:

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Over the past decade Texas has convicted 51 people of voter fraud, according the state's Attorney General Greg Abbott. Only four of those cases were for voter impersonation, the only type of voter fraud that voter ID laws prevent.

Nationwide that rate of voter impersonation is even lower.

Out of the 197 million votes cast for federal candidates between 2002 and 2005, only 40 voters were indicted for voter fraud, according to a Department of Justice study outlined during a 2006 Congressional hearing. Only 26 of those cases, or about .00000013 percent of the votes cast, resulted in convictions or guilty pleas.

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TWENTY-SIX???? FUCK, GET OUT THE DNA TESTING KITS, THUMB PRINT MACHINES AND IRIS SCANNERS!! THIS FRAUD HAS TO STOP!

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Originally Posted by cwolff

We already are preventing voter fraud before it happens. The I.D.'s required under these new laws will do nothing to add integrity to our system.

Here's a study that's been done on the topic. http://brennan.3cdn.net/c176576c0065..._gxm6ib0hl.pdf

This is what the author concludes:



These voter I.D. laws are an idea from the ALEC which is a conservative think tank/lobbying group. They also brought us the castle and stand your ground laws. In 2012 they disbanded their task force which dealt with these initiatives because they were losing gobs of money from large corporations who didn't want anything to do with this stuff.

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All right, I'll shut up until I read the study and do some other research. The study you reference is 32 pages and I'm too tired to read it tonight.

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Originally Posted by Candor

All right, I'll shut up until I read the study and do some other research. The study you reference is 32 pages and I'm too tired to read it tonight.

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HAHA, Good luck with that. It's not exactly a page turner.

Here's some data from N.C.

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In 2012, nearly 7 million ballots were cast in the general and two primary elections. Of those 6,947,317 ballots, the state Board of Elections said 121 alleged cases of voter fraud were referred to the appropriate district attorney's office.

That means of the nearly 7 million votes cast, voter fraud accounted for 0.00174 percent of the ballots.

Looking back at the 2010 election cycle -- which was not a presidential year -- 3.79 million ballots were cast and only 28 cases of voter fraud were turned over to the appropriate DA's office. So in 2010, voter fraud accounted for 0.000738 percent of ballots cast.

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Originally Posted by Thondalar

I wasn't aware "paying taxes" was the measure of citizenship. Hell, for the first 100+ years of our existence as a country, we didn't even have an income tax. Still managed to build roads, schools, fight a few wars...amazing.

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Now let's think about exactly what sort of method of payment for all those things existed that you wouldn't be in favor of. My point was an avowed criminal doesn't exactly have much in the way of higher moral ground over somebody choosing to pay a smaller bribe to drug cartels instead of corrupt officials to get into our country and work for a better life. Civic responsibilities are civic responsibilities.

Another boogeyman to scare people into believing the messenger.

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Originally Posted by Thondalar

I just can't see anything wrong with making people identify themselves as citizens when they go to choose the people who run the country.

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There's nothing wrong with it, in theory. In application, it disproportionately disenfranchises on the basis of race. This is explicitly (:)) forbidden by the Constitution, and please note that the 15th Amendment does not require intent.

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Originally Posted by Latrinsorm

There's nothing wrong with it, in theory. In application, it disproportionately disenfranchises on the basis of race. This is explicitly (:)) forbidden by the Constitution, and please note that the 15th Amendment does not require intent.

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Latrin and Thond, do please keep in mind that we are doing a fantastic job of identifying voters at the polls. We have a system that includes registration, showing up at a local polling place and interfacing with a poll worker who identifies you from a list and checks you off. Different states/jurisdictions do things differently but the entirety of it works incredibly well as is.

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Originally Posted by cwolff

Latrin and Thond, do please keep in mind that we are doing a fantastic job of identifying voters at the polls. We have a system that includes registration, showing up at a local polling place and interfacing with a poll worker who identifies you from a list and checks you off. Different states/jurisdictions do things differently but the entirety of it works incredibly well as is.

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The same system that Mickey Mouse, the entire Raiders team, and a bunch of dead people, etc. still managed to get their votes in with, right?

The race argument for voter ID is pure bullshit btw. Everyone including democrats know this.

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Originally Posted by Methais

The same system that Mickey Mouse, the entire Raiders team, and a bunch of dead people, etc. still managed to get their votes in with, right?

The race argument for voter ID is pure bullshit btw. Everyone including democrats know this.

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Take a look at the actual number of cases of voter fraud from any election cycle. No that there should be any... but it's surprisingly low.