PA now requires State ID to vote

[Silent Bob]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-pa-voter-id-20120816,0,2346712.story

What a crock of shit.

If you register, you should be able to vote. Period. Absolutely no voter fraud to support this requirement; just an easy way for the republican run PA government of Tom Corbett to suppress the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh minority democratic vote.

 

[PatrThom]

Not really. Now they just need to enact the ability to get your ID through the mail without having to personally go to a building and present yourself and everything will be OK, right?

--Patrick

 

[blotsfan]

I really don't see the problem with this. Its not like people have to go to the ID place every week, its basically one trip every 10 years. If you really care about voting that badly, finding out how to arrange that one trip shouldn't be an issue. I could understand the argument that doing it this election might be too short notice, but I wouldnt see an issue with 2013.

 

[GasBandit]

I've had this discussion before. The argument that being able to show ID to vote is an undue burden on the lower class is beneath consideration.

 

[Silent Bob]

I've had this discussion before. The argument that being able to show ID to vote is an undue burden on the lower class is beneath consideration.

Voter fraud is non existent in PA. If anything the new law could potentially hinder someone from voting that wants to vote. Denying just one person the ability to vote is unconstitutional. What is the purpose of this law if not to target large urban areas?

 

[sixpackshaker]

If the wait at the DMV is an hour for a DL; what will the wait time be when you add all the people too poor to drive to those lines? I know Texas just shut down a fair percentage of the DPS offices that do the photos and testing for DL's. There are 3 counties adjacent to mine, if not more that have to DRIVE up to 60 miles to take advantage of these services.

No undue burden on the poor there.[DOUBLEPOST=1345117914][/DOUBLEPOST]Half our counties in TX have reduced hours or no Drivers License offices at all.

 

[Bowielee]

I've had this discussion before. The argument that being able to show ID to vote is an undue burden on the lower class is beneath consideration.

I've come to the conclusion that you've never actually met any real poor people.

 

[DarkAudit]

I've come to the conclusion that you've never actually met any real poor people.

Like he said, they're beneath consideration.

 

[GasBandit]

Voter fraud is non existent in PA. If anything the new law could potentially hinder someone from voting that wants to vote. Denying just one person the ability to vote is unconstitutional. What is the purpose of this law if not to target large urban areas?

Actually, there is nothing in the U.S. constitution about having a right to vote - there are amendments forbidding disenfranchisement for specific reasons, but so long as it isn't for those specific reasons it's left entirely up to the states to determine how they handle their vote. Legislation could be passed denying the left handed the vote, and it would be constitutional. The only way anybody ever manages to even slightly connect voter ID law with unconstitutionality is by calling the cost of getting one a poll tax, and that's a stretch that fewer and fewer people are buying (here in Texas, you can get an ID for this purpose for less than $10). It should be simple common sense that to do something as important as vote - to exercise influence on the direction the country is going, the very least we should require is proof that someone is who they say they are. And even though a given pool might never have had a drowning doesn't mean a lifeguard is unnecessary.

If the wait at the DMV is an hour for a DL; what will the wait time be when you add all the people too poor to drive to those lines? I know Texas just shut down a fair percentage of the DPS offices that do the photos and testing for DL's. There are 3 counties adjacent to mine, if not more that have to DRIVE up to 60 miles to take advantage of these services.

No undue burden on the poor there.[DOUBLEPOST=1345117914][/DOUBLEPOST]Half our counties in TX have reduced hours or no Drivers License offices at all.

Like I said, you don't need a full on Driver's License in TX, there's a regular ID available too. But you want to talk about how we need more places to issue that ID, or make it even cheaper, I'm all ears. And if you show me a piece of paper that says "we need more places issuing IDs" I'll sign it.

Ad Hominem

Ad Hominem

Hey fellas, good to see you too. Grab a pitchfork and give me a hand, I'm just stoking my mansion's furnace with the dead babies of the poor who couldn't feed them! BWA HA HA HA HA HA!

 

[sixpackshaker]

Like I said, you don't need a full on Driver's License in TX, there's a regular ID available too. But you want to talk about how we need more places to issue that ID, or make it even cheaper, I'm all ears. And if you show me a piece of paper that says "we need more places issuing IDs" I'll sign it.

I know you don't need a full DL to vote, but the places that pass out State ID's have been greatly curtailed, just in time for the voter ID bill.

 

[GasBandit]

I know you don't need a full DL to vote, but the places that pass out State ID's have been greatly curtailed, just in time for the voter ID bill.

If you show me a piece of paper that says "we need more places issuing IDs" I'll sign it.

 

[sixpackshaker]

Is motor-voter still on the books? If so, I feel like starting a busing campaign, and overrunning a couple of DL Offices.

 

[Espy]

Are there numbers to support how minorities don't have id's? I guess that seems to me like a real problem with the system if true.

 

[sixpackshaker]

Are there numbers to support how minorities don't have id's? I guess that seems to me like a real problem with the system if true.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-kno...ver-wanted-to-know-about-voter-id-laws/14358/

According to a study from NYU’s Brennan Center, 11 percent of voting-age citizens lack necessary photo ID while many people in rural areas have trouble accessing ID offices. During closing arguments in a recent case over Texas’s voter ID law, a lawyer for the state brushed aside these obstacles as the “reality to life of choosing to live in that part of Texas.”

[DOUBLEPOST=1345128740][/DOUBLEPOST]We are only disenfranchising 11% of the voters.[DOUBLEPOST=1345129105][/DOUBLEPOST]

 

[Espy]

11% is pretty damn big number if thats correct.

 

[GasBandit]

What do the X'd out areas on that map indicate?

 

[Charlie Don't Surf]

Could be not enough people live there for data? I'm no Texas expert (Texpert????), but those look like uh. Godforsaken, no population parts of the state.

 

[GasBandit]

Could be not enough people live there for data? I'm no Texas expert (Texpert????), but those look like uh. Godforsaken, no population parts of the state.

I suppose it could be, but they still color in the areas to varying degrees even with the Xs over them.

 

[PatrThom]

It should be simple common sense that to do something as important as vote - to exercise influence on the direction the country is going, the very least we should require is proof that someone is who they say they are.

Totally and completely on board with this. My only beef with these sorts of requirements boils down to just two things:
1) These requirements tend to pop up just before the most hotly contested elections, leaving little time for the "fringe people*" to get their papers in order. Undue burden? Not really, but the lead time could be a lot better, or else it just starts to sound like one of those 80's 'bad guy' tactics where the good guys show up with their entry fee for the contest only to be told that a new rule was just introduced and has to be completed by 5pm tomorrow or else you and your friends are out of the competition. MUHAAHAAA! If there's such concern over voter fraud, then the countermeasures should be announced and awareness created immediately following the 'spoiled 'election.
2) I'm against the idea that proof can be shown in one and only one way. If I produce an expired driver's license, a phone bill, an auto registration, a birth certificate, a pay stub, my department store nametag, and a recent property tax bill, that preponderance of evidence should be sufficient to allow me to vote in my district. I have verified my likeness, my residence, and my legitimacy with my evidence, and being refused solely because my license doesn't have the new red border just sounds like weaseling out on a technicality.

--Patrick
*"Fringe people" being those whose qualifications to vote used to be sufficient, but now they have to go get whatever required upgrade was just introduced.

 

[GasBandit]

Totally and completely on board with this. My only beef with these sorts of requirements boils down to just two things:
1) These requirements tend to pop up just before the most hotly contested elections, leaving little time for the "fringe people*" to get their papers in order. Undue burden? Not really, but the lead time could be a lot better, or else it just starts to sound like one of those 80's 'bad guy' tactics where the good guys show up with their entry fee for the contest only to be told that a new rule was just introduced and has to be completed by 5pm tomorrow or else you and your friends are out of the competition. MUHAAHAAA! If there's such concern over voter fraud, then the countermeasures should be announced and awareness created immediately following the 'spoiled 'election.
2) I'm against the idea that proof can be shown in one and only one way. If I produce an expired driver's license, a phone bill, an auto registration, a birth certificate, a pay stub, my department store nametag, and a recent property tax bill, that preponderance of evidence should be sufficient to allow me to vote in my district. I have verified my likeness, my residence, and my legitimacy with my evidence, and being refused solely because my license doesn't have the new red border just sounds like weaseling out on a technicality.

--Patrick
*"Fringe people" being those whose qualifications to vote used to be sufficient, but now they have to go get whatever required upgrade was just introduced.

In my opinion, the item used should have a photo. ID, Passport, school ID, whatever. But I do agree that an expired drivers' license should still be a valid photo ID.

And heck, in SOME areas of the country, I think we could do worse than doing the whole "dip your finger in the ink" thing that Iraq was doing, just to make sure people aren't voting more than once.

 

[Soliloquy]

There's one thing that bugged me about making such an issue about photo ID. Because unless I'm mistaken, the only people who wouldn't have photo ID are those who:

• don't drive
• don't have a bank account
• don't own a home/rent an apartment
• don't cash checks or write checks
• don't use a credit card
• don't buy alcohol or cigarettes
• don't receive welfare, social security, or food stamps.

I admit, I grew up in a fairly well-off family, so I have very little context to work from here -- but is not having an ID really that common?

 

[Charlie Don't Surf]

And heck, in SOME areas of the country, I think we could do worse than doing the whole "dip your finger in the ink" thing that Iraq was doing, just to make sure people aren't voting more than once.

this crazy idea of widespread voter fraud in the US is a conservative pipe dream

 

[GasBandit]

this crazy idea of widespread voter fraud in the US is a conservative pipe dream

Is that you, Mayor-For-Life Daley?

 

[Charlie Don't Surf]

"widespread voter fraud in the US presidential election" != voter fraud in one city

 

[GasBandit]

"widespread voter fraud in the US presidential election" != voter fraud in one city

Whup, my mistake. Sorry, Bill Stinson.

Do I even need to repost the video of the guy who passed himself off as Eric Holder at the voting booth? Even if it isn't rampant, do we need to keep it easy to do so until it is? When the whole "undue burden" thing is a total crock? Silly question, I know, when those votes would presumably favor Democrat candidates.

The fact of the matter is you have to have a photo ID to function in american society. Not a single person who's won something at my radio station has failed to produce a photo ID to claim their prizes won on-air. Thing is, a great many of those IDs are mexican consular IDs.

 

[sixpackshaker]

The majority of voter fraud happens at the county clerk's level and up from there. This photo ID requirement is what it is a way to disenfranchise the poor and the rural.

 

[GasBandit]

This photo ID requirement is what it is a way to disenfranchise the criminal and/or the lazy.

FTFY.

Not an undue burden.

 

[sixpackshaker]

FTFY.

Not an undue burden.

What burden is due to disenfranchise people? At what point is it acceptable to force legal voters not to vote? If they go to the polls then they are not too lazy to vote.

 

[Hailey Knight]

Nothing I have to say about this is going to contribute to the discussion, so I'll just say that Republicans don't want low income minorities who don't usually vote to kill them in another presidential election, and then go back to the Skyrim thread.

 

[Eriol]

We've needed ID to vote in Canada for years now, and I've never ever heard anybody say that it's disenfranchising people.

Get over it.

 

[drifter]

Does it count as disenfranchising when state employees have been instructed to charge people unless they ask for free ID's?

 

[Espy]

We've needed ID to vote in Canada for years now, and I've never ever heard anybody say that it's disenfranchising people.

Get over it.

Pff, in Canada you can bring in a bottle of maple syrup as ID.

 

[GasBandit]

What burden is due to disenfranchise people? At what point is it acceptable to force legal voters not to vote? If they go to the polls then they are not too lazy to vote.

Constitutionally, any burden is due other than the ones explicitly enumerated as unacceptable. But even from a common sense standpoint, professed inability to get an ID is extremely suspect. I used to have to ask for ID as part of my duties. A great many of our prizewinners were, and are, poor and/or minorities. And I never, ever had one not able to produce some form of photo ID on demand. It's just, like I said - not all of them were issued by a government agency of the United States.

 

[Sparhawk]

I always see that people claim there is not much voter fraud occurring. How, without a photo id, can you verify that the person that shows up to vote is that person? How can somebody that is registered, but has no intention of voting in a particular cycle, know that somebody voted in their name? How can an election judge at a polling station know that the name that someone is giving is actually their name? How can their be a complaint of voter fraud if there is no check to see if "you" are "you"?

 

[Zappit]

Why not just copy Ohio, and simply distribute more voting machines to rich, white, affluent areas, and send very few to urban areas, preventing voting for many due to long lines? They know how to rig an election, folks!