The Voter's PollFollow

Yes. Which is 100% about proving that you are who you claim to be when casting that vote. A more important issue is that you can also correlate voter registration to identification as well, allowing you to remove names from the voter poll that aren't valid anymore.

If you can't require ID at the voting booth, then you can't do any sort of cross matching of voter registries, allowing for potentially millions of bogus names that are available to be used for any of a number of fraudulent purposes.

This doesn't directly stop ballot box stuffing, but it makes it massively more difficult to hide. When you know that during any given election, you'll have 10 times more registered voters then actual voters, you can stuff that box as much as you're physically capable of and no one can possibly tell that it happened. And even if you check against the list of names at the balloting places, those can be faked as well. If IDs are required, those names have to be the names of not just random people you registered falsely, but people who have valid IDs.

So if a district ends up with more votes then it has registered voters, that's a red flag. If a voting place has more ballots in their box then people who signed in, that's a red flag. And if the list of names on the sign in sheet don't match both the lists of registered voters *and* match a valid ID, that's another red flag.


The ID becomes a critical component since without it either of the other two can be faked pretty easily. With it, it becomes a hell of a lot harder to stuff ballot boxes.




Well. To be fair, there's no way to document cases of voter impersonation if you aren't checking IDs, right? So that's irrelevant. However, as I already pointed out, it isn't just about someone showing up and signing a bogus name so they can vote (although that can be done if you really wanted or had to). It's really about someone getting a hold of both the ballot box and the list for a precinct. They stuff X number of extra votes into the box, and put X additional names on the list.

The only way to catch that is to check the names against registered voters lists. But that's trivially easy to pad. You can simply register a few hundred names and then stick them on the list. There *are* many cases of fraud in which the sign in lists seem to have a lot of names that were signed by the same person.

If those names also have to match valid IDs, that's an extra step that has to be done, and one that's a lot harder to just fake in large numbers. It's pretty easy for me an a half dozen friends to just go and fill out 20 or so voter registration cards each. Someone looking to rig a precinct could easily find dozens of people willing to do this for a small amount of cash, since it requires no real skill to do. But creating hundreds or even thousands of fake state identities? That's not something you can do easily.



Yes. And there have been cases reported where people were not able to vote because their car broke down. Or they were in the hospital. Or got there too late. And thousands of cases every year of people accidentally pushing through the wrong spot, or in some other way ******** up their ballot. That does not automatically mean that the voting rules should be changed.

It's not like obtaining a state ID is hard. I just don't see this as an unfair hinderance to voting.



Um... Well the OP states that 22 already do by law, so I'm not sure what you're trying to say here...

Right. Because if you ever wanted to rig an electon and keep it a secret, the best way to do it is with a hundred guys willing to go vote ten times each for $25.

Uh. No. You pay people to register. Then you use the names they've registered under to inflate the voter count in a precinct and then you stuff the ballot box.

The actual ballot stuffing is done by people a bit higher up. And it's not like the first group of people have any contact or knowledge of the second. In the same way that the local street dealer has no clue who got his bag of dope smuggled into the country, yet that person does exist and both people are working in the same field.

Ah, so the way to do it is to pay off a significant number of people to register and promise not to vote and trust none of them to talk.

Much better. Got it.

No. You gather the names of people you believe are unlikely to vote, or just make them up. If I wander around a downtown area tomorrow with some random bill petition sheet, I'm quite certain I could gather a hundred or so names from the various homeless folks hanging around. It's not rocket science to guess that these people aren't going to vote Joph.

The people gathering the names are "in on it", but they're party loyalists. The people who's names are being gathered probably don't even know what's going on. They think they just signed a petition to provide more funds for the local homeless shelter, or reduce greenhouse gas, or something...

That's how you collect names of people "off the grid". It's done all the time. The methods of using those names to commit election fraud vary wildly. The point is that by requiring IDs at the voting place, you have at least a check that makes it a bit harder to stuff the boxes.

There are a lot of arguments for requiring IDs. There are a lot of arguments against it. There are even good ones on both sides! But the question that was asked was whether a state law requiring a government issued ID in order to vote should be unconstitutional. I don't believe that there is any US constitutional reason that a state can't require IDs.

The Supreme Court apparently disagrees or they would have refused certiorari. They don't here cases that have *no* basis in constitutional law. Oddly, they seem to think they don't have that sort of spare time.

Without anything but surface knowledge of the case, I can think of a few arguments, some somewhat compelling, like the 1st amendment, some novel like it being a form of a poll tax prohibited by the 14th. In point of fact, if the cards aren't free that may be more compelling.

That said, I find it highly unlikely this court will overturn.

Honestly, how many people who can't afford a buck or so a year are the Dems counting on to tip the scales for them? That is really what this is about, right?

Obliviously not. however, the motivations behind bringing the action doesn't weigh on it's constitutionality.

No one's arguing that these measures will result in less Democratic Votes, or at least not seriously. There's clearly no problem with voter fraud, so it's a bad law regardless, but bad laws get passed and withstand muster all the time.

Seriously, if a person can't stand the thought of owning/using an ID, it's quite likely he's purposefully off the grid and wouldn't be voting anyway. Having identification is completely necessary in today's society to function as a voting/income earning citizen.

People who intentionally lack identification are operating under the radar and don't utilize the political process, as that is self-defeating.

Totem

It doesn't matter. You can refuse to own an ID for whatever wacky or sinister reason you wish and, if you're still 18+ and a citizen, you have the Constitutional right to vote. Even if you refuse to exercise that right, you still have it provided by the Constitution.

Not in 24 states, it doesn't Jo. This is precisely what the SCOTUS is/was working on this week.

Totem

I suppose if you're method for determining whether a law is good or bad is based on whether it hurts the Democrat party, sure...


I don't think that's a valid criteria though. If the citizens of Indiana don't like the law, they can fight to get it changed. That's their right. And it's also the right way to resolve this.

No, libertariafacist, it's not ok for the party in power to pass laws to disenfranchise the other party. You can see how that would remove the ability of the people to "fight to get it changed", no?

My opinion would be identical if the law would disenfranchise the GOP. If Massachusetts passed a law only allowing voting at noon on Sunday, it's likely less Christians would vote. I wouldn't think it was a good law.

Or, perhaps a more relevant example would be insistence on campaign finance reform laws that block for-profit corporations from using soft money donations, but place no such restrictions on non-profit organizations, right? I suppose you'll argue that there's some inherent difference based on the "for" or "non" profit status, but the reality is that Liberals like the idea because most of their soft money comes from non-profits. Period. You know it. I know it.

Now maybe we discussed this at some point, and you came down on the side of both being treated equally in terms of campaign donations. I honestly don't know. The point being that I'm quite sure that you've never heard a conservative argue that only non-profits should be barred from donations, while we've all heard many arguments for the opposite. So don't place your "side" on some kind of moral high horse here Smash...


And on this subject in particular, isn't this a matter of perspective? One could argue that the lack of tracking and identification of voters grants the Dems an advantage. Which is wrong? Leaving a status quo that benefits one party, or changing it to remove that benefit? Yes. That only benefits the other party, but pretty much in the same way that not letting the other guy use steroids that my guy isn't using benefits me.


I'm also still a bit confused here. If the Dems aren't committing any sort of questionable election tactics here, then how does this hurt them? I'll repeat my earlier question: How many "off the grid" voters are Dems really counting on here? Don't you find it the least bit questionable that the Dems need so badly to have a voting process in which the voters can't be verified? I'd be a bit suspicious of that, wouldn't you?


I just don't see how many legitimate voters are disenfranchised by this (if any). While I can sorta see the poll tax angle, would your position change if the IDs were free of cost? Is it really about the cost or the verification? And if it's about the verification, then we're back to wondering why the Dems want so badly to have a voting process that doesn't have any? Why does it benefit Dems, but not Republicans? You and I both agree that it does (and that requiring IDs helps the Republicans), but aren't you kinda dancing around "why"?

In the interest of bipartisan harmony, I am for a voter IDs provided that the ID is free of charge, ID locations are widely and easily available for everyone in US and free transportation is offered to and from the ID location 24 hours a day. In the event that someone is unable to leave their home, a representative from the ID Bureau (or whatever) will come to your home and take care of business there. Doesn't have to be forever but for at least the three months running up to any election which will require the ID.

See? Now you get your nice, safe voter ID and there's little reasonable problem in getting an ID. Anyone who disagrees is obviously looking to disenfranchise voters and/or doesn't really want fair elections.