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GAO: Voter ID laws suppress voting, not fraud

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Dox47
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14 Oct 2014, 3:42 pm

Just to go back a few years, wasn't voter fraud a Democratic obsession in 2000 and 2004? I certainly remember my friends darkly muttering about voting machines in Ohio and recounts in Florida, I'd be curious how some of these measure would have been received if they'd been introduced at that time.


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14 Oct 2014, 4:26 pm

Dox47 wrote:
Just to go back a few years, wasn't voter fraud a Democratic obsession in 2000 and 2004? I certainly remember my friends darkly muttering about voting machines in Ohio and recounts in Florida, I'd be curious how some of these measure would have been received if they'd been introduced at that time.


Hmmmm..... :chin:
Wonder how they'll respond to that.


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14 Oct 2014, 5:28 pm

Dox47 wrote:
Just to go back a few years, wasn't voter fraud a Democratic obsession in 2000 and 2004? I certainly remember my friends darkly muttering about voting machines in Ohio and recounts in Florida, I'd be curious how some of these measure would have been received if they'd been introduced at that time.


They were certainly concerns. But in this case, the voter fraud in question wasn't a threat by poor people, college students, and minorities, but by Republican political machines who are in fact behind this voter disenfranchisement today.


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14 Oct 2014, 6:52 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:
They were certainly concerns. But in this case, the voter fraud in question wasn't a threat by poor people, college students, and minorities, but by Republican political machines who are in fact behind this voter disenfranchisement today.


Oh, I get that, I'm just saying, what if the GOP had done this back in 2000, and framed it like "ok, we're sick of hearing about how we 'stole' this election, so we're going to make it easier to validate votes by requiring state ID", which I think would have put the Democrats in a bit of a political pickle, compared to the way they've turned the issue around. Were I in the GOP strategy department, I'd still give that a try, point out the Democratic reaction to the 2000 and 2004 elections and mention how they liked the idea just fine back then, and that the GOP was just leveling the field for everyone. Sales runs in my family, so it's a mental exercise for me to figure out how to sell things, and I do think the race angle is over-hyped.


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14 Oct 2014, 6:58 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:
Dox47 wrote:
Just to go back a few years, wasn't voter fraud a Democratic obsession in 2000 and 2004? I certainly remember my friends darkly muttering about voting machines in Ohio and recounts in Florida, I'd be curious how some of these measure would have been received if they'd been introduced at that time.


They were certainly concerns. But in this case, the voter fraud in question wasn't a threat by poor people, college students, and minorities, but by Republican political machines who are in fact behind this voter disenfranchisement today.

There you go again...... :roll:


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14 Oct 2014, 7:43 pm

Raptor wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
Dox47 wrote:
Just to go back a few years, wasn't voter fraud a Democratic obsession in 2000 and 2004? I certainly remember my friends darkly muttering about voting machines in Ohio and recounts in Florida, I'd be curious how some of these measure would have been received if they'd been introduced at that time.


They were certainly concerns. But in this case, the voter fraud in question wasn't a threat by poor people, college students, and minorities, but by Republican political machines who are in fact behind this voter disenfranchisement today.

There you go again...... :roll:


There I go again because those are the people who the voter fraud laws are targeting. Now, if white, professional men who live in gated communities, and who vote Republican by and large, had also complained about being disenfranchised, I might think there isn't anything to it, but that doesn't seem to be the case.


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14 Oct 2014, 7:52 pm

Dox47 wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
They were certainly concerns. But in this case, the voter fraud in question wasn't a threat by poor people, college students, and minorities, but by Republican political machines who are in fact behind this voter disenfranchisement today.


Oh, I get that, I'm just saying, what if the GOP had done this back in 2000, and framed it like "ok, we're sick of hearing about how we 'stole' this election, so we're going to make it easier to validate votes by requiring state ID", which I think would have put the Democrats in a bit of a political pickle, compared to the way they've turned the issue around. Were I in the GOP strategy department, I'd still give that a try, point out the Democratic reaction to the 2000 and 2004 elections and mention how they liked the idea just fine back then, and that the GOP was just leveling the field for everyone. Sales runs in my family, so it's a mental exercise for me to figure out how to sell things, and I do think the race angle is over-hyped.


Oh, I'm sure race would be over hyped in our part of the country, but we're talking about states and regions that have had long histories of racial discrimination. To be sure, hardly everyone in red states are racists - MissLizard and Raptor (sorry, Raptor, I won't feed the troll here! :P) are hardly bigots - but it's naive to say that everyone there has reformed their prejudices. And it's not in the south - just across the state line in Idaho, there used to be laws against interracial marriage, and unfortunately, there is still of lot of racism there. But today, race is exploited by bigots who use code words instead of just blurting out the N word.


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14 Oct 2014, 8:27 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:
Oh, I'm sure race would be over hyped in our part of the country, but we're talking about states and regions that have had long histories of racial discrimination.


Well, it would be one thing if it was limited to those states, but the voter ID push has been pretty geographically distributed, indicating to me that it's more about votes than about race. The thing about politicians, regardless of what side do the aisle they sit on, is that they want to be reelected, and when you look at this scheme, it makes far more sense as a simple ploy to discourage opposition voters than as some sort of racist plot. Which is not to say that it's great, simply that calling it racist rings hollow.


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15 Oct 2014, 2:02 am

Dox47 wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
Oh, I'm sure race would be over hyped in our part of the country, but we're talking about states and regions that have had long histories of racial discrimination.


Well, it would be one thing if it was limited to those states, but the voter ID push has been pretty geographically distributed, indicating to me that it's more about votes than about race. The thing about politicians, regardless of what side do the aisle they sit on, is that they want to be reelected, and when you look at this scheme, it makes far more sense as a simple ploy to discourage opposition voters than as some sort of racist plot. Which is not to say that it's great, simply that calling it racist rings hollow.


To be sure, just wanting to get reelected is a big part of it, but discouraging people from voting, regardless, is still wrong.


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15 Oct 2014, 8:52 am

Dox47 wrote:
The thing about politicians, regardless of what side do the aisle they sit on, is that they want to be reelected, and when you look at this scheme, it makes far more sense as a simple ploy to discourage opposition voters than as some sort of racist plot. Which is not to say that it's great, simply that calling it racist rings hollow.


^This.


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15 Oct 2014, 8:11 pm

This crap about training workers with the law stricken down is just that, crap. There is very little training involved in being a pollworker. I remember back in 2002, applying to be an assistant precinct registrar the evening before the polls were to open and got the position. I received training from the head registrar at the start of the job and that was all the training I needed. So all this stuff about pollworkers being confused by the law being struck down is crap. The pollworkers probably haven't even been trained yet.


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15 Oct 2014, 8:46 pm

beneficii wrote:
This crap about training workers with the law stricken down is just that, crap. There is very little training involved in being a pollworker. I remember back in 2002, applying to be an assistant precinct registrar the evening before the polls were to open and got the position. I received training from the head registrar at the start of the job and that was all the training I needed. So all this stuff about pollworkers being confused by the law being struck down is crap. The pollworkers probably haven't even been trained yet.


Agreed. My late mom had been a poll worker, and the truth was, there wasn't much for her to learn.


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17 Oct 2014, 2:35 pm

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... nship.html

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For Bentele and O?Brien, this comes down to partisanship. ?These findings demonstrate that the emergence and passage of restrictive voter access legislation is unambiguously a highly partisan affair, influenced by the intensity of electoral competition,? they write.

Even with the context of the other studies, I think this is right. Voter ID boosters don?t hold anti-minority animus as much as they want to maximize political advantage. As Judge Richard Posner wrote in a recent dissent against the Wisconsin voter ID law, ?There is only one motivation for imposing burdens on voting that are ostensibly designed to discourage voter-impersonation fraud, if there is no actual danger of such fraud, and that is to discourage voting by persons likely to vote against the party responsible for imposing the burdens.?

Emphasis mine.


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17 Oct 2014, 3:09 pm

I don't see how they can say there is no danger of fraud when there clearly is, why shouldn't safeguards be in place? A few votes can influence an election. Any issue with access to IDs can solved separately pretty easily. It is a partisan issue over something that is just commonsense, that's why the vast majority of Americans support voter ID laws.



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17 Oct 2014, 4:21 pm

Dox47 wrote:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/10/voter_id_s_real_roots_is_it_racism_or_hyper_partisanship.html

Quote:
For Bentele and O?Brien, this comes down to partisanship. ?These findings demonstrate that the emergence and passage of restrictive voter access legislation is unambiguously a highly partisan affair, influenced by the intensity of electoral competition,? they write.

Even with the context of the other studies, I think this is right. Voter ID boosters don?t hold anti-minority animus as much as they want to maximize political advantage. As Judge Richard Posner wrote in a recent dissent against the Wisconsin voter ID law, ?There is only one motivation for imposing burdens on voting that are ostensibly designed to discourage voter-impersonation fraud, if there is no actual danger of such fraud, and that is to discourage voting by persons likely to vote against the party responsible for imposing the burdens.?

Emphasis mine.


Say there isn't any racial bias involved, from what Posner had written, it's still wrong. And considering that the policy is directed at minorities from voting due to political reasons, the fact that they are minorities makes the outcome racial, regardless of the alleged original motivation.


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17 Oct 2014, 4:27 pm

Jacoby wrote:
I don't see how they can say there is no danger of fraud when there clearly is, why shouldn't safeguards be in place? A few votes can influence an election. Any issue with access to IDs can solved separately pretty easily. It is a partisan issue over something that is just commonsense, that's why the vast majority of Americans support voter ID laws.


Is defending against alleged voting fraud (for which there is no proof that it's so widespread) so important as to risk disenfranchising people guilty of nothing?


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