The War on Voting

Sounds more like Steamer than Stanger:

Conservative columnist Matthew Vadum is just going to come right out and say it: registering the poor to vote is un-American and "like handing out burglary tools to criminals."

"It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote," Vadum, the author of a book published by World Net Daily that attacks the now-defunct community organizing group ACORN, writes in a column for the American Thinker.

"Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn't about helping the poor," Vadum writes. "It's about helping the poor to help themselves to others' money. It's about raw so-called social justice. It's about moving America ever farther away from the small-government ideals of the Founding Fathers."

Most conservative criticism of voter registration drives aimed at poor and minority communities has been under the guise of worries about voter fraud. Vadum's column is notable because he isn't just pretending to be worried about the nearly non-existent threat of in-person voter fraud -- he just doesn't think poor people should be voting.

If this guy writes for "American Thinker," I'd hate to imagine the quality of writing at "American Ranter"

Well, there goes the 'elitist' card.

Yes you could. It would be criminal. If you want a 100% fail-safe system, you're unreasonable.

There is no fail-safe system. Even with rigorous photo ID requirements, you still fail ALOT of the time. I had a crappy fake ID when I was 16 and bought booze all the time. People travel on fake passports.

For you to think a photo ID requirement is workable and necessary also implies that you think the government is really, really effective and cost-efficient at administrative stuff like this. You think they're going to implement and operate a fail-safe ID management system. I'm looking forward to reading your treatise on how we can get the government involved in more practices such as this. I'm certain my large corporation could use the government's advice on how to reduce cases of fraud from .000007% to .000000001%. All we need is some more tax dollars and a few more bureaucrats.

Is that what the conservatives want? More government operating in environments where it's literally impossible to get any value for money? Because that's what you're advocating.

The system that works the best is one that allows the most access to the most amount of people within tolerable failure rates. We are well within the tolerable range of failures, so this policy is simply restrictive for the sake of being restrictive and cannot be called anything but deliberate suppression.

It is hilarious that conservatives are willing for the country to take the statistically well-demonstrated risks of legal gun ownership in the name of freedom; but the nonexistent "risks" of maintaining status quo voting requirements in the name of democracy are intolerable.

Why must I be surrounded by idiots?

The DMV does a pretty... well... slow.... but decent job. The process of getting and renewing a passport is overkill. Fact is, just about everyone that is able to vote should already have a state issued photo ID. Hell, we need a photo ID to use a credit card. Is using a credit card more inportant than voting?

This isn't as big an issue as people are making it out to be.

I can't remember ever being asked to show an ID to use a credit card.

And how does this ID thing work for on-line purchases?

You're right. It's not a big issue. The problem of voter fraud in the United States is non-existent.

When you buy online, you have the item shipped to the card billing address, right?

Do I have to explain everything?

Well, I try to avoid buying online, but when I use the credit card in actual brick and mortar stores, I still don't recall ever having to show ID.

You didn't really address my points; and the bolded piece above misses the point of what I was saying - which is that this isn't about access to a bank's money via credit card. It's about access to our public democracy via the voting booth. Importance has nothing to do with it. We have rights, a constitution, and ideals.

I can argue the other side of the coin, which says that my local convenience store has a check cashing booth - and today being a Friday means that I can go in there to grab my afternoon bottle of Sauv Blanc (I'm a liberal), and watch dozens of hirsute sweaty men of diverse ethnic backgrounds (a gay liberal) hand in little slips of paper and get back cash. In fact, there's not much going on this afternoon at the office - maybe I'll head down there now. But none of them show ID to get cash for their paychecks. It's not required by law, but it's a risk that the business is willing to take because their customer base doesn't necessarily have IDs. I wonder how devastating their fraud and abuse losses are that they continue the no ID policy, despite incentives for fraud to get cold hard cash being infinitely higher than incentives to defraud the government for the purpose of casting a single vote.

Maybe they understand via market forces that the cost involved in getting to 100% fraud-proofiness isn't worth the loss in participation in their business.

I wish our republican friends would realize the same.

They know DAMN WELL. That's the problem.

Just have the election office give people a Voter Card when they register to vote. Mine already sends one out now. Use the Voter Card as your ID to vote and let people use a photo ID as a backup form of identification if they lose or forget to bring their Voter Card.

I'm glad you posted this. Everyone should read it. It's disgusting, wrong and unconstitutional.

Here's a doozy of a quote:

And voter fraud is almost non-existent. And it's non-existent in Minnesota where we don't have to show I.D.s

So you've never bought anyone a gift online and had it send to them, eh?

I've got a solution!

When these people recieve their voter cards we can 'register' them on to a 'system' - you know, an index of sorts. Then when elections come around, you will be registered on said system and thus still able to vote even if your card was mugged off you.

Genius! Now why hasn't somebody thought of something like that before?

You vote with a provisional ballot and prove up later when you get your replacement IDs. Don't people do that with other types of foul-ups, like the voter list not being right? What if you drive to the wrong polling station right before the poll closes and it is too late to get to the other one? Wouldn't the people let you cast a provisional ballot, then check later to verify that you didn't vote at the other location? That would make more sense than not letting you vote at all.

The system should be designed to have a cross-check to verify that the person who shows up to vote is the same person who is registered. Otherwise, it seems to be that there is an obvious potential exploit where the registrant could allow a "proxy" to vote their slot.

This is actually an interesting statement:

What's interesting to me here is that Vadum uses the phrase "the nonproductive segments of the population" as a synonym for the poor. But this sort of language -- "the nonproductive" or better "the nonproductive class" -- is exactly the sort of language old lefties of various socialist and communist stripes used to talk about the wealthy -- i.e. the "idle rich" who were parasites on the productive (laboring) classes of society, and from which the levers of political control must be wrest away before they "destroy the country".

I doubt Vadum realizes or is even capable of appreciating the irony of any of this.

It is a no-brainer. Instead of going off about conservatives trying prevent Democrats from voting, Dems should get off their asses and go get an ID.

Stanger, appoo, and others:

In general, you seem to like the idea that the burden of proof should be on the government to prove wrongdoing before any action be taken; for example, we shouldn't act on climate change until it's been proven that humans are responsible and that it will continue. Likewise, we shouldn't stop people from buying guns unless there is solid, concrete evidence that the person might have a criminal background or for some other reason constitute a danger.

So why, when it comes to voting, is the burden of proof on the person going to vote to prove his or her eligibility? Shouldn't it be on the government to prove that the person is ineligible before the vote can be discounted? That would seem more consistent with the conservative ideology in general.

The climate change issue is one that I don't know if we can relate directly but you do have to have ID to do many things in society, purchasing a gun and voting should go hand-in-hand in this aspect. I have to think there are very, very few eligible voters that don't already have a picture ID.

The rest is just posturing by both sides.