by Doctor Science
I will be personally enriched by Governor Chris Christie’s decision to hold a special October election for Frank Lautenberg’s Senate seat. I’m a pollworker: every NJ election puts $200 in my pocket (for 15+ hours of work, mind you, so it’s hardly a sinecure).
Nonetheless, I think it’s a really lousy idea. Other people have covered why Democrats and national-level Republicans are upset about this. Nate Silver has pointed out how the special election might favor Republicans in NJ, but all these people seem to be overlooking the factor that first comes to my mind, as a pollworker. (OK, I’ll be honest, the first factor besides the money and my schedule.)
More elections means lower turnout per election [PDF]. Normally, a NJ governor election has about 50% turnout [PDF]. I’m betting that having two elections in 3 weeks will reduce the turnout for each well below 50%, even if the cumulative turnout makes it to 50%. This is after a record-low turnout last November, when pretty much everyone in the state was dealing with the aftermath of Sandy.
The general rule of thumb is that overall low turnout tilts the electorate toward Republicans, because poorer and younger voters — more likely to be Democrats — experience more barriers to voting. This is IMHO why Republicans have been pushing so hard in recent years to “tighten up” voting laws — even though voter fraud is very rare.
I have no idea if Governor Christie is *consciously* aware that scheduling 2 elections within a month is certain to reduce voter turnout, and to reduce Democratic turnout relative to Republican, but it sure is convenient from his POV, and fits in with the general Republican strategy to un-small-d-democratically restrict the franchise.
Whether the election is in October or rolled into the general election in November, there still needs to be a primary. Holding that in mid-August pretty much guarantees horrifically low turnouts for both parties, but I’m not sure how much of a choice Christie really had. But spending an extra $12 million or so to have a special election in October is self-indulgently wasteful on Christie’s part, even though it means money in my pocket. To a woman[1] and regardless of party, pollworkers want high turnout more than anything else: we want *everyone* to vote, that’s what makes the hellishly long hours worthwhile.
[1] Old ladies are the backbone of American pollworking. I’m in my mid-50s, so I’m the kid at my regular polling place (which serves 2 districts). This week, though, things were very different, because the high school made a big effort to get students signed up as “pollworker interns” (excused from school! paid real money!), so Sprog the Younger was a pollworker for half the day.
My mother was county auditor way back in the seventies. the chair of the local Republican party orgainzed people to go to the polls and challenge Democrats, just challenge all Democrats, no basis for the challenges. This was decades before bullying and harassment became normal election policies for the Republican party.
I’ve been a pollwatcher in six or seven elections.
I always register voters during election season.
My mom was active in the League of Women Voters.
I never got paid for any of this.
Of course, I always vote. I have driven people to the polls, too.
I live in a blue state where voting is easy.
I was a poll watcher in one election, (Unpaid! You get paid????) tasked with challenging anyone who showed up, who was registered at an address we’d determined, (By walking the entire precinct.) did not correspond to a residence. There were quite a few of those, remarkably, but I didn’t get to challenge any of them. Apparently people who live at non-existent addresses prefer to vote absentee…
“The general rule of thumb is that overall low turnout tilts the electorate toward Republicans, because poorer and younger voters — more likely to be Democrats — experience more barriers to voting.”
The story on the other side is that the Democratic base disproportionately consists of “low-information” voters who really don’t care about politics, (Which is why they don’t go to the trouble to inform themselves.) and thus are very poorly motivated to show up. Because it’s easier, don’tcha know, for Democrats to get the votes of people who are completely ignorant.
So Democrat constantly push to makie voting easier, even though it’s already very easy, because even the slightest inconvenience, like having to prove you’re who you claim to be, register in advance of the election, show up at the right place on the right day, or even follow the instructions in filling out the ballot, seriously hurts your vote totals.
I suppose there could be some truth in both accounts.
Brett’s response to one side: your “rule of thumb” is not a guide to simple calculation, but is instead only a self-serving explanation. One that is really not qualitatively better than self-serving explanations e.g. Brett could come up with.
There’s polling data about low information voters and party identification, but I don’t remember the results. What I do remember is that Faux news watchers weren’t just low information voters–they “knew” stuff that just wasn’t true, having been actrivley misinformed.
Part of the reason why the republican party has a policy of whipping up faux outrage psuedo-scandals is to get the vote out. McConnel sent out a mailer claiming that background checks were the equavalent of gun confiscation, for example, It’;s routine for Repubican politicians to tell scarey lies to their constituents in order to get them to the polls ( and to distract them from Republican policies such as turning Medicare into a voucher system).
Fear and hatemongering are effective political tehcniques, to some extent. Seems to work pretty well with the Republican base anyway.
Please. There’s a nonstop barrage of disinformation from practically everyone who has an agenda. Every time we have a storm in which someone dies, it’s an indication of how something absolutely must be done about CO2 right this second.
Every time there’s a shooting, there’s an insistance that something (anything) must be done about guns Right Now. The result of this particular kind of panic-flurry is that we now have more people hoarding guns and ammunition. Which says nothing about the disinformation campaign that was designed to tip public opinion in favor of more legislation.
Republicans have not yet cornered the market on disinformation. Far from it.
go ahead, Brett, prove that individual voter fraud occurs with more frequency than, for example, lightning strikes.
show us the data. show us the information.
this should be easy. i’m sure the web site for every GOP-run state legislature has the data readily available, so as to back up the claim that we need greater restrictions on voting.
come on, show us that data. back up one of your assertions, for once.
“What I do remember is that Faux news watchers weren’t just low information voters–they “knew” stuff that just wasn’t true, having been actrivley misinformed.”
That scarcely distinguishes them from MSNBC viewers, who simply end up ‘knowing’ different things that “ain’t so”. Media outlets actively misinform their viewers all the the time, ‘liberal’ media outlets simply tend to do it on different subjects, with a different spin.
The subject was “watchers”, not media outlets. Fox is a more effective misinformer, by the numbers.
Hell, some number of people end up being misinformed by The Onion. It’s not that many, but it is a lot funnier when it happens.
Yes, that week Fox was able to misinform 200000 more people in the 25-54 demographic. A true juggernaut. About .2% of the age group.
Well, Marty, I’m not the one who decided MSNBC should be compared to Fox News. I’m noting that it’s not a particularly good comparison. But, if you want focus on a differential of how many people in a particular age group in a particular week watched to demonstrate that almost no one watches Fox News, have at it.
I’m ok with your point hsh, all told though big bang theory informs more people by a lot. NCIS shows more people how unsafe the world is, and I am not convinced that more people don’t watch Wayne Brady on Let’s Make a Deal.
Let’s not ignore how many people learn so much about the world of TV advertising by watching the Super Bowl. They might even pick up a few things about football while they’re at it. 😉
Definition of a “low information voter” (liberal): someone who watches the Colbert Report and thinks what he says is a serious presention of the conservative position.
Definition of a “low information voter” (conservative): someone who watches the Colbert Report and thinks he is not only seriously presenting the conservative position, but providing valid information to support it.
Both, I would point out, far higher than the (non-zero) number of people who take items in The Onion as news.
The result of this particular kind of panic-flurry is that we now have more people hoarding guns and ammunition.
I’d say another contributor to gun and ammo hoarding is paranoia.
Your points are reasonable, but harebrained as it may be, the “holy crap, hurry up and do something right now!!” reaction is generally how things end up getting done.
For good or ill.
It’s not that many, but it is a lot funnier when it happens.
I don’t know, IMO it’s good for a laugh either way.
Hopefully New Jersey will make a concerted get-out-the-vote effort to try to bring more people to the poles, regardless of how they vote. Novembers election numbers were disheartening.
I don’t know, IMO it’s good for a laugh either way.
Oh, The Onion is always funny. What I meant was that it’s a lot funnier for someone to be misinformed by The Onion than it is for someone to be misinformed by Fox News. The former just doesn’t happen nearly as often.
The idea that MSNBC is a liberal network is kind of nutty. In the morning, they’ve got a Republican congressman (who suddenly resigned after an attractive young female intern died in one of his offices under mysterious circumstances). Most of the day is straight up DC/centrist BS and then they’ve got a few liberals in the evening.
Let me know when Fox and friends is hosted by Barney Frank.
“Most of the day is straight up DC/centrist BS”
Yeah, and straight up DC/centrist BS IS ‘liberal’ by the standards of most of the nation.
Of course MSNBC is a liberal network. Even Pew has no trouble recognizing that.
If MSNBC is liberal, why is the critical morning time slot dominated by a conservative republican congressman?
Of course MSNBC is a liberal network. Even Pew has no trouble recognizing that.
Your link doesn’t claim that MSNBC is liberal; it only claims that MSNBC had a lot of negative coverage of Romney. But saying negative things about Mitt Romney doesn’t mean that you’re a liberal: Romney was an objectively bad politician who spent the entire campaign losing. You yourself often criticized Romney: does that prove that you’re a liberal?
Yeah, and straight up DC/centrist BS IS ‘liberal’ by the standards of most of the nation.
you are not most of the nation.
Republicans have not yet cornered the market on disinformation. Far from it.
Well, les’see here. You got your technical knowledge of firearms, and you’re most likely correct on that one. Props to you and Brett. As for just about any other subject, not so much. Here is just a short list of where GOP and/or conservative disinformation far, far, far outweighs anything some liberal do-gooder could come up with: Global climate change, the theory of evolution, Iraq war, “Sharia Law”, Bill Clinton, healthcare, 9-11, racism, ACORN, drug policy, women’s reproductive freedom, women’s anatomy (pretty astounding, that!), public education, the US Constitution beyond repeating the words verbatim, taxation, economics, the regulatory state, civil liberties, United Nations, banking, science, foreign policy, Agenda 21, well my, the list is nearly endless.
Yes, the right has not yet cornered the market on disinformation, but I’d say they are getting pretty close to a corner on the really far out(and some not so far) stuff that is more than one standard deviation from those few remaining things in the world that we can all agree are indeed “facts”.
Because it’s easier, don’tcha know, for Democrats to get the votes of people who are completely ignorant.
Somehow this slipped by me.
WTF are you talking about?
And is there actually any kind of question about the fact that the Republican party seeks to suppress voting among folks who would tend to vote (D)? As, specifically, an electoral strategy?
Yes, although they do seek to suppress illegal voting as an electoral strategy. Despite the ridiculous calls to prove voter fraud, it would be like trying to prove illegal immigration if no one had to prove they have working papers.
I have to prove who I am to buy an antihistamine at the pharmacy, and I should have to to get a gun, or vote.
Marty, mass voter impersonation fraud is economically infeasible. It is like worrying that someone will scour your trash for years collecting aluminum foil until they’ve gotten enough to build a 747 out of it. You’re welcome to worry about that, but doing so makes you look less than sane.
But perhaps I’m wrong. Can you explain how much you’d have to pay fake voters per hour to commit this felony? How many voters would you need to swing the last presidential election? How much will transporting them cost? How will you find registered but guaranteed not to show up real voters to impersonate (plus their addresses)? Or how you will register voters? How will you allay poll worker suspicions when a bus full of never-voted-here-before voters show up at the polling place? If this is really happening, why haven’t any poll workers noticed the big groups of voters? Why haven’t any real voters complained about a phantom voter voting in their name already? Why does polling closely match election outcomes (I mean, how could that possibly work if mass voter impersonation vote fraud was happening?)?
Prove voter fraud? How about show evidence that it’s significant?
And while we’re discussing proof, I don’t have to prove who I am when I vote, but I do have to have some amount of evidence that I am who I say I am.
I’d love to see a reasonable response to Turb’s comment.
Turb, that one is easy. The liberal pollsters are of course in cahoots with the fraudsters. That is also the only possible explanation why the conservative pollsters always predict a landslide for their side but seem to be disproven by the election results most of the time.
I think it evident that in person voter fraud, of the impersonation sort, is likely a minor factor in our elections, though it does exist to some extent, and may throw the occasional razor close race.
The real rubber hits the road when it comes to absentee ballots, where fraud can be done wholesale, not retail, manufactured votes by the hundreds or thousands.
But, of course, the cost is proportional to the problem, photo ID is simply the standard form of ID for the vast majority of transactions, public and private, where there is a need to prove your identity. I get asked for it at the bank, at the airport, cashing a check, trivially during traffic stops. Lack of photo ID doesn’t just cause you trouble voting, it causes you trouble in many different ways during your life.
So, when a demand, perfectly reasonable, is made that the person seeking to cast John Doe’s one and only vote demonstrate they are John Doe, photo ID is the normal, default way by which that is done.
At this point, you can go two ways in response to the lack of ID. You can insist that this transaction, this one alone, and not boarding a plane or cashing a check, be permitted with substandard proof of identity. And the person lacking the ID will get to vote, but by stymied by the lack of ID in many other ways in their life.
Or you can take the other fork, and insist that people lacking photo ID be provided it, at little or no cost, so that they can not only vote, but do all sorts of things those with ID take for granted.
Why take the former course? The rational conservative, assuming liberals must be themselves rational, assumes that there is a sensible reason for gutting the ID requirement, instead of providing the ID. And the only one they can come up with? To facilitate the commission of voter fraud. People like Patrick Moran don’t exactly render this conclusion implausible, either.
Granted, the mistake here is assuming that liberals are being rational. But that’s a mistake I’ll always have a weak spot for.
But, of course, the cost is proportional to the problem, photo ID is simply the standard form of ID for the vast majority of transactions, public and private, where there is a need to prove your identity.
Do I need to prove my identity when I write a check? I guess so. Do I need to prove my identity when I use a no-limit AMEX card? Apparently not: at least, AMEX doesn’t think so. The vast majority of transactions, even those with significant fraud potential, don’t require photo id.
So, when a demand, perfectly reasonable
People who propose extremely expensive solutions to non-problems are not perfectly reasonable. They’re economically incompetent. Why should we kowtow to stupid people?
Or you can take the other fork, and insist that people lacking photo ID be provided it, at little or no cost, so that they can not only vote, but do all sorts of things those with ID take for granted.
Please list the states where I can get a drivers’ license or equivalent photo ID for no cost at all.
I do not doubt that the conservatives act fully rational on this in the sense of rational=likely to yield the desired results. Talking BS is an essential part of many quite rational strategies (a primary secret of successful advertising btw). From the turnout reducing perspective it is ideal to make acquiring the necessary ID as complicated, time consuming and expensive* as possible. Also a perennial favorite is to change the rules which ID is valid and which is not as often as possible, ideally shortly enough before the election that replacements are in essence impossible to get**. Pollworkers have to be kept in the dark too, so they can reject valid IDs. A national personal ID card on the other hand is just the first step to fascism, concentration camps and the gas chambers. Remember, the first thing Hitler did after confiscating all guns and introducing national healthcare was the introduction of a national ID card (except for gays because all of them were already members of his storm troopers)***.
*the ID itself must be formally free of charge but there is no rule to put hefty fees on the stuff that are required to present to get that free ID.
**that’s what made a (conservative) state court invalidate one voter ID law before the last election. The state had to admit that it was impossible to process all applications for ID in time.
***all claims in this sentence have been made by self-proclaimed conservatives, although not all by the same or at the same time.
That is no doubt true, russell, but some of the paranoia was for good reason. Not that I think absolutely everyone HAS to have a semiautomatic rifle, but people who were toying around with the idea of obtaining one were arguably incentivized to go ahead and buy. And ammo up, too, because you just never know when that is going to stop being available.
Yes, I did get that you weren’t placing any particular weight on how much of a factor that was. I honestly don’t know, either.
The story on the other side is that the Democratic base disproportionately consists of “low-information” voters
The notion that Republicans are well-informed is laughable. For starters, take a look at bobbyp’s list.
I suspect that Republicans imagine they are well-informed, because they listen to Rush and whatnot, but the fact is that most or all conservative sources of information are full of BS.
That is no doubt true, russell, but some of the paranoia was for good reason.
When I say “paranoia”, I’m not talking about “I won’t be able to buy one anymore”.
That might be an overreaction, but I’m not not sure it’s actually paranoia. Private ownership of certain classes of firearms have actually been outlawed, it’s not sheer insanity to think others might be, as well.
When I say “paranoia”, I’m talking about the “I need to be able to take out the National Guard and the UN storm troopers when they come to invade my house” thing.
That’s paranoia.
FWIW.
The rational conservative, assuming liberals must be themselves rational, assumes that there is a sensible reason for gutting the ID requirement, instead of providing the ID. And the only one they can come up with? To facilitate the commission of voter fraud.
That’s paranoia, too.
A little lack of imagination to go with, and perhaps a lack of reading comprehension thrown in for good measure.
But definitely paranoia.
Somebody show me the US election that has been won or lost due to voter fraud. Maybe it exists, maybe it doesn’t.
Maybe it happened in Athens, TN.
Why should the voters have more between the ears than the people they elect?
High information voters tend to be a rarity even in countries with less of a tradition of knownothingism and indifference than the USofA.
“You are the candidate of every thinking person””Yes/Maybe but I need a majority”
Turn, not ignoring you, too long an answer for my phone. Maybe time in the am.
This, from Maddow via bspencer at LGM seems apropos:
It was billed of “the first public meeting of Battlefield Dallas.” But a Tea Party Republican made the headlines when he had this to say about GOP voter outreach efforts.
“I’m going to be real honest with you, the Republican Party doesn’t want black people to vote if they’re going to vote 9-to-1 for Democrats,” Ken Emanuelson said.
sure does look like Republicans do whatever they can to keep non white people from voting. the last election we all saw Florida and Ohio do their best to keep those low info voters out. the Black and Brown and Female kind.
of course this was on the internet and the news. but who believes the news anymore. i certainly don’t, knowing they are owned by 6 major corporations, Corporations, who purpose is to make money. Truth is no where to be found on these “so called” news Companies.
watching all those long lines to vote in Florida and hearing about the Republicans in Florida or Ohio who cut Sunday voting or weekend voting, cause we know who gets out to vote on the Weekends. Right. Hint, Hint, Hint.
unless and until the Government provides FREE ID cards, no strings attached, i will believe that there are some people who don’t want everyone to vote. just listen to that guy in Texas who said he didn’t want everyone to vote, cause “you know who they’d vote for” lol
all the BS doesn’t hide the true motive of the Best BSer online here or on Faux or MSNBC. lol.
and don’t dare call MSNBC “liberal” lol.
you haven’t a clue if that is “liberal” lol.
Thanks for clarifying, russell.
If free photo IDs were issued as part of the registration process, I would have no problem with voter-ID laws, at least not with regard to voter disenfranchisement. It might still be too costly, obviously not for the recipients of the IDs, but for the program, relative to the (purported) benefit.
But, as Hartmut mentioned, a number of voter-ID proposals were clearly intended to prevent people from voting, considering that they were put forth well into 2012 and were to be implemented immediately, had it not been for court intervention.
“Republicans have not yet cornered the market on disinformation. Far from it.”
“but people who were toying around with the idea of obtaining one were arguably incentivized to go ahead and buy.”
I guess that will make it a little more difficult to argue with those who feel cornered by their own disinformation.
photo ID is simply the standard form of ID for the vast majority of transactions, public and private,
Brett, congratulations to you on having (apparently) never been poor. If you are poor, you don’t have toprove your identity in a traffic stop because you don’ thave or drive a vehicle; you live in a place where you can ride public transportation (without ID) or ride with others. You don’t need an ID to cash a check, because you either use a check-cashing service (for a high fee, but it works for you) or get paid in cash. You simply do not, mostly cannot afford to, do most of the “routine” (if you are not poor) things that would require an ID.
But does that mean that you are not validly a citizen, and should not be allowed to vote? Sure . . . we could just go back to property requirements for voters, and it would be even simpler. Is that what you, personally, would prefer?
It’s not disinformation when there actually are lawmakers discussing making some kinds of weapons illegal, Count. But nice try.
It’s disinformation to imply that ordinary weapons are going to be banned by federal law, which is what McConnel told his constitutents. In fact that meme –“They are goig to take your guns!”– is a favorite rightwing lie. Gun manufacturers and the NRA used it to encourage gullible idiots to run out and stockpile weapons and ammo during the first six years of the Obama administration when gun control was not an issue under discussion in Congress and when there were zero proposals concerning guns in committee.
In fact the whole discussion of gun legislation has been distorted into “They are going to take your gun”. The back ground check proposal was routinely mis-framed that way.
Most Americans, including most Repubicans support gun control intiatives such as background checks. The NRA and their pet legislators know this, so the distortion of the issue inot “They are going take your gun!” is cynical fearmongering.
perfectly reasonable
Heh. Given the arc of technological progress and our unbound appetite to use it, the Great Security State that both the GOP and standard issue Democrats worship can dispense with ID’s altogether. They know who you are. They know where you are. They know who you know, and they know what you buy. They know what you belief and what you do about it. They may not know the exact words of your speech, but that is unnecessary. They may not yet know when you take a sh*t, but that is only because they have yet to figure out how to make a buck from such knowledge or succumbed yet to a rationale that somehow knowing this will improve “Homeland Security”.
I am reminded of long ago civil liberties debates with YAF conservatives who argued with contemptuous ferocity that “if you are innocent, you have nothing to fear.”
Well, here we are. Are you enjoying the ride?
but people who were toying around with the idea of obtaining one were arguably incentivized to go ahead and buy. And ammo up, too, because you just never know when that is going to stop being available.
Well, in that case, those who acted in that manner showed a near total ignorance of history, any realistic operational knowledge of how a bill in Congress gets to the point of being a law, and current political reality. They are thus self selected members of the “ill informed”, and not surprisingly, they mostly identify themselves as some kind of conservative.
Oh heck, they were buying weapons of all caliber and capacity, figuring they’d run with any kind of information or disinformation the wind blew up their skirts.
On the one side you have conservatives defending their disinformation on a variety of topics while loading up on semi-automatic weapons, while on the other side you have liberals defending their disinformation while loading up on lattes and the chocolate swirl pound cake.
After Newtown, you had conservatives loading up on the weapon of choice in the murders and you had liberals trying to decide whether or not to have another child in case the first one got permanent detention at school.
Thus the increased difficulties with future argument over one’s chosen disinformation.
And, as Brett might point out, you can at least blind, or maybe even kill a guy at close range by throwing a latte in his face, so why not restrict lattes too, which has the advantage of evening out the odds in future disagreements.
One side would have to check their semi-automatics at the door and the other would have to check their lattes.
Personally, I WOULD restrict lattes over 32 ounces to force a pause to refill in case a guy is trying to commit suicide via latte.
I remember when the government authorities were threatening to put a stop sign at the end of my street years ago and I took the opportunity before the forced totalitarian wearing of my brake pads to, depending on my mood, coast nonchalantly onto the adjoining street, or stepping on the gas as I approached and merging on my terms, usually with the horn at full blast.
Alas, time ran out on freedom and I had thereafter to come to a full stop, which caused my latte to tip into my lap.
If I had had a gun, let me tell you.
Oh heck, they were buying weapons of all caliber and capacity, figuring they’d run with any kind of information or disinformation the wind blew up their skirts.
The bar for “incentivised action” is indeed low in this instance, practically nonexistent.
It’s not disinformation when there actually are lawmakers discussing making some kinds of weapons illegal, Count. But nice try.
It is too bad that Intrade shut down because I’d like to put my own money behind the proposition that there’s no way an assault weapons ban passes in the next 5 years.
One thing that always shocks me though is how incredibly narrow the gun defender camp is. Like, don’t I have the right under the second amendment to design and build my own shoulder launched anti-aircraft missile? And maybe sell plans on the internet so that anyone can take out a
747 that is annoying themtyrannical government air force. I mean, surely gun rights groups concerned about government tyranny aren’t so stupid to think that they could win a military conflict without an anti-aircraft capability, right? And why shouldn’t every lunatic on the internet be able to shoot down aircraft whenever he wants?Me, I always get my IUDs and my IEDs mixed up.
Aren’t there some right-wing militias abroad in the land who want to possess the latter to prevent the rest of us from using the former?
These wouldn’t be libertarian militias, I don’t think, who favor leaving the possession of both to the individual’s choice, but I would be careful if you’re a woman when a guy in camo tells you to place the IUD in the street and the IED in, well, not the street.
By the way, not picking on Slart (it’s just that certain juxtapositioned phrases catch my eye) here, because the purity of his conservative credentials are highly suspect under present day standards, which is to say that his information is reliable and not likely to get him invited on FOX News.
That’s a good thing.
Going to make a bolognese sauce this afternoon, so could you people keep it down?
Despite the ridiculous calls to prove voter fraud, it would be like trying to prove illegal immigration if no one had to prove they have working papers.
It seems to me that, if folks want to change the existing protocols for voting in order to prevent voter fraud, it behooves them to demonstrate that such a thing actually takes place.
Personally, I’m unclear on exactly how you would perpetrate voter fraud on scale sufficient to make a difference. Brett says it’s through absentee ballot voodoo. How does that work, exactly? Somebody sends in 1,000 votes from Joe Smith at 123 Main St?
Nobody notices this?
I’d also like someone to explain to me how the voter ID thing plays out, as a practical matter. Do you use your license? Passport? SSN? Some new and as of yet unimplemented ID scheme?
How do we insure that everyone entitled to vote has the proper ID? How do make sure that whatever ID scheme we come up with is more secure and reliable than what (in all of its various forms) we do now?
How broad is the scope of this plan? Are talking some kind of national protocol for voting, enforced the same way everywhere in the country? Who is going to implement and operate this?
Who is going to pay for it?
Right now, when I vote, I go to the community center down the block from me. I tell the poll worker my name and address. The poll worker checks a box indicating that I showed up to vote.
I get one paper form, which I fill out and deposit in the scanner. If I screw up the form, they will take the one I have and give me another one.
When I’m done, I tell another poll worker my name and address, and they check the box indicating that I’m done voting.
The whole thing works perfectly well.
It’s true, somebody could sneak in ahead of me and pretend to be me. That would be one fraudulent vote.
I do not see how you could possibly scale that up to a level that would a difference in any real-world election.
I also don’t see what scheme you could devise to protect against fraud that wouldn’t be just as easy to hack.
Republicans don’t want poor people to vote, they don’t want minorities to vote, and they don’t want students to vote, because those demographics generally vote (D). They vote (D) not because they’re stupid ignorant jerks, but because their interests are better served by folks with (D) after their name.
When those folks – the folks who are less likely to have the paraphernalia of middle-class life like driver’s licenses and photo ids – vote, (R)’s are less likely to win, so the (R) party is interested in preventing them from doing so.
That’s the reality. It’s not like it’s a big secret, either.
“It’s true, somebody could sneak in ahead of me and pretend to be me. That would be one fraudulent vote.”
As the Tea Party guy in Texas said the other day, tell me who the two you voted for and I’ll tell you which vote is fraudulent …. or not.
Me, I always get my IUDs and my IEDs mixed up.
Count, this is real simple: IUD => Ugh! and the Republicans want to take them away.
IED => Eeck! and the Democrats want to take them away.
See? simple!
Since the NSA is monitoring my blog posts, I was thinking they might as well correct the spelling and punctuation while they’re at it, and lift my links when lj is otherwise disposed.
Thanks, folks.
Self-commentary:
“After Newtown, you had conservatives loading up on the weapon of choice in the murders and you had liberals trying to decide whether or not to have another child in case the first one got permanent detention at school.”
I wonder if NRA conservatives watch movies like “Bonnie and Clyde” or say, “JFK” and think to themselves, “Man, first thing tomorrow I’m going to get me some of THAT firepower. Did you see Faye Dunaway spray those gummint dogooders with that thing?”
Liberals, of course, handful of popcorn paused half way to their mouths, are muttering “That’s awful. But, all things considered, the cinematography and slow-mo are righteous.”
“Red Dawn” is probably more like it.
In a way, the Newtown shooter was a good example for certain types, kind of a publicity blitz for gunning up.
The bigotry of us liberals* also blatantly showed when we cheered the protagonist of ‘God Bless America’ going on a killing spree against everything holy to true Americans (ab)using his god-given rights to arm up (even vocally opposing gun control).
The only complaint from our side was that there was too much talk between the scenes of arousing carnage.
*including naturally the godless Europeans I saw the film with.
Hartmut is referring to this film
I’m thinking I will stick with Ozu…
Not my favorite but neither is Miike 😉
I like Kwaidan and The Ballad Of Narayama (in both cases the old deliberately ‘stagey’ versions) and there is a place in my heart for the absurdity of Jigoku (that can be described as Hieronymous Bosch joining Monty Pythons’s Flying Circus in Hell).
Sorry, threadjacking.
russell hits it as usual – the current voter ID processes are more than sufficient to ensure that in-person vote fraud is a rare occurrence, es evidenced, and almost certainly never could be done on a scale to swing an election of any significance.
Absentee ballots might be a different matter, but IIRC they are favored by demographics more favorable to the right side of the political scale.
And while I might, in theory, be amenable to an ID requirement for voting, it would need to be truly cost and burden free to everyone (not to mention accurate), or at least not more costly/burdensome than current procedures.
As it stands, however, what the current voter ID laws amount to are a poll tax, which is unconstitutional per the 24th Amendment.
I get asked for it at the bank, at the airport
As an aside, my stepson, who is a 30 year old hippie musician living in the Pacific Northwest, doesn’t have any kind of photo ID. He lives in a small city and doesn’t own a car, so he has no driver’s license. He currently has no passport.
When he flies, he phones ahead and lets the TSA know when he’ll be flying, and he brings a utility bill to prove that he is who he is.
I don’t know what he does at the bank, it’s quite possible he doesn’t deal with banks all that often. He lives and functions in a primarily cash and barter world.
Everybody isn’t a middle-class automobile-driving citizen with a mortgage or a lease.
Despite the ridiculous calls to prove voter fraud
since you can’t prove that what you claim needs preventing even exists, give us one good reason to take seriously anything you say on the matter.
it would be like trying to prove illegal immigration if no one had to prove they have working papers.
this analogy would hold more water if we did absolutely nothing to prevent people from voting who are not eligible, or from voting more than once.
as noted above, in most if not all jurisdictions, some reasonable amount of due diligence is done to insure that only people who ought to be voting, in that place, on that day, actually are voting.
it would be a non-trivial project to add additional requirements for voting, especially if we wanted to relocate the responsibility for running elections from the local to the federal level. and it would likely make it difficult for many legitimate voters to vote.
if you want that, you need to demonstrate that it’s needed, that it would actually improve the situation, and that whatever upside there would be would not be outweighed by the downside.
none of those things are on the table.
That’s a rather high bar for the passage of laws and regulations.
That’s a rather high bar for the passage of laws and regulations.
But a fundamentally conservative one.
That’s a rather high bar for the passage of laws and regulations.
We’re talking about a fundamental right to be protected, not renaming a post office or whether to build a new interstate bridge.
Despite the ridiculous calls to prove voter fraud, it would be like trying to prove illegal immigration if no one had to prove they have working papers.
This has been looked for many times; they come up with the occasional green-card holder or felon who (they claim mistakenly) thought that they could vote. They come up with many more cases of mistaken identity (eg John Smith #1 votes but the poll worker crossed off John Smith #2).
I don’t know of anyone who’s found more than a handful of cases per election. And just like your undocumented workers, it’s easy to do samples of the population to see if the problem exists. So far, it hasn’t been shown to exist on any scale that matters.
The problem with claiming that the voter fraud efforts are entirely about keeping the vote legitimate is that they dovetail with other GOP efforts to create impediments to voting- eg cutting back on early voting opportunities. They are part of a larger effort- or there is a vast coincidence.
I recall a quote from the guy in PA who worked to pass their voter ID law, who claimed that it would ‘get Mitt Romney elected’. Which means he either thinks there is normally 100ks of false votes that would be deterred- or 100ks of genuine votes…
Lack of photo ID doesn’t just cause you trouble voting, it causes you trouble in many different ways during your life.
Echoing wj, this is one of those sentences that should’ve used the pronoun “I”. You generalize from your experience without consideration- studies have found up to 11% of eligible voters lack a photo ID. Mostly seniors, the very poor, minorities, people with disabilities, and the young. Even if that’s an overestimate by a factor or two or so, that’s 1 potential voter in 20. Some of them will find it easy to get an ID. Others won’t.
[This reminds me of Romney’s statements about ‘borrowing money from your parents’ if you want to start a business as a young person; great if you’ve got parents with money, but more revealing of his circumstances than a general principle of how to get ahead in life].
Assuming that every else’s life is more or less like yours- everyone has access to a car, everyone is treated reasonably by the police, everyone can get a lawyer if they really need one- is a serious flaw if you want to understand how our society works and what the impact of your proposals actually is. Freedom does not just mean the freedom to live like Brett.
And do I not recall you recently berating liberals for their lack of empathy? A little friendly fire, there.
mystery solved!
why did unskewedpolls.com come out looking so idiotic?
please proceed, “conservatives”
There’s no question in my mind that Romney lost fair and square, mostly due to the lack of appeal to the conservative core and resultant less-than-stellar turnout.
It’s not that there’s no voter fraud, ever. It’s that removing all voter fraud would (as far as I am aware) still would result in an Obama victory.
Unless you count the Indiana thing, which isn’t voter fraud but something else entirely. Laziness, possibly.
It’s not that there’s no voter fraud, ever.
i’m still waiting for evidence that the amount of voter fraud exceeds vote counting error. or that it exceeds poll worker fraud. or that it exceeds the number of people who win PowerBall.
waiting.
waiting.
waiting.
“this analogy would hold more water if we did absolutely nothing to prevent people from voting who are not eligible, or from voting more than once.”
….in Massachusetts which requires an actual voter registration card and photo id for first time voters.
The position that you have to prove voter fraud to pass a law that would allow it to be identified makes this discussion circular and a waste of time.
shorter “conservatives”: we must prevent what i can only imagine!
Shorter clerk: if it’s true I think it helps Dems, so I will ignore it self righteously.
halp ! i’m askeered of my imagination! pass a law!
I suppose that depends on what thread you’re on…
….in Massachusetts which requires an actual voter registration card and photo id for first time voters.
Presenting ID to vote for first-time voters is only required in MA if you registered by mail. If you registered in person, you are required to present ID when you register.
Or, you can send the proof of identity with a mailed-in registration if you don’t mind not getting it back.
Photo ID in any case is not required. Any of the following will do:
From here.
Basically, you have to demonstrate that somebody by a certain name lives at a certain address. Then, when you actually go to vote, you state that you are that person.
So, potentially somebody could sneak in ahead of you and vote in your name, but as mentioned above, it’s dead hard to make that scale to a stolen election.
They’re thinking about introducing online registration in MA, I’m not sure how that will work.
The position that you have to prove voter fraud to pass a law that would allow it to be identified makes this discussion circular and a waste of time.
ID laws can only catch one specific kind of fraud- an attempt to register or vote as someone you aren’t. Specifically, people who try to do that but don’t bother to get a fake ID.
It doesn’t catch felons, or green-card holders, or people voting in more than one jurisdiction.
Im not sure how many people you think are out there who want to vote as someone else, but can’t be bothered to get a fake ID to do so. Fake IDs are *cheap*, if you actually thought that this kind of voting fraud was a problem it seems to me that you’d be after a solution that isn’t circumvented easily by virtually every 16-20 year old in the entire *%&#*%$ country.
If.
Actually, re-reading the rules, I don’t think you have to present ID if you register in person. You sign an affidavit, you’re done.
it was a dark and stormy night –
four dark and stormies, maybe five.
a hoard of voters voting,
i saw with my mind’s eye.
voting twice, voting thrice!
four times ! five !
the sacred duty betrayed.
in the annex of the church!
such horror. such dismay.
the franchise besmirched!
i was bound to my chair
by the offense of the act.
my fists clenched tight.
with fear my face wracked.
but with a mere blink,
the vision erased.
the hoard of frauds vanished.
they left not a trace.
but the horror remained:
the country was in danger!
i and knew my only course
was to turn my fear into anger!
but when i speak
of this terrible sight
few men believe me,
most say “yeah, right”.
but the horror of the scene
haunts my days and my nights.
and with ALEC’s kind assistance
i know i must fight.
Also- it would be nice if the proponents could identify some cases where this is occurring. If it’s occurring at a rate high enough to affect elections (let’s say, more than .1%?), that’d be hundreds of thousands every year. You should be able to audit a precinct of 10k and find several examples of non-existent voters.
We find documented cases of bad votes every cycle, in just about every state. A felon, or someone who voted twice, etc. I have yet to see anyone caught voting as someone else even as a one-off, let alone the sort of organized effort it would take to swing even a local election.
So we have a problem that should be easy to demonstrate, but hasn’t been. We have a solution that wouldnt actually solve the problem since anyone willing to organize a large fraudulent effort could also provide IDs. And we have other voter-suppression efforts being undertaken by the same group.
(Some of the lists of acceptable IDs are pretty hillarious eg Texas accepts state IDs, passports, military IDs, and concealed carry permits. Not tribal IDs, or student IDs, public-assistance IDs, etc. It’s *almost* like someone made a list of potentially liberally-leaning groups and rejected their IDs from the list).
List of current and planned reqs by state here.
My bad- that’s what Texas is planning to accept as valid ID once
the Supreme Court finishes gutting the Voting Rights Actthey get clearance from the Justice Dept.“It’s *almost* like someone made a list of potentially liberally-leaning groups and rejected their IDs from the list”
Alternatively, it’s almost like they looked at what was necessary to obtain those forms of ID, and only approved the forms of ID which required you to prove who you were to get.
I suppose we would have to actually look at the details of what’s needed to get each form of ID to determine which of these scenarios is in play. For instance, they currently permit voting on the basis of a utility bill or government mail. Which does prove you knew where a real voter’s mailbox was located. Can’t get much more ironclad than that, right?
my BJ’s wholsesale club member card has my picture on it. can I use that?
how does an ID stop me from voting twice?
Why not hand over this entire ridiculous low-tech voting merry-go-round to the NSA, who could put their massive sifting software and databases to work and figure out who is who and who is not who?
All of that computer power in search of a problem.
For example, they could read our blog posts, calculate the frequency of keywords, apply an algorithm calculated by the number of ironic statements, read our minds, and actually submit our votes for us electronically, thus saving us the trouble of running the gauntlet of geriatric watchers, doubters, ID peekers, martinets, sidelong glancers, Tea Party dyspeptics, and citizen pests who think they know who I am.
I know who I am.
Who are you?
And don’t flaunt that dangling mass of IDs clipped to your shirt as proof that you are a legally certified poll-watcher (who’s watching the Lithuanians is my question) who can spy on me!
I can tell by your wattles and trifocals that you are an errand person sent by grocery clerks to harsh my voting mellow.
Get outta my face!
Alternatively, it’s almost like they looked at what was necessary to obtain those forms of ID, and only approved the forms of ID which required you to prove who you were to get.
Brett, if you ever managed to step away from the party line on stuff like this- especially it’s downright egregious- Id have a much easier time believing you were arguing in good faith.
Someone who said ‘I believe we need voter ID checks even without much demonstrated fraud if for no other reason to maintain or restore public confidence in the process- so let’s make sure we aren’t discriminating against specific groups and that IDs are easy to get for all legitimate voters.’
Instead, we get ‘Hey, suburban white guy here- Id have a heck of time getting by without my drivers license, so probably everyone who doesn’t have one is too lazy and ill-informed to vote anyway’ and ‘these tissue-paper-thin excuses for excluding Dem-leaning groups do exist even if they are paper-thin, so let’s take them as good faith, why don’t you do some research and prove they aren’t for me although my mind is clearly already made up and dissuading lazy
Democraticlow-information voters is probably a good thing anyway.’LSS- not going to look that up, knock yourself out if you feel the need.