StrangeSox

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 19, 2013 -> 04:17 PM) OMG. So make a f***ing exception. Jesus. So make a giant bureaucracy that can grant exceptions at it sees fit, likely making it the target of numerous discrimination claims, but still places significant hurdles to voters via some sort of application and appeals process? To combat a problem for which there is no evidence?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 19, 2013 -> 04:15 PM) I just f***ing linked to a site where 3-4 people were charged! But you also said it was impossible to detect! When it actually happens, which is rare, because it's a dumb way of committing voter fraud*, people actually get caught. And once you're above the small local election level, it's not even plausible that it could be executed at a significant level. *I guess I'm coming at this from a centrally planned effort and not a random person voting for a couple of relatives. Now compare those five votes to how many people in Ohio would have been disenfranchised with a voter ID law.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 19, 2013 -> 04:13 PM) Your entire argument relies upon the fact that there is no evidence that this type of voter fraud happens, but you refuse to acknowledge that it's incredibly difficult to go out and find that evidence given the way the system is set up. Occasionally when an idiot trips up and gets caught, it's proof that it happens, but that's few and far between because the government and the party's don't have the manpower or the means to catch people. It's like arguing that people never go over the speed limit when you have 5 cops patrolling the entire state. The lack of evidence isn't proof that it doesn't happen. Yes, my argument that this isn't a real problem relies on the fact that there's zero evidence that this is a real problem. This is usually regarded as a very strong foundation for an argument. Furthermore, there is more data that can be examined than actually catching someone in the act. You can analyze by-precinct voting results for anomalies. Evidence of in-person voter fraud still does not show up. We can also examine it from a completely theoretical point of view and find that the prospect of non-negligible in-person fraud just doesn't make much sense. There are far more efficient and less-risky ways of committing election fraud. That Republicans focus solely on the one highly implausible form that just happens to disenfranchise their opponents' voters is what makes their motivations so obvious. On the other hand, we have actual, tangible evidence of non-negligible amounts of disenfranchisement that result from these laws. You hand-wave them away because they're inconvenient, or less charitably, because you simply don't care that people are disenfranchised. This is not akin to arguing that people never go over the speed limit because there's a hypothetically low amount of speeding tickets. We can all observe ourselves and others speeding regularly. We can look at reported driving times. At a higher level, we can look at Ipass data. We would still find an abundance of evidence for speeding even if there were few speeding tickets issued. Just the same, we'd find plenty of evidence of voting irregularities if this was an actual, legitimate problem. Yet, we don't. You're still attempting to solve a problem that you've decided to believe is real without any evidence whatsoever. I see no reason to accept these attempts to solve a non-real problem when these solutions result in many multiples more people being disenfranchised than are even hypothetically prevented from committing fraud.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 19, 2013 -> 04:06 PM) SS, Its not about voter fraud at all. You can completely erase voter fraud without actually needing people to take pictures so we can create more databases to track citizens. You just need a database that is actively updating. Now someone could hack the database, but then again, some one could hack the voting machines.... Its interesting what the govt puts out there as what we should worry about, as compared to what would really be the likely way to manipulate voting. That's a plausible way of doing it, but it seems like a hugely unnecessary and expensive system to solve a non-problem. You already sort of have that with registration rolls, two people can't try to identify themselves as the same person. That's one reason why in-person fraud is so implausible even without an ID.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 19, 2013 -> 04:03 PM) Why should I have to put my picture on a govt regulated item? Isnt my ss and birth certificate enough? Perhaps it doesnt impact you, but coming from a group of people that was persecuted by govts for over 2000 years, you get a little nervous any time people want you to "register" because "its for your own good" I remember back in the Middle Ages when they just wanted the Jews to put a little yellow star on themselves. Thats not a big deal, why shouldnt you have to tell the govt who you are? When has it ever gone wrong that the govt has used information to select and target people... If you are going to argue for such an increase in govt power, at least give me a reason why that is the ONLY/BEST method. Seeing as its not even a legitimate or good method to decrease voter fraud, it just simply seems like a way for the govt to get more information/better control its people. I saw a copy of Frank Lloyd Wright's passport on Saturday. They used to just be a list of physical descriptions. "Nose: Large" "Forehead: High"

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 19, 2013 -> 04:01 PM) I don't get it. It's relatively simple. When you're born, you have get a certificate. By law, you're supposed to get an SS#. Those two things everyone has and they're free. Take that to a local post office/drivers license facility/courthouse, whatever. Use that document, get your picture taken and get an photo ID. Use that photo ID for various services including voting. 99.9% of the country already does this. Why is it that so difficult? You have to do more to do just about anything else in life. Why is voting so different? If voting was such a sacred right that can't be infringed even a little, then registration should be thrown out the window. Who cares why they have you register, if it affects someone's right to vote (as in, you CAN'T VOTE AT ALL UNLESS YOU REGISTER), then that should be abolished. If you can physically make it to the polling station, your vote counts. End of story. No, they don't. Remember how I already linked you to one story about that? There's many others about people who were born in areas and eras before BC's and hospital records were widespread and well-kept and who simply cannot ever obtain that information. Maybe in a few decades it wouldn't be an issue, but there's still other concerns as well.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 19, 2013 -> 03:55 PM) I honestly don't know. We know it happens, we don't know to what degree. Provide people free ID's if they need them. Drive people to polls if you want. But make sure that the people that vote are living people who are physically present at the polling station (or that can be tracked to make sure there's not any double voting with absentee ballots). It's f***ing 2013. We have the means to do this. No, we don't. You're simply assuming that we do. If this was a real problem, it would manifest in the voting data. It doesn't. Think about how hard this scheme would be to pull off. You need to know who's registered in a given precinct. You need to know they won't show up. You need to send an individual for every vote you're going to fraudulently cast. You need dozens to thousands (depending on the scale of the particular election local/state-wide) of people to keep quite, to never say a word about this scheme. Now compare that with absentee ballot fraud, something Republicans seem oddly quiet about. Compare it to good ol' ballot box stuffing or electronic manipulation. Why would anyone go through the hassle and risk of in-person fraud on any meaningful level?

I'll note that you're never able to actually present an argument or any evidence whatsoever on this topic and just fall back to some dumb knee-jerk "you're calling me a racist" line. I'm sorry that my "bleeding heart" for "letting people vote" is too much. I'm sorry that you can't accept that there's no evidence-based support for these laws pushed by Republicans that just happen to significantly disenfranchise their political opponents' voters. I'm sorry that you can't discuss an issue with a racial aspect without immediately concluding that you, personally, are being called a racist or that anyone is even being called a racist (they're not, at least by me). I'm sorry that you seem to lack empathy for people in situations that you haven't been through, that you seem to not give one s*** about actual people losing their ability to vote in an effort to stop a non-existent problem. I could like you to various amicus briefs filed in the cases over these laws that document this disenfranchisement and the lack of actual in-person voter fraud, but you've already told me you simply don't care. It doesn't seem to matter that there's no evidence for this being a real problem, you've simply assumed a priori that it's real. It doesn't seem to matter that people actually are disenfranchised, you've assumed a priori that they really aren't and, even if they are, f*** 'em.

Jenks, do you think in-person voter fraud has had any measurable impact on an election? What evidence do you have to support that claim?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 19, 2013 -> 03:45 PM) I fail to see how offering up an ID is "government in your life" anymore than having a social security card or a birth certificate or whatever. It's simply providing evidence that you are who you say you are and not someone else. You don't need a driver's license. Get a regular state-issued photo ID. Something official with your mug on it so that an election judge can say "yep, that's you" instead of someone else. That costs time and money and requires you to have some other official document proving you are who you say you are. Not everybody has the time, money and necessary documents. Getting the documents is a Catch-22 in that you need a state-issued ID to get them.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 19, 2013 -> 03:38 PM) Lol, ugh. So again, why have any requirements at all? Some dumb person might have to deal with a "complicated" process. The horror! Yeah, what a "dumb" person for being old, from an area that didn't have good records and having her SS card stolen! f*** her, better put laws in place that take away her right to vote while preventing a problem that isn't actually real! PS dumb people have just as much as a right to vote as you.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 19, 2013 -> 03:35 PM) And we've been 'round this merry-go-round before: you won't ever get evidence of voter fraud because it's impossible to catch without someone being dumb enough to get caught. This isn't some make-em-up scenario, it happens: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/11...es-in-november/ Wait, I won't get evidence, but here's an example of it happening?? You won't get evidence because it doesn't really happen because in-person voter fraud is an incredibly risky and inefficient way to rig an election with more than a few dozen votes. There are, at most, a handful of cases every couple of years. Pro-ID respondents have repeatedly admitted this, courts have frequently found this. It's not a real problem, and if it was, it'd show up in election data. This is unquestionably true. Various Republicans have explicitly admitted it, and other voting disenfranchisement policies are clearly partisan-oriented, e.g. shifting polling times and locations to Republican areas in Ohio, changes that resulted in hours-long lines in Democratic areas in Florida. They're pretty blatant about it. Since in-person voter fraud isn't actually a real problem, the Democratic response is entirely legitimate: they want to keep voters enfranchised. Yes, they have a partisan interest in it, but they're also morally right. You could make the same argument in decades-past for racial voter enfranchisement (or "racial entitlements" as Scalia would call them), but one side would still clearly be right. Go read any of the numerous amicus briefs on these cases. GMAFB on your ignorance of real, documented cases of disenfranchisement that are only a quick Google search away. GMAFB on equating not wanting to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands if not millions of citizens with wanting to allow unlimited votes.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 19, 2013 -> 03:28 PM) Do you support a nationwide government-issued, government-required ID given to everyone at taxpayer expense? This still leaves many elderly people who lack the proper documentation in the lurch. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/us/polit...;pagewanted=all

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 19, 2013 -> 03:18 PM) Because voting is supposed to be anonymous so that our freedoms arent encroached. Kind of the entire reason why ballots are sealed. But I guess if that isnt a good reason anymore, we might as well just be able to vote online as long as we provide our SS number, and then they can just list our votes for everyone to see. That will end voter fraud, if I can check my vote make sure its right and make sure no one else voted under my name. But then again, we value privacy/secrecy. Guess it just depends on how much you want big brother in your life. FWIW voting wasn't anonymous until the late 19th century.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 19, 2013 -> 03:23 PM) Anonymous? You have to register to vote. How is that any different? Btw, I have to spend [insert price of a stamp because I honestly don't know these days] in order to register. Rabble, rabble! Disenfranchisement! Bunch of raycists! Infringing on my rights! Rabble, rabble! So you're just going to ignore the actual, documented disenfranchisement (that just happens to disproportionately affect minority voters) in order to pursue a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 19, 2013 -> 02:51 PM) It's asinine that in this country you have to produce a photo ID to enter certain buildings, but it's a god damn riot when people ask for photo ID's to be shown while voting. Probably because the impetus for these Voter ID Laws can be easily traced to efforts to disenfranchise voters for the other party and result in disenfranchisement that is many orders of magnitude greater* than the voter fraud problems they're trying to prevent. *this assumes incidents of voter fraud that would be prevented by ID laws are regularly non-zero, facts which are not in evidence.

Scalia continues his campaign to remembered as the worst Justice of the modern era, lending credence to imaginary voter fraud while rejecting documented voter disenfranchisement: https://prospect.org/article/arizona-versus-right-vote

Hawk Harrelson is a reliable judge of talent because he sees this guys play all the damn time.

Would anyone expect impartiality out of Dickie V. if he was talking about what he saw in Duke practices?

More evidence that Nixon sabotaged the 1968 Paris Peace Talks in order to advance his Presidential aspirations and thus prolonging and expanding the war for five more years has emerged. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21768668 Charlie Pierce was some comments:

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 17, 2013 -> 09:47 PM) This is just incredibly scary. It ought to send some shock waves through the Euro and the markets. They've modified the proposal to exempt smaller accounts, but Cyprus still seems set to reject the deal. Good. The ECB has been making dumb move after dumb move. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/business...p&_r=1&

And Lebron's a better player now.

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Mar 18, 2013 -> 03:49 PM) Some of you people need to get off your high horse. People far more reputable than Steve were posting complete bulls*** during the Lebron saga. Isn't throwing bulls*** against the wall sort of the norm in the twitter era?

Clear sucked in Woodridge 2 years ago, pretty much unusable even though I was supposedly only a mile from the tower.

Today's the 10-year anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. What a dumb idea that was. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/a...raq-war/273504/ http://crookedtimber.org/2013/03/17/bush-d...o-the-iraq-war/ http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/10/five-nomination.html digby looks at how the press cheerleaded the war and basically became transcribers around this time, continuing to be so today.