I hope you actually emailed this to Mark and didn't just post it??
Betty
Betty,
What? You don't think that Mark Ritchie hangs on every word out of the Stool?
Seriously, that's a good idea; Spot trusts that the author (ahem) will do that.
I was under the impression that Mn Republicans had already said they wouldn't use this strategy for the obvious reason that election day registration laws make it much, much harder to cage Minnesota voters.
Seems like a lot of work to challenge someone when all they have to do is pull out a current power bill to reregister on the spot and then cast a legal ballot.
Betty's suggestion has been acted upon.
Mark, same-day registration does cut down on the caging, but I can tell you it doesn't solve everything. Four years ago, Kiffmeyer did all she could to confuse voters and election judges alike by inconsistent pronouncements about what would or would not be accepted for same-day registration. She was taken to court before she would allow tribal IDs to be used off-reservation to prove identity.
Not everyone has a current utility bill in their own name. Not everyone has the time to gather the documentation, especially when they may be on the brink of homelessness. Even when they do, neighborhoods with more rentals tend to have very long lines at the same-day registration tables, something that discourages potential voters.
And Mark, do you really take Republicans at their word that they won't try dirty tricks?
Why not avoid all of this fuss and use a photo ID. Then we 'evil Republicans' can't challenge anyone based on their foreclosure status. If you have an ID and it says you live in the precinct, then that's all that needs to be checked.
Of course, those pesky Anarkids who left their ID at home before getting arrested might have a hard time of it, but for all their huff and puff I'd be surprised if they make it to the voting booth anyways.
Dave has just pointed out why the photo ID is disenfranchising. Let's say your home has been foreclosed, and yes, you have moved out. You're living in a homeless shelter and have been there long enough to vote in the shelter's precinct. But your driver's license - with the photo = shows your old home address.
Under current rules, somebody from the shelter can vouch for you, and you can vote in the precinct where you currently, and humbly, reside.
With a photo ID requirement, enforced as Dave suggests, you can't vote where you reside, but you can vote in the precinct where you no longer live.
But that would be voter fraud, wouldn't it, Dave?
The photo ID requirement is just an effort to suppress the vote in the most mobile part of the populace.
Wow, Spot, are you predicting thousands of people being foreclosed on and having to live in homeless shelters just prior to the election?
Look at it from the opposite side, then. What's to prevent me making a $100 'donation' to the shelter and having a worker there vouch for me and five of my friends?
Or in the bigger picture, what's to prevent me from chartering a busload of people from a safe red state like South Dakota over here to Minnesota and having local people 'vouch' for them?
A photo ID for voting is not perfect, I'll grant you that. But it is the 95% solution to preventing voter fraud.
Dave, come on. Photo ID is just a way to keep people from voting; "voter fraud" is just a red herring. Voter fraud? I give you the voter suppression efforts of Sec'ys of State Harris and Blackwell, and our friends from Diebold. They're responsible for more fraud on elections that all the ineligible people voting in the history of the republic.
Photo IDs are nice in Owatonna but I have several friends in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Mpls who do not have a drivers license. They have bus passes and rent checks.
Dave, you outline the modern conservative approach to government quite nicely with your take on voter fraud. You're right, there are no systems in place that would overtly stop you from bribing homeless people to vote for cash. There are, however, laws against voter fraud and 99.9% of the population views such tomfoolery as immoral. The "solution" here is to apply the law and prosecute those who disobey it because it is better to err on the side of inclusion when it comes to matters of enfranchisement than it is to enact measures that would explicitly prohibit far more legal voters than it would implicitly stop a minority of people who would already be criminals under existing law should they be caught doing the things you are worried about. It just so happens that the legal voters who would be stopped with such a proposal belong to a party that is at ideological odds with the one who thinks voting photo ids are such a hot idea.
Philosophically, your approach isn't even conservative at all. Trusting individuals to make the right decision without the intrusion of government would seem to be your proper play here. Then again, this isn't about political philosophy at all, is it? At least have the guts to say that this is about keeping Democratic voters at home rather than pretend to care about...well, you don't even have the stats right in the first place so why pretend that you're genuinely interested in this issue?
No Sponge, it's about keeping Democratic voters down to one vote each, and in the precinct they live in. It just so happens that the illegal voters who would be stopped by a photo ID requirement tend to vote Democrat, so your party would lose some votes.
Get real Spot. Every state in the country issues photo id cards for those who have no need of a driver's license.
And there is no way to catch voter fraud in the act. If I go to your homeless shelter, I go to the polling place and vote and then walk away. My vote is not flagged or set aside. I could announce the next day what I had done, but it's too late because my vote was already cast. Your friends with bus passes in Chicago could probably tell you about all the dead people who show up to vote, but they wont be able to tell you how many people went to jail for it.
Remember 2000 Spot? Why in the world are you advocating for more of that? It is the epitome of conservative thinking, Sponge, to settle voter requirements ahead of voting day, rather than let the courts decide it afterword.
You clearly don't have the first clue what you are talking about. Voter fraud wasn't the issue in 2000. Shitty ballots and hanging chads are the words you are searching for. You also don't know much about being an election judge as there are plenty of ways to challenge voters and weed out fraud. Again, at least grow a pair and admit the real reason why you're interested in this. Usually, when something interests someone,they take the time to learn something about the subject. The only thing you seem to know about this subject is that voter ID laws will cost democrats votes.
No, we wouldn't want to go back to 2000, especially not in Florida. Settle voting requirements ahead of time, indeed.
I happen to agree that an ID isn't a bad idea. But an affidavit from the homeless shelter (many of which issue their own picture IDs) could be accepted as well. The ID doesn't have to prove residency. The utility bill can do that. The ID proves that you are the person on the utility bill.
Hell, I have my ID from the last address I lived at. Sure, it's clipped, but claiming that I was pick-pocketed downtown last weekend and haven't gotten to the DMV yet might be enough.
However, until I hear reports of actual voter fraud (which is so widespread that it shouldn't be hard to find), I don't see the need to change things yet.
Actually, to be fair here, there was considerable amount of fraud in Florida in 2000. Google "texas" and "florida central voter file" and "error felon list". Over a thousand voters were purged from the voting list, 88% of which were black.
Recent studies have estimated that only 22% of blacks have cars.
Even efforts to tie voting registration to registered mail doesn't work well because hundreds of thousands of people move each year. In Ohio, a 2006 law was overturned that required a piece of registered mail in order to be sent to every voter. It was estimated that 600,000 people would have been disenfranchised this time around had the law still been in place.
The fact remains that the main target of voter suppression efforts are Democratic-leaning voters.
In Florida, your drivers license name has to exactly match the voter database in order to vote. Thousands of people get challenged on the basis of spelling mistakes. In Wisconsin, it was found that 22% of voters' registration info didn't match the state's database.
Another fact remains: the vast, vast, vast majority of people do not commit voter fraud and far more people would be disenfranchised by voter id acts than would be stopped committing a fraudulent vote. Even in counties where there are more registered voters than people this is the case. If you've moved in the last 2 years in Minnesota, you are likely still registered at your old address until you re-register on election day.
It's one thing to want a wonderfully functioning election system. It's quite another to engage in the types of blatant partisan tomfoolery that will do nothing but purge more legal voters than stop illegal ones.
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