Voting ID, the problems it purports to solve, and the problems it might create

Stele wrote:

That's how it's always been. Drum up some imaginary boogey man (oh no people are stuffing ballot boxes) to get some public support on your side, and push through a law that actually does something completely different, disenfranchise legitimate voters.

Actually, the laws are functioning exactly how they're supposed to. They aren't designed to disenfranchise all legitimate voters. Instead, they're designed to disenfranchise portions of the population who are statistically more likely to vote for Democratic candidates.

Surprised no one has yet posted about Don Yelton and his surprisingly candid assessment of NC Voter ID law.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...

It always stuns me when people are that uh... "candid" on video. I'm not sure if we're seeing it more because we're just recording and broadcasting things more, or if this is the result of the political echo chambers the Internet and gerrymandering have allowed us. I mean, when you're used to being able to say these things all the time (when you used to have to prepare yourself to speak to ideologically mixed crowds more often), I guess it's easy to feel like this is okay to say everywhere.

Also seriously - why do GOP staffers, politicians, and executives even allow themselves to be interviewed by the Daily Show anymore? Holy crap.

Bloo Driver wrote:

It always stuns me when people are that uh... "candid" on video. I'm not sure if we're seeing it more because we're just recording and broadcasting things more, or if this is the result of the political echo chambers the Internet and gerrymandering have allowed us. I mean, when you're used to being able to say these things all the time (when you used to have to prepare yourself to speak to ideologically mixed crowds more often), I guess it's easy to feel like this is okay to say everywhere.

Also seriously - why do GOP staffers, politicians, and executives even allow themselves to be interviewed by the Daily Show anymore? Holy crap.

Having recently relocated to NC, I can attest that venturing more than half an hour outside the Containment Area puts you smack dab in the middle of Banjo Country irrespective of direction. So, in that sense, it no longer surprises me when I see folks like Yelton spout off stuff that appears a parody of itself. This is really how they are and they aren't practiced in hiding their bigotry largely because their surroundings largely tolerate or encourage that sort of behavior.

Bloo Driver,
I think in part because for people like this guy, it is what they really believe so they are surprised to find that not everyone shares that view.

Paleocon wrote:

Surprised no one has yet posted about Don Yelton and his surprisingly candid assessment of NC Voter ID law.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...

Classic defense:

While Yelton said in the interview he's "been called a bigot before," he argued in his defense that one of his best friends is black.
Stele wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Surprised no one has yet posted about Don Yelton and his surprisingly candid assessment of NC Voter ID law.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...

Classic defense:

While Yelton said in the interview he's "been called a bigot before," he argued in his defense that one of his best friends is black.

Yeah. When you have to wave your black friend around like some kind of talismanic fetish doll, you're probably a racist.

Rahmen wrote:

Bloo Driver,
I think in part because for people like this guy, it is what they really believe so they are surprised to find that not everyone shares that view.

Yeah, and I mentioned the growing and strengthening political bubbles we've set up for ourselves. I'm just more surprised that organized political workers are still able to get ambushed by the Daily Show, which should be a known entity at this point - "known" in the sense that they skewer the crap out of most of the people they interview.

Paleocon wrote:
Stele wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Surprised no one has yet posted about Don Yelton and his surprisingly candid assessment of NC Voter ID law.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...

Classic defense:

While Yelton said in the interview he's "been called a bigot before," he argued in his defense that one of his best friends is black.

Yeah. When you have to wave your black friend around like some kind of talismanic fetish doll, you're probably a racist.

Talismanic Fetish Doll is the name of my new band.

(brilliant statement Paleocon)

If you have to be told that saying whites versus lazy blacks is racist... you're racist no matter how many black friends you've got... especially if you resign, not because you're sorry, but because you don't want to be a part of the group that called on you to resign for racism... yup... super racist... not that that will affect the law in the slightest.

My favorite part of that segment on the Daily Show, though, was when they were brainstorming ways to also keep Republican voters home that included Zachory Quinto saying that voting made him gay.

A little update on the Posner walk-back (and his subsequent walk-back of his walk-back).

http://abovethelaw.com/2013/10/posne...

Former House Speaker Jim Wright was denied a voter ID card Saturday at a Texas Department of Public Safety office.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/11...
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...

Hey, another Democrat that can't vote. That's precisely and exactly the true goal of these measures.

That's the Tea Party at work, folks. You want what they are selling, well, Texans are getting it. Just, maybe not in the orifice they were expecting...

I don't think that's Tea Party, I think that's just straight Republicans.

Today I get to see what a combination of "my PA photo ID doesn't look very much like me any more" and "I neglected to update my address quickly enough after I moved" will get me. What should happen: I go in, tell them I've moved and where, since it's in the same county, I can vote in my old precinct for one last time, and automatically have my registration updated for next year.

But oh my god, think of the tons of voter fraud there must be in Pennsylvania!

(ie, all those Democrats, being able to vote. That's fraud!)

No problems. Probably because I didn't get asked for ID. >_>

(Actually, I think they only ask for ID here if you haven't voted at that location before, so I'll get that next time I'm at the polls. Whee. Once you've voted there once they have a signature on file to compare it to, or something. Or maybe you've just proved that you're probably not the kind of person who's going to give up and not vote, so they want to make sure not to make you take stuff to court. Again.)

I was asked for a picture ID and to state my address at my polling place in VA. They said "Any picture ID will do" like everyone has three and you just have to fish one out.

I was really surprised by it.

Arise!!

Now the voting rights act discriminates against white people! These people are truly insane....

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/right-thi...

JC wrote:

Arise!!

Now the voting rights act discriminates against white people! These people are truly insane....

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/right-thi...

Am I the only one that tried to read that and wished they would just replace the toner... only to realize that it isn't a poor quality printout, that someone intentionally made that look like that?

Wisconsin Voter ID cases in front of our state Supreme Court, starting today.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is getting ready to listen to oral arguments in two lawsuits challenging the state's voter photo identification law.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Milwaukee branch and the League of Women Voters have challenged the law in separate cases.

Dane County judges struck the law down in both cases. But the 4th District Court of Appeals found the law constitutional in the League of Women Voters case, prompting the league to seek Supreme Court review. The justices in November decided to pull the NAACP out of the 2nd District Court of Appeals and decide it themselves.

The Supreme Court? Welcome to voter photo id...

Robear wrote:

The Supreme Court? Welcome to voter photo id...

Yeah, our state Supreme Court has shown itself to be very ideologically compliant when it comes to interpreting even clearly-written statutes - I'm sure they'll rubber stamp whatever our GOP legislators and governor tell them to.

There are separate cases which are pending in Federal court, which is the only way I see a positive decision on our state's Voter ID laws.

A Wisconsin federal judge struck down the state's voter ID law because it violates the 14th Amendment by disproportionately burdening black and Hispanic voters.

Ruling[/url]]Act 23 has a disproportionate impact on Black and Latino voters because it is more likely to burden those voters with the costs of obtaining a photo ID that they would not otherwise obtain.

This burden is significant not only because it is likely to deter Blacks and Latinos from voting even if they could obtain IDs without much difficulty, but also because Blacks and Latinos are more likely than whites to have difficulty obtaining IDs.

This disproportionate impact is a “discriminatory result” because the reason Black and Latino voters are more likely to have to incur the costs of obtaining IDs is that they are disproportionately likely to live in poverty, and the reason Black and Latino voters are disproportionately likely to live in poverty is connected to the history of discrimination against Blacks and Latinos in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

Finally, Act 23 only tenuously serves the state’s interest in preventing voter fraud and protecting the integrity of the electoral process, and therefore the state’s interests do not justify the discriminatory result. Accordingly, the photo ID requirement results in the denial or abridgment of the right of Black and Latino citizens to vote on account of race or color.

The judge systematically tore apart the state's--and conservative's--argument that voter ID laws are required to detect and prevent in-person voter-impersonation fraud:

The evidence at trial established that virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin. The defendants could not point to a single instance of known voter impersonation occurring in Wisconsin at any time in the recent past.

The only evidence even relating to voter impersonation that the defendants introduced was the testimony of Bruce Landgraf, an Assistant District Attorney in Milwaukee County. Landgraf testified that in “major elections,” by which he means gubernatorial and presidential elections, his office is asked to investigate about 10 or 12 cases in which a voter arrives at the polls and is told by the poll worker that he or she has already cast a ballot.

However, his office determined that the vast majority of these cases—approximately 10 each election—have innocent explanations, such as a poll worker’s placing an indication that a person has voted next to the wrong name in the poll book

Still, about one or two cases each major election remain unexplained, and the defendants contend that these one or two cases could be instances of voter-impersonation fraud. I suppose that’s possible, but most likely these cases also have innocent explanations and the District Attorney’s office was simply unable to confirm that they did.

Moreover, the most Landgraf’s testimony shows is that cases of potential voter-impersonation fraud occur so infrequently that no rational person familiar with the relevant facts could be concerned about them. There are over 660,000 eligible voters in Milwaukee County, and if the District Attorney’s office finds two unexplained cases each major election, that means that there is less than one questionable vote cast each major election per 330,000 eligible voters. The rate of potential voter-impersonation fraud is thus exceedingly tiny.

The judge then spent several pages painstakingly walking through the process of obtaining a valid state ID, specifically noting that "Act 23's burdens must be assessed with reference to [low income voters] rather than with reference to a typical middle- or upper-class voter" who would have "little trouble obtaining an ID."

In other voting ID news, last week Arkansas' State Supreme Court tossed out that state's voter ID law finding it unconstitutional for establishing additional barriers that unduly impaired a citizen's right to vote.

Jeez, is the system actually working? I've been so accustomed to it failing utterly lately that all this stuff is welcome news.

The right will simply say "damn activist judges".

Mixolyde wrote:

I was asked for a picture ID and to state my address at my polling place in VA. They said "Any picture ID will do" like everyone has three and you just have to fish one out.

I was really surprised by it.

Interesting. My polling place in VA has never asked me for photo ID. Of course, I always present my Virginia Voter Card.

The ruling by Judge Adelman in US District court is a good sign.

It somewhat moots the two cases in front of our State Supreme Court (League of Women Voters of Wisconsin Education Network Inc. v. Walker and Milwaukee Branch of the NAACP v. Walker), as Federal decisions would supercede anything at the state level, in this context.

Judge Adelman's decision wrote:

There is no way to determine exactly how many people Act 23 will prevent or deter from voting without considering the individual circumstances of each of the 300,000 plus citizens who lack an ID. But no matter how imprecise my estimate may be, it is absolutely clear that Act 23 will prevent more legitimate votes from being cast than fraudulent votes. Cf. Crawford, 472 F.3d at 953–54 (assessing whether “there are fewer impersonations than there are eligible voters whom the [Indiana photo ID] law will prevent from voting”). Thus, Act 23's burdens are not justified by the state’s interest in detecting and preventing in-person voter impersonation. Moreover, because the state’s interest in safeguarding confidence in the electoral process is evenly distributed across both sides of the balance—a law such as Act 23 undermines confidence in the electoral process as much as it promotes it—that interest cannot provide a sufficient justification for the burdens placed on the right to vote. Accordingly, the burdens imposed by Act 23 on those who lack an ID are not justified.

I'd said this (albeit in a slightly stronger formulation) a while ago:

Dimmerswitch[/url]]Given that the upside is zero, my tolerance for even the potential of disenfranchisement is nil.

We're not out of the woods yet - our state Attorney General (JB Van Hollen) has indicated he will appeal Judge Adelman's decision, and the Wisconsin Legislature could be called into special session to pass a version of the Voter ID law that might be more likely to pass muster.

This is still a positive decision, though.

Squeegee_Joe wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

I was asked for a picture ID and to state my address at my polling place in VA. They said "Any picture ID will do" like everyone has three and you just have to fish one out.

I was really surprised by it.

Interesting. My polling place in VA has never asked me for photo ID. Of course, I always present my Virginia Voter Card.

In PA, I believe the current rule is you have to show it first time at a new polling place. The show-it-every-time law was struck down, thankfully. (Going to be fun next time I go to vote, though, since it'll be a new location for me, and my photo ID is still... rather old.