Would democrats lose elections if IDs were required? Is that the worry?
They say it's about "suppression," but MOST people already have some form if ID because they live here and have needed one for nearly every other thing they have to do in life--like cash checks and drive. So why the vehement opposition to the requirement??
I'm not trying to be antagonistic. I honestly don't understand the problem, so civil explanations are welcome. It's just never been explained to me in a way that makes sense. Who would be "suppressed?"
2014-03-09T11:36:07Z
Robert....how is my premise false? That's easy to say if you don't have an answer.
2014-03-09T11:45:07Z
R....I am, of course, against poll taxes as well. But when Republicans in several states offered free IDs to those who wanted to vote for the purpose of presenting one at the polls, they were ignored, implying they didn't want them for some other reason.
There MAY not be an epidemic, but not really knowing, because it cannot be tracked, as no one has to prove anything, wouldn't it be prudent, in the interest of legality, to find out? I know I can go right now and pick up as many registration forms as I want, fill them out with different names, addresses, and send them in. I could do that if I wanted, and there would be little or no mechanism to stop me because I don't have to prove who I am, especially by mail.
2014-03-09T11:56:06Z
Suzee and Nobody...I agree that the mail-in ballots account for most of the problem, and where most of the fraud that happens, happens. Easier to get around. But I am for using all the technology available to us now to scan IDs, as they do at grocery stores for alcohol purchases, say, at the Post Office, and including that information with the mailed ballots. Or something like that...I'm not an expert in that field by any means. But, there really ought to be a way to that ensure that there's no funny business.
2014-03-09T12:08:48Z
I guess it just boils down to my frustration over good laws that we, in the interest of "fairness" (a-hem), are unwilling to enforce. I don't want zealots from either party casting multiple votes, or foreigners deciding who makes our policy. (I actually have the least problem with felons voting, but technically, they aren't eligible, either.) These laws of eligibility are in place for good reason, and I don't understand why they are all but being ignored. End of rant.
Thanks for all the answers. I did find out a few new things.
2014-03-09T12:10:05Z
Bekindtoanimals....I have seen many things like that, too. Part of why I asked, but apparently we aren't supposed to mind that stuff.
BekindtoAnimals222014-03-09T11:59:05Z
Favorite Answer
A local television station in Florida found 94 non citizens who were registered to vote just from jury duty notifications that were rejected due to non citizenship. Jury duty rolls come from voter registrations and these 94 were just the ones who were rejected for jury duty. There must be many, many more. Of the ones visited by the station, all of them had actually voted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hjmKBfrycQ
They election offices only investigate as a result of tips that in infraction of election laws have been broken. There is no way to check to see if a voter is a citizen. Evidently they just lie when they register to vote.
The photo ID requirement is just not really needed... There is voter fraud, but very little with in person voting.. It is with election officials voting for others and with mail in ballots...a photo ID will not stop either one of those.. a person voting in person and mailing in a ballot.. A big problems seems to be that many polling places do not keep their records updated..
There are some elderly people who do not have a photo ID.. because they don't need one.. They don't drive, cash checks, purchase guns or beer.. They probably had one at one time but no longer have one because they stopped driving.. It is hard to believe that there people who don't have a photo ID and will have a hard time getting one. But, it has happened..
There will always be funny business happening during voting.. I am not personally opposed to showing my ID to vote, I am just wondering why the GOP is pushing this so much since there really isn't much evidence of in person voter fraud...it seems as if there is another reason for the push..
Yeah, it's really a free ID when you have to drive a couple of hundred miles round trip like you do in Texas. Or in North Carolina where they made the voter ID law so restrictive that even the ID that lets you buy a gun will not let you vote. In Pennsylvania, one of the judges that struck down their law said according to the law even his Supreme Court ID wouldn't let him vote. Sound reasonable?
If the ID were the only issue, we might take it more seriously, even though there has been no evidence of voter fraud at any level that would actually change an election. But it isn't. The same people are also cutting down early voting days, not allowing them on the weekend at all, and closing the booths at 5PM during the week. They are also closing polling places in minority districts so that people end up standing in line for 8 hours or more just to get to vote. For instance, in Houston they had one minority polling place for 80,000 minorities, while the white and upper class neighborhoods only had to take care of 8,000.
And the majority of the fraud that takes place in any election is through absentee balloting, but they have done nothing about that.
When you can show that there is a serious problem with non-Americans voting, or dead Americans, etc., and when you can show that the restrictions in voting have something to do with voter fraud, then we can talk.
It has never made sense to me to implement the voter ID laws that the GOP has. They act as if there is some sort of epidemic of in-person voter fraud taking place that just is simply not the case. If one does not have the required ID (which is NOT free), they must obtain one in order to participate in our democracy; in other words, requiring people to purchase an ID just so that they can vote equates directly to an unconstitutional poll tax.
EDIT: I cannot find a single state that offered completely free IDs. Even when the IDs were "free", the documentation required to obtain said ID was not. No one was "ignored", and if Republicans were sincere, there would be plenty of states still offering voting identification completely free of cost, and there are none. We know that there is no epidemic of in-person voter fraud. Indeed, studies have shown that you are more likely to be struck by lightning than to ever encounter someone who had perpetrated said fraud.
Voter fraud is rare, fraudulent votes account for about 0.006% of votes cast in a given election.
The overwhelming majority of the fraud, (Almost all) is done through absentee ballots. Voter ID laws do not prevent this at all. I find it suspicious that measures claiming to attempt to prevent voter fraud do not address the source of almost all of it.
Twenty one million voting-age Americans don't have a government-issued photo ID. To put that number into perspective, Bush beat Kerry by 3 million votes, Obama beat McCain by 10 million votes, and Obama beat Romney by 5 million votes. Disenfranchising 21 million people WILL change the outcomes of elections.
I maintain that voter ID laws have nothing to do with fraud (Since they do nothing to prevent it) and have everything to do with preventing certain groups from voting.