• Eric Holder sues Texas to stop voter ID law
    51 replies, posted
You need to show ID and proof of address in Canada to vote, and it doesn't seem to hamper minorities in the slightest. If you were born here you have/can get a birth certificate, if you immigrated here you have a citizenship card, and to work you need a Social Insurance Card. If you're here legally, you have or can get ID, and I know the States isn't much different.
[QUOTE=Chronische;41931605]Seems more like it discriminates against the lazy and illegals who can't or won't get proper ID.[/QUOTE] Or all those people who are illiterate, who live far from the DMV and can't afford transportation, who work very long hours and don't have the time, et cetera. People whose lives are also affected by the outcome of elections.
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;41932041]Or all those people who are illiterate, who live far from the DMV and can't afford transportation, who work very long hours and don't have the time, et cetera. People whose lives are also affected by the outcome of elections.[/QUOTE] DMV can mail you ID too, there's basically no reason you can't have at least a state id. Basically every library in the country has internet for free, you can ask for help filling stuff out if you are illiterate (which isn't exactly common) and if you want to vote you clearly have a way of getting to a polling station. If you can do that you can get id. There's 0 reason you can't have at least state id.
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;41932041]Or all those people who are illiterate, who live far from the DMV and can't afford transportation, who work very long hours and don't have the time, et cetera. People whose lives are also affected by the outcome of elections.[/QUOTE] If you are legally in a country you have or can get ID that does not require you learn how to operate a motor vehicle. There are many more forms of ID than a driver's license, and if you work legally in the US you are supposed to have a Social Security Card, which is itself ID.
[QUOTE=DaCommie1;41932014]You need to show ID and proof of address in Canada to vote, and it doesn't seem to hamper minorities in the slightest. If you were born here you have/can get a birth certificate, if you immigrated here you have a citizenship card, and to work you need a Social Insurance Card. If you're here legally, you have or can get ID, and I know the States isn't much different.[/QUOTE] I don't know about Canada but in the United States the accessibility of ID's can vary widely by state and city. A large number of areas in the US are serviced by too few DMV's and getting anything from one of them can be an all-day ordeal. That was certainly the experience I had trying to get my first driver's license. Even if we ignore the socioeconomic factors which determine which groups of people have the most trouble getting an ID, [I]at best this is just one more piece of bureaucracy involved with voting.[/I] As has been shown, voter-fraud is a non-existent issue in the US so I can hardly see why everyone is suddenly arguing for entirely superfluous bureaucracy. [editline]22nd August 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=DaCommie1;41932085]If you are legally in a country you have or can get ID that does not require you learn how to operate a motor vehicle. There are many more forms of ID than a driver's license, and if you work legally in the US you are supposed to have a Social Security Card, which is itself ID.[/QUOTE] A social security card actually isn't valid form of ID anywhere because it does not contain a photo or a description. It's literally just a name, a birthdate and a SS#.
[QUOTE=DaCommie1;41932014]You need to show ID and proof of address in Canada to vote, and it doesn't seem to hamper minorities in the slightest. If you were born here you have/can get a birth certificate, if you immigrated here you have a citizenship card, and to work you need a Social Insurance Card. If you're here legally, you have or can get ID, and I know the States isn't much different.[/QUOTE] Seem to be an issue in the US because they do not have federally mandated citizenship cards which are common in Europe, Canada etc. Since there's no mandated ID, a lot of people might potentially not need one, since a lot of services never formed around the existance of one. For instance it;s possible you might be able to open bank accounts without one and a lot of other stuff, which in turn essentially means needing one, where one wasn't needed and not mandating the need for one can cause issues, generally for economically less stronger people who have had no need for one until now. Generally speaking, if you want to pass laws that require an ID, you also have to pass laws which make this ID mandated for everyone for instance and make it accessible for everyone in a timely manner.
[QUOTE=DuCT;41931936]Correlation does not equal causation.[/QUOTE] You're saying the correlation between Republicans voting for a law that would fix a problem which doesn't exist, and that law also hindering a large section of a major social group from voting (mostly) Democrat is completely random?
[QUOTE=wraithcat;41932169]Seem to be an issue in the US because they do not have federally mandated citizenship cards which are common in Europe, Canada etc. Since there's no mandated ID, a lot of people might potentially not need one, since a lot of services never formed around the existance of one. For instance it;s possible you might be able to open bank accounts without one and a lot of other stuff, which in turn essentially means needing one, where one wasn't needed and not mandating the need for one can cause issues, generally for economically less stronger people who have had no need for one until now. Generally speaking, if you want to pass laws that require an ID, you also have to pass laws which make this ID mandated for everyone for instance and make it accessible for everyone in a timely manner.[/QUOTE] The only federal IDs here are passports, gun licenses, social insurance cards, and citizenship cards, and for immigrants half of those are not necessary and for natural-borns 3/4 of them are not mandated. Birth certificates, health cards, and driver's licenses are all provincial, and far more common than federal ID, but still no minorities are crying afoul about discrimination, and people can be just as far away from and inconvenienced by the Canadian equivalent of the DMV too.
[QUOTE=DaCommie1;41932285]The only federal IDs here are passports, gun licenses, social insurance cards, and citizenship cards, and for immigrants half of those are not necessary and for natural-borns 3/4 of them are not mandated. Birth certificates, health cards, and driver's licenses are all provincial, and far more common than federal ID,[/QUOTE] If I were to list the valid forms of ID in the US it would be a different list than your list of valid forms of ID in Canada. It's almost as if the US and Canada are different countries and comparisons between the minutia of one or the other's forms of identification are entirely meaningless. You have American citizens telling you their experiences with American identification processes and you're just saying "Nuh-uh, Canada is like this, so America must be like..." What the hell is your horse in this race? [QUOTE=DaCommie1;41932285]but still no minorities are crying afoul about discrimination,[/QUOTE] Good to know what your feelings about any member of a minority who complains about discrimination are.
There's no excuse to not get an ID when of age. I don't care if the process takes a day because your location is understaffed, that's a completely irrelevant excuse for being an irresponsible lazy person -- get priorities and make fucking time.
[QUOTE=SigmaLambda;41931727]Please, just try to understand the fact that not everybody's life is exactly like yours and what is "an hour or two" for you in your specific location with your specific schedule is not going to be the same thing for the 300 million other people who live in this country. If the system isn't broke, don't fix it.[/QUOTE] When I got my first ID we lived in a low-income area and went to the closest DMV which was in the middle of the one of the worst parts of Aurora. Took 3 hours on a Friday which we know are the busiest. Though I'm proud of you for being able to make baseless assumptions like "Protocol7 is a rich white guy who has an exclusive rich white guy DMV that has no filthy poors in it."
[QUOTE=Protocol7;41932595]When I got my first ID we lived in a low-income area and went to the closest DMV which was in the middle of the one of the worst parts of Aurora. Took 3 hours on a Friday which we know are the busiest. Though I'm proud of you for being able to make baseless assumptions like "Protocol7 is a rich white guy who has an exclusive rich white guy DMV that has no filthy poors in it."[/QUOTE] And I am equally proud of you for assuming that your experience with the worst DMV ever to exist in the united states represents the far-extent of all possible DMV experiences in all possible cities in all possible states. I am also proud of how proud we are of each other. I promise never to mention that one time I went to a DMV and the woman at the counter mispronounced my name because then everybody's name would start getting mispronounced at the DMV in this dark future where Canada is America and anecdotes are law.
[QUOTE=SigmaLambda;41932665]And I am equally proud of you for assuming that your experience with the worst DMV ever to exist in the united states represents the far-extent of all possible DMV experiences in all possible cities in all possible states. I am also proud of how proud we are of each other. I promise never to mention that one time I went to a DMV and the woman at the counter mispronounced my name because then everybody's name would start getting mispronounced at the DMV in this dark future where Canada is America and anecdotes are law.[/QUOTE] You've assumed that I think my experience was horrible. No, I think it is average for most people. It is a time consuming process but time consumption is a shitty excuse for not setting aside some time for something you are inevitably going to need to function in a modern society.
One time I went to a Wendy's and they put mayo on my burger when I specifically asked for no mayo. As I [I]think my experience is "average" for most people[/I], any reality where someone could request no-mayo and have their request fulfilled is as unfathomable to my mind as is a tesseract [IMG]http://fi.somethingawful.com/safs/smilies/4/6/staredog.001.gif[/IMG] [editline]22nd August 2013[/editline] my hilarious jokes aside you absolutely don't need an ID to function in modern society. I didn't need one to open my account at a national bank and I didn't need one to fill out the requisite paperwork for any of the jobs I have worked. In all cases a social security card and mailing address were sufficient. (uh-oh, I have broken my own rules about anecdotes. It's almost as if that the range of possible life experiences is wildly variable and judging people you've never met as "lazy" for not having an ID is in conflict with the vast range of different circumstances in which people live)
If you are a US citizen and you do not have a ID then that's just sad. All I can see this is making sure people who are voting are actually a citizen in their state or a citizen at all.
The only reason theirs Voter I.D is so republicans can suppress democrat votes. As its been said the fraud they hope to curb is very rare. Most instances being Felons that had no idea they couldn't vote. You can't just be some person from the U.K and walk up and vote either, you still require proof that your a citizen and resident to register.
This legislation is just a waste of time, it solves a virtually nonexistent problem and the people who drafted it knew that Holder would probably challenge it. Hell, we passed the same kind of law in NC and already the lawsuits are pouring in. I don't think a voter ID law is unreasonable, I just think there are more important things for our legislators to focus on.
While I understand where the "should have an ID" guys are coming from, it's not always so easy for the disenfranchised and poor. For instance, in my state it's a 25$ fee to get a driver's license (on top of paid driving tests through a state-approved trainer), and 10$ for a state ID card, which doesn't sound bad for most of us but for someone who lives below poverty, or doesn't even have enough money to pay for necessities as is, getting an ID even for 10$ or 25$ is not something that is a priority. And while us middle-class white folk might not understand it so well, many minorities already live in this situation, legal or otherwise. For instance, a 2006 study records that 38% of the people without automobile access are poor (and an additional 26% "near-poor"), and that together blacks and hispanics make up 52% of those without auto access. And all together, only 4% of those without automobile access can be categorized as "non-poor" (as opposed to "poor" and "near-poor"). So obviously we can determine some things from this: 1)minorities make up the majority of those without auto access 2)the poor make up the majority of those without auto access 3)these groups- poor minorities- miss out on the most obvious and straightforward method of obtaining ID, the driver's license As such, it can be inferred that one has to go out of their way to obtain a drivers license, and that their poverty could be a contributing factor. According to a study based out of the 2011 census, minorities (blacks and hispanics) make up 68% of those in poverty. As we can see from above, poverty likely has an influence on whether one has access to autos, and from there if one has access to a driver's license, which is the most common form of accepted photo ID. But if we want to go even more blatant, the Collaborative Multi-Racial Political Study provides us with a definitive racial statistic. 2.7% of Latinos, 2.8% of Asians, 7.5% of blacks did not have access to a current photo ID, compared to 2.1% of whites. [URL="http://www.latinodecisions.com/blog/2012/03/21/racial-and-ethnic-differences-in-access-to-photo-id-in-texas/"]This site[/URL] has the breakdown of the study relative to Texas, in which you can see that the specific Texas ID law could prevent up to 12% of latinos, 13% of Asians, and 16% of blacks in the state from voting based on the "matching name" requirements. Ouch. So we have basically a law that a) requires identification that is least accessible to the lowest-income population b) which most frequently is a racial/ethnic minority c) and also further specifies restrictions that affect racial/ethnic minorities the most. "All by chance" you may say. "This does not target these minorities". Fair enough, but an apt comparison is the fact that we have federal election days on Tuesdays, which while having the official reason of "can't drive on sabbath so can't have it on Monday, yet Wednesday is a market day so can't have it then", effectively also doubled as "Tuesday is a work day in the middle of the week, effectively preventing the working class from taking it off"- that is to say, its placement was strategic in order to prevent the disenfranchised minority from being capable of voting in federal elections- which is why poor and working-class voter turnout rates (and by extension minority) are lower than the better-off and well-to-do. Is this really that much different? Of course it's in the interest of the state to have legal voters with evidence of their legality (something which to me honestly is absolutely silly, as it disenfranchises residents who are still ruled over and affected by the state and election results but whom can not influence or partake in the voting/governing process), yet because their is not a large problem in voter fraud, there really isn't motivation to have a program that effectively prevents something close to 15% of any given minority from being able to vote in your state. There is no burden of proof that should come with every limitation in the process of voting and governing. Recall also that this is the same state that, after only 2 hours of being overturned, (would have) violated the Voting Rights Act in redistricting in a way that was only a few years before determined to be unacceptable as it discriminated against minority voters. Long story short, this fucks with minorities (and the poor) the most in a state with a history of fucking with minorities.
Voter ID laws disenfranchise people by numbers that are orders of magnitude larger than the amount of cases of voter fraud. This is a rare good move from the Justice Department supporting genuine democracy. [editline]22nd August 2013[/editline] People here cry about [B]the media [/B]but the fact that so many FPers are willing to accept the completely false conservative narrative that voter fraud is an actual problem in this country is worrying. The GOP wants less people voting and disenfranchising tens or hundreds of thousands of people per state would play well into that strategy.
this wouldn't be a problem if we had Australia's mandatory voting laws. but i guess that'd be construed as a reverse poll-tax here. i rdon't see any problem with being required to have some form of ID, if you are on any goverment assistances, you have an ID, if you have a driver's license, you have an ID, if you have a social-security card, you have an ID. all these programs also give out IDs for free to whoever registers to vote [editline]22nd August 2013[/editline] its not about voter fraud, you should be able to prove who you are when you vote, end of story.
[QUOTE=Siminov;41931316]Well you basically need Identification to get a job or drive a car "legally". It is essential and I couldn't imagine anyone being without one unless they were either illegally here. [/QUOTE] What a stupid thing to say. There are millions of Americans who are definitely here legally who don't own an ID for whatever reason. Your requirements for being a legal citizen is absurd given the current rate of unemployment and the popularity of public transportation in urban areas. [editline]22nd August 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Siminov;41931785]I don't see any problem in the prevention of Voter Fraud though. When possible voter fraud is in question, instead of the politicians shrugging their shoulders with nothing to do, they could say that we have done [B]these things[/B] such as requiring identification to disprove any people who question the validity of someone in office.[/QUOTE] Well the main problem is that you are disenfranchising more people than who commit voter fraud. You are skewing votes even farther than before you "fixed" it. As Sigma is referencing, I'm sure it's purely coincidental that minorities and the poor are less likely to have government issue ID but more likely to vote Democratic and it's Republicans pushing these policies across the country.
[QUOTE=DuCT;41931206]Okay, I can vaguely see where ID's can discriminate. But the lines? All the lines do is determine who your rep is. You can still go out and vote and all that jazz.[/QUOTE] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mky11UJb9AY[/media]
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