• Voting-Machine Vendor Put Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to U.S.
    72 replies, posted
So what are you trying to say here? e-voting should be pushed just because you're mad at the EC?
For how much they push voter ID laws, they really don't seem to care about election integrity.
No That paper voting is kept because its reliable even though its not that practical in counting the votes. and that the Ec is kept because its practical for counting the votes even though its not that reliable in providing the democratically elected candidate. That's a circular logic right there, one that caused Trump to win last time, and made Bush junior win against Gore. To me it sounds like 'I guess the system is kinda broke, but lets not change anything, because if it aint broke, dont fix it.' attitude.
Voter ID laws are a fantastic example of how the politicians pushing it can outright say that the purpose is to hurt democrats and moronic Republicans will still support and defend it under the guise of "what's wrong with making sure voters are who they say they are?"
You can say that about anything in politics I dont see democrats going for voter ID either, while it would be the perfect counter to make sure its done in a fair and balanced way, that helps people get registered to vote instead of fuck over the impoverished politically.
The only way voter ID would actually work to "secure" the vote the way Republicans claim they want without artificially suppressing the minority vote which is what Republicans actually want is if voter registration was automatic and ID cards were sent to all voters for free. Today's Republican party, especially the further south you go, hates every single word of that sentence after "if". You can't just "say that about anything in politics", voter ID has been a persistent threat against the voting rights of minorities (who tend to vote Democrat) and it's consistently been a Republican effort. They haven't even hid their true motives every time, as Helix Snake said, and their voters don't question the blatant anti-democratic nature of the proposals.
What if democrats would push for a version where every citizen gets this voting ID in the mail for free. Would that not be a smart idea to prevent the democrats from implementing the bad method you allure to? You technically only need a couple republicans to vote nonpartisan to get it done. But that isn’t happening, i dont wonder why.
Well now you're saying that paper voting is reliable, not practical, and Electoral College is practical, not reliable. So it sounds like you should regard them differently to begin with.
I mean like I said, if there was automatic registration for all eligible voters and automatic ID cards sent to every registered voter for free (i.e. on the taxpayer's collective dime), this would actually work the way Republicans claim it would work -- voters would be verified and every vote confidently counted as valid -- without disenfranchising a big swath of minority voters. But there are two problems with this: one, Republicans don't want it to work properly so you'll never get them to agree to this plan, as you already know. Two, this is a monumental waste of taxpayer money to eliminate the pathetically insignificant and absolutely miniscule amount of fraudulent voting that actually occurs in the US. It's always been overkill that disenfranchises tons of poor blacks/other minorities in the name of fixing statistically insigificant voter fraud. It's a problem that doesn't need to be solved, and the only reason solutions keep getting proposed is for (barely) hidden anti-democratic agendas by the GOP.
I dunno, I've been pushing for this from day one. I actually got excited when MLK III met with Trump and they discussed a possible form of federal-issue ID that everyone could easily get. I don't know if anything will come of it though. And actually, if you go to minority communities like Harlem or the Bronx and you just ask around most people do have an ID. There's a lot of things you just can't do without one. They say that it hurts democrats because in their eyes (disclaimer: mine too) democrats' benefit from a lack of voter ID comes from abusability rather than an actual voterbase who just inexplicably can't get an ID. The allegation that minorities have trouble getting an ID is both racist and ridiculous btw, there's 365 days in a year and one day is to vote, two if you like doing primaries. All you need to do is take a portion of a day in the year to go to a DMV, give them your SSN and proof of residency and there's no reason why you wouldn't be approved for an ID card. I checked this process for both my state and Texas and it's pretty much the same universally it seems. Remember you need an ID to buy guns, alchohol, tobacco and nicotine products, prescription drugs, and to prove your age, etc. There's no reason to not have one. Frankly it's ridiculous that in my state you can just stand outside a polling place, look at the voter rolls, and use the information from those voter rolls and that information alone to illicitly cast a vote. Then, due to voter turnout dynamics and how many people register or get re-registered but don't show up, there's like a 50/50 chance that your vote actually counts because the person you voted as may or may not show up which is the only way they would realize that someone has impersonated them. EVEN if you believe that this doesn't happen, EVEN if you believe in the good hearts of people in an urban society, wouldn't you still want to patch potential risks before they have to be called into question? What's going on right now is like a software developer saying "yeah uh, we discovered this massive exploit in the application we made you but since nobody's abused it YET we're just going to leave it the way it is)". This actually HELPS democrats because it would increase the legitimacy of elections in democratic regions by putting Republican suspicions of voter fraud to rest. The only reason that I can come up with democrats still being opposed to voter ID laws is that they actually are benefiting from voter fraud in some capacity or another, either that or they're racists who believe that a black man is too stupid to go to a DMV and fill out a form and drop off a copy of their lease and birth certificate.
A lot of people can't afford to take a portion of a work day to go to the DMV. A lot of people can't afford the money that is sometimes charged to get an ID card. A lot of people don't live anywhere near a DMV. We've been over all of this the last few times this was brought up. Making voting more difficult is still voter suppression even if it doesn't make voting impossible.
Voter ID isn't necessarily bad, but I don't trust it to have good intentions in the country where the south probably started disenfranchising black people the second it got home rule after Reconstruction.
How many people work every single non-US-holiday in the year? It's actually cheaper to get an ID in Texas (16 dollars) than it is to get it here in California (30 dollars, but I think I paid 25). And honestly, 30 dollars sounds like a very good investment for something that will last you several years and is essentially a necessity. Minority communities tend to live in dense urban areas where access to a DMV or other ID-issuing office is as simple as a brisk walk or a ride on the bus. People who wouldn't live anywhere near a DMV tend to be more conservative by nature so I don't know what the problem is here. That's why I support an affordable federal-issue ID that's as easy to get as possible and strong enough to serve as voter identification. It's already relatively simple to get your id card but if we made it even more universal the democrats would have no more excuses. I'm actually being quite generous here in advocating for this because a lot of conservatives just think that if you can't even get basic things like your identity in order that you shouldn't be allowed to vote to begin with.
A lot of conservatives think that anyone who's a dirty liberal shouldn't be allowed to vote. That doesn't mean that you're being "generous", it means that the entire American right has gone off the anti-democracy deep end.
First of all I never said the "entire american right" said that, just a bunch of republicans I have spoken to, and even a couple democrats when I was working this year's primaries who expressed their surprise when I told them that I was not allowed to request their ID card upon them asking. Second of all, even if you massively misinterpret their intentions, don't you think it's a fair point?
I'm not "massively misinterpreting their intentions", their intentions couldn't be clearer. Voter fraud is already negligible and has been proven as such, and Republican politicians have come out and SAID they're glad voter ID laws have passed because of how much it will hurt the democrats. It's not a fair point. They're fighting something that has a negligible effect on votes with something that has a large effect on votes. It's an effort to subvert our democracy that couldn't be more obvious.
Yes, they do, but you can't seriously tell me that they can't put some hours aside and do it. People run errands on their off-days anyways, no matter what your station in life. Okay, so why don't we just make it so that people can vote online? After all, having to take a couple hours out of a day one time in a year to travel to a physical location and vote is voter suppression.
Yes, having to travel to a physical location and vote IS voter suppression, and if you'd been keeping up you'd know it's deliberately being used as such: There Are 868 Fewer Places to Vote in 2016 Because the Supreme C.. Voting online is an obvious security nightmare but everyone should be able to vote by mail like we can in Oregon.
Voting has always been a rather contentious issue. Gonna need a very severe instance of disenfranchisement on the level of poll taxes to get any change.
Nip it in the bud with something that has a much larger effect on votes? No, you're just being disingenuous. I've explained to you that voter ID laws cause lower voter turnout for democrats but that's the only reason Republicans want voter ID laws in the first place. Every other reason they come up with is a lie that I don't believe for a second. If preserving the sanctity of democracy was their goal to begin with they'd stop immediately when it's pointed out that voter ID laws has a bigger effect on votes than actual voter fraud, but they never ever do. And it's because their pretend concern for the sanctity of democracy is nothing but a giant fucking lie. All they care about is winning.
well okay, but here in CA we still have physical polling as an option and I think that you shouldn't just be able to look at the voter rolls and snipe someone's vote. I just don't think that requiring an ID is going to disenfranchise people because everyone's already got one and it isn't hard to get to begin with. And it would put people's fears of voter fraud to rest. Yeah, poll taxes were pretty gay.
Literally ignoring every last thing I pointed out about why this isn't the case. It's like talking to a brick wall.
What we have here is a "citation needed" situation. What's the incidence rate of voter fraud caused by peeping at voter rolls and giving a name you read off the sheet before your turn came up in line? Do you have any links to back this up? @Helix Snake has provided references for his arguments, your turn.
"Vote Sniping" is a felony that would result in 5 years in prison. It's not fucking worth it to get a single extra vote for whatever you're voting for. That's why people don't do it.
And my suggestion is that they should be able to get a federal ID that's cheap enough for the lowest common denominator of income (maybe even free) and strong enough for voter identification. So what's the issue here? He's actually provided one, and it was about physical polling, not about the impact of voter fraud which can't be readily quantified on the negative because if they aren't detected, how would you even be able to record it? The data that we would have on this would only be the tip of the iceberg. We don't actually know for sure what the impact of voter fraud is because by NATURE we can't count the times people have gotten away with it. Democrats could easily put this to rest by putting in place ID checks to vote. That way the sanctity and legitimacy of their elections can't be questioned. You argue that Republicans say they want voter ID laws because they want to preserve the sanctity of democratic elections and that it's bullshit, and that they just want to win. Well they think it's bullshit that Democrats want to keep an exploit open in our voting system to "preserve the sanctity of our democracy" because Democrats don't actually care about that, they just want to win. Yeah, you know what else is a felony? Marijuana. You could rot in jail for a couple years for that and you become a registered felon who can't buy guns, can't take certain jobs and get barred off from other areas of society. Clearly not worth it but a shitton of people fucking do it anyways.
So you can't prove anything but you demand a law to be put in place to do something about this problem we can't even quantify. Fantastic, and also the same braindead party line from Republicans for years.
I can prove that it's an exploit that exists and is quite easy to get away with. In the interests of being above suspicion, why would you be opposed to simply patching this exploit unless you were benefiting from it somehow? One can only wonder.
You can't make laws based on feelings, and without proving how big of a problem is, all you have to go on are feelings. Unless the problem is significant, why should significant measures, which have been proven to have an outsized effect on voter disenfranchisement, be taken? You're proposing to cut off your nose because of the potential need to spite your face. If you can't demonstrate an actual need for this law it goes in the trash where all the other ideas nobody asked for go. Here's a suggestion on closing the loophole: Make people have to cross a wide space between the end of the formal line and the attendant with the voter rolls. If you try and wander across this space for no good reason and start to move over towards one of the roll desks like you're trying to peep at the records, security steps in and escorts you back behind the ropes where the lines are. Congratulations, your oppressive voter ID system has been made redundant by minimal basic crowd control a foreigner came up with in six seconds.
Let's also not forget that employers are required to give employees time off to go vote, but they give such a little amount that it's almost impossible if you don't already have the time.
Could be a solution, but I'm required by California law to constantly update and post the voter rolls with the information at the door to the polling location. It might be worth looking into getting this changed actually.
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