I only got through the first half of the thread before I got tired. Enjoy a small wall of text.
Cutting down or doing away with early voting would eliminate a certain amount of voter fraud.
Uh... how exactly? And are there even cases of fraud in early voting to worry about anyway? It's not like there are more than a handful of fraudulent in-person votes anyway.
What exactly is it that you oppose about the elimination of voter fraud??
I certainly oppose it when it comes at the cost of elimination of a whole lot of legitimate votes. Don't you? How many legitimate votes is it okay to eliminate for one fraudulent vote? Where is the cutoff where too many legitimate votes are suppressed to make a rule unacceptable? Obviously there must be a limit, otherwise we should just do away with voting completely, since that would be the only way to truly guarantee that there were no fraudulent votes cast. So where is the cutoff? How many law-abiding citizens' votes is it okay to eliminate in order to stop one fraudulent vote?
We have an election day, not month or whatever.
Which is silly. Why not vote over a week? Don't we complain every time that a lot of Americans don't vote? So why do we crowd all the voting into a single day? And a weekday at that? And a weekday at that? What if someone is sick that day? What if someone has a crisis at work and really can't get away? What if someone really needs the money and, while they are entitled to take time off to vote, really can't afford to? What if someone is stuck at home taking care of kids? We should be making it easier for people to cast their votes, not harder.
But the ID argument as being a "poll tax" can be taken pretty far. Must we provide a voting booth within walking distance of every possible voter?
I'm not sure exactly what the definition of a poll tax would be, since it must be wide enough to counter things that aren't literally just taxes on voting. If it were that narrow, then plenty of states would enact things that had the effect of a poll tax that weren't legally poll taxes. Like everything else, it would be subject to analysis and a balancing test by a court. If it serves a legitimate purpose, then it's probably not a poll tax. If it just makes voting cost something, then it probably is. ID laws have the effect of preventing people from voting, but do not have the effect of stopping people from voting twice or using someone else's identity to vote, which is their stated purpose. But maybe we should transport people to the polls, or make sure there are enough polling locations so that no one is prohibited by the time or cost of travel. Don't we want every eligible citizen to vote? We certainly don't want to simply make voting prohibitively expensive for anyone. The only purpose to that is to prevent the poor from voting.
How do you function without ID? I hardly leave my house (I am servant to cats) and I must pull out my DL at least once a day. I'm curious how you manage around that. Do you pay all cash for everything?
I think I showed my ID about twenty times total in three years living in Washington DC. Most were connected with my endeavors in law school. I didn't need to show it to enter into my first of two rental agreements. I didn't need to show it to obtain any of the jobs I had, either the paid ones or the unpaid internships (though some of those were though my law school, which did need my ID, and I needed it when those jobs or internships took me to government buildings). I showed it to one of the two general practice doctors I saw at the time. Some contend that you need ID to cash a check, but you certainly don't need one to deposit a check or withdraw from an ATM. Dealing purely in cash is not difficult at all. I pretty much only ever needed ID while driving, or when entering a government building. Were I poorer and not in my chosen vocation, I could have easily survived without one. Working middle class people use their IDs a lot. Lower class people do not necessarily. Nor do retired senior citizens. Nor do students. And those are the three groups that tend to be most affected by ID laws, and the groups whose votes are being suppressed.
In some states, IDs are (without paperwork and bureaucratic wrangling) between 3-10 dollars. I think this is an acceptable amount of money to pay for the ID. The problem I have with it is that many states have much more expensive IDs. Now, many of those will design free or discount IDs, but that is a more complicated process for many folks, and is not simply bing bang, done.
Don't forget that time is money, too. A waged worker may need to lose an entire day of pay in order to go to the DMV or other office to get this ID, and may have to go more than once if they do not have the right paperwork the first time. Some people cannot afford to lose that day of wages and so the ID is prohibitively expensive, regardless of its upfront cost. That is one of the reasons why there are plenty of working poor who do not have IDs. Basically when people assert that IDs are necessary, they are asserting that they are necessary for a middle class lifestyle. They're really not necessary if you're poor, and if you're poor, you skip everything that's not necessary.
Early voting is stupid. We have election day for a reason. And what if something major happens between the time early voting starts and the actual election that changes peoples minds? Early voting (minus legitimate absentee) needs to be abolished across the board.
And what reason is that, exactly? Why do we only vote on one day, and a weekday at that? Tell me this reason. And then tell me how this reason actually benefits anyone.
I agree. I think the expense that Fiddy referred to was more the result of coming up with a new type of ID that would be (nearly) impossible to forge.
How about distribution, too? As I said above, travel and time to obtain this ID isn't free. Wouldn't it need to be mailed to everyone? What if someone has no permanent address to mail it to? How will the state get the ID to someone? If we require IDs of every citizen to vote, how can we, in good conscience, spare any expense to get that ID to a citizen? Otherwise we're simply denying them a vote.
Good point! But how many people 18 years of age or older are there who have no ID of any kind? They don't drive, drink, read library books, see a doctor, have a bank account, have a job, have a credit card, attend college, etc? If our government has money to spend on other countries' problems around the globe, why can't they provide an ID to those few who need one to vote? They're making a mountain out of a molehill for reasons other than what we are being told, IMO. :thumbdown:
Quite a few. They don't drive. They probably don't get carded for drinks and smokes. They don't read library books or see doctors. If they get medical care, they get it from an emergency room, where they'll treat you even if you don't have ID. They probably don't have a bank account, might have a job, but get paid in cash or take their checks to places that don't require ID and purchase the checks for a 10% discount. They don't have credit cards or attend college. It's called being poor. Poor people do not have any of these luxuries that require IDs. Be glad that you are not poor like they are and that you have access to these ID requiring things.
So, unless you bought a very cheap car and you drive without a license.....are you sure you don't have ID?
Many people either don't drive, or do exactly that. Buy a cheap car, not from a dealer, but from a relative or friend, and not actually get a license. Driving without a license is a crime, but stripping someone of the right to vote is a grossly disproportionate punishment for that crime. Existence does not require IDs the way that middle class people think it does.
