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Is requiring voter photo ID a type of disenfranchisement?

Is requiring voter photo ID a type of disenfranchisement?

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In this political climate where Republican voter fraud takes the form of trying to prevent those from voting who should be eligible to vote and democrat fraud takes the form of getting votes from those who aren't, perhaps we should consider why this is so.

and having said that, may the countdown begin for a strong partisan on one side or the other to claim it is only the other guy. 5 4 3 2

In any case, I think voter I.D. is a good idea and think it should be implemented on a national scale, streamlined in such a way that here isn't too much excessive mumbo jumbo involved in getting one.
 
im fine with this too as long as its free and easily accessible at government building and or the polling place. Streamline and national is probably the best way to go for the many cases of students/military etc. Other forms of ID also need to be acceptable and just like in most cases everybody still gets to vote but a window of verification is in effect.
 
MMC said:
How many cases of What.....Voter Fraud? Whats That.....No Such thing In Chicago and Illinois. Democrats rule here doncha knows. :lamo
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Its roughly .0001% of the votes are fraudulent. Acceptable risk as opposed to preventing people from voting by new age jim crow laws.

snopes.com: 2012 Voter Fraud
 
Nynaeve Meara said:
Its roughly .0001% of the votes are fraudulent. Acceptable risk as opposed to preventing people from voting by new age jim crow laws.

snopes.com: 2012 Voter Fraud
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Here is what I have on it.....

Plain truth about voter fraud

You need a government-issued photo ID to vote early in Illinois.

How did liberals ever allow that? After all, isn't requiring an ID an unvarnished GOP plot against Democratic voters? Isn't it an undue burden to expect minorities, the poor and students — the party's "base" — to produce photo identification cards? Isn't it racist?

Voter fraud. For an entire generation of Chicagoans, it's a relic, like an old streetcar retired to a museum and no longer operating. A nostalgic Election Day joke that few take seriously: "Vote early and often."

Voter fraud is a fine art: ghost voting and buying votes; voting as a dead guy or from a fictitious address; "helping" supposedly confused voters by entering the voting booth and marking the "right" candidates; wheeling in masses of senile or medicated patients from nursing homes; deploying partisan election judges and precinct captains (read: enforcers) who campaign or intimidate voters in the polling place; and jiggering with the vote count after the polls close. The opportunities are endless.

Yet, Democrats would have us believe that the voting rolls here and across America are as clean as a whistle, so voter IDs and other measures to counter cheating are unnecessary and, indeed, violative of civil rights. Efforts to cleanse thousands of ineligible names from the rolls, most recently in Florida, are compared to the dark days of Jim Crow — as if your right to vote fraudulently is a civil right.

On the other hand, the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States has concluded in a study, "Inaccurate, Costly and Inefficient," that the voter registration system badly needs a fix. "Voter registration lists are used to assign precincts, send sample ballots, provide polling place information, identify and verify voters at polling places, and determine how resources, such as paper ballots and voting machines, are deployed on Election Day," the study said.

Pew estimates that in America about 24 million voter registrations are invalid or significantly inaccurate. More than 1.8 million dead people are on the lists, and about 2.75 million people are registered in more than one state.

In Illinois, you don't need valid photo identification to vote on Election Day. Just show up and provide a signature that remotely resembles the one in the registration book — a system that invites fraud. Only when you vote early must you provide a voter ID in Illinois.

So if it is reasonable to require a photo ID when voting early, why isn't it reasonable to require one on Election Day?.....snip~

Getting rid of voter fraud - Chicago Tribune
 
And?

Here is the thing you need to show quantifiable voter fraud in order to promote a limit upon someone's rights. So far you have some statistics that show voter registration but nothing that shows a significant fraud amount. On top of the numerous articles talking about how low voter fraud is and now in NC their voter ID laws would stop 1 or 2 fraud votes meanwhile preventing or making it harder for 900,000+ people to vote. It doesn't make sense.

Technically I'm registered to vote in two states, I only live in one. I have voted once in every election I have been able to. However, my original state doesn't have any voter de-registeration ability, I have to wait for their time frame to clean out their own registration entries. That sure isn't my fault. Same thing for dead voter registrations, they are registered but they aren't voting.
 
NIMBY said:
Why do you suppose estimates from both political parties are that hundreds of thousands of mostly Democratic voters will be thrown off the rolls, purged, though they have legally voted in the past several decades, like the Rexas female Judge ?
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Because some Republicans are paranoid about the presumed massive illegal immigrant voting, and some Democrats are eager to present the whole thing as a Republican plot against minorities?
 

Sure. But getting to the polling booth itself may take 2-3 buses as well - or a small fortune in gasoline, in some rural areas.

None of us on this board will ever get close to understanding what it is like, to be illiterate. But some American citizens are, at least functionally. Should every voter who doesn't really understand what's on the ballot be given an interpreter and a couple of sworn witnesses, to prevent cheating?

We are talking about pretty basic stuff. Only citizens can vote. And they can vote only once in every given election. Nobody is objecting to these rules. The only way to make these rules enforceable is verification of the voters' identity.

Doing virtually anything that has to do with any kind of documents is marginally more difficult for the poor, the uneducated and the new arrivals (it certainly was for me, as a fresh immigrant without English, back in 1986), but it is hardly a good reason to abandon transparency in the democratic process.
 
Very, very few people risk prison to be one in a million vote, the Repubs know that but if they can discourage a few demo voters. They just want to discourage the immigrant or anyone else who likely wont vote republican, you know, the 47%. that is why they lapse into the freeeee **** to signify exactly who they are talking about. It is not like they say "them people" but pretty close.
Cyrylek said:
Because some Republicans are paranoid about the presumed massive illegal immigrant voting, and some Democrats are eager to present the whole thing as a Republican plot against minorities?
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Actually it shows why Pew says the System is flawed as it is.....which means they are still on the lists.

Which then still leaves that question over Early voting which one has to have an ID and those that vote on the same day.....and some sort of excuse why on the day when one votes they don't need the ID. ......doesn't it?
 

But in this quest to make absolutely super-duper sure that everyone that votes should be voting, how much voter fraud are we actually preventing?

More effort is being spent trying to make sure people don't vote that have a right to.....felony lists and not making sure you got an actual felon.....mass mailings trying to "catch" people who have moved. Not having enough polling booths in areas of concentrated population - with huge waits (frequently in the bad weather) for people who are just scraping by on low paying jobs. Those issues are likely more prominent than actual voter fraud...I just wish people cared about that more.
 
It is not fraud if you are on the rolls, it is only fraud if you vote. The Repbulicans insist on confusing the two. There is very little fraud, there is no evidence there is, and in this case, the abscence of evidence, is evidnece. If bus loads of "them" people were voting there would be 1000s of arrests every election, it just aint true.
 

ignorance of the law is no excuse
 
year2late said:
But in this quest to make absolutely super-duper sure that everyone that votes should be voting, how much voter fraud are we actually preventing?.
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THAT is the question. As I have mentioned earlier.

The problem is, we have no way of knowing, until we have the verification system in place.

Some Democrats claim that there's virtually no fraud, because very few instances are documented. But isn't it a bit like saying that there's no crime in Town X, because no arrests are being made there - while there's no police in Town X?
 
Cyrylek said:
In some cultures, people believe that taking a photograph of your face steals your soul. Representatives of these cultures who happen to be American citizens will be severely disenfranchised.
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Those people are idiots.
 
There is absolutely nothing wrong with demanding a person to legally identify themselves before being able to vote. In fact, that's how it should have always been. If you're too lazy to get ID, you don't need to be voting IMO. I don't care about any of the excuses either. Most of these people have had a lifetime to get an ID, it's not my fault they haven't bothered.
 

I agree with your first part. For someone that currently doesn't own a usable ID card asking them to go out and pay for one is basically a poll tax. It's a card they only need to vote and for no other reason.

As for the second part...so the default assumption is that massive fraud occurs without proof and we should pass laws in order to stop something that we assume to be true?
 

(a) It doesn't matter if there is a problem or not, this keeps there from being a problem in the future. Laws should be proactive, not reactive.
(b) Anyone can go down to their local DMV and get a state-issued ID card for little or no money right now. I don't care if it costs money or not, the cost is minimal already and if they want to take part in the running of the government, it's their social duty to get an ID.
 
Cephus said:
Laws should be proactive, not reactive.
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I disagree wholeheartedly. Feedback from real life is far more important than (presumed) ideal foresight.

Cephus said:
I don't care if it costs money or not, the cost is minimal already and if they want to take part in the running of the government, it's their social duty to get an ID.
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I was not talking about the cost they incur, I was talking about the cost to the taxpayer. Our public finances are not exactly in perfect shape, not in most places.
 
Cyrylek said:
I was not talking about the cost they incur, I was talking about the cost to the taxpayer. Our public finances are not exactly in perfect shape, not in most places.
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How does it cost the taxpayer anything? Individuals should be wholly responsible for any costs incurred getting an ID.
 
Cephus said:
How does it cost the taxpayer anything? Individuals should be wholly responsible for any costs incurred getting an ID.
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Every single voter ID proposal includes free-of-charge issuance of the IDs. Otherwise, it would constitute a poll tax. Unconstitutional.
 

I would say no, no, no, I don't know but I read that Franken won his senate seat with the in-prison vote who were authorized to vote. 65 convictions prior to the statute of limitations ran out. With another 800 cases pending that weren't brought forward.

Here in Georgia before they went to the photo ID, my next door neighbor went to vote in the afternoon only to find out someone had already voted for her. That's when Georgia first started to consider photo ID. I would say apparently there was more cases like this than just the one I mentioned. Personally, I think most of the fraud occurs at registration than at the polls.

then too, I married a Thai and before she became a naturalized citizen and motor voter was started. The licence bureau asked her if she wanted to register to vote. Perhaps this is where I came to my conclusion that more fraud is at registration than the voting booth. Georgia gives free State ID's for those who do not drive or have any other form of photo identification. There is quite a list of what type of photo ID is okay.
 

The variety of "minimal" is pretty wide throughout the United States; from as little as $3 to about $50 or so.
 
Fiddytree said:
The variety of "minimal" is pretty wide throughout the United States; from as little as $3 to about $50 or so.
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not to mention saying "Anyone can go down to their local DMV and get a state-issued ID" isnt even a true statement state by state, person by person.
 

Precisely. In fact, somehow folks have no trouble coming up with an ID when it's to cash a check or get into a bar they like.
 
Mike Turzai - the republican legislative leader from Pennsylvania who rammed through a law like this - came right out and said in no uncertain terms that the law would deliver his state to Romney in the 2012 presidential election.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77811.html#ixzz2ikuIPJbr

Come on people - this issue is baked and done with that clear admission of what these laws are really about.
 
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