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Yes

12 (20.3%)

Maybe/Depends

5 (8.5%)

No

42 (71.2%)

Total Members Voted: 59

[GlyphGryph]

This entire controversy could be ended with free national ID's. Poor people have the time to get something that is for free, including ID cards.

... not with the way things are currently set up. I've gotten "free" things from the government before, and actually went through and tallied up how much it cost me, and had it add up to well over a hundred dollars. There's a reason people price convenience - it saves them shittons of many thanks to the miracles of opportunity cost.

For example, I need to go to court soon - the paperwork and court date will cost me maybe 15 dollars. However, transit time means that it will make me miss between three and four hours of work. I'm not poor, I make over 20 dollars an hour, but a $100 cost for something the government claims to be trivially cheap is not exactly attractive to me. If it wasn't incredibly important, or if I felt like it didn't matter that much, there's no way I could justify that sort of cost.

Now, add the time out of work to get an id card to the time out of work to vote, even barring any additional costs, that's a mighty high poll tax there.

(If you can't tell, I also believe we should make election day a national holiday, like all the other civilized nations. Our government seems explicitly built to make dealing with them surprisingly expensive, even when they charge you nothing, by require most people to miss work (and risk reprimand) to interact with them)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Unfortunately, there are some state and local governments who have declared their election days to be holidays, and it doesn't increase voter turnout.

Mandatory voting does, however, and might be more effective combined with a holiday, but that is speculation.

[GlyphGryph]

State holidays only effect state employees, and I've never heard of a state that gives their employees trouble going to vote. I don't see how that WOULD make the change, unless they made it some sort of super-holiday where general workers were given the time off as well. If there was any change, I'd expect it to be quite minimal.

That said, at the very least polls where I live now seem to be open late, so it's not such a big deal anymore, at least for me.

[melomel]

Poor people have the time to get something that is for free, including ID cards.

What?  What.  No.  Just no.  Where on Earth do you live?  Is it even on Earth?

(1)  ID isn't free.  It's $20 USD here.  (2)  Poor does not equal "gobs of free time" and I don't know how anyone could rationally make that assumption.

Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R) said that the voter ID law passed by the legislature would help deliver the state for Mitt Romney in November.

[...]

“Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done,” Turzai said at this weekend’s Republican State Committee meeting , according to PoliticsPA.com.

A spokesman for Turzai confirmed the accuracy of the quote for TPM but argued that people were reading too much into it.

Link:  http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/06/pennsylvania_gop_leader_voter_id_will_help_romney.php

That pretty much sums it up, for me.  Wish you could freakin' arrest a moron who flat-out admits that he enacted vote-restricting legislation in order to allow his party's national candidate to win the state.

[GalenEvil]

I voted before reading everything, so sorry for the extra +1 to yes.
In retrospect I had not done much research into the prevalence of voter fraud cases (it seems far too small a number to be useful, TBH), and to the immediate above.... WTF was that guy thinking? Doesn't he know anything about politics? You don't admit ANYTHING to ANYONE about what you are actually doing!

To comment on a few other parts of the thread:
My sister for some reason never got a driver's license. This prevented her from obtaining a passport since for some stupid reason they required a valid photo-id card to obtain in addition to her high-school diploma and birth certificate. My mother had to run through a few hoops to get her a passport, which sucked, and shows that getting a photo ID isn't always cut and dry.

As rare as it is that I actually agree with GlyphGryph in the GD section, I do. At least with the first post on this page $15 isn't a whole lot... at first. +time lost from work (if you are unlucky and work Mon through Fri every week), +time spent (always some cost there) ends up coming out to usually at least $50-$100 worth of time. Normal hourly wages are not the only things counted in that estimate, by the way. There is also the luxury time-wage if it is a day off + extra if you are missing some important event or rendezvous (lunch, perhaps).

Considering the overall cost to benefit ratio of requiring ID cards for all voting persons, versus the actual documented incidents of voter fraud, the argument is at least mostly translucent and in favor of the courts who have been striking down these laws. In regards to claims of disenfranchisement of persons willing but unable to vote due to these laws I cannot comment due to lack of rounded knowledge on the subject. I do find it odd that democrats and/or liberals want nation-wide ID requirement while against IDs required to vote; at the same time troubled by republicans and/or conservatives that find nation-wide ID requirement reprehensible while still wanting IDs required for voting. It seems as though both democrats and republicans wish for similar things but are only at a standstill as to how to implement it.

Politics is making my brain hurt. While I hope that the subject of this thread dies peacefully in the night I doubt it will, and so will return later on to crash myself against its waves. I hope my statements were as reasonable as possible. I dislike both parties heavily at the moment and have attempted to control my commentary.

[Zangi]

Interesting thing... Early Voting/Mail Ballots.

If you want to increase turn out... you gotta play to the fact that most people are unwilling or unable to go out and vote on election day for various reasons.  Costs of traveling there and even work places that will fire people for taking time off to vote.

[MaximumZero]

My vote is no. We'd be spending money we don't have on shit we don't need for an outcome we don't want.