Nnn okay I guess I'm not quite gone yet, but at least Mainiac and me are okay.
I just have to respond to one last thing, sorry...
So, a. Most laws designed to prevent voter fraud are, in point of fact, racist. They can very well be racist and elitist at the same time, it turns out. Don't get me wrong, I find the 'disproportionately affects people of color' line to be quite tiresome. But that don't mean it's false. I looked at one of the old literacy tests they would give people in order to choose who could vote. And it was them choosing. Those things are goddamned confusing, and I got a 800 in the reading SATs, so at the very least it'snot me being thick about it. Voter fraud is not a common issue in the US. And reasons can overlap. Blacks tend to be democratic, so it's an easy way to consolidate voting blocks. Is it Ku Klux Klan style racist? No, probably not. It's still intentionally blocking minorities. Keeping out other poor folks is just icing on the cake.
...No
Disenfranchising the poor isn't racist, even though black people are more likely to be poor. It's not targeting any race, it's targeting the poor. In this case, people so poor they can't pay $15 every 4 years OR qualify for any of the situations where they don't have to pay.
Just for illustration, if everyone in poverty lost the right to vote? More white people would lose that right than black people. All I'm saying is that poor white people exist, in fact there are a fucking lot of them. Many in my family, so sorry if I take this just a little personally.
Disenfranchising the uneducated was the same. It targeted the uneducated. Lots of people were uneducated, lots of white people.
Is it wrong to disenfranchise the poor? Yeah, so let's call it what it is instead of inventing a racist conspiracy. It's a conservative conspiracy against Democrats.
It ain't a conspiracy. You can't target black people specifically, we have laws against that. You can get away with finding things that affect them more than people who aren't black, though. Gerrymandering is the anti-democrat bit. There's plenty of poor people who vote Republican, after all.
Rolan, do you have personal experience with this while living in the American South? Because America has a goddamned history. MLK was only 50 years ago. If you're saying it's not targeted at blacks because it doesn't only target them, you're mistaken. You may as well say it's impossible to n racist; sure, banning raw fish consumptin affects Japanese restaurants proportionally more than white restaurants, but it does affect both, so really this is targeted at fishermen. I mean, leaving aside the way the law is implemented. Who they ask for ID. How much difficulty the beauracracy makes about getting it. Whether that decide your interpretation of the literacy tests is acceptable. Jim Crow laws aren't in debate. Yes, white people can also get tucked over by them. Individuals are not statistics. Black people get fucked over more than white people. Including, iirc, within the category of poor people. "Trailer trash" tend to have cars and live in semi-rural areas. They don't have population densities that can justify forcing four+ hour long waits to get those IDs when you need to work two shifts to make the rent, and pick up the kids from daycare. Just as one possible mechanism to give you an idea of how it can happen.
Banning raw fish -> Sushi restaurants is not the same as Requiring ID -> Black people. Nothing is stopping black people from getting an ID, except in some cases poverty. So the issue is poverty.
White people "can" get tucked over by these things, yes, it happens *more* unless you go by capita. And it's correlated with poverty, not race.
And... I'm sorry?? "Trailer trash" who live in rural areas have better access to services? *Really*? I got my ID in downtown Raleigh and got it renewed in flipping Durham, there wasn't any 4 hour line. More like an hour. Comparable to what a fortunate "trailer trash" with a vehicle might spend driving to the local DMV, based on visiting my cousins. And yeah, somewhat southern US (North Carolina). Not even West Virginia.
But it doesn't matter whether these presumably white "trailer trash" have worse access than the inner-city people I guess you're implying are essentially all black. That's a matter of geography and infrastructure, the ancient difference between urban and rural life. Not race! Race is *absolutely* irrelevant to those problems.
Seriously... Inner cities have long lines, so there's a conspiracy specifically against black people? I can't even respect that.
Republicans cheat by gerrymandering, not by demanding a ~$15 proof of ID every 4-6 years.
In case you didn't notice, that second map is zoomed out significantly compared to the first one. Wonder who is hurt more by having to drive completely across town to obtain valid id for voting? Certainly it isn't a problem for folks who already have a valid driver's license and vehicle, so who does that leave?
What is this, the 19th century? Is it such an epic hurdle to catch a ride or take a bus? Minorities are allowed on buses, trust me, and not everyone pays. I paid $2.50 to travel between Raleigh and Durham in high school, this is in-city.
In fact, my daily bicycle ride to my last high school was longer than the distance between those stations, so cry me a fricken river!
Maybe that person who carpools to multiple jobs so they have no time, has no bike or car of their own, no one in their local community willing to drive them (church especially), and is incapable of walking a couple of hours, might need to call the local young Democrats and ask for a freakin lift.
I'm not going to just take it on faith that voter fraud is so incredibly "minor" as our party (Democrat) says it is.
This is ridiculous, a name is not a suitable unique identifier. And yet we still identified so many cases of dead people voting. It's happening.
I'm not really sure what you're saying here.
Voter impersonation in person at a polling station is a non-existent crime. Because you need to line up, risking a $5000 fine and 5 years in prison and a felony conviction. Per vote. And those extra votes are only going to count if the election comes right down to the wire. The chance of e.g. 1000 extra fraudulent votes changing an election outcome is minuscule. And yet you'd need to find e.g. 1000 people willing to risk prison over it. Not gonna happen.
Voter ID at polling stations ONLY deals with the most implausible possible scenario of mass vote rigging.
And yeah, all those cite cases of dead voters fell apart on scrutiny.
How exactly are they going to catch you without any reliable identification? And we know it happened. People do it. We just don't know the scale.
Also it's kinda the opposite: The votes will count *unless* the election comes down to the wire. Stuff the ballots enough, and there won't be scrutiny.