Billionaires trying to buy our elections through the supreme court ruling, "corporations are people."

[binary solo]

Kasz216 said:

badgenome said:

Mr Khan said:

We've tread this ground before, but in Pennsylvania they're really not making it much easier.

That's a problem for people in Pennsylvania, then. So far the courts don't seem to agree, but I guess we'll see where the Supreme Court comes down.

I don't know how common actual ballot manufacturing and the like is as opposed to voter regsitration fraud, but if it helps to improve the integrity of the vote then it just doesn't seem all that burdensome or unreasonable to me in a society where you need a photo ID to do practically anything. And the fact that a Democratic legislature and independent governor in Rhode Island passed voter ID kind of takes the steam out of the kneejerk "it's bad, because Republicans" argument.

Also doesn't help that nearly 75% of the country is for voter id laws.

Hell, even a clear majority of Democrats are for Voter ID laws... specifically voter ID laws that require government issued photo ids no less!

Different minorities, different ages, NO GROUP is against government photo IDs being needed by a majority.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2012/08/12/National-Politics/Polling/question_6226.xml?uuid=Nd4PSOTWEeGXOe75nF-yhQ

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-concerns-about-voter-fraud-spur-broad-support-for-voter-id-laws/2012/08/11/40db3aba-e2fb-11e1-ae7f-d2a13e249eb2_story.html

Voter ID laws are just widley popular common sense laws.

Hell, even noncitizens s

We don't have or need photo ID laws. What we do have is a voting card mailed out to every registered voter. You take the card to the polling place hand it over and you get your ballot.

The problem with requiring photo ID is that it's a cost on those who don't have photo ID: the poor, because no one provides photo IDs for free. Thus in order to be able to vote you have to pay a fee. That does not meet the definition of "free and fair elections", it amounts to a poll tax. The concept of a photo ID is fine, it's the implementation that can be disenfranchising. Free elections just means you have to be a citizen (or permanent resident in some countries) and not have exceed the criminal threshhold (whereby your right to vote is removed for a specified time. You don't have to have a job, you don't have to have paid taxes (of course if you're convicted of tax evasion then that might cause you to lose the right to vote), you don't have to have a driver's licence or passport or any other form of ID that has a photo. So to require a photo ID for which you must pay is a tax. And it is fundamentally undemocratic to tax people in order for them to be able to carry out what is a basic right in a democracy.

The fact that the vast majority of people already have a photo ID for which they paid for it's primary purpose (drive a car, go overseas, obtain certain social services) is irrelevant. A proportion of people will not have a photo ID and their only reason for getting one is to vote. Ergo it should come at no direct cost to them.

A free photo ID is fine. A paid for photo ID specifically to be able to vote is not.

In my view it's better to let 10 people cast fraudulent votes than to prevent 1 person from casting a vote that is their absolute right in a free and fair democracy (somewhat akin to the better to let 10 guilty people walk free than see one innocent person wrongly convicted)

Besides, there is no evidence of large scale voter fraud. That being the case why are people so hell bent on photo ID? I question people's motives in this context, not the base concept of photo ID.