Democrats are Racist?!

[kanageddaamen]

Kasz216 said:

kanageddaamen said:
Unless IDs are issued for free by the government (and payed for by tax payers mind you) requiring a person to purchase an ID to vote that they do not otherwise require is the equivalent of a poll tax, which is banned by the 24th amendment.

To me there is no difference between "Pay the government when come to vote" and "Pay the government, and then you can come and vote"

These laws are also a blatant attempt at voter suppression under the guise of solving a problem that simply does not exists in any statistical significance.

http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/policy_brief_on_the_truth_about_voter_fraud/

There should be zero barriers to voting in a free republic. Any that are instituted are a direct blow to the democratic process, regardless of who is disenfranchised.

A) Point to a state that doesn't offer an ID for free that has such a law.

B) You do need a state photo ID, to do many other things.  Like cash a check... or get a job.  Or get government assistance.  Basically to function successfully in todays soceity you need a state ID. 

C) Voter fraud doesn't have any statistical significance because there are no ways to judge it.  It's like saying France has no problems with race inequality because the french don't collect data on race inequality.   There are no effective measures for measuring voter fraud.

D) So... not letting one person vote is harmful to the insitutional practice.. but letting someone vote 15 times isn't harmful?

Not sure how that makes sense.

E) Republicans and Democrats both wanted voter ID laws in the past.  Jimmy Carter thought they would INCREASE voter turnout rather them surpress it.   Greatly increasing the voter turnout among registered voters.

a.) PA:  http://www.dmv.org/pa-pennsylvania/id-cards.php 

b.) Well, that claim is not necessarily true.   I have never once in my life needed a photo ID to get a job for example.  Besides, many valid voters DO NOT have IDs (as many as 11% of eligible voters), which is in fact the problem.

c.) There is a way to judge it based on convictions of fraud.  Even if you say, well not everyone who does it gets caught.  (see D)

d.) This is not at all what is happening.  What is happening is you are not lettting a huge number of people vote to prevent 1 person from voting multiple times.  Which does more harm?  Lets say  only 1 of every 10000 of the fraudulent votes cast is by someone who gets caught (an obsurd assertion, but benefits your argumnet), that is still only UPWARDS of only 0.09% of the total votes.  You are then possibly disenfranchising 11% of the people to stop 0.09% of the vote which is fraudulent.

e.) The effects of this on actual voter turnout will have to be seen naturally, but should be very hard to determine statistically.

I would say, however, that the requiring ID part is not what I object to.  I would have no problem with these laws if they were also tied to a tiny tax increase to make sure everyone has access to at least a free photo voter card or something similar, AND it didn't happen in the year of a major election, so there was adequate time for people learn about the policy and to aquire them.  Also, I have a hard time turning a blind eye when legislatures say things like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuOT1bRYdK8