[MortgFinsJohnQ]

So it's worth a huge national campaign to stop something that is not proven to be happening from happening, no matter the cost?

Are you arguing that the convictions are the only occurrences? With loose controls convictions will be difficult, with tighter controls the fraud will be difficult. I'll take the later. And since you edited into the next part of your response a pertinent bit of my answer (instead of here where it belongs) I will repeat: Any potential election fraud that can be dealt with this easily should be.



Of course they are being disenfranchised, these laws stop people who can currently vote from voting. You can argue that they can go out and fulfil the new conditions, but that still acts as an impediment on voting. As it keeps being pointed out, many of these laws make it very difficult for some people to receive the proper ID, including people who are infirm, people who cannot easily travel to the required locations, people who lack acceptable birth certificates (which is a suprisingly large number of people) and many more.

So you keep saying but I simply don't believe this is as huge a number as you claim, certainly not millions. If it is then a case study should be easily available...

It comes back every time to why this is being done though. There is no evidence that there is a problem and there is a mass of evidence showing that the 'solution' is going to screw over a huge number of people. What possible justification can there be for this other than voter suppresion? Again, it is a reasonable requirement that should be easy enough to do for anyone that for some reason (!!) still lacks proper ID. Election fairness requires that not only are all allowed to vote but that the voting will be done fairly.

Getting ID once is certainly easier than trotting out to the polls every 4 years.

[UncoonsKala]

All voters are given an ID when they register in the form of their registration ID. Why is that not enough?

[VEGLAS - SPB]

This is the sort of **** that happens when elections are not tightly controlled:



Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj is not waiting for the Supreme Court's decision before firing another volley in his battle over last year's election in Etobicoke Centre.

The court is expected to rule next week on whether Tory MP Ted Opitz can keep the seat which he won by just 26 votes. Either way, though, Wrzesnewskyj says "difficult questions" surround what he calls "problematic" new evidence presented to the court at the last minute by Elections Canada.

The former Liberal MP alleges that the agency failed to mention relevant facts which should have been disclosed to the justices. For example, he says, Elections Canada argued that many voters whose ballots were rejected by the lower court because of missing paperwork were really valid, because their names had since turned up on the voters' list.

What wasn't mentioned, Wrzesnewskyj says, was that nearly half of these were on the list in other ridings — not in Etobicoke Centre.

In April, Wrzesnewskyj persuaded Judge Thomas Lederer of the Ontario Superior Court to throw out the election results because of 79 ballots which he ruled invalid. In many cases, Judge Lederer found that registration certificates, by which voters get added to the list of qualified electors, were missing or never existed.

Opitz appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court, which came back from its summer recess to hear the case. That's when Elections Canada claimed to have found "new evidence" that 44 "invalid" ballots were, in fact, cast by valid voters, even though their registration certificates could not be found.

The justices did not indicate whether it would even consider this new evidence — and Wrzesnewskyj's lawyers urged them not to. However, Wrzesnewskyj says his side didn't have time to fully examine Elections Canada's submission and to discover some revealing details.

In particular, he points to one voter whose name was quietly dropped, without explanation, from Elections Canada's list of newly-discovered "valid" voters. That, he suspects, is because the same name occurs twice among those who cast ballots.

"We've since found that one individual slipped off the list and it appears that person voted twice," says Wrzesnewskyj.

That should have been disclosed, he says — although, in a second case, it was: a small footnote on the Elections Canada's chart concedes that two other names also appear to be the same person.

Wrzesnewskyj finds it even stranger that, in the very same polling station, Elections Canada provided 26 names of voters whose names had been "found" on the voters' list. On closer examination, 17 of those 26 names are actually registered in other ridings — as far from Etobicoke as Niagara Falls and Jonquière, Que. That means they could not have cast valid votes in Etobicoke.

Besides that, says Wrzesnewskyj, Elections Canada seems to have "found" all these names by trying multiple different spellings, sometimes changing several letters before finding a match.

That, at least, does seem to have been disclosed to the Supreme Court — if the justices can read it. In very small letters, a note appears next to eight names, saying, "Handwriting difficult to make out. Many iterations of name were tried."

What the court did not hear is that some of these alternative spellings produced a match with the voters' list only after a bit of a stretch.

In one case, the handwritten initials in the Etobicoke poll records look like "C" and "S." The match that Elections Canada says it found on the voters' list has the initials "Q"and "J." A second surname had five letters beginning with an "R" — but, in the match allegedly found, all but one letter was different and it began with an "L."

For Wrzesnewskyj, all this calls into question the credibility of Elections Canada's "new evidence" — although he stops short of accusing the agency of trying to hoodwink the Supreme Court.

"I'd hate to think that would even be possible in Canada," he says. "What we do know is that there are very difficult questions that need to be answered about this last-minute evidence."

That is, if it matters. Even if the Supreme Court were to reinstate all 44 votes on Elections Canada's list, that would still leave 35 other votes ruled invalid by the lower court. That's nine more than the 26-vote margin which gave Opitz his seat.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/stor...ke-centre.html

It's only a handful of votes. Perhaps we shouldn't worry about it? I thought you wanted studies (see my links above) not just single events confirming what you want to believe.

[PebydataFeents]

Breakfast is a partisan issue in the US.

To clarify: To me this isn't a partisan issue.

Then why are you not arguing from the side of evidence and facts?

[Frogzlovzy]

Of course, the easiest way to prevent voter fraud is simply to not let anyone vote.

[ImapFidaarram]

What ID can't?

Photo ID (except in rare circumstances).

[Plonnikas]

No, I appreciate studies and all but I am really curious to hear a real story of a real voter (has voted in past and wanted to in future) that will not be able to vote next timeout. I want to hear the circumstances that lead to such a situation because I really am finding it hard to believe this is an onerous requirement.

If that's all it takes for you: www.gooogle.com

Hell, going to the polls is a pain in the ass that must certainly "disenfranchise" millions of people. Why can't we all just stay home and mail/email our ballots? Citizens overseas can mail their ballots.

Onerous requirements are relative. Evidence is on the side that voter IDs are onerous for minority groups. Why should they be singled out? Let's put all the polling stations in ghettos and have them only open after sundown.

[seatlyled]

I'm not doing your work for you.

The claim has reached as high as "millions". I simply ask for one.

[stastony]

The claim has reached as high as "millions". I simply ask for one.

Ah, the Ben approach. Very popular in this discussion.

[Heessduernbub]

Ah, the Ben approach. Very popular in this discussion.

*sigh*

Your argument is failing so you have moved on to step two of your MO?

Let's keep the name calling out of it.

[Mypepraipse]

No, I appreciate studies and all but I am really curious to hear a real story of a real voter (has voted in past and wanted to in future) that will not be able to vote next time out. I want to hear the circumstances that lead to such a situation because I really am finding it hard to believe this is an onerous requirement.

This woman will now be able to vote, but does this count as onerous enough?

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking to overturn Pennsylvania's tough new voter identification law has received the state-issued photo ID card necessary to vote, despite saying she'd been rejected for years because she lacked appropriate documentation to receive the card.

Viviette Applewhite, who recalled marching for voting rights in 1960 with Martin Luther King Jr., was issued the temporary card on Thursday, the same day lawyers for her and others opposing the law appealed a judge's refusal to halt the law from taking effect in the Nov. 6 presidential election.

Applewhite, 93, had trouble meeting the state's documentation requirements to get a photo ID. For one thing, she did not have a Social Security card after it was stolen with her purse some years ago, she has said. Plus, she was adopted early in life, making the name on her birth certificate different from that on her other paperwork, and she did not have a record of the adoption.

Applewhite received her identification card after riding two public-transit buses to a Department of Transportation licensing office and presenting a clerk with her Medicare card from the 1990s, a state document listing her name and Social Security number in her own handwriting, and proof of her Philadelphia address, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

None of the documents, however, linked her birth certificate name of Viviette Virene Brooks to Viviette Applewhite.

PennDOT's licensing bureau director Janet Dolan said Friday that clerks are able to make exceptions to the document requirements and work with applicants.

For instance, she said, PennDOT clerks are able to confirm somebody's Social Security number with the Social Security Administration if they're able to somehow show that the number belongs to them. But Dolan could not explain why Applewhite had been rejected before, saying she did not know what kind of documentation the woman had brought with her previously.

Still, PennDot's official guidelines say a Social Security card is a must to get a photo ID, and a PennDot employee answering the agency's voter ID hotline Thursday said the card is required.

Applewhite's lawyers said she has been attempting to obtain a PennDOT-issued ID card for years.

"You just have to keep trying," Applewhite said. "Don't give up."

Penda Hair, a co-director of the Washington, D.C.-based Advancement Project, a civil liberties group providing some of the lawyers for the plaintiffs challenging the voter ID law, was dubious of PennDOT's decision to grant the identification card. But the Inquirer reported that the clerk who issued the card did not appear to notice that Applewhite was a central figure in the legal challenge.

[Alulursuifold]

This woman will now be able to vote, but does this count as onerous enough?

Thank you.

Too onerous obviously but I do note:

PennDOT's licensing bureau director Janet Dolan said Friday that clerks are able to make exceptions to the document requirements and work with applicants.

For instance, she said, PennDOT clerks are able to confirm somebody's Social Security number with the Social Security Administration if they're able to somehow show that the number belongs to them. But Dolan could not explain why Applewhite had been rejected before, saying she did not know what kind of documentation the woman had brought with her previously.


I'd argue of course that this would be an extremely rare case (that did ultimately work out). As rare perhaps has voter fraud?

[Super-Luser]

Voter IDs are not a simple fix to voter fraud either. There are a myriad of other costs and considerations when this requirement is added:


http://www.brennancenter.org/content...he_courts_say/

A fiscal note prepared in conjunction with aproposed photo ID law in Missouri estimated a cost of $6 million for the first year in which the law was to be in effect, followed by recurring costs of approximately $4 million per year.
When Indianaestimated the costs of its photo ID law, it found that, to provide more than 168,000 IDs to voters,the “[t]otal production costs, including man-power, transaction time and manufacturing” was in excess of $1.3 million, with an additional revenue loss of nearly $2.2 million.
That estimateapparently did not include a variety of necessary costs, including the costs of training and votereducation and outreach. A fiscal note assessing an ID bill in Minnesota estimated at least $250,000for the manufacturing costs of providing free ID at only 90 locations across the state, the costs of onetraining conference for county auditors, and some administrative costs.
The estimate includedneither the costs of outreach and education, nor any of the significant costs that would be borne by local governments.
The note estimated an additional cost of $536,000 per election if each precincthired just one additional election judge. While a few million dollars a year may not sound like a lot, that sum is a significant fraction of states’total election administration budgets. Missouri, for example, spent about $10.5 million in its 2009fiscal year; a photo ID requirement would have increased the state’s election administrationspending by more than 50%, according to the state’s own estimate. Indiana’s Elections Divisionspent about $3.4 million in its 2009–2010 fiscal year,
which is roughly equal to the state’s estimatedcosts for photo ID from 2008 to 2010. States are unlikely to receive sufficient federal assistance tomeet these costs.
In Wisconsin, a nonpartisan association of local election officials expressedconcerns about a photo ID bill, in significant part because of the fiscal impact of photo IDrequirements on local municipalities and state agencies.
And in Iowa, an association of localelection officials made up of Republicans and Democrats cited the cost of photo ID laws in publicly registering its opposition to an Iowa photo ID bill.

[choollaBard]

DaShi

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I will not be called Ben.

[pipojambo]

DaShi

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I will not be called Ben.

I think this is very reasonable.

[Pcodaygs]

You're personal feelings about photo IDs still don't change the fact that requiring photo IDs to vote disenfranchises specific groups of people.

Also, I can't see the connection with desiring more freedoms (as you claim you want), yet wanting everyone to have to carry around a photo ID. What's the point of a photo ID other than to apply an often needless restriction on people? They can be faked easily enough that people who want to abuse the system can and will do it, and those who are honest will be more likely to be harmed or inconvenienced by it.

I'm only being inconsistent with your caricature of my views. I never said that people should "have to carry around a photo ID." I observed that IDs are a part of daily life for most adults, and it's reasonable to expect people to have them. I have no problem with people leaving their photo ID at home in a coffee can, along with their birth certificate and everything else. Pull it out when you know you're going to need it. But honestly representing other people's views has never been your forte, has it?

It's appropriate for governments to regulate how elections are conducted and to ensure that people who are voting are who they say they are. Asking people to identify themselves before receiving a ballot is a reasonable request. If some people refuse to get IDs and are disenfranchised, I don't care.

If photo IDs can be easily faked, and if people who want to abuse the system and and will do it, then why should we ever use them for anything? Why do I need an ID to buy a gun, fly on a plane, ride Amtrak, buy cold medicine, buy alcohol, or rent a car? Maybe because they're not easily faked, and maybe because the people who abuse the system are usually caught and punished quite quickly.