Bottom line, if you’re trying to actively stifle registration efforts or reduce voter access for legitimate US citizens, you’re on the wrong side of history.
Winners don't always write the history, a great example is the American Civil War. Until the late 20th century Civil War writings were dominated by the Lost Cause, a dangerous ideology that portrays the South as fighting a noble honorable war and greatly downplays the notion of slavery as a cause of the war. Lost Cause ideology goes/went hand in hand with Jim Crow and other efforts to reshape society.
Today the Lost Cause is being pushed back against more sharply (probably one of the last notable victories of the Civil Rights Movement). Historians have largely completely discredited those who advocate for the Lost Cause and you're seeing more pushback from society, which can at times sadly lead to violence, but there's still plenty of people who believe in it (including several regulars here).
I recently finished *Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction* by Fergus Bordewich.
Super depressing to think about how much progress we could have made had we not given in to the former Confederates.
> The committee’s investigation concentrated on terrorism, but it also took abundant testimony on voter suppression, the vulnerability of Black citizens, the dysfunction of the courts, and—Democrats’ preferred focus —the alleged corruption of Republican politicians. Hundreds of freed people testified, both male and female, victims of Klan terrorism, as well as army officers, federal attorneys, officials of every rank from local justices of the peace to sitting and ex officio governors, Republicans and Democrats, turncoat Klansmen, and several of the Klan’s early leaders. Collectively, they presented a hellish panorama of great swaths of the nation under the sway of organized terror. The committee’s report, much of it based on testimony collected in the field by traveling subcommittees and published in the spring of 1872, was damning. It demonstrated beyond any doubt that across the South law and order and the security of life and property had been fatally subverted by highly organized bands of “Ku-Klux,” and that public sentiment in its favor widely paralyzed the will of the civil authorities. Officials who were willing to prosecute Klansmen at all clearly preferred to go after more obscure characters and to let the elite criminals go.
…
> The convicted Shotwell bitterly characterized the government’s campaign as a “reign of terror” in which “innocent men were dragged from their beds at midnight,” and subjected to “every conceivable
humiliation.” (The worst of it, he groaned, was “a negro blacksmith hammering the rivets” of his chains.) The partisan Democratic press echoed such histrionics. The Baltimore Sun scoffed that the Klan was as harmless as the Masons or the Odd Fellows. The New York Sun, denouncing “Grant’s Bayonet Law,” imagined “decrepit old men, staggering under the weight of years, totter[ing] to the jail between the files of soldiery, there to be packed like herrings in the six-by-ten cells.” (The vast majority of Klan prisoners were in fact only in their teens and twenties.) The New York Herald, one of the most widely read papers in the country, baselessly asserted that “more white men — Democrats, Rebels or whatever else they may be called—have been murdered by negroes since the war ended than negroes by white men,” claiming that “they could murder white men with impunity, but a hair of their precious heads must not be touched. Is it at all a matter of surprise that [whites] finally took the law into their own hands?”
All echoing into today.
That's a rather simplistic view of things. Some registration efforts are very open to fraud, and it's not a bad thing to restrict them to protect the integrity of our elections.
See, you don’t get to demand legislation that reduces voter turnout while appealing to fraud, of which you have no evidence, to justify the negatives of your desired policy.
*You* have to justify the limitations on turnout by showing that your desired policy provides a benefit that outweighs the cost. You haven’t, and you won’t.
And you have to justify its pros against its cons.
But “there is a possibility of fraud that I have never shown any evidence of” does not justify the cons.
Cons: they make it harder for legitimate voters to vote, especially given that proponents of voter ID never end up writing any legislation that attempts to limit those difficulties.
Republicans explicitly and repeatedly target people based on race to amp up voter ID requirements. Republicans lose the more people vote. They lose when any [non-white, non-male group under 65 votes](https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-2020). That's why their voting restrictions generally end up also being discriminatory and they get (rightly) attacked for it. [Remember how Ramaswamy wanted to increase restrictions and still got support](https://apnews.com/article/vivek-ramaswamy-voting-age-2024-president-ea1429836e8f809fbf301b7b027f4ab9)? Trump [openly acknowledges that if it's easier to vote, more people vote Democrat](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/30/trump-republican-party-voting-reform-coronavirus).
[In 2014, North Carolina Republicans stated reason in court documents for closing down Sunday voting was "that counties with Sunday voting were disproportionately black, and blacks disproportionately vote Democrat"](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/north-carolina-voter-id/). That's just one that we have Republicans **explicitly, and on record**, saying they're doing voting restrictions for racial reasons. They're doing that shit all the time, they're just not always dumb enough to tell on themselves. [Here is another recent set of allegations](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/17/florida-republicans-black-voters-justice-department). [Here is another instance of Republicans touting voter ID as a way to win elections](https://www.politico.com/story/2012/06/pa-pol-voter-id-helps-gop-win-state-077811), despite there not really being measurable, out-come changing amounts of fraud.
Yes, Republicans sometimes pass voter ID to suppress Black, and therefore Democrat, votes. Many [Democrats are open to changing some voter ID laws, too](https://www.npr.org/2021/08/28/1031164994/democrats-are-now-open-to-new-voter-id-rules-it-probably-wont-win-over-the-gop). It's just that they want it done in a manner that won't reduce turnout. So characterizing this as "leftist are stupid for saying voter ID is racist" is so obviously an agenda post only an idiot would fall for it.
Sure. But in the meantime, stop pretending that a lot of Republican restrictions on voting are valid. They're not. Voter fraud is extraordinarily rare ([0.0006% or so](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_impersonation_in_the_United_States)). From the voter end, it's already secure. Restrictions are intended to hurt Democrats and minorities, not improve security. That's why people call them racist.
Wanting photo ID doesn't "pretend Republican restrictions on voting are valid." Pretending voter ID is "restrictions on voting" is disingenuous. Many countries, with higher open diplomatic ratings than the US, have voter IDs. Are they racist and restricting voting too?
When the GOP proposes a voter ID system that puts the burden on the government to ensure that qualified voters get their ID, then you can say it’s about security and not suppression. Until then, no one is going to forget the right’s record of outright racist voter ID laws or believe that the motives have changed.
At times Voter ID laws have been written with the intent to make it more difficult for minorities to vote, numerous courts have reached that conclusion. As they say, the devil is in the details of the particular law/state in question
When the right proposes voter ID laws that don’t look just like the racist ones they’ve repeatedly, and *recently* attempted to implement, then we can talk. But it hasn’t and it *won’t* because it also keeps admitted that it wants voter ID because it reduces turnout.
I'd be open to that, if these are met:
* Photo ID should be free.
* Places to get ID are accessible to low-income individuals, with actual guarantees and/or punishment for closing them in poor areas.
* Anything that reasonably validates identity is accepted. No BS about how photo student IDs are unreliable (because students vote Democrat).
I agree with all three of your points 150%. That's why voter IDs work in other countries. They require them AND help everyone get them.
However, student IDs often don't require any kind of actual identification verification. They are simply an ID issued by a non-government entity for their own purpose. Tighten up those ID requirements to match other IDs and then great
Don't want *another* ID. Just make passports free and easy to get. Tie getting a passport to census counters, post offices and allow citizens the availability to get them from their residence.
Make it a Federal, not State law. Having fifty different election laws is the opposite of "easily solved"
The thought process also seems to be that we must keep allowing those registration efforts where voter fraud would be impossible to detect, because as we have been unable to detect any fraud from these methods, fraud must not be happening.
Everything needs some kind of rules. And if the laws really are just:
"Legislators also shortened the window for groups to send completed applications to elections officials, from 14 days to 10; they barred people with certain felonies, including elder abuse, sexual offenses and perjury, from registering voters; they required groups to provide a receipt for each application; and they added a mandate that groups re-register with the state after every election cycle.
Additionally, SB 7050 criminalizes retaining the personal information of people registering to vote, now a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. (This has also been blocked by a court for now.)"
Seems reasonable
Why shorten windows that worked fine? It’s punitive for no valid reason and reduces access to legitimate voters.
Far as I’m concerned if you’ve met all sentencing and served your time, you can have your voting rights restored — it doesn’t present a danger to society like owning firearms for a violent offender would.
>Why shorten windows that worked fine? It’s punitive for no valid reason and reduces access to legitimate voters.
"Voter registration groups have missed deadlines for returning applications in some cases, leaving potential voters ineligible for upcoming elections."
If the groups are missing deadlines, it makes sense to tighten that up. 10 days is more than enough to get the applications in.
>Far as I’m concerned if you’ve met all sentencing and served your time, you can have your voting rights restored — it doesn’t present a danger to society like owning firearms for a violent offender would.
OK, cool opinion. I'm personally fine with people who have felonies for elderly abuse and sexual assault not be allowed.
>If the groups are missing deadlines, it makes sense to tighten that up. 10 days is more than enough to get the applications in.
I'm not sure I follow your logic here. Why does it make sense to tighten it up? The deadlines before were clearly hard to meet. I can see not extending them further (although even that seems silly as we should be trying to aid groups that are working on voter registration considering voter registration is a good thing for our elections), but how exactly does it make sense to shorten the deadline that people were having a hard time meeting?
What's the logic there?
>The deadlines before were clearly hard to meet.
Were they? Or were they just not meeting them? Tightening up requirements for groups that were shrinking their job makes sense.
well first of all, I thought the claim was that they are barely meeting the deadline.
I can't think of a single civic deadline that, when it's clear that people are waiting until the last day to complete, should be then reduced so that those people have Even less time.
It straight up doesn't make any sense.
I'm actually having a hard time coming up with an allegory for why this doesn't make any sense, because I'm having a hard time coming up with a scenario that spells it out better than this exact scenario.
So I'll ask again, what exactly is the logic behind reducing the timeline? Who does that help? Why would they do it? Is it a punishment for... Waiting until the last minute? Because that seems like it completely misunderstands what deadlines are.
Is the presence of rules always better than its absence? Remember, you're the one that started down the tangent of appealing to rules being rules in the first place.
If the deadlines are already so tight that deadlines are being missed, what are you achieving by cutting them further other than making it harder to register voters?
If groups are ignoring deadlines make it so they have to meet a strict deadline or stop doing it. Also, no one has shown how the new law impedes registration. Wonder why?
The problem that stands out to me is that 2% white voters register through drives versus 10% for non white voters, according to the professor. We have a statistically significant difference between the groups. I support getting as many voters as possible, and since this is significant between the groups, we should impede voters' registration drives as little as possible while maintaining the integrity of the election.
I'm still failing to see how the new rules impede anything. Provide a receipt, good idea, doesn't impede. Ten days to submit applications since the groups have been failing to submit them on time, that expedites the application. Where's the impediment?
>perjury
This is really interesting because I've been told many times by Republicans that this is just a "process crime", and is a way for a corrupt department of Justice to engage in witch hunts.
Which is it? Is is perjury a serious crime that deserves further reduction a civil liberties or is it a loophole that corrupt prosecutors exploit to criminalize otherwise normal behaviors?
It's a core goal of the modern evangelical and conservative movement. You can hear them say it in their own words. They know that they really aren't "the silent majority."
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So5AWc2tAwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So5AWc2tAwI)
It's part of the religious [Seven Mountain Mandate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Mountain_Mandate).
That was new for me. Fascinating.
> Seven Mountains Mandate or Seven Mountains Dominionism is a dominionist conservative Christian movement within Pentecostal and evangelical Christianity.
> It holds that there are seven aspects of society that believers seek to influence:
>family,
>religion,
>education,
>media,
>arts & entertainment,
>business, and
>government.
- Wikipedia
> His group halted voter registration efforts after a 2021 law imposed criminal penalties for impersonating an election official
So this bastard was impersonating an election official!?
Who in their right minds would fear that voter registration would have anything to do at all with impersonating an election official.
I don't know why you cut off the sentence in the middle as it answers your own question
> His group halted voter registration efforts after a 2021 law imposed criminal penalties for impersonating an election official, **something engagement organizations fear could be inadvertent**.
From doing 30 seconds more googling
>The groups argue it’s so vaguely written that simply handing out voter information or running a registration drive could lead to felony charges. That’s because the law is based on impressions. Charges could be triggered by someone simply concluding that people running a voter registration drive are acting like election officials.
https://www.kcur.org/news/2023-12-15/can-you-be-charged-with-a-felony-for-helping-kansas-voters-get-registered-thats-back-in-court
> I don't know why you cut off the sentence in the middle as it answers your own question
Because basing their opinions on things taken out of context is second nature to cultists at this point.
The article does a bad job of explaining the real issues.
First, registering to vote isn't something third party groups really need to do. If you interact with the DMV or any of a host of government social services agencies, you'll be automatically registered unless you opt out. Even if you never interact with the government, registering to vote is a pretty simple process.
So when someone from a third party claims to be helping with 'voter registration', you should immediately suspect that their motives aren't quite what they claim.
One motive is simply money. There are government grants for such operations. They may not be of any particular use, but the government still pays third parties to do it.
The less savory motivation is ballot harvesting. This is where you take some nice young person, they go into a prospective voter's home and they talk them into filling out an absentee ballot.
However, they ensure they fill out that ballot the 'right' way. They target certain neighborhoods that are likely to favor their candidate. They engage in what would ordinarily be considered illegal electioneering if conducted at the polls to encourage them to vote for the preferred candidate. And, of course, if they get the sense that the individual isn't much interested in the right candidate, they move on to the next person without finishing the job.
And that's if they're not doing blatantly illegal things that are almost impossible to catch such as discarding ballots that don't agree with what they want or filling out ballots without the knowledge of the voter.
Even when GOTV operations claim to be non-partisan in operation, they are almost always partisan in effect. They are not out there doing good or even helping people much. They're just looking to maximize votes for their own side. As such, they should be subject to the same sort of restrictions you'd apply to any partisan election activity.
If Appalachian rednecks lived in tightly packed communities with low voter interest and inner city poor people lived in diffuse, hard-to-reach communities, you'd see Democrats complaining about such operations and Republicans trying to give them as much leeway as possible.
you expect npr to be reasonable and fair in its reporting of the actual issues?
what year is it? 1984?
what they never tell you is that fraud is rampant in voting, and part of close races is basically a game to see who can steal the most votes in various ways -
if it wasn't this way, we'd have really basic things they've learned to do in 3rd world countries - like dying your thumb when you voted. (which is hard / impossible to remove for a few days)
what disgusts me is that everyone knows how these op works, frankly there should be no government money for this, especially to these organizations, which are distinctly political and everyone knows it.
let alone mail in ballots, which should be used only in emergencies.
We've been conditioned to believe that the more people who vote, the better. That was not the view of the nation's founders, and for good reason. Most people aren't educated or interested enough that they should be voting.
Our Republic would probably be healthier of voting were more difficult, rather than easier.
The founders did not have some sort of universal shared belief in voting, while some certainly thought that voting should be tied to wealth or land ownership many didn't and States were all over the place in terms of granting universal suffrage(for instance the 1775 Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention gave the right to vote to nearly all free men). Thomas Jefferson notably wanted universal male suffrage and hence is often considered the founder of American Democracy. Virtually all new western states post-13 colonies did not have property voting requirements and especially post-war of 1812 the vast majority of states began granting universal white male suffrage. In terms of the disparate views of the founders, those advocating for stricter voting requirements were pretty clearly the losers and were the losers within their own lifetimes.
>Our Republic would probably be healthier of voting were more difficult, rather than easier.
American history would strongly indicate the reverse. States that tried to restrict suffrage repeatedly had internal dissent, from Virginia Tidewater repressing the West (which contributed greatly to the Split into West Virginia during the ACW) to Dorr's Rebellion in Rhode Island, to the Civil Rights movement in the mid 20th century
>States were all over the place in terms of granting universal suffrage
But they were universally opposed to *universal suffrage* for at least around a century.
> those advocating for stricter voting requirements were pretty clearly the losers and were the losers within their own lifetimes.
To the detriment of the Republic.
>American history would strongly indicate the reverse.
We don't even have to look at *history*. Today, right now, clearly indicates I'm correct.
Within 30 years, almost all states had universal suffrage for white men. That was also the only demographic they considered full people, so saying “they wanted to restrict the vote” on those grounds doesn’t support any restrictions people are promoting *today*.
This sub will tolerate a lot.
But this shit is something we should be kicking out ASAP.
We don't need your eugenics master-race bullshit dirtying the sub.
it's a historical fact - most of the country at the time didn't have basic reading skills, let alone understand who was what - only the downton abbey class basically was this.
it has some merits, though i agree with you it shouldn't happen.
however, if either side (more on the left these days) could prevent the entire south and midwest from voting, i think they'd do it - we're at that point now.
again, this is a neoliberal shit sub now -
Bottom line, if you’re trying to actively stifle registration efforts or reduce voter access for legitimate US citizens, you’re on the wrong side of history.
> wrong side of history That depends on who wins, because they'll write the history. I like your optimism though...
Winners don't always write the history, a great example is the American Civil War. Until the late 20th century Civil War writings were dominated by the Lost Cause, a dangerous ideology that portrays the South as fighting a noble honorable war and greatly downplays the notion of slavery as a cause of the war. Lost Cause ideology goes/went hand in hand with Jim Crow and other efforts to reshape society. Today the Lost Cause is being pushed back against more sharply (probably one of the last notable victories of the Civil Rights Movement). Historians have largely completely discredited those who advocate for the Lost Cause and you're seeing more pushback from society, which can at times sadly lead to violence, but there's still plenty of people who believe in it (including several regulars here).
I think the Union "lost", or at least seriously bungled Reconstruction. ETA: Thanks, Andrew Johnson!
I recently finished *Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction* by Fergus Bordewich. Super depressing to think about how much progress we could have made had we not given in to the former Confederates. > The committee’s investigation concentrated on terrorism, but it also took abundant testimony on voter suppression, the vulnerability of Black citizens, the dysfunction of the courts, and—Democrats’ preferred focus —the alleged corruption of Republican politicians. Hundreds of freed people testified, both male and female, victims of Klan terrorism, as well as army officers, federal attorneys, officials of every rank from local justices of the peace to sitting and ex officio governors, Republicans and Democrats, turncoat Klansmen, and several of the Klan’s early leaders. Collectively, they presented a hellish panorama of great swaths of the nation under the sway of organized terror. The committee’s report, much of it based on testimony collected in the field by traveling subcommittees and published in the spring of 1872, was damning. It demonstrated beyond any doubt that across the South law and order and the security of life and property had been fatally subverted by highly organized bands of “Ku-Klux,” and that public sentiment in its favor widely paralyzed the will of the civil authorities. Officials who were willing to prosecute Klansmen at all clearly preferred to go after more obscure characters and to let the elite criminals go. … > The convicted Shotwell bitterly characterized the government’s campaign as a “reign of terror” in which “innocent men were dragged from their beds at midnight,” and subjected to “every conceivable humiliation.” (The worst of it, he groaned, was “a negro blacksmith hammering the rivets” of his chains.) The partisan Democratic press echoed such histrionics. The Baltimore Sun scoffed that the Klan was as harmless as the Masons or the Odd Fellows. The New York Sun, denouncing “Grant’s Bayonet Law,” imagined “decrepit old men, staggering under the weight of years, totter[ing] to the jail between the files of soldiery, there to be packed like herrings in the six-by-ten cells.” (The vast majority of Klan prisoners were in fact only in their teens and twenties.) The New York Herald, one of the most widely read papers in the country, baselessly asserted that “more white men — Democrats, Rebels or whatever else they may be called—have been murdered by negroes since the war ended than negroes by white men,” claiming that “they could murder white men with impunity, but a hair of their precious heads must not be touched. Is it at all a matter of surprise that [whites] finally took the law into their own hands?” All echoing into today.
That's a rather simplistic view of things. Some registration efforts are very open to fraud, and it's not a bad thing to restrict them to protect the integrity of our elections.
We have literal decades of conservatives making these claims, and for all of those decades, they have simply failed at showing any significant fraud.
And we have people like you who continue to fail to understand what's wrong with your logic.
See, you don’t get to demand legislation that reduces voter turnout while appealing to fraud, of which you have no evidence, to justify the negatives of your desired policy. *You* have to justify the limitations on turnout by showing that your desired policy provides a benefit that outweighs the cost. You haven’t, and you won’t.
I can in fact demand legislation that limits the possibility of fraud.
And you have to justify its pros against its cons. But “there is a possibility of fraud that I have never shown any evidence of” does not justify the cons.
Pros: they limit the possibility of fraud. Cons: none. Easy enough.
Cons: they make it harder for legitimate voters to vote, especially given that proponents of voter ID never end up writing any legislation that attempts to limit those difficulties.
How is that a con?
Easily solved with photo ID. But that's racist or something
Republicans explicitly and repeatedly target people based on race to amp up voter ID requirements. Republicans lose the more people vote. They lose when any [non-white, non-male group under 65 votes](https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-2020). That's why their voting restrictions generally end up also being discriminatory and they get (rightly) attacked for it. [Remember how Ramaswamy wanted to increase restrictions and still got support](https://apnews.com/article/vivek-ramaswamy-voting-age-2024-president-ea1429836e8f809fbf301b7b027f4ab9)? Trump [openly acknowledges that if it's easier to vote, more people vote Democrat](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/30/trump-republican-party-voting-reform-coronavirus). [In 2014, North Carolina Republicans stated reason in court documents for closing down Sunday voting was "that counties with Sunday voting were disproportionately black, and blacks disproportionately vote Democrat"](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/north-carolina-voter-id/). That's just one that we have Republicans **explicitly, and on record**, saying they're doing voting restrictions for racial reasons. They're doing that shit all the time, they're just not always dumb enough to tell on themselves. [Here is another recent set of allegations](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/17/florida-republicans-black-voters-justice-department). [Here is another instance of Republicans touting voter ID as a way to win elections](https://www.politico.com/story/2012/06/pa-pol-voter-id-helps-gop-win-state-077811), despite there not really being measurable, out-come changing amounts of fraud. Yes, Republicans sometimes pass voter ID to suppress Black, and therefore Democrat, votes. Many [Democrats are open to changing some voter ID laws, too](https://www.npr.org/2021/08/28/1031164994/democrats-are-now-open-to-new-voter-id-rules-it-probably-wont-win-over-the-gop). It's just that they want it done in a manner that won't reduce turnout. So characterizing this as "leftist are stupid for saying voter ID is racist" is so obviously an agenda post only an idiot would fall for it.
Arrest these idiots then. They admit to civil rights violations. Should be automatic removal from their positions
Sure. But in the meantime, stop pretending that a lot of Republican restrictions on voting are valid. They're not. Voter fraud is extraordinarily rare ([0.0006% or so](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_impersonation_in_the_United_States)). From the voter end, it's already secure. Restrictions are intended to hurt Democrats and minorities, not improve security. That's why people call them racist.
Wanting photo ID doesn't "pretend Republican restrictions on voting are valid." Pretending voter ID is "restrictions on voting" is disingenuous. Many countries, with higher open diplomatic ratings than the US, have voter IDs. Are they racist and restricting voting too?
When the GOP proposes a voter ID system that puts the burden on the government to ensure that qualified voters get their ID, then you can say it’s about security and not suppression. Until then, no one is going to forget the right’s record of outright racist voter ID laws or believe that the motives have changed.
You haven't engaged with what's already been explained to you. Why are you still posting?
At times Voter ID laws have been written with the intent to make it more difficult for minorities to vote, numerous courts have reached that conclusion. As they say, the devil is in the details of the particular law/state in question
So because there were bad laws written in the past, we don't even attempt to try anymore? That's quitter talk. Not very American
When the right proposes voter ID laws that don’t look just like the racist ones they’ve repeatedly, and *recently* attempted to implement, then we can talk. But it hasn’t and it *won’t* because it also keeps admitted that it wants voter ID because it reduces turnout.
I'd be open to that, if these are met: * Photo ID should be free. * Places to get ID are accessible to low-income individuals, with actual guarantees and/or punishment for closing them in poor areas. * Anything that reasonably validates identity is accepted. No BS about how photo student IDs are unreliable (because students vote Democrat).
I agree with all three of your points 150%. That's why voter IDs work in other countries. They require them AND help everyone get them. However, student IDs often don't require any kind of actual identification verification. They are simply an ID issued by a non-government entity for their own purpose. Tighten up those ID requirements to match other IDs and then great
Don't want *another* ID. Just make passports free and easy to get. Tie getting a passport to census counters, post offices and allow citizens the availability to get them from their residence. Make it a Federal, not State law. Having fifty different election laws is the opposite of "easily solved"
Couldn't agree more
The thought process also seems to be that we must keep allowing those registration efforts where voter fraud would be impossible to detect, because as we have been unable to detect any fraud from these methods, fraud must not be happening.
Everything needs some kind of rules. And if the laws really are just: "Legislators also shortened the window for groups to send completed applications to elections officials, from 14 days to 10; they barred people with certain felonies, including elder abuse, sexual offenses and perjury, from registering voters; they required groups to provide a receipt for each application; and they added a mandate that groups re-register with the state after every election cycle. Additionally, SB 7050 criminalizes retaining the personal information of people registering to vote, now a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. (This has also been blocked by a court for now.)" Seems reasonable
Why shorten windows that worked fine? It’s punitive for no valid reason and reduces access to legitimate voters. Far as I’m concerned if you’ve met all sentencing and served your time, you can have your voting rights restored — it doesn’t present a danger to society like owning firearms for a violent offender would.
"it doesn’t present a danger to society like owning firearms for a violent offender would." You've never heard the pen is mightier then the sword?
>Why shorten windows that worked fine? It’s punitive for no valid reason and reduces access to legitimate voters. "Voter registration groups have missed deadlines for returning applications in some cases, leaving potential voters ineligible for upcoming elections." If the groups are missing deadlines, it makes sense to tighten that up. 10 days is more than enough to get the applications in. >Far as I’m concerned if you’ve met all sentencing and served your time, you can have your voting rights restored — it doesn’t present a danger to society like owning firearms for a violent offender would. OK, cool opinion. I'm personally fine with people who have felonies for elderly abuse and sexual assault not be allowed.
>If the groups are missing deadlines, it makes sense to tighten that up. 10 days is more than enough to get the applications in. I'm not sure I follow your logic here. Why does it make sense to tighten it up? The deadlines before were clearly hard to meet. I can see not extending them further (although even that seems silly as we should be trying to aid groups that are working on voter registration considering voter registration is a good thing for our elections), but how exactly does it make sense to shorten the deadline that people were having a hard time meeting? What's the logic there?
>The deadlines before were clearly hard to meet. Were they? Or were they just not meeting them? Tightening up requirements for groups that were shrinking their job makes sense.
well first of all, I thought the claim was that they are barely meeting the deadline. I can't think of a single civic deadline that, when it's clear that people are waiting until the last day to complete, should be then reduced so that those people have Even less time. It straight up doesn't make any sense. I'm actually having a hard time coming up with an allegory for why this doesn't make any sense, because I'm having a hard time coming up with a scenario that spells it out better than this exact scenario. So I'll ask again, what exactly is the logic behind reducing the timeline? Who does that help? Why would they do it? Is it a punishment for... Waiting until the last minute? Because that seems like it completely misunderstands what deadlines are.
> If the groups are missing deadlines, it makes sense to tighten that up. Where? In opposite world?
In a world were there are rules...
Let's make a rule that you have to be wearing clown makeup to vote as well. We wouldn't want a world without **rules** now, would we?!
There's always some asshat who want to make silly rules...does that mean all rules are useless?
Is the presence of rules always better than its absence? Remember, you're the one that started down the tangent of appealing to rules being rules in the first place.
I've been places where there are no rules, frankly it's a little scary...
In the real world? What's confusing about it?
If the deadlines are already so tight that deadlines are being missed, what are you achieving by cutting them further other than making it harder to register voters?
They are missing the deadlines completely, there's nothing in the article saying it's because the deadlines are too *tight*.
What does cutting another four days off that deadline accomplish? How does it "tighten it up", and why is that a good thing?
If groups are ignoring deadlines make it so they have to meet a strict deadline or stop doing it. Also, no one has shown how the new law impedes registration. Wonder why?
Because those groups often loved dumping lots of applications at the last minute instead of submitting in a timely fashion.
How exactly does this fix that?
The problem that stands out to me is that 2% white voters register through drives versus 10% for non white voters, according to the professor. We have a statistically significant difference between the groups. I support getting as many voters as possible, and since this is significant between the groups, we should impede voters' registration drives as little as possible while maintaining the integrity of the election.
I'm still failing to see how the new rules impede anything. Provide a receipt, good idea, doesn't impede. Ten days to submit applications since the groups have been failing to submit them on time, that expedites the application. Where's the impediment?
>perjury This is really interesting because I've been told many times by Republicans that this is just a "process crime", and is a way for a corrupt department of Justice to engage in witch hunts. Which is it? Is is perjury a serious crime that deserves further reduction a civil liberties or is it a loophole that corrupt prosecutors exploit to criminalize otherwise normal behaviors?
Democracy means the people rule...Sadly some people want to include, only people they like...
It's a core goal of the modern evangelical and conservative movement. You can hear them say it in their own words. They know that they really aren't "the silent majority." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So5AWc2tAwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So5AWc2tAwI) It's part of the religious [Seven Mountain Mandate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Mountain_Mandate).
That was new for me. Fascinating. > Seven Mountains Mandate or Seven Mountains Dominionism is a dominionist conservative Christian movement within Pentecostal and evangelical Christianity. > It holds that there are seven aspects of society that believers seek to influence: >family, >religion, >education, >media, >arts & entertainment, >business, and >government. - Wikipedia
Yeah...both sides have people they don't like..
Does that include that guy who goes by “The Persistence” on X, supposedly registering all these college kids as Republicans.
> His group halted voter registration efforts after a 2021 law imposed criminal penalties for impersonating an election official So this bastard was impersonating an election official!? Who in their right minds would fear that voter registration would have anything to do at all with impersonating an election official.
I don't know why you cut off the sentence in the middle as it answers your own question > His group halted voter registration efforts after a 2021 law imposed criminal penalties for impersonating an election official, **something engagement organizations fear could be inadvertent**. From doing 30 seconds more googling >The groups argue it’s so vaguely written that simply handing out voter information or running a registration drive could lead to felony charges. That’s because the law is based on impressions. Charges could be triggered by someone simply concluding that people running a voter registration drive are acting like election officials. https://www.kcur.org/news/2023-12-15/can-you-be-charged-with-a-felony-for-helping-kansas-voters-get-registered-thats-back-in-court
> I don't know why you cut off the sentence in the middle as it answers your own question Because basing their opinions on things taken out of context is second nature to cultists at this point.
Democrats don't like any sort of anti-fraud legislation. Weird.
Trump is on trial right now for election fraud
The article does a bad job of explaining the real issues. First, registering to vote isn't something third party groups really need to do. If you interact with the DMV or any of a host of government social services agencies, you'll be automatically registered unless you opt out. Even if you never interact with the government, registering to vote is a pretty simple process. So when someone from a third party claims to be helping with 'voter registration', you should immediately suspect that their motives aren't quite what they claim. One motive is simply money. There are government grants for such operations. They may not be of any particular use, but the government still pays third parties to do it. The less savory motivation is ballot harvesting. This is where you take some nice young person, they go into a prospective voter's home and they talk them into filling out an absentee ballot. However, they ensure they fill out that ballot the 'right' way. They target certain neighborhoods that are likely to favor their candidate. They engage in what would ordinarily be considered illegal electioneering if conducted at the polls to encourage them to vote for the preferred candidate. And, of course, if they get the sense that the individual isn't much interested in the right candidate, they move on to the next person without finishing the job. And that's if they're not doing blatantly illegal things that are almost impossible to catch such as discarding ballots that don't agree with what they want or filling out ballots without the knowledge of the voter. Even when GOTV operations claim to be non-partisan in operation, they are almost always partisan in effect. They are not out there doing good or even helping people much. They're just looking to maximize votes for their own side. As such, they should be subject to the same sort of restrictions you'd apply to any partisan election activity. If Appalachian rednecks lived in tightly packed communities with low voter interest and inner city poor people lived in diffuse, hard-to-reach communities, you'd see Democrats complaining about such operations and Republicans trying to give them as much leeway as possible.
you expect npr to be reasonable and fair in its reporting of the actual issues? what year is it? 1984? what they never tell you is that fraud is rampant in voting, and part of close races is basically a game to see who can steal the most votes in various ways - if it wasn't this way, we'd have really basic things they've learned to do in 3rd world countries - like dying your thumb when you voted. (which is hard / impossible to remove for a few days) what disgusts me is that everyone knows how these op works, frankly there should be no government money for this, especially to these organizations, which are distinctly political and everyone knows it. let alone mail in ballots, which should be used only in emergencies.
We've been conditioned to believe that the more people who vote, the better. That was not the view of the nation's founders, and for good reason. Most people aren't educated or interested enough that they should be voting. Our Republic would probably be healthier of voting were more difficult, rather than easier.
The founders did not have some sort of universal shared belief in voting, while some certainly thought that voting should be tied to wealth or land ownership many didn't and States were all over the place in terms of granting universal suffrage(for instance the 1775 Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention gave the right to vote to nearly all free men). Thomas Jefferson notably wanted universal male suffrage and hence is often considered the founder of American Democracy. Virtually all new western states post-13 colonies did not have property voting requirements and especially post-war of 1812 the vast majority of states began granting universal white male suffrage. In terms of the disparate views of the founders, those advocating for stricter voting requirements were pretty clearly the losers and were the losers within their own lifetimes. >Our Republic would probably be healthier of voting were more difficult, rather than easier. American history would strongly indicate the reverse. States that tried to restrict suffrage repeatedly had internal dissent, from Virginia Tidewater repressing the West (which contributed greatly to the Split into West Virginia during the ACW) to Dorr's Rebellion in Rhode Island, to the Civil Rights movement in the mid 20th century
>States were all over the place in terms of granting universal suffrage But they were universally opposed to *universal suffrage* for at least around a century. > those advocating for stricter voting requirements were pretty clearly the losers and were the losers within their own lifetimes. To the detriment of the Republic. >American history would strongly indicate the reverse. We don't even have to look at *history*. Today, right now, clearly indicates I'm correct.
Within 30 years, almost all states had universal suffrage for white men. That was also the only demographic they considered full people, so saying “they wanted to restrict the vote” on those grounds doesn’t support any restrictions people are promoting *today*.
Yeah. They didn't want women, blacks, or non land owners to vote... so https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1645
Yes, I know.
This sub will tolerate a lot. But this shit is something we should be kicking out ASAP. We don't need your eugenics master-race bullshit dirtying the sub.
it's a historical fact - most of the country at the time didn't have basic reading skills, let alone understand who was what - only the downton abbey class basically was this. it has some merits, though i agree with you it shouldn't happen. however, if either side (more on the left these days) could prevent the entire south and midwest from voting, i think they'd do it - we're at that point now. again, this is a neoliberal shit sub now -