Voter ID laws: Everyone has an ID, right? Nope
 

Here's a solution for all of those without an ID - if you want to vote, GET ONE!!

this needed a new thread? whatever.

anyway, can't see what madam wrote, can only see the thread title. i really wish when i pose a question when at work and unable to look for the answer, that someone whose posts i can read would answer...at any rate, i found this:

http://geoff82.wordpress.com/2012/01...ave-photo-ids/

i have no idea who this site is, or if they're 'valid' or not. i just know it was first on the google list. found it interesting to say the least.

This chart was posted..

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gee, thanks. i'll sleep better tonight not having to wonder any more.

Too bad Danzig won't read this:

Fri Jul 20, 2012
The Fraud of Voter Fraud
by Richard Riis

There is a coordinated, nationwide effort right now to enact voter ID laws that do nothing to impact alleged voter fraud and instead disenfranchise voters and infringe upon the fundamental American right to free and fair elections... which is, of course, precisely what the proposed laws are intended to do.

Photo ID laws have been introduced or passed in at least 15 states. They discriminate against those who don’t have driver’s licenses — disproportionately the poor, elderly and minorities. Nationally they could disenfranchise about five million voters. Several states are also pushing legislation to restrict voter registration and to limit early voting.

A quick check of the facts vis-à-vis voter fraud: The Bush Justice Department conducted a massive, five-year investigation into voter fraud that resulted in a mere 86 convictions nationwide. An independent investigation into voter fraud in Missouri in 2000 determined that the rate of voter fraud in that state was 0.0003%. A similar study in Ohio in 2004 turned up a percentage of 0.0004%, while another study in Wisconsin the same year measured the proportion of fraudulent votes at 0.0002%.

Notably, in virtually every case the “fraudulent” votes involved either in- and out-of-state double voting or votes cast by ineligible voters, chiefly ex-felons, problems that would not be addressed by photo ID. None were cases of actual fraud via voter impersonation.

Based on these studies, and expecting about 125 million votes to be cast nationwide in this year’s general election, we can anticipate the number of ineligible or fraudulent votes to be cast in 2012 at between 250 and 500.

We like to say that every vote counts, but, really, five to ten votes, on average, in each of 50 states are hardly likely to make a difference in this, or any, election’s outcome. Voter fraud is just not a very real threat to American democracy.

However, the costs of implementing these new laws are very real. States must undertake massive public information campaigns, retrain poll workers, account for longer lines on Election Day, and produce and distribute millions of free IDs to citizens. This has the potential to increase electoral costs in some states by as much as 50 percent — tens of millions of dollars.

Most recently, Indiana's strict voter ID law cost taxpayers more than $10 million in the issuing of new IDs. Estimates by other states projected additional implementation costs of up to $25 million in North Carolina over three years, $17 million in Missouri over three years.

Is this really the wisest use of taxpayer money in these tight times?

Of course, the real intent of voter ID laws is not to prevent fraud but to disenfranchise millions of otherwise eligible voters.

Studies have shown that about 21 million Americans, or 11% of eligible voters, currently lack a valid photo ID.

However, those percentages rise to as high as 25% for African-Americans, 15% for low-income voters, 18% for seniors and 20% for voters under 30.

Do you detect a pattern here? These demographic groups are predominantly Democratic base voters.

The other pattern at play: all of the new or proposed voter ID laws and other legal obstacles to voting are being put into place by Republican legislatures.

Though right-wing efforts to suppress low-income and minority voting are nothing new, the current GOP campaign is unprecedented in scope, organization and ambition.

Not all these measures will likely survive court challenges. The 14th and 15th amendments to the U. S. Constitution and the 1965 Voting Rights Act bar discrimination and other interference with voting in all elections.

In addition, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires preclearance for nondiscrimination by either the Justice Department or a federal court before states can change any voting procedures.

This is what led the Texas Justice Department to recently put a hold on Texas’ discriminatory new voter ID law and a Wisconsin judge to strike down a similar law in that state.

"Voter fraud is no more poisonous to our democracy than voter suppression”, wrote Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess in his decision; “A government that undermines the very foundation of its existence — the people's inherent, pre-constitutional right to vote — imperils its legitimacy as a government by the people, for the people, and especially of the people."

What we ought to be doing in this country is rethinking our voting laws with regard to how to ensure that every citizen can cast his or her vote with fewer obstacles, not more.

Registration drives, extended voting hours, modern balloting technologies — Americans should be having a national conversation on how to encourage and increase voting, not on how to suppress it.

June 26, 2012

ALEC has given Republicans an agenda to achieve goals. Some of these are:

Voter ID laws - to disenfranchise voters that tend to vote democratic.
Abortion facility laws - get rid of facilities in states, and no abortions can be performed even though it's legal
Gun control - loosen gun control laws, pass "stand your ground" laws
-----------------------------------

PA State Representative Republican Mike Turzai, admits GOP voter ID laws are intended to help Republicans win.

During a speech to the Republican State Committee's summer meeting in Hershey on Saturday, Rep. Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, ticked off what he said were the GOP's achievements during its nearly two years in control of the General Assembly and the governor's office.

You are welcome...she just posted a long story on voter fraud, you want to see it?..:)

As I've suggested before since all Americans will be required to have health insurance. By simply producing a pic id with SS # on your health insurance card would provide the needed ID to all starting in 2014.

This would also eliminate anyone showing at a Dr. or Hosp. trying to portray themselves as the insured on whatever proof they show, hence the pic and SS.

A win-win all the way around!

If i did, i would change my settings. Thanks anyway.

Yea. I don't get it. Why the controversy?

A photo ID and signature would help eliminate fraud.
I remember 20 years ago, my mother had to get an ID to vote in Indiana. She's never had a Driver's License.

Get it done and move on.

Because it's not easy for many people - a very significant number - to have access to obtaining an ID, both financially and geographically. You can't put a poll tax on voters. You can't put excess requirements on certain parts of the population (see chart) And so far the courts are agreeing completely.

Banking, driving, cashing checks is a privilege. Voting is a right. You don't have to be a "normal citizen participating in society on a daily basis (working, driving, banking)" to have exactly the same, inviolate right to vote as every single other American citizen. And it has been repeatedly documented that there is little to no voter fraud, virtually non-existent, and what exists is rarely preventable by any photo ID.

:tro:

I don't get it either...I have to show my driver's license to get checked off the roles before going into the booth. I consider it an honor to do so, and appreciate the retired folks that volunteer their time to man the polls.

What the hell is the difference? If they questioned my eligibility, I'd comply with the same honor of privilege, thankful that there are enough people that still give enough of a sh1t to insure the election is legitimate.

She is just bent because she knows how many illegitimate inhabitants of this country will purposefully and willingly attempt to sway the election via fraud, toward her particular candidate. And now she's crying because the fraud has been uncovered and disallowed. Boo hoo.

OMG! Brown people! Run in fear! Make up imaginary lies about voter fraud by illegals! :D

Daily Show hilariously eviscerates the lies about massive voter fraud existence:

Yes that's it... taking pride in my country and appreciating the efforts of our elected representatives by insuring legitimate voter roles = racism




You've got some nerve - but I wouldn't expect anything less out of you.

BTW, Obama's DOJ agreed with Rick Scott, so you can check one of the largest swing states off your list of potential vote stealing wins :D

Put your money where your silly allegations are - I expect nothing less from you. You said, "how many illegitimate inhabitants of this country will purposefully and willingly attempt to sway the election via fraud,".

How many? Give us some figures? Prove your allegation. It's absurd on it's face. This isn't Free Republic here.

It's your foot. If the shoe fits, wear it. I'm sure you're worried about all those Germans and Canadians "fixing the election". Face it - the proven facts are that there is little to no voter fraud.

Oh, and Obama's DOJ did not agree with Rick Scott that there is massive voter fraud at all. Compliance with access to a data base is not agreeing, and DOJ initially fought FL having access as they were afraid FL would misuse the info. I'm sure you know that before you misstated.

Btw, where's your buddy coach panties lately, did you drive him away?:D

I need to cash a check - can I do that without a photo ID?

I want to purchase something with a credit card - can I do that without ID?

I want want to own a racehorse - can I do that without being fingerprinted and issued a photo ID?

I want drive a car - can I do that without a photo ID?

I want to travel to Myrtle Beach - can I pass through security without a photo ID?

I want to rent a car, can I do that with out a photo ID?

I want to rent a house in Myrtle Beach, can I do that without ID?

[/color]
Answers in red...:)

Please use a pie chart next time :rolleyes:;)

So what? None of that matters. The above are all choices. Voting is a Constitutional right, having nothing at all to do with the ability to do any of the above.

Citizens are entitled to vote whether or not they choose to drive, travel, rent a car or house, buy a horse.

Citizens are entitled to vote even if they are poor and can't afford a car, and don't have a drivers license; even if they are 80 in a nursing home and don't travel out to shop or take the bus, or cash checks, and don't have a bank.

We need to make voting more accessible and easier for those people. Not more difficult simply because they don't fit some imaged middle- or upper-class lifestyle paradigm. There are no class discriminations in the Constitution for Voting Rights. Every citizen is equal: even the poor meth addict can vote.

Oh, yeah - and they tend to vote Democratic.

The courts have determined that several of these voting ID bills are essentially unfair poll taxes on certain, targeted segments of American citizens. That's why they are being thrown out. And besides, as repeatedly proven, "voter fraud" is a false meme that simply doesn't factually exist in any discernable volume whatsoever.

But yet in real life, many people, an estimated 5 million American citizens, do. They don't live within 100 miles of a DMV, they don't have transportation, they are elderly and don't have a birth certificate (yet have been voting for 50 years at the same precinct), they are so poor they don't have money to get on a bus and take a day off work to go to a DMV and get an ID.

There is no voter fraud. It's virtually non-existent. And the voter fraud that is found cannot be prevented by a photo ID.

Restrictive photo ID voting laws are simply an ALEC-generated Republican construct to attempt to prevent voters that often vote Democratic from voting. And the federal courts are agreeing.

That would be the Supreme Court and our judicial system. Not a president. Not a Congress. And the federal courts are throwing out restrictive GOP voter ID laws as unconstitutional right and left.

Every state in the Union already has laws determining eligibility to vote. Restricting those further is being found overwhelmingly unconstitutional. Period.

Is there none, or some but virtually none? You contradict yourself so ofter it is hard to keep up. You don't know anything for fact - you simply regurgitate the same old ACORN spew over and over.



Oh, and your last sentence is an outright lie.

This has nothing to do with ACORN, Mr. Conspiracy Theorist :D Three studies - including a massive one by Bush DOJ - has put incidence of documented voter fraud at 0.0002, 0.0003, or 0.0004% depending upon the study.

Nope. Sorry. You need to read a newspaper now and then. Judges are indeed throwing out nonsensical voter ID laws as unconstitutional.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/...ete_idiot.html


Republicans don't know precisely how much voter fraud actually occurs -- but then, neither does anyone else. However, voter fraud occurs more frequently than progressives would have us believe, as was ably demonstrated by Hans A. von Spakovsky in an August National Review article:



"The claim that there is no voter fraud in the U.S. is patently ridiculous, given our rich and unfortunate history of it. As the U.S. Supreme Court said when it upheld Indiana's photo-ID law in 2008, "Flagrant examples of such fraud . . . have been documented throughout this Nation's history by respected historians and journalists." The liberal groups that fought Indiana's law didn't have much luck with liberal justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the 6-3 decision. Before being named to the Supreme Court, Justice Stevens practiced law in Chicago, a hotbed of electoral malfeasance."




Requiring photo IDs to vote is better than nothing and may help at the margins, but it isn't going to stop voter fraud. Would poll workers have photos of all registrants on hand to match against the photos presented by voters? (A better solution lies elsewhere.)

The left-wing quotes above don't even rise to the level of speculation; they're part of a deliberate concerted effort to deceive -- a propaganda campaign. Alleging that voter fraud doesn't exist is a straw man designed to divert attention away from other more pressing election problems. Alleging that an undetectable fraud doesn't exist draws attention away from the frauds that can be detected, but aren't. Alleging that voter fraud doesn't exist whitewashes America's voter registration mess.

Progressives allege that new voter ID requirements are meant to suppress turnout, especially of "the wrong kind of people," as the Doonesbury cartoon puts it. But the progressives' resistance to even the most basic safeguards is an attempt to keep elections open to theft. Progressives don't care about the integrity of elections; they just want to win, by whatever means necessary.

Milwaukee-Journal Sentinal today
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/1...rt=newestfirst

The latest study linking support for voter ID laws to their feelings toward African-Americans is not surprising.
By James Causey of the Journal Sentinel
July 23, 2012 11:02 a.m

In the study by the University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication, respondents were asked several questions, and their answers were used to create a spectrum of "racial resentment."

The more resentment people had toward blacks, the more likely they were to support voter ID laws.

So basically, the study suggests that if you really dislike blacks, you really support voter ID laws.



That's interesting, because at the core of voter ID laws is race. There is little voter fraud. Last week, a second judge declared Wisconsin's voter ID law unconstitutional, almost guaranteeing that the ID requirement will not be in place for elections this fall.

Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan wrote that the state's requirement that all voters show photo ID at the polls creates a "substantial impairment of the right to vote" guaranteed by the state constitution.

In March, he issued an injunction temporarily blocking the law because the plaintiffs - the Milwaukee branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera - were likely to succeed in their arguments.

Flanagan made that injunction permanent in the 20-page decision he issued Tuesday because he found the impact of the law hit disproportionately hard on the elderly, indigent and minorities.

The judge made the right decision based on the fact that 220,000 people, according to state estimates, don't have the proper ID to vote.

Nope. False. There have been several studies on the incidence of voter fraud, and the numbers are clear. And very, very small. Mostly felons voting that should not. And nothing that would be solved by a photo ID requirement.

But the false equivalence of "both sides are wrong" is laughably cute as an editorial debate tactic, especially as the author has to resort to it right up front.

"Buy the premise, buy the bit" is the way to convert the gullible.

Don't you ever get tired of you own lies?

Watching you flat-out deny that judges are indeed throwing out the latest ALEC-GOP voter ID laws as they are too restrictive is funny. Which ones specifically are you denying happened: Texas? Wisconsin?

I'll bet you don't think the President's birth certificate is real, either :D

Brennan Center: 500,000 legal American citizens could be disinfranchised due to restrictive "free" voter ID laws

The Brennan Center, NYU Law School's public policy institute that focuses on democracy and justice issues, has a new report detailing the challenges faced by voters in 10 states with new, restrictive voter ID laws.

Those laws ultimately mean that as many as 500,000 eligible voters won't cast ballots because of the insurmountable barriers these laws erect, particularly for rural voters. In other words, yes, these new laws are basically poll taxes.


The cost of the IDs aside, most of these voters don't have access to transportation to obtain the ID. To complicate matters more, in many of these states, the offices that are designated to issue IDs are open infrequently for short periods of time.

There's even one office, in Sauk City, Wisconsin, that's open "only on the fifth Wednesday of any month. That would limit the office to being open just four days this year." Sure, you can get a free voter ID, if you happen to have one of those four days free, have transportation, and already have the necessary documentation—birth certificate, marriage license, divorce decree—all lined up.

One state court judge found that these barriers are a "substantial impairment of the right to vote" guaranteed by Wisconsin's constitution, and blocked the voter ID law from being implemented.

So voters in Sauk City will at least be able to exercise their franchise. They're among the lucky.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/0...free-voter-IDs

A gift for Old Dog, and others to whom voting rights for their fellow Americans is less important than themselves:

:tro: :tro:

though accidental or unintentional ALWAYS are deliberate deep down.

when you are drunk you get to see six of them!!!!

Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice launches formal investigation into Pennsylvania's new voter ID law to determine if the law discriminates against minorities.
The state itself has estimated that more than 750,000 eligible voters don't have acceptable photo identification. A new study from a University of Washington expert pegs that number at nearly 1.4 million. That's Pennsylvanians who are eligible to vote.

More striking, more than a million actual registered voters don't have the proper id. Most of those registered voters think they have valid ID, but actually don't, the researchers found.

Relevant to this investigation, they found that women, low-income, minority, and both young and senior voters are far more likely to not have the necessary ID. As usual.
If the DOJ does end up suing Pennsylvania, it will have to show that there is significant racial disparity in the law's effects, as well as the significance of the burden the ID requirement places on would-be voters. In the meantime, the ACLU's case on behalf of Viviette Applewhite will be heard this week.

The all American girl, and they are real...:eek:

Pennsylvania admits to DOJ there is no Voter Fraud
 

Ahead Of Voter ID Trial, Pennsylvania Admits There’s No In-Person Voter Fraud

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...oter_fraud.php

As the Justice Department investigates Pennsylvania’s voter ID law on the federal level, a coalition of civil rights groups is gearing up for a state trial starting Wednesday examining whether the law is allowable under Pennsylvania’s constitution.

In that case, Pennsylvania might have handed those groups and their clients (including 93-year-old Viviette Applewhite) a bit of an advantage: They’ve formally acknowledged that there’s been no reported in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania and there isn’t likely to be in November.

Pennsylvania has said that over 750,000 registered voters do not have ID from the Transportation Department, a problem more concentrated in urban centers like Philadelphia.

One top state Republican has claimed the voter ID law would help Mitt Romney win the Keystone state.

Democrats have already altered their campaign plans should the law survives legal challenges.