NAACP ask UN to investigate US voting rights laws

[xBiffx]

so because I make money i now have to pay a tax to vote?

You already have ID for other reasons. Outrage not found.

 

[dank69]

Who is it that wants an extranational organization with no legitimate authority to supersede our Constitution and tell us how to run our country? That's the point that seems to be lost in this discussion. One can argue about our laws but it is we and no one else who has the right to determine how we do things.

I never said that the NAACP going to the UN about this was a good idea.

 

[dank69]

I really wonder how many people who have no need for an ID there really are in each of the states? I've got to think this should be a one time hassle type fix, where ongoing upkeep should be a very low cost overhead. Short of a national ID card, with each polling place having your picture to look up on their system, I'd think providing SSN + some type of official mailings (medical, payment, banking, etc) should do the trick.

Free National ID would just be so much easier and pretty much take away any voter issues from either side, plus, make it far easier for people within the US to vote anywhere they needed to.

As for absentee, secure web based system to go along with their new free National ID. Don't figure out to use it ahead of time? No problem! Next time you'll bother so you'll be able to vote.

Done. Forever.

Free National ID, how anti-government spending of you. Can we make all services provided by the DMV free while you're at it?

 

[JSt0rm]

Perhaps that was the idea but doubtful. A handful of police even with automatic weapons isn't going to stop much for very long. Probably would be 100 to 1 or 1000 to 1 in the revolutionist's favor. Reloading is gonna be a real bitch.

Well in that case the military would come in.

 

[chucky2]

Perhaps that was the idea but doubtful. A handful of police even with automatic weapons isn't going to stop much for very long. Probably would be 100 to 1 or 1000 to 1 in the revolutionist's favor. Reloading is gonna be a real bitch.

Most of the police I know hate Politicians so bad, there is absoFinglutely no way they'd ever show up to shoot citizens who gathered in that amount of mass to overthrow <x>.

Not gonna happen. (if we ever reach that point, there'll be police in the crowd helping, not the other way around)

Chuck

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I never said that the NAACP going to the UN about this was a good idea.

Ya I know

Still that's what the OP was about and somehow that tidbit got lost. Someone has to herd the cats. :biggrin:

 

[chucky2]

Ya I know

Still that's what the OP was about and somehow that tidbit got lost. Someone has to herd the cats. :biggrin:

I actually think it's a good idea, something the US should consider doing, probably at least 2-3x in a row. Although I'm sure not for the reasons the NAACP is wanting it done...

Chuck

 

[blankslate]

our voting system is so ridiculous, it's not even funny.

Everyone has a unique SS#, right? show a form of ID, with that number on it, if you want to vote.

It's really that simple.

If you don't have such a form of ID -tough shit, you can't vote.

Have it hooked up to a really basic - and of course very secure, database, and any controversy is over.

Seems to make sense but how would you implement that idea?

It might be that too many states implementing different standards of how that theoretical ID should look could be a problem for people who tend to move around the country every few years or so.

maybe a national standard for such voter ID cards?

Unfortunately that would cause certain groups to raise a stink as well.

here's one example
http://news.cnet.com/National-ID-cards-on-the-way/2100-1028_3-5573414.html

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a real solution given the political climate today.

 

[JSt0rm]

Most of the police I know hate Politicians so bad, there is absoFinglutely no way they'd ever show up to shoot citizens who gathered in that amount of mass to overthrow <x>.

Not gonna happen. (if we ever reach that point, there'll be police in the crowd helping, not the other way around)

Chuck

well what about the 99% who were protesting? The police sure did stomp down on them. Or are you referring to old white southerners? I will tell you, if any old white southerners come into my neighborhood carrying weapons I will call my police department and have them deal with you.

 

[JSt0rm]

Ya I know

Still that's what the OP was about and somehow that tidbit got lost. Someone has to herd the cats. :biggrin:

Oh right. I forgot the new "rules" didn't allow for divergent thought.

 

[chucky2]

well what about the 99% who were protesting? The police sure did stomp down on them. Or are you referring to old white southerners? I will tell you, if any old white southerners come into my neighborhood carrying weapons I will call my police department and have them deal with you.

The p*ssy unwashed OWS folks? That's who you're talking about? I'm talking about a real mass of people who are moving on some political body with the intent to overthrow it, not get out and do something fun because it gives them a Chris Matthews tingle and they can show off their new iPhone.

I think we're talking about two different things here...

Chuck

P.S. I'm not old, or a southerner.

 

[JSt0rm]

The p*ssy unwashed OWS folks? That's who you're talking about? I'm talking about a real mass of people who are moving on some political body with the intent to overthrow it, not get out and do something fun because it gives them a Chris Matthews tingle and they can show off their new iPhone.

I think we're talking about two different things here...

Chuck

P.S. I'm not old, or a southerner.

Oh so the police have no problem using violence on the ows protesters that for the most part are peaceful but you think the police would stand by while citizens violently overtook the capital? hahahah.

 

[bfdd]

well what about the 99% who were protesting? The police sure did stomp down on them. Or are you referring to old white southerners? I will tell you, if any old white southerners come into my neighborhood carrying weapons I will call my police department and have them deal with you.

Those weren't the 99% and they were to busy being corporate slogan chanting hippie wannabes for the most part. They were ineffective and had no idea what they were doing. Wannabe revolutionaries aren't part of the 99%. They are firmly seated within the 1%, obvious by their insane need to live instead of working to make it the world they want.

PS doesn't 30k a year put you into the 1%? Don't give me that "it's all subjective" shit. No it fucking isn't, you worthless twats. Way to marginalize the REAL 99%.

 

[chucky2]

Oh so the police have no problem using violence on the ows protesters that for the most part are peaceful but you think the police would stand by while citizens violently overtook the capital? hahahah.

Well, yes, of course.

Really depends on the amount of citizens, you're talking gray area here. If it's 100 citizens, 500 hundred, even a thousand, they're going to get rolled back. If you've got 10k people showing up with guns, knives, clubs, whatever, you ain't going to be expecting too many police to show up to deal with that.

At that level of societal rage, the majority of police are going to be on the side of the people. You might get small large % showing up, but, short of a few delusionals, none are going to be egging on that large armed mob.

You might get a military unit ordered in, who might show up, but, I highly doubt they're going to open fire on US citizens...and you're going to have the same type of willpower/conflict of interest problems with them as you would the police.

Sorry...just don't see it happening in Reality...

 

[bfdd]

Well, yes, of course.

Really depends on the amount of citizens, you're talking gray area here. If it's 100 citizens, 500 hundred, even a thousand, they're going to get rolled back. If you've got 10k people showing up with guns, knives, clubs, whatever, you ain't going to be expecting too many police to show up to deal with that.

At that level of societal rage, the majority of police are going to be on the side of the people. You might get small large % showing up, but, short of a few delusionals, none are going to be egging on that large armed mob.

You might get a military unit ordered in, who might show up, but, I highly doubt they're going to open fire on US citizens...and you're going to have the same type of willpower/conflict of interest problems with them as you would the police.

Sorry...just don't see it happening in Reality...

^ this. OWS never had the support or people to make a dent, hence they got pushed around. I still don't get why they just SAT IN A FUCKING PARK instead of raiding the goddamn building and taking it over. Serious pusses.

 

[Siddhartha]

What does the land of the free have to worry about an outside agency evaluating their voting regulations? It is not possible that the UN will find that a certain party has systemically set up the rules for voting to surpress the vote of groups that historically vote for the other party is it?

 

[Fern]

Nice try on putting the burden of proof on the people affected by the law as opposed to the people trying to restrict voting access. What's really strange is that this argument seems to be implicitly conceding that there is no evidence for this voter fraud. Why on earth would you support a law without factual basis?

The facts are inescapable, people are being presented with an additional burden. This cannot be argued. Now you must justify this burden.

We've posted back-n-forth about this several times.

For one thing, you cannot prove voter fraud involving identity unless and until you have an ID requirement. In the absence of an ID requirement, the only way to prove (convict) voting fraud is with a confession.

For another, no one has ever come up with serious study on voting fraud. If you don't look for something, you won't find it.

Not too long ago a federal law was passed requiring (sort of) states to check their voting rolls. Those that have, have reported substantial discrepancies. Some are easy to spot with ID, namely felons who shouldn't be there. I've previously linked some of these.

If the foundation for your system- the voter rolls - is a mess, you need to start there and clean it up. Right now the system is broken/unreliable. The obvious way to fix it is require ID then clean up the rolls. We'll also need to have states cross-checking their rolls. We've got a lot people with multiple residences that could easily register in 2 counties or two states. I find it highly counter-intuitive to leave holes in your system and assume no one is abusing them. Experience says otherwise.

We've seen that elections can be very very close, so you don't always need hordes of people cheating to unduly influence an election.

Fern

 

[chucky2]

Free National ID, how anti-government spending of you. Can we make all services provided by the DMV free while you're at it?

That's exactly how I'd roll it out, through the state DMV. They are all over, staffed with the right people and equipment, and have everything needed to carry out the task. It's little more government spending that we have now, to solve a problem any side just cannot stand.

Those not needing a drivers license and just wishing for a NID for voting purposes can get to their local DMV in the 4 years between elections for one. If they're incapacitated, that's not a problem either. They can register for a NID the same way we send in for a FOID card (provide picture + info) and that ID, with internet pin, will be mailed to their address that SS has on file.

Gone are complaints of mass amounts of dead people voting (SS gets notified when you die), improper people voting for others, etc. Truly a much more accurate system than we have now.

Here's the plus for Libs: Obviously this will slightly increase spending, and thus, increase jobs (which at these DMV's, go to minorities - at least at the ones I've gone to in the Chi area). See? There's something in it directly for you all too...you should be right on board with this right amirite?

 

[blankslate]

For one thing, you cannot prove voter fraud involving identity unless and until you have an ID requirement. In the absence of an ID requirement, the only way to prove (convict) voting fraud is with a confession.

Look at this study.

http://www.truthaboutfraud.org/pdf/TruthAboutVoterFraud.pdf

 

[chucky2]

^ this. OWS never had the support or people to make a dent, hence they got pushed around. I still don't get why they just SAT IN A FUCKING PARK instead of raiding the goddamn building and taking it over. Serious pusses.

They would have sent such a more powerful message had they done that. A thousand people pushing past the police, raiding these places, would have sent such a much more powerful message to not only the Politicians, but also Wall Street, I cannot imagine why they didn't go that route.

Probably too busy dancing out there I'd guess, or maybe eating, who knows...

 

[DrPizza]

What if we made it a condition that to vote, unless you were handicapped, you had to walk 5 miles, stay awake for 20 hours, and watch every episode of Jersey Shore and Nova? A lot of people, and I'm sure you would agree, would say, "it's just not worth the effort." Doing anything - spending a perceived hours of the day (ever been to the DMV?) in line waiting to get a photo id - that might just be "too much effort" for a small, but significant percentage (particularly compared to margins of victory) for absolutely no defensible *real* reason is wrong.

 

[Fern]

Look at this study.

http://www.truthaboutfraud.org/pdf/TruthAboutVoterFraud.pdf

I'm pretty sure I've read that. They are not investigating voter fraud, they are looking at other peoples' claims of voting fraud. There is a big difference between the two.

A systematic analysis to check for voter fraud will likely need to be done by the county govt. (Where I live, and in most reports I've seen voting rolls are kept by the county.) And you're going to need some kind of ID requirement.

You see where I live, I don't really need give my SS# to register. I can register in 5 precincts here, each under a different name and go vote 5 times.

Now, how could you possibly check for that?

Well you can't without voter ID rules.

If you examine the voter rolls, you'll find my 5 names, with the (slim) paperwork required to verify the voter. So far so good, everything checks out. Then you can confirm that each one of those voted only once. Well gee, everything matches up perfectly. No voter fraud huh?

I'm not going to hunt up the links to reports some states have done to comply with the relatively recent federal legislation, but we've got counties/states with error rates as high as 30% (IIRC). You know what? They don't give a shizz. The county (or counties) said they were not going to fix a damn thing and the state had no authority to force them.

BTW: My wife is an illegal voter (of sorts). She's an Italian here on a Greencard. When she moved here I took her to the DMV to get her drivers license. Like many places, you can register to vote when getting your DL. I was standing next to her and heard her tell the woman at the window she did NOT want to register to vote at least 2 or 3 times. She told her she wasn't a citizen etc.

Well guess what? My wife has received jury duty notices. They pull those names from - guess where? - yep, registered voters.

The system is so messed up and broken, no one can have any real idea of irregularities.

Fern

 

[blankslate]

If you've read it then you know that when they did look at investigations of voter fraud as detailed in the appendix that look at three states then you know that it was found voter fraud accounted for less than 0.003% of the votes in Missouri, New Jersey, and Wisconsin.

While a on page six of that report a person who is a member of the party that usually supports voter ID laws has the following observations.

Royal Masset, the former political director for the Republican Party of Texas, concisely tied all of these strands together in a 2007 Houston Chronicle article concerning a highly controversial battle over photo identification legislation in Texas. Masset connected the inflated furor over
voter fraud to photo identification laws and their expected impact on legitimate voters:

Among Republicans it is an &#8220;article of religious faith that voter fraud is causing us to lose elections,&#8221;
Masset said. He doesn&#8217;t agree with that, but does believe that requiring photo IDs could cause
enough of a dropoff in legitimate Democratic voting to add 3 percent to the Republican vote.

Now if you have reservations about that study in and of itself, ok; but I believe that there is enough of a question about the issue to have a larger peer-reviewed nationwide study conducted on to make sure that legitimate voters are not turned away because of poorly written and implemented voter ID laws.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Oh right. I forgot the new "rules" didn't allow for divergent thought.

What new rules? Nothing has changed.

 

[JSt0rm]

What new rules? Nothing has changed.

Really? All the new rules are gone?


Lets test it out :sneaky:

Go fuck yourself you fucking fuck.