Ohio - difference in polling hours depending on majority party in district

[woolfe9999]

You see no reason why someone who might be deployed on a ship or at a forward fire base, not free to leave at his or her own discretion, risking death for his country in a nation without clean water, much less a functional mail system, might deserve a bit more consideration in voting than, say, Madonna?

Seriously, no reason at all?

If you're abroad, whether military or civilian, you can vote by absentee.

And the answer is no, access to the polls should be equal for all voters. If you want to give the military an expanded voting window, great, give it to everyone else too. Why wouldn't you? It's not as if people in the military are the only ones who could benefit from an expanded voting window, just like it isn't as if only those in republican districts can benefit. All sorts of people have jobs which can make voting difficult for a variety of reasons. If we are so concerned about this, then let everyone vote early. It isn't about taking something away from the military. It's about everyone playing by the same rules. Give something to one group - give it to all of them. Let's not have one set of voting rules for one city, one occupation, one group, and another for everyone else.

And yes, I'm sure it's a total coincidence that whenever republicans want to enact new voting laws, they just happen to result in either expanded opportunities for traditional GOP voting groups and/or contracted opportunities for everyone else. Such a damn happy coincidence for them that they're just caring citizens doing the right thing and every single time it also just happens to give them more votes. AND on top of it, these things curiously seem to be showing up a lot in battleground states like Ohio just now. But it has nothing to do with politics. Sure it doesn't.

- wolf

 

[BladeVenom]

4. And that doesn't justify Republicans blocking thousands of innocent voters from voting just to MAYBE catch ONE person for voter fraud (if they're lucky). We get it, you hate the poor and blacks having the right to vote. It's the conservative legacy.

They are not blocking anyone from voting. They are just requiring identification. You have show identification for many things, that are less important than voting.

 

[Phokus]

They are not blocking anyone from voting. They are just requiring identification. You have show identification for many things, that are less important than voting.

And yet, there isn't any correlation between voter ID laws and actual voter fraud, according to the Republican Lawyers association report.

The point is to disenfranchise the poor, the elderly, the young, and especially blacks. Stop being daft.

 

[berzerker60]

They are not blocking anyone from voting. They are just requiring identification. You have show identification for many things, that are less important than voting.

They're blocking anyone without the specified IDs from voting. That includes very many people who shouldn't be voting, but also a large number of people who have the right to vote.

"You have show identification for many things, that are less important than voting." It's exactly because they're less important than voting that the ID requirement for those things is tolerable. If some people can't drive a car, that's not an infringement on their most fundamental right as citizens. If they wanted, they could vote to abolish the law against drivers licenses. You can't vote against voter ID laws without having ID. If voter fraud by impersonation was a statistically real problem, voter ID laws would probably be worth pursuing. However, it's not a real problem, and the fact that the laws don't address the actual potential source of voter fraud - absentee ballots - makes it clear that it's not really intended to combat voter fraud, but merely suppress voting.

The sad thing is that if this forum existed in the days of poll taxes and literacy tests to keep blacks from voting, conservatives would buy into the phony excuses covering for those, too.

 

[Jhhnn]

And yet, there isn't any correlation between voter ID laws and actual voter fraud, according to the Republican Lawyers association report.

The point is to disenfranchise the poor, the elderly, the young, and especially blacks. Stop being daft.

Daft isn't the correct terminology. "Deliberately obtuse" is what you want.

 

[BladeVenom]

The point is to disenfranchise the poor, the elderly, the young, and especially blacks. Stop being daft.

Where's your proof? Maybe your tin foil hat is on too tight. The purpose of picture identification, is for accurate identification. So stop with the crazy conspiracy nonsense.

 

[nehalem256]

They're blocking anyone without the specified IDs from voting. That includes very many people who shouldn't be voting, but also a large number of people who have the right to vote.

"You have show identification for many things, that are less important than voting." It's exactly because they're less important than voting that the ID requirement for those things is tolerable. If some people can't drive a car, that's not an infringement on their most fundamental right as citizens. If they wanted, they could vote to abolish the law against drivers licenses. You can't vote against voter ID laws without having ID. If voter fraud by impersonation was a statistically real problem, voter ID laws would probably be worth pursuing. However, it's not a real problem, and the fact that the laws don't address the actual potential source of voter fraud - absentee ballots - makes it clear that it's not really intended to combat voter fraud, but merely suppress voting.

The sad thing is that if this forum existed in the days of poll taxes and literacy tests to keep blacks from voting, conservatives would buy into the phony excuses covering for those, too.

Except that the constitution would disagree with you on that. The right to vote was quite restricted during the beginning of the history of our country. Whereas other rights were granted to all.

 

[BladeVenom]

When 6,138 votes can be cast in a county with 4,895 registered voters you need identification.

When you have 1.8 Million dead people still registered to vote, the system needs fixed.

 

[berzerker60]

Except that the constitution would disagree with you on that. The right to vote was quite restricted during the beginning of the history of our country. Whereas other rights were granted to all.

Yeah, and the founding fathers were wrong to not include it explicitly, as were their successors in using terrorism and legal obstructions to suppress voting rights once they were written in, a trend this current example is just one part of in a long history of voter suppression. I'm referring to the idea of natural rights, fundamental rights that go deeper than what the Constitution says, though it also now agrees. The right to vote is central to democracy, and the founding fathers including slaveowners doesn't make that less true.

 

[Jhhnn]

Except that the constitution would disagree with you on that. The right to vote was quite restricted during the beginning of the history of our country. Whereas other rights were granted to all.

The Constitution has been amended in the meanwhile, extending the franchise, and other statutes doing the same have been ruled entirely Constitutional.

Repubs everywhere are trying to create a modern version of Jim Crow in response to the realignment of "conservatives" from the Democratic party to their own. North or South, it's still Jim Crow, just with a twist where it disenfranchises voters along broader lines than race alone.

Early voting hours & dates may be a States' Rights issue, but that does not allow for different partisan standards within the State. Claiming that it does is utterly dishonest, and an attack on the whole concept of egalitarian democracy as we know it.

 

[Jhhnn]

Where's your proof? Maybe your tin foil hat is on too tight. The purpose of picture identification, is for accurate identification. So stop with the crazy conspiracy nonsense.

The intended electoral purpose of valid picture ID is to restrict voting to those who have it, and none other. Instances of in person voter fraud have not been shown to exist at a significant level, other than in the minds of gullible or dishonest Righties.

If your candidates & ideas are so great, if you're really the majority, then you wouldn't be afraid of the boogeyman, at all. You wouldn't need to create him. You'd convince voters of all stripes to vote for you, based on the strength of what you offer to the country.

But you don't. Why not? Why resort to dishonesty & voter suppression tactics?

 

[DCal430]

Can politicians in Ohio by recalled? If so they should start a recall petition for this secretary of state, very disgusting what he is doing.

 

[BladeVenom]

The intended electoral purpose of valid picture ID is to restrict voting to those who have it, and none other.

The intent is to stop voter fraud.

ACORN was caught red handed committing voter fraud before the last Presidential election. That's why liberals don't want ID laws, because they are the ones committing voter fraud.

 

[berzerker60]

The intent is to stop voter fraud.

ACORN was caught red handed committing voter fraud before the last Presidential election. That's why liberals don't want ID laws, because they are the ones committing voter fraud.

No they weren't. Some employees committed voter registration fraud in order to get paid, but there's no evidence it was systematic, and even if the registrations had gone through unchecked, then voter ID laws wouldn't matter anyway since no one would need to be impersonated in order to cast those fake votes (which no one ever did). http://www.factcheck.org/2008/10/acorn-accusations/

"Dan Satterberg, the Republican prosecuting attorney in King County, Wash., where the largest ACORN case to date was prosecuted, said that the indicted ACORN employees were shirking responsibility, not plotting election fraud."

Satterberg: [A] joint federal and state investigation has determined that this scheme was not intended to permit illegal voting.
Instead, the defendants cheated their employer, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or ACORN), to get paid for work they did not actually perform. ACORN’s lax oversight of their own voter registration drive permitted this to happen. … It was hardly a sophisticated plan: The defendants simply realized that making up names was easier than actually canvassing the streets looking for unregistered voters. … [It] appears that the employees of ACORN were not performing the work that they were being paid for, and to some extent, ACORN is a victim of employee theft.
​

 

[alzan]

The intent is to stop voter fraud.

ACORN was caught red handed committing voter fraud before the last Presidential election. That's why liberals don't want ID laws, because they are the ones committing voter fraud.

Proof? I know there were cases of registration fraud which is a completely different issue.

 

[nehalem256]

The intended electoral purpose of valid picture ID is to restrict voting to those who have it, and none other. Instances of in person voter fraud have not been shown to exist at a significant level, other than in the minds of gullible or dishonest Righties.

If your candidates & ideas are so great, if you're really the majority, then you wouldn't be afraid of the boogeyman, at all. You wouldn't need to create him. You'd convince voters of all stripes to vote for you, based on the strength of what you offer to the country.

But you don't. Why not? Why resort to dishonesty & voter suppression tactics?

Because the other party is attempting to buy half the electorate through subsidized healthcare and free birth control.

What are the Republicans suppose to do? Offer free birth control and free chocolate?

 

[berzerker60]

Because the other party is attempting to buy half the electorate through subsidized healthcare and free birth control.

What are the Republicans suppose to do? Offer free birth control and free chocolate?

Oh okay, Republicans have carte blache to suppress voting because their policies aren't in the interest of the vast majority of Americans. Got it.

 

[Jhhnn]

The intent is to stop voter fraud.

ACORN was caught red handed committing voter fraud before the last Presidential election. That's why liberals don't want ID laws, because they are the ones committing voter fraud.

You're delusional, and extremely well indoctrinated in the fantasy of all Righties.

Stop voter fraud? You mean the proven fraud that's so vanishingly rare as to be insignificant? It's akin to stopping Bigfoot.

Acorn did not commit voter fraud. Some of their canvassers committed another kind of electoral fraud, registration fraud. Acorn was obliged, by law, to send those registrations forward, and often flagged them as suspect. State authorities did their job, disallowing those registrations. No voter fraud has ever been shown to have occurred as a result of Acorn registration efforts.

Democrats don't want voter ID because we're not afraid of sections of the electorate that repubs both fear & loathe & would rather not have voting.

The actions of Ohio Repubs wrt early voting in different districts should really give conservatives pause, & reason to reflect upon what they believe & who they believe. If your leadership is willing to do that, to resort to such means in an attempt to win, is there anything beneath them? What makes you think that this whole voter fraud is any different, other than Faith?

 

[BladeVenom]

You're delusional, and extremely well indoctrinated in the fantasy of all Righties.

You're the brainwashed sheep who keeps spouting off the liberal lines. "voter suppression" please .

There's nothing wrong with requiring a picture ID. It's required for so many other things. It's stupid not to require it to vote.

What I find amusing is at least the left is admitting that people who are too stupid to get a picture ID are usually Democrats.

 

[Jhhnn]

Because the other party is attempting to buy half the electorate through subsidized healthcare and free birth control.

What are the Republicans suppose to do? Offer free birth control and free chocolate?

And what *are* Repubs offering, other than the usual wedge issues, vague & unworkable promises to do something wrt deficits at the expense of working people, offshore more jobs, cut taxes for "Job Creators" so they can have more money to do what they're already doing, which is sucking the economy dry under the guise of trickledown economics?

Did Repubs not pander to the fear of seniors, medicare recipients, with their whole "death panels!" deception in 2010? Are they not attempting to do much the same today? Is Medicare not a govt program?

Which side of their mouths are they raving out of today, anyway?

 

[berzerker60]

You're the brainwashed sheep who keeps spouting off the liberal lines. "voter repression" please .

There's nothing wrong with requiring a picture ID. It's required for so many other things. It's stupid not to require it to vote.

What I find amusing is at least the left is admitting that people who are too stupid to get a picture ID are usually Democrats.

Man, I give in, this rhetoric one-two punch of a rolly-eyes emoticon and implying some kind of connection between intelligence and owning a state-issued ID is too much for me. I'm converted!

After all, nothing says "party of small government" like requiring every citizen to keep official up-to-date government IDs! Let's save some trouble and just implant chips in everyone, keep a big database of the information somewhere. Free us from the tyranny of Big Government by invalidating our citizenship if we don't jump through the government's hoops to get and maintain state ID!

 

[BladeVenom]

Some employees committed voter registration fraud...

So we need picture ID to make sure it doesn't go any further. Sounds logical to me.

 

[BladeVenom]

After all, nothing says "party of small government" like requiring every citizen to keep official up-to-date government IDs! Let's save some trouble and just implant chips in everyone, keep a big database of the information somewhere. Free us from the tyranny of Big Government by invalidating our citizenship if we don't jump through the government's hoops to get and maintain state ID!

We already have most of that under Obama.

Obama kept Guantanamo open, extended the Patriot Act, DHS and FBI are working for the MPAA/RIAA now, supported warrantless wiretapping, and gave the telecommunications companies immunity. He also increased the debt by $4 trillion dollars.

 

[Jhhnn]

You're the brainwashed sheep who keeps spouting off the liberal lines. "voter repression" please .

There's nothing wrong with requiring a picture ID. It's required for so many other things. It's stupid not to require it to vote.

What I find amusing is at least the left is admitting that people who are too stupid to get a picture ID are usually Democrats.

Fantastic display of obfuscation & denial. First, we need voter ID to combat voter fraud, basically a strawman, a conceptual framework not supported by fact. Then it's stupid to not require picture ID because... wait for it... ID is necessary, or so you claim, for a lot of things that a lot of people apparently don't do, or they'd already have picture ID to do what they do, to live their lives.

People who lack current valid picture ID are often seniors. They often live in a pretty small circle. Their SS checks are direct deposit, and they're known in person where they bank & shop for groceries, by their landlords, by everybody they normally deal with. Their face is all the ID they need in their daily lives. Their medicare card & original SS card supplement that in unusual situations, and neither are picture ID, neither expire, ever.

They're not stupid, they just don't need picture ID, and neither do a lot of other people, either.

 

[BladeVenom]

So if requiring a picture ID to vote is voter suppression, requiring a picture ID to buy a new gun is 2nd Amendment suppression?