Wisconsin court upholds voter ID law

[Bowfinger]

It's just as unacceptable to continue with completely inadequate or even no controls on voter identity. And if you don't agree with that then we really do have nothing more to discuss and this will again come down to an exercise in pure political power.

Can you kindly tell us which state or states had "completely inadequate or even no controls on voter identity?" I can't speak to every state, and they all have their own rules, but the states I am familiar with have various measures in place to control in-person voter impersonation. They are clearly adequate, since the incidence of such fraud has been shown to be virtually zero. In contrast, other forms of fraud have been detected in significant quantities, primarily absentee ballot fraud and insider fraud. Neither is affected by these RNC voter ID laws.

 

[Bowfinger]

Perhaps you missed this, from the other thread, re. the Crawford vs. Indiana SCOTUS decision:

Again, what that court and you think doesn't matter. Either it will be overturned by SCOTUS in which case your opinion is moot, or they'll agree and you'll have your way. My opinion (which is just as worthless as yours) is that the clear text of the Crawford decision about gathering underlying documents not being a burden will be reaffirmed.

Umm, that's NOT what the Crawford decision says. On the contrary, it acknowledges that the Indiana law does create a burden for some eligible voters, even with the free ID and provisional ballot accommodations. The petitioners filed a facial challenge to the law, attempting to have the entire law struck down as unconstitutional. The majority ruled that the petitioners did not provide enough evidence to prove the impact justified that extreme remedy. Consequently, the Court deferred to the State's right to manage its own elections, refusing to strike down the entire law based on the evidence provided.

There was a comment suggesting the petitioners might have prevailed had they either focused on specific impacted classes or been able to better quantify the number of eligible voters harmed. It would be interesting to see how a similar suit would fare today, given there is so much more data available now. It's also interesting that the court acknowledged the State failed to show any evidence of in-person voter impersonation, and that there was partisan motivation behind the law.

 

[glenn1]

Can you kindly tell us which state or states had "completely inadequate or even no controls on voter identity?" I can't speak to every state, and they all have their own rules, but the states I am familiar with have various measures in place to control in-person voter impersonation. They are clearly adequate, since the incidence of such fraud has been shown to be virtually zero. In contrast, other forms of fraud have been detected in significant quantities, primarily absentee ballot fraud and insider fraud. Neither is affected by these RNC voter ID laws.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_States

Maine has no identification requirement at all, see 9C. Any state that allows people to register and "verify identify" with an easily stolen piece of mail (e.g. utility bill) and no secondary documentation required is a completely inadequate control. At a minimum verification with non-photo ID means should require multiple pieces of identifying documentation for even a minimal amount of security ((e.g. utility statement and expired photo ID or lease statement, etc). Likewise any state which never requires any documentation to verify identity on election day is willful blindness in action, most non-ID states fall into this category (California, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Montana, NJ, WY, etc.). The very idea that states accept minimal identity documentation to register to vote then never again require identity documentation to be shown even decades later (even inadequate ones like utility bill) on voting day whatsoever is a completely unacceptable situation - hell, even if you disagree with photo ID laws I find it completely baffling that you'd support this. Would you allow me to buy a firearm by showing a utility bill one time with no other supporting documents, then never again ask me for identification of any type in any gun store for the rest of my life?

 

[fskimospy]

And like I said earlier, I don't have to when Crawford v. Marion County Election Board has already been decided and allows Voter ID. You're on the losing side and need to make the convincing argument, not me.

I don't know why you are continuing to flail like this. We all know your opinion is irrational and based on bullshit. If it wasn't, you wouldn't be trying so desperately not to provide any evidence for it.

You have already said basically "I know there's no reason for this I just don't care". If that's good enough for you just own your irrationality. You can do it!

 

[MrPickins]

Getting an id takes just a few minutes. Get an id, get registered, then go vote.

Please see pages 32 to 43:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1312285/posner.pdf


Really you should read the whole thing. Posner is a very good writer, as you'd expect from the person who is (by far) the most-cited legal scholar of all time.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Maine has no identification requirement at all, see 9C. Any state that allows people to register and "verify identify" with an easily stolen piece of mail (e.g. utility bill) and no secondary documentation required is a completely inadequate control. At a minimum verification with non-photo ID means should require multiple pieces of identifying documentation for even a minimal amount of security ((e.g. utility statement and expired photo ID or lease statement, etc). Likewise any state which never requires any documentation to verify identity on election day is willful blindness in action, most non-ID states fall into this category (California, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Montana, NJ, WY, etc.). The very idea that states accept minimal identity documentation to register to vote then never again require identity documentation to be shown even decades later (even inadequate ones like utility bill) on voting day whatsoever is a completely unacceptable situation - hell, even if you disagree with photo ID laws I find it completely baffling that you'd support this.

"I have no evidence that voter impersonation occurs, but I can imagine a situation in which it occurs, therefore it definitely occurs."

 

[Bitek]

Please see pages 32 to 43:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1312285/posner.pdf


Really you should read the whole thing. Posner is a very good writer, as you'd expect from the person who is (by far) the most-cited legal scholar of all time.

Excellent read. Absolute destruction of every conservative argument for photo ID.

-since 2000, only 10 cases of such ID preventable fraud. Ratio is 1 in 14.6M!

-true cost of "free" ids are $75-175 considering travel costs and lost wages. This is more than the original poll tax.

-many cited examples of ”need ID to do this” are factually incorrect. Photo ID is not considered essential to airline safety. Neither is it required for bank act's, prescriptions, guns, etc.

-strong evidence of selective vote suppression of minorities, immigrants, the poor, and others

-documentation requirements are often burdensome, and in some cases impossible to complete

-states with strong voter ID laws show no improvement to rates of fraud

-conspiracies to commit impactful voter fraud are illogical, impractical, expensive, and highly likely to detection by existing checks.

 

[trenchfoot]

Excellent read. Absolute destruction of every conservative argument for photo ID.

-since 2000, only 10 cases of such ID preventable fraud. Ratio is 1 in 14.6M!

-true cost of "free" ids are $75-175 considering travel costs and lost wages. This is more than the original poll tax.

-many cited examples of ”need ID to do this” are factually incorrect. Photo ID is not considered essential to airline safety. Neither is it required for bank act's, prescriptions, guns, etc.

-strong evidence of selective vote suppression of minorities, immigrants, the poor, and others

-documentation requirements are often burdensome, and in some cases impossible to complete

-states with strong voter ID laws show no improvement to rates of fraud

-conspiracies to commit impactful voter fraud are illogical, impractical, expensive, and highly likely to detection by existing checks.

Along with that, it doesn't a take much of a whiff to blow over a house of cards or an ice cube to sink a titanic made out of wet toilet paper.

edit - Voter ID laws are so transparently obvious as to what their intended purpose is. If devices like this are needed to win elections, it's also obvious what these devious tactics convey about the party that needs to rely on them.

 

[fskimospy]

Excellent read. Absolute destruction of every conservative argument for photo ID.

-since 2000, only 10 cases of such ID preventable fraud. Ratio is 1 in 14.6M!

-true cost of "free" ids are $75-175 considering travel costs and lost wages. This is more than the original poll tax.

-many cited examples of ”need ID to do this” are factually incorrect. Photo ID is not considered essential to airline safety. Neither is it required for bank act's, prescriptions, guns, etc.

-strong evidence of selective vote suppression of minorities, immigrants, the poor, and others

-documentation requirements are often burdensome, and in some cases impossible to complete

-states with strong voter ID laws show no improvement to rates of fraud

-conspiracies to commit impactful voter fraud are illogical, impractical, expensive, and highly likely to detection by existing checks.

And remember, the people pushing this are those who constantly complain that the government wastes money. So naturally now that they realize how much it costs and how little it does, they will act consistently within their ideology and revise their opinions accordingly.

Wait, why are you laughing?

 

[Bitek]

[/SIZE]

Its amazing to read the ridiculous arguments made by conservatives for the photo ID laws, but it is the surest sign they don't have a sound position based on fact.

Why can't supporters come up with this simple cost/benefit breakdown:
...

Let me update my cost/benefit analysis with some known facts, as well as some rough estimates where needed (as the conservatives never bothered to find any real data, and why would they start now...)



Potential error in elections: ~3% (Florida 2000, 175K votes of 6M subject to manual recount due to physical error)
Error attributed to impersonation fraud: 0.000007% (1/14.6M)
Error attributed to voting equipment: 3%
All other error: 0.x% (?)

WI Only:
Cost to implement photo ID; $22.5M to $52.5M
Cost to improve voting equipment: $33M (1100 voters/precinct*#voters*~$3500/machine*3 per precinct)
Estimated disenfranchisement due to lack of ID; 1% disenfranchisement rate is not unreasonable. Up to 300,000. Even if 90% of these get ID, that leaves 30,000.

“It doesn’t matter if there’s one, 100 or 1,000,” Gov Scott Walker said in debate on 10/7/14


The Problem-Voting Error:
Before Photo ID; 3.000007% (est)
After Photo ID; 4% (that's 3%-0.000007%+1% for you dummies)

Therefore, according to conservatives, we should spend tens of millions of $, hundreds of thousands of manhours, all for screwing ten of thousands of voters out of their right to vote, with no benefit to elections, and in totality, a net decrease in the outcome of elections reflecting the will of the people.

By all measures, this is a stupid @#$%ing idea.

 

[Newell Steamer]

My my, what big government you have there Wisconsin,...

 

[Bowfinger]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_States

Maine has no identification requirement at all, see 9C. Any state that allows people to register and "verify identify" with an easily stolen piece of mail (e.g. utility bill) and no secondary documentation required is a completely inadequate control. At a minimum verification with non-photo ID means should require multiple pieces of identifying documentation for even a minimal amount of security ((e.g. utility statement and expired photo ID or lease statement, etc). Likewise any state which never requires any documentation to verify identity on election day is willful blindness in action, most non-ID states fall into this category (California, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Montana, NJ, WY, etc.). The very idea that states accept minimal identity documentation to register to vote then never again require identity documentation to be shown even decades later (even inadequate ones like utility bill) on voting day whatsoever is a completely unacceptable situation - hell, even if you disagree with photo ID laws I find it completely baffling that you'd support this. Would you allow me to buy a firearm by showing a utility bill one time with no other supporting documents, then never again ask me for identification of any type in any gun store for the rest of my life?

Yet even though you fervently believe these measures are inadequate, the fact remains that in-person voter impersonation is effectively non-existent, not even a rounding error compared to other sources of errors and fraud. Given that the facts contradict your beliefs, isn't it perhaps time to set your emotions aside and reevaluate?

 

[Jhhnn]

Yet even though you fervently believe these measures are inadequate, the fact remains that in-person voter impersonation is effectively non-existent, not even a rounding error compared to other sources of errors and fraud. Given that the facts contradict your beliefs, isn't it perhaps time to set your emotions aside and reevaluate?

He can't reason his way out of a position he didn't reason his way into. He's a few leaps of Faith away, in the wrong direction.