So, as I was saying, if the real motive for voter ID laws is to insure the security of the election process and stop fraud, then why are they only requiring ID's? ID can be faked. As I recall, teenagers do it all the time to get alcohol and tobacco. Requiring everyone to be fingerprinted every time they vote would be much more secure. Or for that matter, how about requiring DNA profiles or retinal scans to vote? So what do you think, are you willing to be fingerprinted and have a DNA sample taken every time you vote?
Requiring ID, in addition to purging registration rolls is a good start. Actions like these protect the votes of legal voters by preventing illegal votes from canceling then out, and they protect voter confidence in the democratic nature of our system.
Teens do not "do it all the time". Nonsense. If the "real reason" to oppose voter photo Id laws is to protect the vote of the Imaginary Voters , with NO ID,who CANNOT OBTAIN ONE...then show us ONE...just ONE....
Answer the question, guys. Are you willing to be fingerprinted, retina scanned, and DNA tested every time you vote to ensure the security of the election process, or are you in favor of security measures that only effect people who aren't like you and ever so coincidentally tend to vote Democrat?
We're OK with positive voter ID, via photo ID. Todays's STATE ISSUED IDs are not EASILY duplicated,and yourv entire premise is a flawed straw man. Have you READ the new PA voter ID law? Didn't think so....
LOL Holy evasion, Batman! Do you deny that IDs can be and are faked? Do you deny that fingerprinting, retina scanning, and DNA profiling would be much harder to defeat and therefore provide for a more secure election? If not, then where's the straw? And since the people who are committing all this supposed election fraud are apparently all brilliant criminal masterminds since they manage to leave absolutely no evidence of their crimes at all, I think better security measures would only be prudent. Remember all those criminal masterminds are already master forgers, since you have to sign in every time you go to vote. Can faking an ID really be that much of a challenge for these evil geniuses? The reality is that Republicans have been using every law enforcement resource available to hunt for voter fraud for years, and come with a while lot of nothing. Voter fraud is pretty rare, and voter impersonation fraud (The only kind that voter ID would address) is extremely rare.
Look at the fight the pro-fraud forces Democrats, are putting up just for IDs. Can you imagine what they'd do if you had to get fingerprinted before you were arrested for election fraud. Nice try, Kessy, but stupid. And the problem with children buying liquor isn't the IDs its sloppy and crooked clerks. That problem will still exist as long as liberals need election fraud. I'm selling t-shirts tha tsay, "Pro-Fraud and Proud", Kessy. Want one? If you ask a serious question, Kessy, you might get a response. Is your next silly effort going to be suggesting a vaginal and rectal exqm before voting?
Election fraud can be and is detected. And prosecuted. It's just pretty rare. One way of detecting voter impersonation is simply comparing signatures. And yes, there are records to compare it to. You have to sign your initial voter registration and you have to sign in each time you vote. Consider what Gregg Abbott, Texas's attorney general, said about voter fraud. He claimed that voter ID was necessary because of all the voter fraud going on in Texas. As proof, he claimed to have made 51 convictions for voter fraud since 2002. So 51 cases in ten years in a state with 26 million people is a major problem? On top of that, he rather stretched the meaning of the word "conviction," including cases that ended in deferred adjudication or pre-trial diversion. (For details of what that means, see the Politifact article.) By Politifact's count, only about 40% of the cases Abbott cited were unequivocally convictions. On top of which, these are 51 case for all kinds of election fraud, including things like voting more then once and voting despite ineligibility. There are only 2 cases that are described as voter impersonation on the list. I don't know about you, but this doesn't exactly sound like a crime wave to me. But let's take Attorney General Abbott's statement completely at face value and do a little extrapolating, assuming the rate of fraud in Texas is representative of the entire country. He claimed 51 convictions over ten years out of 311 accusations of voter fraud. Let's assume that there were ten times as many cases of actual voter fraud as there were accusations - which I'd say is pretty generous considering that 16% of accusations resulted in convictions. So we're talking about around 3,000 cases of real fraud in all of Texas over ten years. Texas has about 8% of the US population (26 million out of 314 million), so that implies 36,700 cases in the entire US. That's over ten years, so let's assume those all occurred in federal election years. That works out to five elections, so 7,300 cases of fraud per election. Their are 435 congressional districts in the country, so that gives us an average of about 17 cases of fraud per district per election. Now remember that's all kinds of voter fraud. Voter ID Laws only address one specific kind of fraud, voter impersonation. Of the 57 prosecutions in Texas, only 2 were voter impersonation. At that rate, we can expect voter ID to stop 0.6 cases of fraud per Congressional district per election, or 257 cases in the entire country. I've heard estimates of 750,000 people being prevented from voting in PA due to the voter ID law. Let's assume the real rate of people with a legitimate right to vote being prevented from voting is 1/10 of that, or 75,000. Pennsylvania has a total population of 13 million, so with a little math that works out to about 12 people with a legitimate right to vote being disenfranchised for every case of fraud stopped. I don't know about you, but disenfranchising 12 people to stop one case of fraud isn't even close to being acceptable to me. And remember that that's using some pretty generous assumptions.
Yes by sending out cops to look for "that one guy".....who didnt show an ID and is nameless. Surely the cops will bring him to justice..... Voter ID Law in PA could prevent 750,000 from voting...... ........just as it could prevent 750,000 Leprechauns riding Unicorns from voting.....but it probably wont. . .
And I'm selling t-shirts that say "Pro-Voter Suppression and Proud," Pat. Want one? No one is in favor of fraud - that's purely a product of your overactive imagination. Democrats would have no problem with election reform that's fair, even handed, and doesn't disenfranchise people with a legitimate right to vote. That's not what this law is about. The ID requirements are very specifically tailored to exclude people who don't have a driver's license. Employer ID's are excluded as are school ID's without an expiration date, which a lot of them don't have. A voter registration card is a good enough ID for the IRS, (see the I-9 form) but it's not good enough to actually vote? That's ridiculous. In fact, Mike Turzai, the Republican leader of the PA House, recently said outright that the purpose of the voter Id law is to help Republicans win elections - on camera. Speaking to a meeting of the state Republican committee, he presented a laundry list of Republican accomplishments in PA: Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, its done. First pro-life legislation abortion facility regulations in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done. I don't know how it could be more blatant. The question is how would we know if voter fraud is being committed without an ID law, not about catching the people involved. We're discussing whether or not voter fraud actually happens at anything like a significant rate. Yeeees, which is why I tossed out 90% of that estimate just at the gitgo.
Right.....which is why Democrats oppose any and every attempt to prevent it...just like Illegal Immigration. NY Democrat: Voter Fraud is an acceptable way of winning elections Indeed...how would you know? Assume your a poll worker at your local polling station......various Democrats without ID come in and commit voter fraud...... .....how would you know?.....how would you even begin to prosecute? Well its a FREE Voter ID.......so you might as well toss out the other 10% as well. . .
And why Republicans have no interest in any reforms that would address the real problems we do have? BTW, do you happen to have an attribution for that quote a little more specific then "a NY Democrat"? I've already addressed this several times. You've never responded to any of the points I've made. "Free" ID... yeah, right... "The response of proponents of these laws has been, 'Well, just get an ID and if in fact you're too poor to pay for it, we'll give you the ID for free," Lawrence Norden, deputy director of the Brennan Center's Democracy Program told reporters on a conference call Wednesday. "Unfortunately for many people, this is not going to be such a simple solution." Nearly 500,000 eligible voters in these 10 states do not have access to a vehicle and live over 10 miles from the closest office where they can obtain the type of identification required to vote in their state, according to the center's study, which came out this week. Many offices maintain limited or odd hours, such as being open only one day a month. Additionally, some eligible voters in those states face an added challenge in that they have to pay for the underlying documentation necessary to obtain the photo identification. The center estimates that 11 percent of eligible voters in the U.S. currently do not possess the type of photo-issued government ID required by these restrictive laws. Most of those affected are minorities. Attorney General Eric Holder recently decried the hidden cost of free photo IDs, referring to the new voter ID laws in 10 states as "poll taxes." "Many of those without ID would have to travel great distances to get them, and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them. We call those poll taxes," Holder said during an address to the NAACP July 10. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/free-voter-ids-still-burdensome-poor-people-says-164843705.html
This is short and sweet, let require voter ID and get rid of the illegal votes. Anyone can get an idea unless they just swam across the river.
