PA Voter ID law upheld, for now

[Jauronimo]

As far as I can tell, the biggest standard of living challenge that we have today that wasn't around as much 50 years ago is obesity, and people are fatasses by choice.

Not true. Personal responsibility or Social Darwinism as it should be known against the onslaught of multi-million dollar advertising campaigns promising instant gratification for $1 or less. We need a strong central government to protect us from soda, trans fat, smoking and anything else that could have adverse effects on our health. Either that or free health care.

Edited August 16, 2012 by Jauronimo

[Chef Jim]

 

 

Are you saying the exodus of American manufacturing had no affect on communities?

 

Sure. I see a lot less dirty fingernails and a lot more new cars.

[dayman]

As the voter ID issues goes the way I see it:

 

1) Most people when polled agree it isn't manifestly unreasonable.

 

2) There isn't any actual evidence of voter fraud.

 

3) As such, it makes no sense to make this applicable this close to the election. Had it been mad applicable for elections in the future.... probably less uproar.

 

4) Voter fraud that there is evidence of..is not in person...it's absentee ballot...but there is no legislation restricting that. This law does nothing for that. Voters that vote that way...more likely to vote GOP btw...these are just the facts...

 

5) Comment by that one state legislature dude

 

...long story short...is the voter ID unreasonable? Na...not in my opinion. Is beef w/ what is going on legit? yes w/ out a doubt..is this a recipe for public distrust in elections? Absolutely. Is public distrust in elections the most important thing in this scenario given the facts? Without a doubt.

Edited August 17, 2012 by TheNewBills

[John Adams]

If you don't think there's been voter fraud, in person, I'll sell you a bridge.

 

IDs were required in the PA primaries already held this year, but if you didn't have your ID, you were merely warned. The law was passed in March.

 

Even most Dems favor the law, in polls I've seen.

Edited August 17, 2012 by John Adams

[dayman]

If you don't think there's been voter fraud, in person, I'll sell you a bridge.

 

IDs were required in the PA primaries already held this year, but if you didn't have your ID, you were merely warned. The law was passed in March.

 

Even most Dems favor the law, in polls I've seen.

 

Voter impersonation fraud, which could be prevented by the types of voter ID laws passed in Republican-led states the past few years, is virtually nonexistent, according to a new study. The investigative reporting project News21 sent public information requests to all 50 states and found 10 cases of alleged in-person voter fraud since 2000. Out of the 146 million registered voters in the U.S., that number represents one case of voter impersonation fraud for every 15 million potential voters. Of the 10 cases of voter fraud, five of them involved family members illegally voting on behalf of relatives. "The fraud that matters is the fraud that is organized," Lorraine Minnite, author of The Myth of Voter Fraud, told News21. "That's why voter impersonation is practically non-existent because it is difficult to do and it is difficult to pull people into conspiracies to do it."

 

http://www.drudge.co...ud-non-existent

Edited August 17, 2012 by TheNewBills

[B-Man]

Voter Fraud in the Keystone State

by John Fund

 

Opponents of voter-ID legislation are fighting such laws in over ten states, but much of their attention has recently focused on Pennsylvania. This week, a state judge refused to block a new law requiring ID at the polls and increasing security measures for absentee ballots from taking effect this November. The political stakes couldn’t be higher.

 

A new poll from Franklin & Marshall College shows that Barack Obama’s lead over Mitt Romney in the Keystone State has fallen to five points (47 percent to 42 percent). Obama led Romney by 48 percent to 36 percent in the last F&M poll in June. An incumbent president without majority support in a state at this point in the race is in danger of not being able to catch up. If Pennsylvania went Republican, it could decide the presidency — after all, the state hasn’t voted for the GOP at the presidential level since 1988, and it has 20 electoral votes.

 

In 2004, John Kerry edged out George W. Bush by only 150,000 votes out of 5.7 million cast. Kerry’s victory was built on an enormous margin in Philadelphia, where he won 81 percent of the vote, giving him an edge of 412,000 votes. Republicans have long suspected that voter fraud regularly occurs in Philadelphia. In the 1990s, a Philadelphia election that determined control of the state senate was thrown out by a federal judge because of massive fraud.

 

Last month, City Commissioner Al Schmidt, a Republican, issued a 27-page report on irregularities he found in a sample of Philadelphia precincts during this year’s primary. The report, which looked at only 1 percent of the city’s 1,687 districts, found cases of double voting, voter impersonation, and voting by non-citizens, as well as 23 people who were not registered to vote but nonetheless voted. Schmidt also found reports of people who were counted as voting in the wrong party’s primary.

 

“We did not set out to quantify the magnitude of voting irregularities that occurred, but rather to analyze them in detail,” his report stated. “Nevertheless, we identified hundreds of cases of voting irregularities [in select precincts] that warrant further investigation.”

 

{snip}

 

The basic problem that opponents of photo-ID laws have is that the American people reject their view that these laws are a tool of voter suppression. The American people view these laws as common sense. In a time when everyone needs ID to buy Sudafed at a drug store, purchase beer, travel by plane or even train, cash a check, enter a federal building, or apply for welfare benefits or a marriage license, showing ID at the polls doesn’t strike the average person as burdensome.

 

Artur Davis, the former Democratic congressman from Alabama who nominated Barack Obama for president at the 2008 Democratic convention, agrees. “A big thing that drove me to leave the Democratic party and support photo ID was the realization that the real victims of voter fraud are minority and poor people who live in places where machines block reform efforts by stealing votes,” he told me. He wrote in an op-ed in the Montgomery Advertiser last year that “voting in the names of the dead, and the nonexistent, and the too-mentally impaired to function cancels out the votes of citizens who are exercising their rights — that’s suppression by any light. If you doubt it exists, I don’t; I’ve heard the peddlers of those ballots brag about it, I’ve been asked to provide the funds for it, and I am confident it has changed at least a few close local election results.”

 

This week, it was announced that Davis will be a featured speaker at the GOP convention in Tampa this month. Here’s hoping he exposes the falsehood that voter ID is designed to suppress votes. Fraudulent votes shouldn’t be counted, regardless of which party they benefit.

 

http://www.nationalr...state-john-fund

Edited August 17, 2012 by B-Man

[WorldTraveller]

I've made this point a few times, and I suppose I'll say it again. How many of you have ever brought a cheat sheet with you to school or knew of someone who did and used it?

 

I knew of a lot of kids that did, literally hundreds of times and I don't recall ever someone getting caught.

 

What I'm saying is just because there haven't been thousands of people that hadn't been caught doesn't mean that thousands of people still aren't cheating the system.

 

In any case, it's good policy, and most Americans overwhelmingly agree.

[DC Tom]

Voter impersonation fraud, which could be prevented by the types of voter ID laws passed in Republican-led states the past few years, is virtually nonexistent, according to a new study. The investigative reporting project News21 sent public information requests to all 50 states and found 10 cases of alleged in-person voter fraud since 2000. Out of the 146 million registered voters in the U.S., that number represents one case of voter impersonation fraud for every 15 million potential voters. Of the 10 cases of voter fraud, five of them involved family members illegally voting on behalf of relatives. "The fraud that matters is the fraud that is organized," Lorraine Minnite, author of The Myth of Voter Fraud, told News21. "That's why voter impersonation is practically non-existent because it is difficult to do and it is difficult to pull people into conspiracies to do it."

 

http://www.drudge.co...ud-non-existent

 

Now how are you supposed to reliably account for voter fraud when you have no way of identifying the voters to begin with?

[dayman]

Now how are you supposed to reliably account for voter fraud when you have no way of identifying the voters to begin with?

 

Like I said above I don't think the law is unreasonable I just think given these facts the most important factor is voter confidence in the process and it should be made applicable to later elections not this one.

 

But the point of my #4 up there is not that there IS no evidence of in person fraud, it's that there is almost none while there IS lots of evidence of absentee ballot fraud. It seems if you want to address the issue you would start there. Republicans are more likely to mail in their ballot. New more strict absentee ballot rules would get at the issue of known fraud more than these voter ID laws...but would likely hinder GOP voters more. Hence the appearance of corruption. Plus a number of other factors nationwide and in the Penn legislature that also add to that appearance. This kind of thing just isn't good for the country.

[DC Tom]

Like I said above I don't think the law is unreasonable I just think given these facts the most important factor is voter confidence in the process and it should be made applicable to later elections not this one.

 

But the point of my #4 up there is not that there IS no evidence of in person fraud, it's that there is almost none while there IS lots of evidence of absentee ballot fraud. It seems if you want to address the issue you would start there. Republicans are more likely to mail in their ballot. New more strict absentee ballot rules would get at the issue of known fraud more than these voter ID laws...but would likely hinder GOP voters more. Hence the appearance of corruption. Plus a number of other factors nationwide and in the Penn legislature that also add to that appearance. This kind of thing just isn't good for the country.

 

And I wasn't criticizing you, I was criticizing anyone who writes a study on catching people committing voter fraud in the absence of a mechanism to catch people that commit voter fraud. What's the measure of voter fraud? People saying they're someone they're not. How do you identify someone committing voter fraud? You don't because ID isn't required. It's a ridiculous circular argument; voter IDs aren't necessary because fraud is virtually non-existent, which you can't prove anyway because ID isn't required.

 

Next up, the researchers are going to investigate the interpretation of impressionist paintings by blind people.

[dayman]

And I wasn't criticizing you, I was criticizing anyone who writes a study on catching people committing voter fraud in the absence of a mechanism to catch people that commit voter fraud. What's the measure of voter fraud? People saying they're someone they're not. How do you identify someone committing voter fraud? You don't because ID isn't required. It's a ridiculous circular argument; voter IDs aren't necessary because fraud is virtually non-existent, which you can't prove anyway because ID isn't required.

 

Next up, the researchers are going to investigate the interpretation of impressionist paintings by blind people.

 

I understand your point. And I'm sure you understand mine. Additionally though, to the problem of in person fraud...not only does lack of evidence suggest it is far less a problem than mail in (and like I said I get your point here) ... but just common sense alone dictates that. If you are going to commit fraud to steal an election how are you going to do it? Organize a bunch of people to walk around to polls all over and pretend they are people they aren't or mail in a bunch of ballots that shouldn't be mailed in?

Edited August 17, 2012 by TheNewBills

[DC Tom]

I understand your point. And I'm sure you understand mine. Additionally though, to the problem of in person fraud...not only does lack of evidence suggest it is far less a problem than mail in (and like I said I get your point here) ... but just common sense alone dictates that. If you are going to commit fraud to steal an election how are you going to do it? Organize a bunch of people to walk around to polls all over and pretend they are people they aren't or mail in a bunch of ballots that shouldn't be mailed in?

 

How'm I going to do it? I'm going to go all Pat Robertson and collect all the homeless, bus them to the polls, and offer them a hot meal if they vote for me.

[dayman]

How'm I going to do it? I'm going to go all Pat Robertson and collect all the homeless, bus them to the polls, and offer them a hot meal if they vote for me.

 

We both know that isn't how you would go about it, or how most people do.

[DC Tom]

We both know that isn't how you would go about it, or how most people do.

 

Actually, it probably is. One of the reasons I'll never be elected for anything.

[Oxrock]

Crap. It's not that hard. Register people in the name of dead and/or indigent and/or unable to go to the polls. Provide those names to a few. They go and vote in those names.

No ID required.

 

How the !@#$ do you know that they voted fraudulently? You don't. The common theme with Liberals and the democrat party: Have the right prove/dis-prove a negative.

[dayman]

Crap. It's not that hard. Register people in the name of dead and/or indigent and/or unable to go to the polls. Provide those names to a few. They go and vote in those names by mail.

No ID required.

 

How the !@#$ do you know that they voted fraudulently? You don't. The common theme with Liberals and the democrat party: Have the right prove/dis-prove a negative.

 

Adjusted for reality

[3rdnlng]

 

 

Adjusted for reality

 

What's the point?

[dayman]

What's the point?

 

The point is that IMO organized voter fraud that has any effect on elections isn't stopped by this voter ID law. And I've said above my feeling on the law, not the end of the world and not evil. But ultimately, I do feel as enacted in Penn for this election cycle it will do more harm than good. The idea that voter fraud w/ actual bodies walking into polls pretending to be other people is the problem...isn't reality. Hence...adjusted for reality.

Edited August 21, 2012 by TheNewBills

[WorldTraveller]

Sure it is, and you can keep repeating it to you are in blue in the face, but that's not going to stop a good sensible law from being enacted.

[Oxrock]

 

 

Adjusted for reality

Ugh went to the bourbon one too many times that night. Tonight is cafe zin.