9% of Pennsylvanian voters not allowed to vote.

[Themightytom]

This seems like an awfully harsh solution to a problem that can't even be proven to exist and just happens to help the major political party that was in power when writing these laws across the country.

Tell me about it, you should have seen what went down in NH in reference to the Right To Work legislation. Our Republicans received a pamphlet in the mail that their predecessors have been getting for years and had been throwing in the garbage discerned an injustice faced by their constituency and discovered that NH didn't protect the freedom to choose whether or not to participate in a union. there was nothing formally requiring them to anywhere, but there was the inference that they could be coerced. they introduced legislation that would have criminalized any efforts to recruit into a union and would have required unions to cease collecting dues and re-enroll all members....without recruiting them... to make sure that everyone in a union really did want to be in a union.

Now it was coincidence, that unions typically support democratic candidates, it was coincidence that the time frame for implementation would have been right in the middle of an election, it was coincidence that employers with dissolved unions could more easily terminate employees at will and substitute their positions for ones with much lower compensation, and it was utter sheer unbelievable coincidence that this was all during the massive furor about compensation for public workers whose unions were coming out in support of the Affordable Care Act.

For people who shit on the poor so often for gaming the system, a certain party has been getting really good at it. You don't have to perpetuate voter fraud to game an election, you just have to define favorably, who a voter is. Between this and redistricting you could squeeze out just enough result to win an election. Look at how close the last few have been.

[Blayne]

Right to Work makes it illegal for the State to enter into contracts with unions in the first place if I recall, its arguably even worse.

[Sea Skimmer]

I know public teachers unions exist in Texas, so that can't be the case. Not as a hard ban anyway, rules are bound to vary state to state. However since union labor does cost more on average, states are just way less likely to end up hiring union labor for projects. All the more so when state and local laws may legally require taking the lowest bidder on construction projects.

[Darth Wong]

Right to Work makes it illegal for the State to enter into contracts with unions in the first place if I recall, its arguably even worse.

I thought "Right to Work" just means that the conditions of employment can't be mandated by the state, and that employees can choose to work in shitty inhumane conditions if that's what the market will bear. In normal employment law, there are certain minimum working pay and conditions which are mandated by the state, and an employer cannot go below those standards even if the employee agrees to tolerate substandard treatment (because of course, the ability to agree to such a thing would make the standards utterly meaningless).

[Blayne]

I went and glanced at it at Wikipedia since at best I was recalling from a conversation from elsewhere, link, I'm not fully understanding it, but it seems to inherently lower wages by weakening unions and disrupting the ability of workers to collectively bargain for a higher wage.

I think how it works is that once a union is formed it signs a contract with the employer, stating that all employees for that job/trade/whatever have to be members of the union, so that non members don't get the benefit of collective bargaining without first paying dues to the union and prevent free riding. What right to work does is make these arrangements between employer and the unions illegal to make in the first place. That's what I'm gathering from this article and from what I originally recall.

[Todeswind]

Except, if you knew what you were talking about, you'd know provisional ballets aren't worth the paper they're written on. Let me put it to the finest point possible: One election day, I explained I wasn't voting as I wasn't a citizen, it was still offered as a provisional. Most of the time, they aren't used. In short, no ID(And even one red cent is unconstitutional under poll tax rulings), no vote. The 'provisional' ballet is just a way to convince the dull of brain that those caught aren't simply fucked. It seemed to work on you well enough.

Provisional votes not counting unconditionally is not the same as not counting at all. Most provisional ballots are dismissed, because most people who apply for a provisional ballot are found to be ineligible to vote (based upon the laws of their state) on closer examination. Things like, say, not being a citizen don't stop you from getting a ballot because of HAVA (which requires polls to give a ballot to anything with a pluse) but it doesn't mean that that vote counts unconditionally.

The conditions that cause a provisional ballot to be dismissed are almost inevitably the product of voter error rather than any sort of malevolence on the part of the government. People try to vote in the wrong district, vote after they've already mailed in an absentee ballot, vote in the wrong state, vote under the wrong name, forget to change their registered address after moving or any number of things to disqualify them. However the PA laws for provisional ballots are far more inclusive than those of other states, even if you vote in the wrong district your vote is still allowed to count, so the issue of "right church, wrong pew" ballots isn't as pervasive.

PA is not Ohio or Texas, the provisional ballot system is (while not perfect) much better constructed that a lot of its contemporaries. It isn't perfect, I'll grant you that, but the only conditions under which the provisional ballots would not be counted would be if the if the victor won the election by a margin so large that counting the ballots would be purely superfluous. They usually aren't counted but neither to they need to be counted, much in the same way as absentee ballots. I would never claim that the vetting process is not without error (nor that progressive reforms couldn't be made), but it is a vetting process not a waste paper bin for votes.

[Blayne]

Posting from elsewhere:

-- too poor to afford a car, so you never bothered to get a driver's license, and you have no way to get to the DMV to get a driver's license or photo ID, and everyone else you know is also too poor to own a car, so you can't bum a ride

-- live in a nursing home and the staff lose your ID, and you can't drive yourself to get new ID because your legs don't work (hence the nursing home), and you have limited or no access to public transit because you're handicapped and (say) in a rural area . . .

-- you have a personal disaster like your home burns down (or you're homeless and your wallet gets stolen), so you lose your birth certificate and photo ID, and you can't afford the $20 to get new ID . . .

-- you live on a fixed income from social security disability or something similar, and you only have maybe thirty bucks discretionary income in an entire month, so taxi fare to the DMV to get a new ID might by itself blow every spare cent you have that month, not even counting the fee for the card itself


There are just so many ways poverty can fuck you in terms of getting even basic things like photo ID, ways that people who have middle class lives with cars and jobs and physical health have absolutely no conception of.

Poll tax and unjustifiable.

[Surlethe]

Right to Work makes it illegal for the State to enter into contracts with unions in the first place if I recall, its arguably even worse.

I thought "Right to Work" just means that the conditions of employment can't be mandated by the state, and that employees can choose to work in shitty inhumane conditions if that's what the market will bear. In normal employment law, there are certain minimum working pay and conditions which are mandated by the state, and an employer cannot go below those standards even if the employee agrees to tolerate substandard treatment (because of course, the ability to agree to such a thing would make the standards utterly meaningless).

I thought it meant that nobody can be forced to join unions or pay union dues if they're not union members. The Wikipedia page says "A "right-to-work" law is a statute that prohibits union security agreements, or agreements between labor unions and employers that govern the extent to which an established union can require employees' membership, payment of union dues, or fees as a condition of employment, either before or after hiring." In effect, it's a law that limits the power of unions to coerce membership from workers who are either free-riding or willing to underbid the labor cartelization of a particular workplace. For workplaces which naturally have very poor conditions - such as perhaps coal mines - your characterization seems to be accurate.

[Simon_Jester]

In a "right to work" state, the union needs someone's permission to get money, and use it to tell you that you should be in a union.

Your employer does not need permission to get money, and use it to tell you that you shouldn't be in a union.

This strikes me as a bit asymmetrical. And the results are pretty predictable.

[Questor]

Poll tax and unjustifiable.

By this argument, the fact that the polling place workers do not come to one's home/place of business to allow them to vote is poll tax and therefor unjustifiable.

Try again, there may be good arguments out there, transportation/mail costs aren't them.

[General Zod]

In a "right to work" state, the union needs someone's permission to get money, and use it to tell you that you should be in a union.

Your employer does not need permission to get money, and use it to tell you that you shouldn't be in a union.

This strikes me as a bit asymmetrical. And the results are pretty predictable.

A number of studies have shown that right to work states are basically done to neuter union bargaining power, and employees in those states have an average wage far less than non right to work states. It's a great bit of Orwellian double-speak because it doesn't mean what people think it means.

[Ralin]

In a "right to work" state, the union needs someone's permission to get money, and use it to tell you that you should be in a union.

Your employer does not need permission to get money, and use it to tell you that you shouldn't be in a union.

This strikes me as a bit asymmetrical. And the results are pretty predictable.

It also means that the union doesn't have the ability to extort businesses into only hiring their members and to force people to chose between not working and paying dues to the union. Unions are at best a necessary evil. I'm not all that sympathetic.

[Simon_Jester]

I don't get to decide whether or not to fund the people who represent my employer. Not even when my employer would happily screw me, and uses his people to make it happen.

Why should I be all that worried about whether I get to decide whether or not to fund the people who represent me?

[Broken]

Minor update: about this being whole thing being a solution in search of a problem; according to the Huffington Post it really, really is by the looks of a court document:

"There have been no investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania; and the parties do not have direct personal knowledge of any such investigations or prosecutions in other states,” the statement reads.

According to the agreement, the state “will not offer any evidence in this action that in-person voter fraud has in fact occurred in Pennsylvania and elsewhere,” nor will it "offer argument or evidence that in-person voter fraud is likely to occur in November 2012 in the absence of the Photo ID law.”