I don't know how to make it more explicit.
If you do that FIRST, set up the laws so that people can't be punished for taking a day off work to get their ID card renewed, and wait five or ten years for everyone to actually get one of those IDs...Purple wrote:As someone from Europe I often think that some of your American views on things are strange and confusing. And this case is no different. Honestly I don't understand what the problem is with just having a proper state issued ID with your birth date, picture and all as these people intended. We do that in Europe and have been doing it for god knows how long. It's not only about voting but everything else. But even without that what's wrong with being required to show a non falsifiable ID to vote?
Then there is nothing wrong with it.
In the US as it stands, people who make very little money are often greatly penalized for taking time to get their ID card renewed. No system of universally accepted and mandatory ID cards exists right now, so lots of people just don't have one. And even if we did have such a system, it would take time to get it working.
So instead of giving their citizens that time and support to make sure everyone has an ID, the state here is simply mandating that you can't vote unless you have one of the existing types of IDs. But it was never a legal requirement that you have one of those IDs before, so this is essentially imposing a new condition on people. They're not allowed to vote, even if they were before, unless they have IDs that they weren't legally required to have.
And no decent amount of time or resources is being supplied to make this happen, so it's effectively a tax on voting. Which is unconstitutional in the US because you can't just require that poor people not vote.
The Republicans have repeatedly shown that they do want to reduce voter turnout in areas where minorities and the poor live. For example, during the 2000 election of George Bush, the Republicans distributed fliers in African-American neighborhoods telling them the wrong date for election day. Something like "Make sure you vote on November 8!" when the election was on the 5th.Having a single centralized ID system has many benefits and absolutely no flaws. And while yes it seems that the implementation in this case was badly planed and generally botched there seems to be a number of people here who honestly believe that it was not incompetence and inexperience but an actual republican conspiracy to manipulate elections. Something that quite honestly sounds like a bond villain plot rather than something that happens in the real world. And it's not just here. The internet seems to be honestly full of Americans who believe in this conspiracy theory.
So seriously is there anything to it? Or is it just the usual paranoia about having a government at all?
There is no explanation for that other than "I'm trying to get a few of my opponent's voters to accidentally miss their chance to vote."
And this is not a unique incident, though it's not an area I spend vast amounts of time researching.
At the same time we have the thing called "gerrymandering," which is its own whole subject of research. Look into that too, it's more evidence.
So yes, there are grounds to believe that at least SOME Republican politicians are consciously looking for ways to make sure poor people, students, and ethnic minorities can't vote. Or that their votes are neutralized and meaningless.
If the state actually wanted to do this, they should FIRST spend a few years and a few billion dollars publicly advertising the new national ID card. They should have mobile stations operating out of vans that drive to various neighborhoods to take people's pictures and get their applications for the ID card taken care of. They should behave in all ways as if they want to get people to have these IDs.Purple wrote:That's the thing that confuses me most thou. The fact that people read the first part and the second part and thus conclude that the whole thing is actually a republican conspiracy to exclude minorities.Serafina wrote:Excluding people from voting is bad enough - it only gets worse when you consider that its disproportional poor people and minorities who don't have picture-ID and are thus excluded from voting.
Making it difficult to get an ID and then requiring an ID to vote simply acts to stop people from voting if they can't do the difficult thing. There is a limit on how hard people should be expected to work to exercise the right to vote, especially if the bulk of their energy is being spent purely on survival.