“If the purges [of potential voters], challenges and ballot rejections were random, it wouldn’t matter. It’s anything but random. For example, an audit by the State of Washington found that a Black voter was 400% more likely than a white voter to have their mail-in ballot rejected. Rejection of Black in-person votes, according to a US Civil Rights Commission study in Florida, ran 14.3% or one in seven ballots cast.”
"[…] Democracy can win* despite the 2.3% suppression headwind.
And that’s our job as Americans: to end the purges, the vigilante challenges, the ballot rejections and the attitude that this is all somehow OK."
By “restrictive voting laws” do you mean voters having to show ID? Like every other country on the planet?
No, this article is talking about things like rejecting registration based on minor clerical errors like ink color, rejecting provisional ballots arbitrarily, and restricting the availability of ballot boxes. That sort of thing.
On the voter id question, by the way, the argument isn’t about whether or not you should have ID to vote, it’s about whether you can get ID in the first place.
Most countries in the world either issue IDs to everyone or allow you to prove your identity with things like bank statements and utility bills, or just somebody else who can vouch for you. The problem with US voter ID laws is that they only give you a few options for acceptable documents, and then make it hard to get those documents.
My state’s voter ID allows all of those things and more (including the voter registration card given to you for free when you register and whenever you update your registration as well as SNAP and TANF cards), although here the “somebody else who can vouch for you” has to have ID themselves and has to sign a sworn statement on penalty of perjury that you are who you say you are and that they have known you for at least 6 months.
Yeah, that seems like a reasonable approach.
By comparison, North Carolina attempted to implement a voter ID law in 2016 that was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court because it deliberately targeted black voters.
It’s not as difficult to get ID in many other countries
It’s not difficult in the US
It’s harder than it should be
Harder than going to the place that gives them out and asking for one? I’m not going to hold your hand
If only it were that easy!
It is, I’ve done it many times
I am very happy it has been easy for you. From what I have read that is not the case for many
You’ve never done it?
Are you white? Are you not living in poverty?
They didn’t ask
Why don’t you ever try and actually meet the other side in good faith?
Opponents of voter ID have a very simple line of argumentation, and very clear issues that would need to be solved. Why do you think proponents of voter ID never attempt to solve these issues?
Why do proponents always insist that voter ID has to be implemented in a way that happens to hurt minority voters disproportionately?
Look at Spain. We have been using our IDs for decades and it’s a great way to solve that problem. You just go to the voting table, show your ID (DNI) and vote. That’s it. And it works for everything related to anything official.
But because of the voting system we don’t have gerrymandering (or at least not that much).
That works great for Spain (and most other countries) because it has a compulsory national ID. This doesn’t exist in the US, so introducing such laws shouldn’t be done before easy access to such an ID exists for everyone.
In the US case it should be a federal ID. With a 6 or 7 letters ID should be more than enough. And compulsory at 13 y.o. You can drive, you have an ID.
Yep, that would be a good solution. Yet conservatives never advocate for this.
You first
Like?
You don’t name them or they’re aren’t an actual issue
They don’t
No, I won’t allow you to disadvantage minorities, no matter how often you ask.
You’ve literally never listened to anyone opposing your view? Or why are you asking me?
No, I think you’re a bad faith troll and won’t invest more time than strictly necessary. If you’re not a bad faith troll, it’s literally one search away!
You literally started your comment doing exactly this
I won’t allow you to stereotype minorities as people incapable of doing things, especially something as easy as getting an ID.
I do it everyday, you just don’t have an answer
Should be easy for you to name them then
I literally never said anything about that. Literally
Strawman racist bullshit, disguised as uplifting affirmation of equality. Tell us you don’t see color while you’re at it.
I did the same thing they did. Why don’t you tell us how you *acknowledge your white privilege *
I try to acknowledge my white privilege by voting for politicians and laws that attempt to mitigate that privilege, by extending it as widely as possible, to as many people as possible.
Your unexamined privilege is demonstrated in claiming things like satisfying voter ID laws is easy when it is not for many, for a variety of profound and serious reasons.
Yeah that’s not surprising
Oh, it’s a bad faith troll, what a surprise, who could have seen it coming, oh no
I just responded the same way you did
If you really think that, I’ll give you one last chance. I’ll explain why your response to my serious points was wrong. You can explain properly why you disagree, without resorting to strawmans or insults or anything. Deal?
My position is: minorities will be disproportionately affected by voter ID laws, since it’s on average objectively harder for a poor person to get an ID (due to transportation, scheduling due to possibly multiple jobs etc.), and minorities are disproportionately poor. You could mitigate this disproportionate effect by first ensuring easy and equal access to ID for all citizens. Even if you disagree on any of these points, you should at least be able to accept that you can get what you want if you give me what I want, and giving me what I want doesn’t hurt you in any way.
So, why do you still ask me to make the first move? Why can’t you see that you’re blocking yourself from getting what you want here?
Here’s my first issue. Earlier you said
I never believed that and you just admitted this was a lie.
You use minorities as a shield to call people you disagree with racist. Then you just say I’m not racist there for I’m right. Except not all minorities are poor and there’s more poor white people.
How about this idea. You call or email the DMV or wherever you get an id, they give you a pass for whatever public transit to the DMV. Easy enough?
I’m not blocking anything, we have voter ID where I live
The biggest and most obvious is that ID isn’t available to literally everyone who can legally vote without cost to the end user of any kind, and as a consequence requiring such an ID is tantamount to a poll tax. Federal ID that’s fully subsidized would be the easiest solution, and if done right you could even optionally fold most state ID systems into a federal one with things like being licensed to drive being an endorsement on the federal ID.
Notably, the same people who demand photo ID to vote also tend to be the people terrified of a federal ID as a concept.
I SENTENCE THIS USER TO ONE HOUR ON THE CHAIR OF CHEER
I sentence you to a lifetime
https://today.umd.edu/umd-analysis-millions-of-americans-dont-have-id-required-to-vote
And “just get one” is not a solution when you live in poverty and don’t even have the transportation to go to the nearest license branch, which could be miles away. If you still have the proper documents, which sometimes are ridiculous in terms of what is needed.
And then, if you’re black and were born in the South during (and even sometimes after) Jim Crow, it’s entirely possible that there is no official record of your birth because no hospital would admit your mother.
Most countries that require this also give their citizens free IDs.