Related: North Carolina is no longer a democracy
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article122593759.h...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/north-carol...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/12/23/north_caro...
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article122593759.h...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/north-carol...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/12/23/north_caro...
I’ll put it more simply, again. North Carolina has an electoral system that gives the minority party an absolute veto proof majority of their congress. In my view that is incompatible with democracy, and I don’t understand why I should give any credence to a criticism who can’t engage with that point honestly and forthrightly. I’m open to hearing more about alternative opinions, but for me that requires a better argument.
That's exactly why the original article can be dismissed. Of course there's a lot wrong in NC but no one has to engage data that is put forward in bad faith. Find (or write) a "forthright" argument first.
NC has Voter ID laws, which were a huge part of the x/100 score given. Literally every other developed country (and most undeveloped countries) in the world require ID to vote, but somehow it's "undemocratic", among other outrageous things, if you try to do it in the U.S.
> But, on the day after the Supreme Court issued Shelby County v. Holder, 133 S. Ct. 2612 (2013), eliminating preclearance obligations, a leader of the party that newly dominated the legislature (and the party that rarely enjoyed African American support) announced an intention to enact what he characterized as an “omnibus” election law. Before enacting that law, the legislature requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices. Upon receipt of the race data, the General Assembly enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans. In response to claims that intentional racial discrimination animated its action, the State offered only meager justifications. Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist.
That does seem pretty damning when you read their justification
[1] http://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/nc-4th.pdf
Active election fraud is almost exclusively in the favor of the Democratic party. I can't remember the last time someone on the right was arrested for fraudulently filling out registrations forms, or when >100% of the registered voters in a district voted for the Republican candidate, as happened as recently as the 2016 presidential election in Detroit in the favor of Clinton.
The problem isn't voter ID. It's two sides using it as a way to unfairly benefit their interests. One side pre-emptively and the other actively during the vote. Both are wrong, but Voter ID itself isn't.
How about for actually fraudulently voting someone else's ballot. (Ironically, after publicly making your exact argument about voter fraud being exclusively a Democratic thing.) [0]
Or voting twice because of Republican voter fraud claims. [1]
Or ballot-box stuffing. [2]
All from the 2016 election.
[0] https://www.salon.com/2017/03/22/former-colorado-gop-chairma...
[1] https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-court...
[2] https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/gydkk3/the-face-of-voter...
A nice key word there, arrested.
Especially given that multiple members of Trump's electoral team, even his own family, were found to have violate electoral law and fined.
I get it though, they were just "confused" and making "honest mistakes".
Given the Republicans arrested for voter fraud (yes, the kinds that actually affect the vote count) in the 2016 cycle, the more key phrase seems to be “I can't remember”.
It's not that it didn't happen, repeatedly and recently, it's just that fortythirteen doesn't remember it, perhaps because it clashes with a preconceived worldview.
Quit playing for your side and accept when you've read a valid point.
> The former doesn't even affect the vote count.
Some of the people mentioned in my example _were_ shown to have voted twice.
> Quit playing for your side
My side? I'm a US permanent resident, I'm not eligible to vote. That doesn't make me blind to the fact there are huge issues with the system here, and fault to be found on both sides of the aisle.
“Quit playing for your side”, indeed.
I can, it's this https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-court...
>Voter ID laws themselves were not declared unconstitutional, the extra actions by the Republicans were.
Wrong, North Carolina's Voter ID laws were declared unconstitutional as they were used to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.”[0]
>I see no effort from Democrats to offer any option on how to secure our elections,
Are you saying the Secure Elections Act[1] doesn't have Democratic sponsors?
[1]https://www.lawfareblog.com/assessing-bipartisan-secure-elec...
>which is especially damning considering they've spent the whole last year falsely claiming that they were "hacked".
Democrats were 'hacked', unless you are claiming that John Podesta, Colin Powell, and the DNC didn't have email accounts that were broken into. I think your strawman claim is that democrats are maintaining that vote counts were altered, which again is a strawman - no one serious is actually making that claim, it would seem you're trying to claim a fringe view as a mainstream (strawmanning).
>Active election fraud is almost exclusively in the favor of the Democratic party.
That's the typical claim, yes. Your comment is interesting though, since you seem to want to limit the discussion to 'active voter fraud', as opposed to methods that indirectly lead to unfair elections - like voting laws designed to disenfranchise minorities with 'surgical precision'. If we expanded the scope of the discussion, we'd see you're arguments conveniently leave out those methods that Republicans have been using for the past 30+ years.
>I can't remember the last time someone on the right was arrested for fraudulently filling out registrations forms, or when >100% of the registered voters in a district voted for the Republican candidate, as happened as recently as the 2016 presidential election in Detroit in the favor of Clinton.
You mean those precincts where workers miscounted voters? Didn't the Republican Secretary of State say they were errors, and in any case didn't affect the outcome in the state? Seems like you're fishing.
>The problem isn't voter ID. It's two sides using it as a way to unfairly benefit their interests. One side pre-emptively and the other actively during the vote. Both are wrong, but Voter ID itself isn't.
It seems like you're closing your argument with 'both sides', and in any case 'both sides' aren't having their voter id laws thrown out in court because they are explicitly being used to drive disenfranchisement.
[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/us/politics/voter-id-laws... [1]https://www.lawfareblog.com/assessing-bipartisan-secure-elec...
Well, the UK doesn't. And most other developed countries have proper national mandatory ID systems where everyone has an ID. People would complain a lot less about the ID requirement if the ID was equally easy to get for all voters, which it isn't.
This is the nub of it. The way to disenfranchise people "legitimately" is to
1) insist on the voters having an Id and
2) make it hard for some people to get the necessary Id.
Longer discussion here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHFOwlMCdto "these restrictions tend to disproportionately impact African-American and Latino voters"
Who in this country is unable to get an ID? More specifically, who in NC is unable to get an ID?
It's rather convenient that the Democrats are always against any measure that would make elections less easy to rig, and provide no active solutions to improve the situation.
It's not as simple as taking a 15 minute drive to the DMV and waiting in line. Many of these people lack access to proper transit systems to get to these places. At least where I live, the DMV is open during normal business hours which may be impossible to get to without taking time off of work. Many of these people are paid hourly which makes this a financial decision as well. It's really hard to miss an hour of work when that could be food or rent.
It's really hard to come up with a solution when large swaths of the country or totally opposed to anything that slightly resembles a national ID. While I agree that we could probably be doing something, it's not as simple as telling everyone to go to the DMV.
I've thankfully never been in that situation, and I think you've done a great job explaining the issues with the a voter ID system to someone like myself who wouldn't see any issue with it.
I watched my parents struggle growing up. My dad worked in a steel mill. My mom cut hair and cleaned businesses after work. I never saw them not busy. They made a ton of sacrifices to keep a roof over my head and food on the table.
Getting an ID would not have been a simple task for them. We lived in public housing and we walked almost everywhere. I watched them struggle to get by every day and to hear someone say "just do something" really makes me upset. It's not that simple. Their life was planned down to the minute. Work, walking me home, second job, making dinner, managing finances down to the penny, etc.
All that I am saying is, it's not that simple. People are in some really shitty situations despite doing everything right. Making it harder for these people to vote (who already have trouble finding the time to get to the polls) is just fundamentally wrong in my opinion.
I mean, there is, I was young, living on my own, getting around by bus poor, and then there is poor poor.
There are many reasons why people can’t or won’t get state IDs, even if you can’t fathom it. Until we have mandatory federal IDs (which, incidentally, Republicans are usually against because...facism or something), making them required for a civic duty is just dumb and unfair.
But...uhm, what if you don't have your birth certificate lying around somewhere? What if its like California, you have to pay $50 and wait in line for a few hours? Or what if you try to get a state ID and they want a utility bill to pay your residence?
There are billions of little things.
You can do a lot without an ID card. You can even fly with evidence of identity that doesn't require an ID. You can actually bank as long as you know your SS# and can provide another form of identity (e.g. birth certificate). You might not be able to get a credit card, but those are rich people problems.
Anyways, there is an entire world that you and I are not very familiar with.
Is there any evidence that this is happening, in a way that voter ID would prevent?
"It's not hard to get" is the other fallacy, which is subject to huge selection bias "because I found it easy and so did all the people that I know". Many comments here exhibit that, and I can't tell if they're made in good faith or not.
If people are actually concerned that requiring a state ID to vote will disenfranchise the poor, then compromise and make IDs free or discounted based upon income.
But that's the thing. What if the people pushing to require a state ID want to disenfranchise the poor?
I refer you to this comment, which you should have seen by now. Court case, concrete evidence. No frivolous arguments please.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16116107
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16115954
> Why is voting, which is an important civil duty, the one thing that should not require proof of identity?
Are you saying that it might be abused? But is it actually abused, in reality? Your "what if" isn't good enough without concrete evidence. Enough double-think.
There are a lot of comments in this post so I did not see that. In this case, it does appear that the NC legislature did intentionally act maliciously to affect who could vote. That being said, I still stand by my position that an ID should be required to vote, and that it should be easy acquire an ID.
> Are you saying that ... it might be abused? But is it actually, in reality? Your "what if" isn't good enough without concrete evidence.
I'm saying that not requiring an ID makes it easier for voting to be abused. I doubt it's abused much because it would be too fragile and require too much orchestration, but I don't think it's nonexistent. I think it's one of many safeguards to help ensure that elections are legitimate.
> Enough double-think.
I fail to see how I'm being logically inconsistent. I simply asked for evidence which you did provide. Most of the time people mention vague events without any citations.
Requiring voter Id, while making it not trivial to get voter id, has pros and cons. The pros are theoretical, as you say "I doubt it's abused much", and the cons are actual. That alone should indicate that it's a bad idea.
The position that "an ID should be required to vote, and that it should be easy acquire an ID" is logical and defensible, except when that's made out to be the actual situation. The problem that it solves is theoretical, the abuses of it are manifest.
The governor race in 2016 went 49%-48.8%, yet 2/10 representative sent to Washington are Democrats. Why do you think this is representative?
Voter ID laws are consistently shown to disadvantage poor minority voters -- especially when coupled with the strategic closure of DMV offices and an increase in fees -- as surprise we've seen here in NC.
> so the majority Republican legislature
I get that this is the system, but it's an inherent problem of the system.
If (arbitrary numbers) 5M people live in three cities and they voted Democrat (leaving aside the Raleigh issue for now), and 1M people live in the rest of the state, there is no credulous interpretation of how you can come to a conclusion that
"the majority of the state is Republican"
other than to acknowledge that your system is not about 1 person, 1 vote, but 1 unit of land, 1 vote, and it unfairly awards people who own large tracts of land, or live in undeveloped areas. Yes, yes, I get that this was to allow country folk to feel represented.
But be clear, in no way is the state truly "majority Republican" other than in terms of square miles, regardless of who does or doesn't (because huge tracts of federal land, national parks and the like, get lumped into these rural districts) live there.