Regardless of your stance on the issue, does anyone actually believe that three "voting rights" professors will give a politically unbiased testimony in 2021?
He is implying that their testimony would most likely be very biased politically. I think that is probably true, and you can see that by skimming through their Twitter accounts [1][2][3].
However, this does not justify the university intimidating them with legally dubious means. [4]
[1]: https://nitter.fdn.fr/electionsmith
[2]: https://nitter.fdn.fr/ElectProject
[3]: https://nitter.fdn.fr/SharonFLUMC
[4]: I am tempted to say that the correct course of action would be to defund all social science departments (except perhaps economics), but that's politically unfeasible.
I think this illustrates how bias thrives in generalities - with as little evidence as is necessary to advance the agenda.
Deep examination of nuances leads to an organic, comprehensive understanding, one that is rocky soil for bias.
As example: Ideological media relentlessly push preformed talking points to prevent viewers from contemplating an issue beyond the desired scope.
Why is this question even relevant in a court case? There's no assumption anyone involved in either side of litigation is unbiased: in fact quite the contrary. The legal system including judges and juries is designed to sort out the contending claims.
I personally find issue with the idea of convicts being unilaterally disbarred from voting while I also feel that verifying the identification of the voter is pretty crucial to a believable vote. But I didn't read the whole thing. There might be more objectionable material that I missed or didn't understand properly.
> For Settles to get one of those, his name has to match his birth certificate — and it doesn’t. In 1964, when he was 14, his mother married and changed his last name. After Texas passed a new voter-ID law, officials told Settles he had to show them his name-change certificate from 1964 to qualify for a new identification card to vote.
> So with the help of several lawyers, Settles tried to find it, searching records in courthouses in the D.C. area, where he grew up. But they could not find it. To obtain a new document changing his name to the one he has used for 51 years, Settles has to go to court, a process that would cost him more than $250 — more than he is willing to pay.
That's a pretty clear illegal poll tax, if you ask me.
> What he does not have is the one thing that he needs to vote this presidential election: a current Texas photo ID.
He can't get one without the proper documents, which he can't obtain.
Texas's list of requirements is at https://www.dps.texas.gov/internetforms/Forms/DL-15.pdf; he'll need proof of residence, which is likely all under the name he's been using for half a century.
Are you prepared to similarly be declared an edge case and not permitted your Constitutional rights?
Am I prepared? Yes. I have all my important identity documents locked in a fire safe. If something should happen to them, I'm willing to pay the $250, etc. amount to fix the problem.
I asked if you'd accept "you don't get Constitutional right X because you're an edge case" if it were your edge case and not someone else's.
($250 is, to many on HN, an insignificant amount. To some in the world, it's the sort of expense that'd mean eviction or having to skip your diabetes meds for the week. No one should have to pick between necessary expenses and their right to vote like this.)
Yes. I live in California and own guns, so I've already seen my state make many compromises on the most liberal (not as in 'left') interpretation of my 2nd Amendment rights. Some of the laws even result in extra fees. And no, I don't "get" my 2nd Amendment right in the same sense that people "get" that right in Texas.
Anyway, I'm not sure we're going to get through talking past each other on this topic. Voter id is clearly intended to ensure and enforce an implicit voting right that my-vote-counts-the-same-as-yours (disregarding any complaints about the Electoral College). If people cannot acknowledge that and want to pretend voting is identical to, say, speech, I'm not sure how to even continue the conversation from there.
That is exactly the attitude the authoritarians are counting on.
This is how you lose your own representation.
I don't think any of this is "worth it," I just don't agree with coming up with sob stories as a counterexample. It's not that hard to hold onto important government documents like your birth certificate, social security card, etc. The argument against disenfranchisement shouldn't look like such a clear edge case.
If anything, I think there's a case to be made that the government shouldn't be using paper documents handed to potentially irresponsible parents to verify identity, and then holding someone responsible for their parents' fuck-ups. But the jump from such an argument to saying we shouldn't verify voter identity at all is an absurd one.
The fact that you can't decide makes me think you know I wasn't quoting you, which was contextually obvious.
I find the rest of your argument equally sincere and convincing.
I know your pattern now, you’ll call this another edge case sob story and set it aside because it isn’t convenient for your argument.
As for your paper document argument… what is your proposed alternative? You must have one, else you wouldn’t have floated it.
(Aside, today is having fun with quotes day.)
Is the next argument that Hitler wanted voter id? At what point do we get to actually discuss the merits of validating a person is who they say they are so they get exactly one vote?
Implementing a voter ID law in the way being pushed right now will disenfranchise people, and it seems like every time an example of an impacted group is brought it, they are summarily dismissed and their existence minimized as "edge cases" or mocked. e.g. "What, are minorities so dumb they can't get an ID?" or in this case "What, did the dog eat your voter ID?"
But it doesn't change the fact that this law you are pushing will take away their rights. What are you going to propose to make them whole, or did you not think it through that far? It would just be nice if you would demonstrate you are as concerned with disenfranchising your fellow citizens as you are cracking down on suspected and heretofore yet unproven massive voter fraud.
> At what point do we get to actually discuss the merits of validating a person is who they say they are so they get exactly one vote?
Well, it would be nice if the side claiming massive systemic voter fraud would prove their claims. That would be a good starting point. Then we could have actionable fixes that address a specific problem to minimize collateral damage. I just don't understand why we have to engage in a massive civic project that will strip rights from citizens under literally no burden of proof for those making these claims.
I'm interested in your experiences on the topic, as I've personally not had a voting experience that was hard or expensive. For what it's worth, I'm considered a minority in the U.S.
Now, if you are in republican held states like Alabama or Georgia, it's going to be a different story. republicans use several methods to disenfranchise voters, voter ID is just one of them.
1. republicans always aim to have the shortest polling hours possible. This benefits them because their base tends to be older and more time/ability to vote during the day. Working-class voters are especially impacted by this because if they can even get time off during the day, they probably will have to pay for the privilege of voting in the form of sacrificing hours at work and getting a reduced paycheck.
2. The second thing republicans do is close polling stations in areas they don't expect a lot of support. This creates massive wait times for folks who are more likely to vote Democrat.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/smartphone-data-s...
Those hourly workers who are already sacrificing money to vote have to take even more time off to cast their ballot.
3. Another tactic is voter roll purges. A lot of folks don't know that they've been unenrolled from the voter rolls till they show up on election day. This particularly effects renters who might not realize they aren't registered at their current address, and miss mail regarding it because its sent to their former address.
4. republicans will also just shamelessly attempt to discourage Democratic turnout. For example, Georgia got rid of voting early Sunday morning to put a damper on the 'Souls to Polls' movement. There is no rationalization for this. They didn't even bother to lie about it. They just wanted to squash a successful Black get-out-the-vote initiative.
I hear this a lot, but states do have to keep their voter rolls up-to-date by law. People move in and out all the time, and not everyone votes in every election. Are there mechanisms that you think are effective in reducing the chances of someone mistakenly getting removed, while still allowing for stale records to be dropped?
You show up, they find you in the system at your old address, you submit an updated registration card, they hand you a ballot, and we all move on with our lives.
As for same-day registration, I'm sort of for it, but only if people understand the cost involved. And it's not about money. I served as a poll worker in California many years ago, which has very accommodating rules for voting. You can register same-day, vote out-of-precinct, the whole smash. It makes it really easy for voters, which is a good thing. But it has a price: it makes the check-in process more complicated. If there are a lot of people who need to do same-day registration (as was the case in my precinct when the city renamed a street a few weeks before the election), then it causes long lines.
When you purge your voter roles becomes a lot less important if you allow for registration/reregistration on election day regardless.
Oregon has same day registration update (and we have motor voter) and no long-lines because we vote primarily by mail.
Disenfranchising voters to 'avoid long-lines' is just a red herring.
There are lots of ways to create quick, safe voting. Election problems are the result of a deliberate attempt to make voting harder for certain people. Full stop.
Sometimes 'common media talking points' are talking points because a real and serious problem exists. There's plenty of evidence of the problem if you want to take the time to get educated on it.
republicans ARE out to destroy the right to vote. They are actively anti-democracy to the point of spreading outright lies about the 2020 Presidential election and attempting to overthrow the democratically elected candidate for US President. This really isn't a 'both sides' thing.
When you have to pretend that both sides are bad so as to appear fair, we call that 'enlightened centrism'. republicans represent a minority of Americans. They'd never have power again if we had fair democratic elections. Democrats represent the majority of Americans. They benefit greatly from fair democratic elections. It's just that simple.
This is the truth, and is why Republicans are doing what they are doing. It's not because Republicans are bad and Democrats are good. It's because Republicans are going to lose otherwise.
And I don't think fraud is a particularly good reason to be for voter ID. The ID requirement seems to speed the line along. We don't need people to spell out their names, especially for non-native English speakers with uncommon or foreign names. The security argument for voter ID strikes me as bogus, but it has a place for efficiency and accessibility.
The point of modern voting suppression is it's designed such that each hurdle on its own looks reasonable to people new to the issue. But the aggregate is intended to suppress voters in a targeted way. The architects of these programs even publicly say as much, it's not a secret.
Without making the direct comparison, it's worth noting that the Jim Crow voter suppression laws similarly evolved from humble beginnings. That's why it's important to watch the trend line, and these laws do not trend in the direction of more voter participation.
1 - https://www.governing.com/archive/alabama-demands-voter-id--...
There are interesting trade-offs to consider in the voter ID discussion.
If you took a few moments to look up our voter ID requirements, you'd find that your characterization is totally unfair and inaccurate. We also accept utility bills, government checks (i.e., for those on government assistance), and a signed affidavit saying you have an ID. I'm a Virginia homer through and through; I think we do voter ID the right way.
https://www.elections.virginia.gov/media/formswarehouse/vote...
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-licenses-identification...
Depends on the margins of victory perception of the fraud among the other voters.
If people widely consider the elections to be illegitimate high participation doesn't do anything to solve that.
Plenty of people saw no problem with poll taxes and reading tests. This just the latest swirl.
I.e., Florida is part of the U.S. So if Florida does it, in at least a small way it is American.
Making it difficult for certain groups of people to participate in the democratic process is unfortunately a long-standing American tradition.
Could you expand on that?
My original comment was based on the assumption that the Florida issue demonstrated a lack of ideological consensus amongst Americans. Thus my "no true Scotsman" observation.
So I see two ways that I might have been off the mark:
(a) Florida's actions don't represent those officials' ideals, or
(b) we somehow don't include those officials' ideals when talking about American ideals.
Both (a) and (b) seem like interesting topics of discussion.
Which ideals? Don't forget that the US literally started with slavery and land ownership-based voting rights for males only. Incredible progress has been made, but with huge caveats ( no slavery except as punishment, anyone can vote but... ).
I guess the other option is that you disagree with expert witnesses as a concept?
These are "experts", after all. They're already starting from a position of credibility, and I don't think the defense lawyer is necessarily equipped to deconstruct whatever the "experts" spend their professional lives working on, regardless of the objectivity of their teatimony.
This sounds like something someone would say whose opinions were not defensible academically.
Anecdotally, I see examples of right leaning opinions from academically schooled contributors to HN all the time.
> Its an open secret that right leaning opinions are taboo across academia
Not in the South, they aren't.
> If the subject is politically polarized then I am inclined to agree
Does this apply to police testimony as well? Courts use their testimony all the time, and it's certainly politically polarized much of the time.
Nonsense
I went to a top school in the US and encountered if anything, a constant right-leaning bias, and some people at the same school at the same time are now top RW personalities on Fox, books, etc.
What is happening is that the RW, and particularly the GOP, which was formerly the party of science, technology, and progress, has in more recent years turned towards authoritarianism and this requires a decoupling from facts.
And, yes, the facts (e.g., anthropomorphic global warming, vaccination, voting dynamics, etc.++) do in fact lean against common RW shibboleths used to crank up their populist amplification needed for their ambitions.
If a bona-fide expert presents data and expert scientific interpretation about how vaccines, public health measures, or voting actually works, that is not political. What is political is calling that political and attempting to silence it because you do not like the conclusions.
What it does mean is that people making claims like yours are most likely in the wrong here, and are attempting to silence the very real opposition because they do not like it.
Stop it and rethink.
>And, yes, the facts (e.g., anthropomorphic global warming, vaccination, voting dynamics, etc.++
Part of the problem is this insidious, preemptive appeal to "consensus" as a misleading substitute for certainty, particularly in biological or social sciences. This isn't physics or math and the science is never so certain as to justify putting careers into jeopardy over dissent.
>a bona-fide expert presents data and expert scientific interpretation about how vaccines, public health measures, or voting actually works, that is not political
It is political when the science on these subjects is not actually settled as is dishonestly claimed and the only allowable opinions of so called experts at the vast majority of our academic institutions consistently align in a certain political direction.
Reality's liberal bias is an illusion, borne of groupthink, social shaming, a collusive media, and exclusion/shaming of dissent. The fact that one or more experts believe something does not make it true, and there is clear evidence of political bias in the sciences. For a more obvious example, consider nonsensical "consensus" that race does not exist, or cannot be used to predictively classify humans. Look at what happen to Watson for daring to suggest that maybe 200k years of natural selection did not stop at the shoulders. The same ideologically driven bias has spread to virtually all soft sciences, and laymen do not understand the hard/soft distinction.
However, the defense team certainly has the full capability (including budget) to find their own experts in the field to present to the jury whatever counter-arguments may exist to the plainiff's experts.
If the defense fails to do so, it is either their malpractice, or the reality that they actually have no effective argument.
Either way, even with your original assumption that those plaintiff experts are biases, that is ZERO reason to prevent their testimony.
The only reason to prevent their testimony is that the defense has no real case, and they know it.
For example, police have a long-documented history of not giving reliable testimony. And yet these "experts" provide testimony at most criminal trials. If a state is willing to allow its police to provide expert testimony, why not its other employees?
Frankly, I think "if you're getting paid you can't use our name" is a sane policy for all issues on which professors may testify.
It shouldn't be hard to imagine the shoe being on the other foot and some energy company paying professors to testify that some new environmental law is asinine. But of course just because it's not hard to imagine doesn't mean everybody participating in the discussion doesn't have the amount of cognitive dissonance that prevents doing that. It is 2021 after all.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, but this is completely normal and happens all the time.