I just voted in NY without ID - good thing or bad thing?

Here is some more fake new : "Pubs want to hinder/stop poor liberals from being able to vote." Stop this crap. It makes you look foolish.

TMad wrote:

Here is some more fake new : "Pubs want to hinder/stop poor liberals from being able to vote." Stop this crap. It makes you look foolish.

Except for that basically being what's happened as long as there's been voting you're bang on the mark. The business of people with money and property trying to keep people with little or no money or property from voting goes to the beginnings of US history and even further back into British history. Originally only male property owners could vote. When the requirement for owning property was removed some states tried to add poll taxes and/or literacy tests. Now that neither of these are legal the new barriers are ID requirements, declaring groups of voters ineligible and in some places closing polling places early or completely. It's not so much an ideological thing as a class thing.

No ID, no problem! Many jurisdictions will accept an EGO or SUPEREGO card instead.

Debs wrote:

TMad wrote:

Here is some more fake new : "Pubs want to hinder/stop poor liberals from being able to vote." Stop this crap. It makes you look foolish.

Except for that basically being what's happened as long as there's been voting you're bang on the mark. The business of people with money and property trying to keep people with little or no money or property from voting goes to the beginnings of US history and even further back into British history. Originally only male property owners could vote. When the requirement for owning property was removed some states tried to add poll taxes and/or literacy tests. Now that neither of these are legal the new barriers are ID requirements, declaring groups of voters ineligible and in some places closing polling places early or completely. It's not so much an ideological thing as a class thing.

Sort of. Your chronology is a little off, as is your reasoning. Like a first year med student, you know just enough to be dangerous.

It isn't about not wanting people to vote because they are poor or liberal. There is a very real - and legitimate - desire to keep people from voting who do not contribute to the system. “The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’ ‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.” -Robert A. Heinlein

1. The fact is, rich white men in politics voted - of their own accord - to empower the poor, minorities, and women. It isn't as if an aristocracy is inherently evil. 2. Every single measure to increase voter turnout - from social media announcements to offers of rides to the polls - is an attempt by liberals in power to entice otherwise disinterested citizens to vote themselves more Bread and Circuses. It is disingenuous on the part of liberal leadership and dangerous to our very way of life.

To be clear, I am saying that people of a particular ideology shouldn't vote. Anyone who pays more taxes than they get back in benefits - regardless of their political bent - should absolutely have a say on election day where that money goes...

...but voting should be more difficult than responding to an election day announcement of free pizza.

I can't believe you even ask this question.

Here are a couple of reasons:

https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-sheet

In my small town, they just have a list of all registered voters. They don't ask for ID or anything but do have to check you off after you vote. It would be easy for the volunteers to fill out ballots for those who don't show but are registered. No ID or signature is even required. They just ask who you are and check you off the list. Pretty easy to pull off but and you could probably only do it a dozen or so times (300 registered voters in my town with 80 to 90% showing up to vote). It would take a pretty large and elaborate system to do this enough to make a significant difference though.

I think there is also same day registration now but you do need a copy of an ID and a piece of mail for that. It wouldn't be hard to invent another dozen or so people and make fake ID's and send them some fake mail if you were really committed and already worked at the town office.

Runner 247 wrote:

I can't believe you even ask this question.

Here are a couple of reasons:

https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-sheet

I can't believe you would quote the ACLU as a meaningful source.

If it would be that easy, it would be done more often.

Obviously it's not that easy to check somebody off that list and vote then.

Somone tried to stop me at the doors, I said f0ck you, get out my way.

Showed them my library card and voted.

No, an aristocracy is in and of itself bad in so far as it is not a democracy (justified in the next clause), and a democracy is in and of itself good in so far as it allows the people to determine their own political destiny. The rich do not contribute more than any one else to a society to the extent that they should have the right to rule it and when the rich rule, they may or may not give bread and circuses to all but they typically give them all to themselves, whereas when the people rule, they are sometimes far-sighted, sometimes not, but often do such as the FL voters did yesterday, granting 1.4 million ex-felons the right to vote. If you think about the fact that states led by Democrats are wealthier than those led by Republicans and that Democrats in the White House lower the deficit, while Republicans lower taxes on the wealthy and raise the deficit, it seems what you say is backwards.

What a bunch of bull.

lol no. I assure you, both members of an aristocracy and members of a democracy vote for their own selfish interests. The only difference is that one allows people with no skin in the game to help dictate how the skin is used.

EVERYONE has skin in the game. Renters, bank presidents, homeless people,CEOs, minimum wage workers, anyone who lives here potentially has skin in the game. You talk about keeping people who won't contribute to the system from voting. Well, who gets to determine which potential voters will and will not contribute to the system? That perspective has always been around and the general assumption of those making it is that people lacking wealth and property are the ones who won't contribute to the system. And yes, normally people vote for their own interests. But some people have a different and sometimes wider of what those interests are. And even if that's not the case, there's no reason why it's better when wealthier people vote for their own selfish interests and poorer people do the same.

theJeff wrote:

I can't believe you would quote the ACLU as a meaningful source.

Says the person using a science fiction writer as a meaningful source.

theJeff wrote:

Anyone who pays more taxes than they get back in benefits - regardless of their political bent - should absolutely have a say on election day where that money goes...

Why does everything have to be based simply on money in/money out? Elections aren't JUST about "where the money goes."

Our elected officials make laws/decisions about all sorts of things. Abortion, the environment, religion, going to war, the internet, etc etc etc. Not making much money shouldn't exempt any citizen from having a say in those matters.

lease wrote:

wejo wrote:

Also one thing I'd never thought of but all the democrats where on the left hand column of the ballot. Is that common? I think they should randomize the party position on the ballot.

It is typical (in many states) that the leading votegetter's party from the previous election is the party that's listed first. Whether that's the process in NYS--or it's simply done alphabetically--I don't know.

Most of my votes were cast for the Working Families Party or the Women's Equality Party, both well over to the right on the ballot--and both, of course, late in the alphabet.

And both nearly always the same person as the Democrat. Patently unfair to allow big parties to spawn fake third parties to get their name to appear more than once. New York started it.

Whether it's good or bad, depends on how easy it is to obtain Fake ID.

wejo wrote:

It got me thinking about voter fraud. Seems like the easier way to do it would be for the people with access to the blank ballots to stuff the box. Never hear of that happening recently but wouldn't that be more effective than having a bunch of people go pretend to be a registered voter?

Don't be surprised if Broward County (FL) "suddenly" finds say 50000 extra Nelson votes, via absentee, chad, etc.

People concerned about "Russian collusion" want to make it easier for people to vote without ID or via absentee ballot? I have a theory that goes like this: "if I can think it, someone will do it." And my thought is that it would be very easy to get a list of names of people who have never voted, and are very, very unlikely to vote, and to send in ballots on their behalf. SUPER easy. Or, on a smaller scale, let's say you know 5 people who aren't going to vote. BAM, you've just increased your voting power by a factor of 5.

These arguments against requiring an ID for voting sound like the same arguments we heard in the past about Marathon cheating. "Why would anyone ever do that?" "It's hard to cheat", "nobody's going to do that", etc. I think we know by now that if there is an opportunity for cheating, there are people who will do it.