Open Mic June 1

Okay a show of hands. Every­one who thinks that not a sin­gle legit­i­mate voter will be denied a chance to vote by the new voter sup­pres­sion laws.

I agree with Mule and oth­ers that police are often far too zeal­ous. We have at least some pro­tec­tions in place — Miranda rights for exam­ple. Unfor­tu­nately, the cur­rent Supreme Court has a his­tory of sid­ing with police on issues where indi­vid­u­als claim to have their Con­sti­tu­tional rights vio­lated by law enforce­ment authorities.

Mule, let that be a les­son — lib­er­als who talk pol­i­tics get pas­sion­ate, but peo­ple who talk sports are nuts.

By the the way, I’ve asked three times now, on two dif­fer­ent threads, and no one is will­ing to claim that there will be no legit­i­mate vot­ers who will be pre­vented from vot­ing by the new Republican-​​sponsor changes to the vot­ing laws.

This rather implies that even con­ser­v­a­tives and right-​​leaning par­ti­sans admit these laws will sup­press votes.

So let’s stop pre­tend­ing oth­er­wise, okay?

Who’s pre­tend­ing otherwise?

Good. We’re agreed. With­out any evi­dence of voter fraud, the Repub­li­can Party is will­ing to pre­vent legit­i­mate vot­ers from vot­ing. You admit their Con­sti­tu­tional rights will be vio­lated. Why are elected Repub­li­cans so anx­ious to do this?

Btw, are you will­ing to claim that the Obama pres­i­dency didn’t lead to the need­less death of some puppies?

I see no direct con­nec­tion. Can you draw one?

If ID is required of every­one that wants to buy beer at the gro­cery store…are you claim­ing that some­one legit­i­mately over 21 will not be denied the abil­ity to buy beer by these dra­con­ian laws?

I make no such claim. How­ever, buy­ing beer is not a Con­sti­tu­tional right. Our democ­racy does not depend upon the pur­chase of beer. It’s an absurd false analogy.

Are you seri­ously equat­ing vot­ing rights to the pur­chase of beer? Really?

Cost/​benefit analysis?

The cost is, as we have agreed, there will be peo­ple who have their Con­sti­tu­tional right to vote vio­lated. Dozens, hun­dreds, maybe mil­lions — doesn’t mat­ter, there will def­i­nitely be some.

The ben­e­fit? None that we can document.

The cor­rect deci­sion doesn’t seem even close.

Mean­while, it is the sup­posed pro­po­nents of “lim­ited gov­ern­ment” who want to vio­late the Con­sti­tu­tional right to vote.

There is no greater way to vio­late the prin­ci­ple of “lim­ited gov­ern­ment” than to take away The People’s right to par­tic­i­pate in government.

The hypocrisy here is immense and stunning.

So dis­en­fran­chise­ment can mean many things.

No. It means one thing. Tak­ing away someone’s right to vote. You don’t get to make up your own def­i­n­i­tions of words.

Nah, Supreme Court said Voter ID is fine. Why are you still harp­ing about some­thing that been ruled to be OK and many states already do?

Because those deci­sions apply to those spe­cific laws and those par­tic­u­lar States. And they were bad deci­sions (like the Cit­i­zens United deci­sion) and need to be reversed.

And that’s not “besides” (sic) the point, because you were say­ing that because some­one might vote counter to you, you would be “dis­en­fran­chised,” there­fore giv­ing you the right to deny the vote to them.

This is the point. If you can use this argu­ment to deny the vote to some­one else, then I can use it to deny the vote to you.

You’re dis­en­fran­chis­ing me, accord­ing to you. There­fore, I have the right to deny you the vote. Right?

“ren­der­ing a person’s vote less effec­tive, or ineffective”

rgbact, that does not mean “allow­ing some­one I dis­agree with to vote”

It means not count­ing the vote, or count­ing it as half a vote, or turn­ing it into a “pro­vi­sional” bal­lot and count­ing it only under cer­tain circumstances.

You claimed,

Well you’re assum­ing that some­one thats a total fool that actu­ally votes isn’t par­tially dis­en­fran­chis­ing me, who is fairly informed. So dis­en­fran­chise­ment can mean many things.

You will never find a def­i­n­i­tion of “dis­en­fran­chise” that cor­re­sponds to this. It’s absurd.

You don’t get to decide who votes, or who is “informed enough” to vote. Not in this country.

Max,

I agree, the point is that the laws, as they are being con­sti­tuted, are intended to dis­ad­van­tage cer­tain classes of peo­ple. If the laws were writ­ten in a way to equally dis­ad­van­tage every­body, that would be different.

What should hap­pen is this. The law should say that, when you reg­is­ter to vote, you get a voter ID — just like you get a phys­i­cal dri­vers’ license card when you reg­is­ter to drive. Then every­body has one.

Peo­ple who are already reg­is­tered to vote need to be grand­fa­thered in. There is no excuse for requir­ing some­one to jump through extra hoops to con­tinue exer­cis­ing their Con­sti­tu­tional rights. Doing so auto­mat­i­cally dis­ad­van­tages var­i­ous classes of peo­ple — peo­ple who would find it dif­fi­cult to get to wher­ever the place is — elderly, the infirm, the poor (par­tic­u­larly work­ing poor), and so on.

But if you move to a dif­fer­ent loca­tion and need to reg­is­ter in that new loca­tion, then you auto­mat­i­cally get a Voter ID when you reg­is­ter. Or when you first turn 18 and reg­is­ter for the first time. No addi­tional action required. This also means that that states like Min­nesota, which allow you to reg­is­ter at the polling place, would issue Voter ID cards at the polling place. And NO COST for doing so (which means you’re impos­ing costs on the States to find a fund­ing mech­a­nism to phys­i­cally pro­duce the Voter ID cards).

But since there is no evi­dence that this is nec­es­sary, I don’t see any rea­son to do it.

Mule, I’d like to echo Max’s sen­ti­ment — I’d like to, but I can’t, because you still do wax pretty offen­sive pretty often. I appre­ci­ate and acknowl­edge that you’re mak­ing an effort, and I applaud you for that. And I enjoy the con­ver­sa­tions we often have before you lose it. I encour­age you to keep in mind what I know is your hon­est desire to be polite and to engage in mature dis­course. You’re a smart guy, and we all appre­ci­ate your contributions.

Any­one want to make any pre­dic­tions here??

I pre­dict who­ever loses will accuse the other side of rig­ging the election.

Spe­cial elec­tions are noto­ri­ously hard to poll. Recall elec­tions are par­tic­u­larly hard, because they are so unusual. It’s anybody’s guess what’s going to hap­pen tomorrow.

Also note — there are four (4) Repub­li­can state sen­a­tors up for recall, in addi­tion to the gov. The loss of a sin­gle seat flips con­trol of the state Sen­ate from R to D.

Democ­rats have noth­ing to lose in this elec­tion. Repub­li­cans have noth­ing to win. The best the red side can do is main­tain the sta­tus quo. Democ­rats can gain the state Sen­ate and /​ or the Governorship.

Repub­li­cans are out­spend­ing Democ­rats, by some esti­mates, ten to one (mostly with out-​​of-​​state money, from the nation’s biggest and deep­est right-​​wing pock­ets). At that rate, they should be run­ning away with the elec­tion. It shouldn’t even be close. The Repub­li­cans should be stomp­ing the Democ­rats into the dirt and wip­ing them off the bot­toms of their shoes.

That this race is really too close to call is a mon­u­ment to Repub­li­can over­reach and arro­gance and stun­ning dishonesty.

  The spin after­wards should be entertaining.

Com­pletely. Who­ever comes out per­ceived as “the losers” is likely to try using it as a recruit­ing tool — “Look how bad things are get­ting!” Who­ever is seen to have “won” will try to use it as a pep rally.