New Voter ID Law Would Ban CCW Permit As Valid ID

[SHMIV]

1) You keep saying that we are "Trying to right a wrong that doesn't exist". I disagree. I'd post a source, but it would probably come from Fox, or NRO, or some other Conservative news source, and you've already stated a distrust for them.

2) All of those ID-less people, that you mentioned, made it out to vote; they can make it up to DMV, too, and they can obtain a photo ID.

3) Anyone who finds that voting is important to them, that may also legally vote, should have no problem with getting up to DMV. Most retirement communities have a shuttle service; or, of course, you could give your grandmother a ride up to the DMV.

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[VBshooter]

Agree,,,If you want to vote...Get off your ass and get your ID. We used to actually be tough in this country,,Now all any government puke preaches is how we have to make it easier for the LAZY and stupid..

[Donkey]

The Bush Administration did an exhaustive national survey and found nine "possible" cases of so-called "voter impersonation fraud" nationwide.

My research suggests that the imposition of a new strict photo ID requirement would prevent around 35,000 people from voting a regular ballot at the polls in Virginia.

Depending on which expert you listen to, up to 400K more might not show up at all due to this requirement.

You spend millions on bureaucracy like this. You tie up human and financial resources that otherwise could be spent doing things to cut down on the size of polling place lines -- such as buying newer and more reliable voting equipment -- or simply returned to the taxpayer.

And what do you get for these additional barriers to the ballot, the money, and the inefficiency? You force granny to take her "non-photo" ID down to the DMV or the office of elections, where she will wait in another line. They will use the non-photo ID to authenticate her identity -- just like the election officers would have done at the precinct -- so that they can issue her a photo ID. So you have added a worthless and meaningless additional step in a process solely for the edification of true believers and bureaucrats: unless, that is, you think that qualified voters still ought to be made to prove themselves worthy or informed enough to vote.

Personally, I am glad we got rid of literacy tests for voters.

This law is a stinker.

[gunderwood]

The argument that voter verification may disenfranchise some is not a valid reason to disenfranchise everyone else through fraud. As Donkey personally admits, his pseudo-disenfranchisement is due to his own lack of responsibility. Why should everyone else be effectively disenfranchised through fraud because these people aren't responsible enough to manage their own affairs?

In order for our system of government to work we need to make sure that only citizens are voting and voting only once, otherwise we have no legitimate government. We're getting dangerously close to that already. Our system is truly amazing. Our government changes hands more or less peacefully. The next President can meet with the current President without fear of disappearing. This peaceful transition doesn't occur because of the goodness of our political parties, but rather because the People require it and believe it is a legitimate transfer of power. As much as people on this forum dislike Obama, had he "disappeared" and Bush claimed an "emergency third term," there would have been open revolt among supporters of both parties. I believe in limited Constitutional government, but it must be legitimate.

The states have botched this up by permitting IDs which do NOT prove citizenship to be used. Some states have gone so far as to provide acceptable voting IDs to illegals (e.g. MD DL). Like it or not, only citizens may vote and if the government is to be legitimate it must ensure that only citizens do vote and vote only once. Regardless of how much fraud is in the system or not, it's the appearance of illegitimate elections, and thus government, that is going to cause violence in the future.

Edit: Reading back through it appears that Donkey alludes to 4th Amendment violations, aka "papers." Do not confuse an illegal search and seizure with legitimate documentation. A DUI checkpoint or "boarder" checkpoint are illegal searches. You have been stopped simply because you came across and agent of the state. Your papers and statements are demanded as proof you have done nothing wrong which IS an illegal search/seizure and why you do not have to comply...the agent of the state may phrase it like a demand and may use their authoritative position to influence you into complying, but it's only legal if you consent! That's vastly different than wanting to participate in legitimate governance via voting. When voting you are making the claim that you're a valid voter and meet the Constitutional requirements.

[Donkey]

The issues of citizenship and impersonation are different:

"Impersonation fraud" -- passing yourself off as somebody else to vote multiple times or at all if you are not qualified -- is a very small problem and very few people attempt it. A "cure" that involves limiting ballot access to numbers of people 5 or 6 orders of magnitude larger than the number of people who do this sort of thing is bad policy. It does nothing to boost the credibility of election results and actually undercuts them.

"Citizenship fraud" -- passing yourself off as a US citizen when you are not so you can vote -- is something that is far better addressed through the voter registration process where there is time to evaluate and test someone's credentials. If you have concerns about particular voters, you can volunteer as a poll-watcher and challenge these voters under state law if you have good cause to believe they are not US citizens, or are otherwise unqualified. But short of a US passport, there is very little in the way of photo ID that indicates anything about a persons' citizenship.

[gunderwood]

The issues of citizenship and impersonation are different:

"Impersonation fraud" -- passing yourself off as somebody else to vote multiple times or at all if you are not qualified -- is a very small problem and very few people attempt it. A "cure" that involves limiting ballot access to numbers of people 5 or 6 orders of magnitude larger than the number of people who do this sort of thing is bad policy. It does nothing to boost the credibility of election results and actually undercuts them.

"Citizenship fraud" -- passing yourself off as a US citizen when you are not so you can vote -- is something that is far better addressed through the voter registration process where there is time to evaluate and test someone's credentials. If you have concerns about particular voters, you can volunteer as a poll-watcher and challenge these voters under state law if you have good cause to believe they are not US citizens, or are otherwise unqualified. But short of a US passport, there is very little in the way of photo ID that indicates anything about a persons' citizenship.

You keep saying that it's minor, but post no proof. Estimates vary widely because of the unknowns. The reality is that no one really knows because it's never looked into with much zeal. It seems that every election there is a half-hearted investigation, with no real conclusions or prosecutions. It seems that both parties accept the elections as a game and know the other is cheating, but are afraid to expose it lest they get caught as well. It appears nothing good can come of knowing the truth.

When you have the son of a VA Democrat Congress man who is working on the campaign openly encouraging voter fraud, that tells you how corrupt the system actually is. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-575 ... aud-video/

Besides, you can't seriously claim it minimal when the Federal government sues the state of Florida to prevent them from verifying their voter rolls. So Democrats and a few Republicans are blocking proper voter verification at the polls and at the election.

Nothing short of an actual verifiable photo ID at the polls is going to stop people from fraudulently voting as another legitimate citizen, alive or deceased. Yet, a national ID card is a terrible idea. Democracies are such a chaotic mess; the Republic really was a much, much better idea.

[Donkey]

To save time, I am paraphrasing myself from OCDO below:

The Bush Administration looked at this exhaustively and found 9 cases of possible voter identity fraud nationwide. Let us suppose – solely for the sake of argument -- that one of these cases was in Virginia. . . .



In the Veritas video, Breitbart’s boys accost Patrick Moran in a coffee shop and tell him that they have a list containing “hundreds” of inactive voters, and an unquenchable a desire to cast votes for these people out of anxieties about Republicans.



To obtain such a list of inactive voters, one would likely leave a paper trail that might be traced to the organizers of the fraud. The organizers would then have to recruit enough volunteers to fit the age and sex characteristics of the persons on the list, who are willing to travel to the precincts of the persons on the list, and willing to commit a serious felony once they get there. It takes rather motivated volunteers to just to do the driving, let alone to face serious jail-time for you. It is not going to be so easy to find them.

So you are going to have to contact (to be very generous) at least several hundred people to find the 25 co-conspirators you will need. That is going to be kind of tricky, because it only takes one to squeal to get you a 10-year stay at club fed. If I, or virtually any other party activist I know got got a call from someone proposing something like this, our next call would be to the authorities. We will never know many times Veritas had to attempt to entrap some poor fool campaign staffer before they finally found one willing to speculate out loud about what such a plot would require.



If you successfully recruit enough willing felons, you need to forge false documentation for each one of them, and get it to them. You have to worry that any one of the volunteers may get caught trying to execute the plan, because one of your “inactive voters” may show up, or because someone at the precinct may recognize that your volunteer is not the person they are pretending to be.

If that happens, the gig is up, for you and everyone involved in your little your conspiracy. You also may have seriously damaged whatever cause prompted you to take these risks.

If I had 25 super-volunteers who were prepared to go to this extent to win an election, I could use them to produce a lot more votes by employing them in legitimate “get out the vote” efforts. If I had to pay these people enough to take these risks, I could use that money in much more effective ways to get my guys elected.

Based on New Hampshire's 2012 experience of 1% of voters showing up without ID, and a 2007 Cal Tech study which concluded that 10% of voters do not show up at all if you make strict demands for photo ID, you would need 423,990 more than fraudulent votes in VIrginia to offset the legitimate votes you would lose by implementing this law.

423,990/200 votes per conspiracy = 2020. That is the number of actual Patrick Moran/Veritas type conspiracies you would need in Virginia to equal the harms you would cause with the proposed version of this legislation. So far, there is not evidence of one. All you have is a partisan prank by Veritas which led a young staffer down a dark path for a few minutes.

So IMHO there is no justification for this bill whatsoever.

[gunderwood]

The Bush Administration looked at this exhaustively and found 9 cases of possible voter identity fraud nationwide. Let us suppose – solely for the sake of argument -- that one of these cases was in Virginia. . .

(4 of 5)

Thank you for proving my point. Neither party is interested in finding the truth. 9 parts per 100 million (give or take) is absurd! They can't even count the votes with that kind of accuracy in a single contested county! They could at least have picked a believable number; sounds like North Korean elections. 100% of the vote for dictator, but only 9 fraudulent votes...

Again, each party launches in "investigation," sits on it for a couple of years, and then put out absurd findings. Neither party is interested in delegitimizing the government they control or will control.

The Moran video simply showed that those in power and their lackeys are not only open to voter fraud, but will encourage it and know how to accomplish it. The reaction alone tells you everything you need to know; an honest person/campaign would have been offended at the concept.

[gunderwood]

So IMHO there is no justification for this bill whatsoever.

The justification is the Constitution itself. It and Congress set forth who may vote, the States simply must find a way to implement it. To intentionally support none-voter verification is subversive to the Constitution and the rule of law. It violates the consent of the governed through fraudulent disenfranchisement and delegitimizes the election results.

[Donkey]

The Bush Administration looked at this exhaustively and found 9 cases of possible voter identity fraud nationwide. Let us suppose – solely for the sake of argument -- that one of these cases was in Virginia. . .

(4 of 5)

Thank you for proving my point. Neither party is interested in finding the truth. 9 parts per 100 million (give or take) is absurd! They can't even count the votes with that kind of accuracy in a single contested county! They could at least have picked a believable number; sounds like North Korean elections. 100% of the vote for dictator, but only 9 fraudulent votes...

Again, each party launches in "investigation," sits on it for a couple of years, and then put out absurd findings. Neither party is interested in delegitimizing the government they control or will control.

The Moran video simply showed that those in power and their lackeys are not only open to voter fraud, but will encourage it and know how to accomplish it. The reaction alone tells you everything you need to know; an honest person/campaign would have been offended at the concept.

To quote Bart Simpson, "au contraire, mon frere."

Many of these studies set out to find this kind of fraud, because the signficance of this kind of fraud has seeped into the basic narrative of one of the political parties.

You may recall that several US Attorneys were fired during the Bush Administration because they were perceived by party activists as not pursuing this issue with sufficient ardor.

While you might argue that the Democrats and various public interest organizations have an interest in minimizing voter impersonation fraud, you cannot say that about Republicans. But vigorous Republican and independent efforts to chase down evidence have yielded little more than excuses:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washi ... wanted=all

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09 ... ter-fraud/

http://truth-out.org/news/item/10981-ne ... oter-fraud

http://votingrights.news21.com/article/election-fraud/

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012 ... fact_mayer

http://www.salon.com/2007/03/21/us_attorneys_2/

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... kevin-drum

The Republican Party increasingly seeks to establish its legitimacy by de-legitimizing government. Question that orthodoxy these days as a Republican politician, and you find yourself with plenty of time of time on your hands to explore the joys of the private sector.

[SHMIV]

In discussing this with the other half, she brought up an interesting point...

She asks, " If you ain't responsible enough to keep up with your ID, how are you responsible enough to cast an intelligent vote?"

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[gunderwood]

As usual, ignore the arguments and post more news stories about the same ridiculous claim. You have no idea how pure 0.09PPM is do you?

Six Sigma (six standard deviations from the norm, aka 99.99966% accurate...that's about 4.5 errors for every 1,000,000) would still have ~408 errors with 120M voters. The government can't even count votes that accurately, yet you really think they can find voter fraud that is approaching two orders of magnitude smaller? Based on recounts, the government appears to be closer to ~3 sigma.

Consider the 2006 Florida results: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_election_recount

The media recount study found that under the system of limited recounts in selected counties as was requested by the Gore campaign, the only way that Gore would have won was by using counting methods that were never requested by any party, including "overvotes" — ballots containing more than one vote for an office. While some of these ballots recorded votes for two separate candidates, a significant number (20 percent in Lake County, for example) were cases of a voter voting for a candidate and then also writing in that same candidate's name on the write-in line.

Unless there was a recount as this election required, 20% of a county would have been voting twice because the machines didn't check that error case! Seriously, how do you get nearly 20% of the people to vote for Gore twice without fraud? Filling out a ballot properly isn't hard. Basically, 40% of Democrats voted twice in a Florida county (since the election was split and it would have given Gore the victory).

The recount covered 175,037 of the approximately 6,000,000 ballots cast in the election.[4] In principle these were the ballots that were recorded with no vote or multiple votes in the machine counts. However, since the machines were not designed to separate ballots as such when originally counted, the identification of these ballots can only be approximate; the totals do not match.

Despite covering only ~175k ballots, they couldn't get the recounts to match within a couple hundred votes. 100 errors per ~175k is one error every 1,750 ballots or 99.94% accurate (~3 sigma).

No, all the Bush era study shows is that it's really hard to catch people committing voter fraud because of the silly rules those encouraging voter fraud put in place.

[gunderwood]

As for how to get that many people to vote twice for Gore is actually a lot easier than it first appears.

Step 1
Figure out which counties can absorb the fraudulent votes and find a way to "update" the machines. Realize I don't need to do all machines in a county either, nor would I want too. This has been demonstrated.
http://avirubin.com/vote.pdf

Step 2
Start a rumor that the voting machine company is owned by Republicans and some tests have shown that Gore's votes are under-counted.

Step 3
A short while later, but not too soon before the election, I would start a rumor in extreme Democrat circles only that while the machines do undercount Gore votes, tests have shown that they don't do so if you vote for Gore and then also as a write in. For the less extreme I would simply note that if there is some miscount and you also wrote Gore down it would make sure your vote was counted.

Step 4
Win an election by fraud.


Wait! Weren't there rumors about Dibold circulating around that time?

[GeneFrenkle]

@gunderwood - costs dramatically increase as the greater the number of SD's you go out. At some point, you really have to question the cost, whether or not the error will alter the result, and the time (which is also a cost function) is really effective or meaningful.

[gunderwood]

@gunderwood - costs dramatically increase as the greater the number of SD's you go out. At some point, you really have to question the cost, whether or not the error will alter the result, and the time (which is also a cost function) is really effective or meaningful.

Understand. I was pointing out the statistical absurdity to say that the 9 "Bush found" was a complete undertaking by comparing to the accuracy of merely counting the votes. Very few human endeavours actually achieve 6 sigma vice the approx. 7 sigma Donkey is suggesting.

They didn't find 9 because that's how much fraud there actually was. They found 9 because the laws make it very, very hard to actually find voter fraud (due to Donkey and other Democrats) and/or there simply isn't a need or desire to look into it with much dedication when you won. The second explaination exactly why Holder/Obama blew off the Black Panther voter intimidation in Philly.

[Donkey]

Insofar as voter impersonation fraud is concerned, it really is not too difficult to detect because inevitably more than one person claiming to be a particular voter will show up at the polls, because election officers are usually drawn from the precincts where they work and have lived for a long time, and because these neighborhood residents will often know the person that the fraudster is trying to pretend to be.
,
The reason that there is not more voter impersonation fraud is because the risks are too great and the rewards too small for both the individual fraudster and any campaign that would consider employing these kinds of sleazeball tactics.

We do not have much to worry about here in Virginia with respect to the issues in theBush-Gore recount fiasco. Neither our touchscreen machines nor our optical scan machines will allow an "over-vote."

Where the problems might arise in Virginia are more along the lines of the Coleman-Franken recount in Minnesota, where Coleman unsuccessfully tried to get the Courts to order the state to count uncounted absentee and/or provisional ballots that were thrown out because of some immaterial defect on the envelope, even though the voters' identity and qualifications to vote could be determined. Ballots should never be left uncounted for purely formal reasons like that.

I don't think it is legitimate to restrict the ballot from people who have better things to do with their time than to follow the changes the legislature makes in these laws every year. We did away with the "literacy test" for good reasons, and should be trying to make it as easy as possible for as many qualified citizens to participate as possible.

That is the best way to pick good leaders, and ensure that the vote maintains credibility and integrity.

[SHMIV]

What was wrong with the literacy test? Was it too easy?

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[gunderwood]

Insofar as voter impersonation fraud is concerned, it really is not too difficult to detect because inevitably more than one person claiming to be a particular voter will show up at the polls

Which is why Democrats opposed Florida cleaning up the vote rolls so as to remove tens of thousands of dead and non-citizen registrants.

The state of Florida says there may be 180k non-citizens registered: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/ ... AF20120511

The state of Florida says there may be 53k dead citizens registered: http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-0 ... oter-lists

Ya, there's no fraud here, but don't remove those 233k dead and non-citizens from the rolls because they vote Democrat!

because election officers are usually drawn from the precincts where they work and have lived for a long time, and because these neighborhood residents will often know the person that the fraudster is trying to pretend to be.

This is laughable. You either have no idea, live in a really, really small town, or are just making stuff up. I've NEVER met a poll worker whom I've known. In fact, I don't even recall seeing anyone I know at the poll either. Yes, I even vote in the local/non-president elections too. It's just that there are greater than 100k in the county, tens of thousands in my city alone, and about 3k at my polling location alone who actually voted last election. Yet, turnout wasn't great.

[gunderwood]

The reality is we simply don't know how much voter fraud there is or isn't. It's very difficult to prove since the Democrats block every attempt to verify that only citizens are voting, to verify the voter rolls so that dead citizens aren't voting, etc. We can only presume that they perpetuating fraud upon the American people when they block every attempt to verify that the laws are being followed.

In one key state alone (Florida), there were nearly a quarter million registered voters who shouldn't have been. Yet, the Democrats will block any attempt to rectify the situation based on the notion that a few mistakes could be made. The irony is that for anyone whom a mistake was made, the law already permits them to cast a provisional ballot, so the impact approaches zero. So a couple percentage points of mistakes works out to be a couple thousand people in the state of Florida max and those can easily be fixed through provisional ballots, yet the other 95+% of known errors can not be corrected because Democrats block it. A known quarter million errors or a few thousand at most due to correcting the quarter million? No fraud there, move along...

It's possible they can't do simple math either.

[Donkey]

What was wrong with the literacy test? Was it too easy?

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UMMMMM, lets see:

Oh yeah: maybe that it was used primarily to keep blacks, poor whites and other "undesireables" powerless and disenfranchised?

Where do you think these brilliant ideas really come from?