Yeah, that right is reserved fro trolls.

It is an unnecessary barrier to entry, as demonstrated in http://www.npr.org/2012/01/28/146006217/why-new-photo-id-laws-mean-some-wont-vote
There are people without photo ID, these people are likely to refrain from getting voter ID, as there are monetary issues for some, time and gas issues for others et al.

Oh come on! The fucking democrats *bus them to the polls*! You don't think they'd bus them to the ID centers? And hell, amnyone on welfare could be given an ID voucher that could be traded in for a 4 year ID (like most State IDs). That's a stupid argument if ever there was one.

We require everyone to buy health insurance now but we can't manage to get everyone an ID? Please.

Well, there is the photo requirement. The thing is, everyone has ID, but not everyone has ID with all the criteria required by many states.

Honestly, we're sort of buying into the Republican narrative to argue this sort of thing. The implication is that this is a serious and well-intentioned effort at confronting a problem facing the Republic, when the real point of it is obviously to depress voting, a consistent goal of the Republican party.

By their fruits, ye shall know them. The Republican party succeeds when fewer people participate in the electorate. In the end, doesn't that say all you really need to know about the aims and means of the modern Republican party?

It's a little about depressing turnout, yes. The dead are a reliable Democratic constituency that voter ID laws disenfranchise.

Got any evidence for that claim, slugger (explicit or implicit), or are you just hurling shit at the wall to see if any of it sticks, like a caged colobus monkey?

What exactly was this 'dead' stuff supposed to mean? Are you suggesting that the elderly are already dead? Because that's who you're depriving of the right to vote, along with the poor.

It's a joke. Jeez, calm down.

But there is real merit in making sure the only people who vote are the people who legally can vote. How people can be against this is really something I cannot wrap my head around.

No, I mean dead as in dead. Work on the reading analysis skills, champ.

If it was about that, I wouldn't really have a problem with it. But it's not. It's about depressing turnout, and transparently so. In other words, the Republican party is attempting to gain electoral advantage by making it more difficult for citizens to exercise their rights.

Well, for one thing, I doubt you avoid more cheating than you prevent votes. That makes this a bad decision. Stopping 100 people from legitimately voting to stop 100000 from cheating is not good, but justifiable. Even assuming one third turnout, you would prevent 1000000 people from voting to stop a couple hundred fraudulent votes?

It isn't about that at all. It's entirely about only having people who are legally able to vote be the ones voting. It's really not too hard for an illegal immigrant to register to vote and then cast a ballot in an election. It's also not hard to get an ID, and states that have voter ID laws ought to make them as easy to get as possible and do it for free.

I don't see how making people register to vote is perfectly fine but requiring them to get an ID is this horrible burden keeping them down. In Illinois, where I've always voted, you can't register online, so implicit in exercising your right to have to pay for a stamp to mail the stuff or somehow get yourself to a library or wherever else they can do it all (I always went to a library). If that's OK, how can we be so against adding one little requirement that is pretty much required already on a societal level? Basically everyone who is involved with the economy already has these, and they're easy to get if you don't already have one.

Read the article I posted. Sure, they grab the big stories, but 200 dollars is a lot of money.

So make them free. I never said existing laws were perfect, just that the idea is a good one.

Yes, but these are particular situations with their own laws, effects and such.

That sentence doesn't make sense.

You can go to the Post Office and get a Passport. Why not give the Post Office the ability to issue a Voter ID card with a picture?

Maybe Bob G can give us some distance analysis on how the poor live too far from the post offices.

And 200 dollars? You can go get a state ID with just your birth certificate *or* your social security card *or* your green card for $20 that's good for 4 years in Ohio. Even less ($17 when my wife got her's) and good for 7 years in Kentucky.

@flc64

I'm not claiming they do live too far from the polling places, although they do tend to be markedly fewer serving poorer areas than richer ones. But in my county, although there's only one place where you could get a valid photo ID, there are over 60 places to cast a ballot, leaving aside the possibility of voting by mail.

I believe it was pointed out that perhaps post offices should have the ability to issue these photo IDs.

That would be a good thing, so long as they were issued free of charge, if we were going to insist upon requiring ID to vote.

Voter I'd fraud coming up

I already presented the ID that welfare recipients be given a voucher for an ID. Requiring an ID can be done with infrastructure to make cdertain those unable to comply monetarily or transportation wise be taken care of.

We shoudl honestly be upset at Obamacare's website requirement for purchasing health insurance. The poor don't have internet and people like my mother-in-law have neither internet nor the means to get to a office somehow even if it could be done that way.

Everything that appleis to voter registration applies to Obamacare but nobody seems to be rasing a fit about "penalizing the poor" because they don't have a means to use the system to buy it.

The issue with ID is that there are a couple systems, all of which require a birth certificate. People born in the 30's don't have valid birth certificates a lot of the time and need to pay good money to get one.

No. A Social Security card works just fine in place of a birth certificate. And you can't tell me all these black voters were born before WWII. My dad was born I. 43 and he is 70. There aren't that many living people in the US over 75. Certainly not the kind of numbers the liberals would have us believe.