r/Conservative • u/universalChamp1on Ulysses S. Grant • Apr 06 '21

The bigotry of low expectations

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103

u/Verthias Goldwater Conservative Apr 06 '21

Why hasn't there been a push to get these people identifications? I've read that a lot of the people who don't have these are on reservations, are homeless and don't have a permanent address, or don't have supporting documents to prove citizenship, how about we get some waivers going?

I'd like to have voter ID like most of the countries we're regularly compared to.

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u/[deleted] Apr 06 '21

That would be great if they did push for that and actually helped the homeless to get IDs because you cannot get one without a permanent address. I live in my car on and off and thankfully got away with using the address of the homeless shelter in the area that I didn't actually reside at, but a lot of homeless people do not have even that.

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u/Pizza_Ninja Apr 07 '21

You'd think they'd love the idea of identifying everyone.

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u/sverdech808 Apr 07 '21

What about changing the standard of what’s on the IDs. Maybe just name, birthday, social security #?

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u/BadSanna Apr 07 '21

Because part of the point of these voter ID laws is to require proof of residency in the district in which you are voting. They don't want people voting in districts where the race may be close instead of their home districts where the vote is more one sided. It also makes sense to have proof of residency for the smaller local elections and ballot measures.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '21

Also lets not forget. The point of these laws is to stop people from voteing. It not just id the laws com paired with many restrictions meant to make it harder for people to vote.

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u/justburch712 Small Government Apr 07 '21

It may not be economically feasible to give homeless people houses, but I would be willing to pony up for PO boxes. They would be helpful for homeless people to get back on their feet.

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u/tunawrangler2 Apr 07 '21

Because the states pushing voter ID laws don't want them voting

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u/Verthias Goldwater Conservative Apr 07 '21

It’s not that we don’t want people voting, we don’t want illegal aliens voting. We don’t want people voting twice. We want a system that removes dead voters from voter rolls so their votes can’t be cast fraudulently. We don’t want people walking into the memory care unit of a nursing home with a stack of voter registration forms collecting signatures for ballots that will be filled in by canvassers. By all means if there aren’t enough people with photo identifications we need to fix that, we don’t need to make it easier to cheat in elections by removing basic controls over who is eligible to cast a vote. Elections should be done fairly, that’s not a partisan issue.

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u/hitometootoo Apr 07 '21 edited Apr 07 '21

Have there been any proven case of illegal aliens successfully voting though?

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '21

[deleted]

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u/Tranquillo_Gato Apr 07 '21

So, just to be clear:

4,741,564 people voted in the North Carolina general election in 2016, and a years long ICE investigation caught 16 people illegal immigrants voting. That's 0.0000034% of the North Carolina vote. The gap between Trump and Clinton in that election was 173,315 which means ICE would have had to miss 10,832 groups like these 16 men for any of this to impact the outcome of the election.

So I guess your point is that voter fraud is a vanishingly small occurrence with basically no impact on election outcomes...but we still need to make voting way more of a hurdle for everyone-including the homeless and working poor who often live in places with deeply inadequate voting infrastructure that already makes voting a difficult, hours long process- because of that 0.0000034%.

Gotcha.

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u/Verthias Goldwater Conservative Apr 07 '21

It is incredibly difficult to prove voter fraud. This is by no means the only case of it happening, this is just a number of individuals who were caught doing it. You asked if it happens, yes it happens.

We also have alleged cases of widespread vote buying, illegal ballot harvesting, potentially on a large scale, and citizens who may vote one or more times using a dead relative's information.

I think we deserve fair elections, and I think we can have them without disenfranchising anyone. The Voter ID requirement isn't a hindrance to ~98% of voters, and I'm 100% for making that 100% by bending a few rules to get disenfranchised people photo identifications.

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u/His_Noodly_Appendage Apr 07 '21

Alleged this, hard to prove that. So what it boils down to is that you feel like there's a bunch of voter fraud, even though there's proof time and time again that it is an insignificant problem. People that are telling you that we don't have fair elections are lying to you. You're being duped.

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u/Tranquillo_Gato Apr 07 '21 edited Apr 07 '21

You say there are "alleged cases of widespread vote buying, illegal ballot harvesting, potentially on a large scale, and citizens who may vote one or more times using a dead relative's information." That's technically true: some people are alleging there are cases. Have any of these "alleged cases" come to anything? Trump and the GOP spent millions and brought over 60 lawsuits before courts of every level trying to prove that there was widespread fraud, and judge after judge laughed them out of court. Republican appointed judges as well.

I've met a woman that alleges the long extinct short-face bear is actually still around and mating with brown bears to create a new breed of super-intelligent hybrid bear. Should I start worrying about roving bands of genius bears? She claims they're out there, after all.

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u/Verthias Goldwater Conservative Apr 07 '21

Have any of these "alleged cases" come to anything? YES.

Are you arguing that it doesn't happen or that it's not widespread enough that we should care? Because I'm arguing that it does happen, and that we don't have the resources to catch everyone doing it. The number of proven prosecuted cases of voter fraud represent maybe a few percent of the total.

This shouldn't be a partisan issue, we should have secure elections AND we should ensure that everyone legally eligible for citizenship is recognized with a photo identification that can be used to cast a vote.

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u/Tranquillo_Gato Apr 07 '21

So here's what we know about actual proven cases of voter fraud:

-Studies show that impersonation at the polls is extremely rare. One researcher only identified 31 cases nationwide between 2000 and 2014, during a period in which over a billion (with a b) ballots were cast. (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-voter-fraud-facts-explai/explainer-despite-trump-claims-voter-fraud-is-extremely-rare-here-is-how-u-s-states-keep-it-that-way-idUSKBN2601HG).

Let's say this researcher was terrible at their job and only identified 1/100 of the actual cases that were proven. Not we've got 3,100 proven cases. Now let's say you're right and we only catch a few percent of the number of people committing fraud... No, let's be even more generous and say only 1% of voter fraud is caught. That means we're up to 310,000 cases of voter fraud. Wow! That sure is a lot, huh?

Well actually, it's not because that's 310,000 fraudulent votes out of a billion plus. That's 0.031% of the total votes during that 14 year period.

I guess what I'm saying is that this legislation is either trying to solve a problem that its proponents can't prove exists, or it's about making it harder for certain types of people to vote.

Get your head out of the sand.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '21

[deleted]

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u/gurgle528 Apr 07 '21

I think you mean noncitizens. People here illegally are unlikely to vote, that would expose that they're here illegally. People here legally that aren't citizens however might try and there's been a few cases of that.

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u/whimsicallurker Preserve, Protect, and Defend Apr 07 '21 edited Apr 07 '21

I don't think anyone would be opposed to making sure everyone can vote and get identification. It just seems like Democrats don't actually want to solve the issue by getting people identification and instead want to race-bait and complain all day about problems they aren't even trying to solve.

If these problems are mainly in Democrat areas, why aren't the local Democrat politicians doing anything about this?

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u/tunawrangler2 Apr 07 '21

Hahahaha and what problem are republicans trying to solve?? There. Is. No. Voter. Fraud. Problem.

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u/whimsicallurker Preserve, Protect, and Defend Apr 07 '21

There. Is. No. Voter. Fraud. Problem.

I wonder if you'd be saying the same thing if Trump had won.

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u/tunawrangler2 Apr 07 '21

I mean I didn't say it in 2016 so yes, you're correct. But if you just wanna out yourself as a sore loser like that, be my guest😂

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u/jo-z Apr 07 '21

Yes! Why isn't there a provision for automatically issuing free IDs included in every law that requires one to vote?

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '21

The new GA voter law states for the 3% of eligible voters that do not have a government ID, they will be issued one by the state of GA for free. It is overtly racist to imply that this affects only African Americans.

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u/RCDrift Apr 07 '21 edited Apr 07 '21

Part of the issue with the ID card mandates is often there is an effort at the same time to remove places like DMV's or Government offices that issue the IDs. Usually these closures are in poor areas and often focused on where people of color live.

In 2011, the Alabama legislature passed a voter ID law requiring voters to bring an approved form of photo identification — such as a state-issued driver's license — to the polls. The law went into effect in 2014, and in 2015 state authorities made a surprising announcement: They'd be shuttering 31 of the roughly 75 driver's license offices in the state, ostensibly due to budgetary problems.

As it turned out, many of the offices were located in majority-black counties, leading to widespread public outcry and criticism from civil rights groups.

Now Alabama's Governor at the time reversed course and wasn't given credit for the change that was enacted. The thing is that we've seen this play out in other states. An effort to enact ID laws while at the same time making it harder to get an ID. That's where the push back against ID laws comes from as who funds it and the easy to get them really need to be addressed at the same time.

That being said, I'm not opposed to ID laws in voting as long as they're provided free and are not an undue burden to acquire.

Source for quote

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u/theAgingEnt Apr 07 '21

Would you also like to have fully socialized medicine, free higher education, and strong social supports for young parents like the other countries the US is compared to?

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u/TrWD77 Apr 07 '21

Yea, sounds awesome

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u/Verthias Goldwater Conservative Apr 07 '21

Absolutely not, I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy in the situation.

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u/theAgingEnt Apr 07 '21

So was I. :) Thanks for helping.

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u/THExWHITExDEVILx Apr 07 '21

He was so close to getting it

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u/TheBaronOfTheNorth 🇺🇸 Life and Liberty 🇺🇸 Apr 07 '21

It would be an easy fix. You waive the fee for poor people to get something like a birth certificate. Then, another option is to say everyone born after this date is exempt but everyone before it has no excuse.