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On March 20 2015 00:12 Velr wrote:
Uhm... Isn't it unnessesary hard to vote in the US?
Why go for mandatory voting if you might as well first make it EASY and QUICK for people to vote...
Hint: If there are waiting times before your voting locals, your doing something wrong.
in my experience, no it's not hard to vote in the US. It's actually pretty simple, and I believe anybody who says it was hard or complicated for them to vote are either extremely lazy or really stupid.
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So is there actually a consensus around here now that voter ID laws are, in fact, generally reasonable?
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
the problem with voter id laws was never with the simple idea of a voter id, but with the timeframe of implementation and resources/costs of getting people their IDs.
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On March 20 2015 00:23 Velr wrote:
Voting by mail and stuff is imho fine. Online voting will come but there are rightfull doubts about its security.
But things like having to register to vote (why?) and stuff like this seems just weird to me.
In Switzerland every person eglible to vote gets a letter with informations and a simple sheet to put his "YES/NO" or "Name/Party", then there are several weeks time to drop it into a mailbox. You can also go by before election day and drop it into a box, if that for some reason is your thing, which i personally never would have taken more than 15 mins to do (these include the acutal WALKING to the place).¨
When i read stuff like: "Busses full off supporters were dropped off at the voting station", I honestly just feel humoured by the sheer stupidty of these systems...
Voter registration in some ways is just added oversight in regard to ensuring people are actually qualified to vote (e.g., age, criminal record), but is also a way of empirically gathering and analyzing data from the electoral census to determine voting patterns, voter turnout and the overall voter base. Again, to me this is not only reasonable but practical.
As far as the buses full of supporters, if you're referring to an American context, this means these people chose to gather together in a town-hall or community setting, as members of the same party or supporters of the same candidate, to party/discuss politics on election night prior to scheduling a bus to pick them up from said party and deliver them to the polls. This is fairly standard American excess which runs rampant around election season, and is not a reflection on the voting system but rather the American political campaign system.
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On March 20 2015 00:37 xDaunt wrote:
So is there actually a consensus around here now that voter ID laws are, in fact, generally reasonable?
the issue was never with voter id laws in general, but how they tend to be used in America, and why they were pushed by the republican party.
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On March 19 2015 23:44 ZasZ. wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 23:34 xDaunt wrote:On March 19 2015 23:24 ZasZ. wrote:(CNN)The president whose major policy achievement is mandatory health insurance thinks maybe voting should be mandatory, too.
Asked how to offset the influence of big money in politics, President Barack Obama suggested it's time to make voting a requirement.
"Other countries have mandatory voting," Obama said Wednesday in Cleveland, where he spoke about the importance of middle class economics, and was asked about the issue during a town hall.
"It would be transformative if everybody voted -- that would counteract money more than anything," he said, adding it was the first time he had shared the idea publicly.
The clout of millionaires and billionaires in campaign funding has been enormous, and many claim the uber wealthy have undue leverage in politics.
"The people who tend not to vote are young, they're lower income, they're skewed more heavily towards immigrant groups and minority groups," Obama said. "There's a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls."
At least 26 countries have compulsory voting, according to the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Failure to vote is punishable by a fine in countries such as Australia and Belgium; if you fail to pay your fine in Belgium, you could go to prison.
Aside from campaign finance issues, the United States also grapples with one of the lowest voter turnout rates among developed countries.
Less than 37% of eligible voters actually voted in the 2014 midterm elections, according to The Pew Charitable Trusts. That means about 144 million Americans -- more than the population of Russia -- skipped out.
But mandatory voting could bring its own set of problems. Haydon Manning, associate professor at Flinders University in Australia, said that country's rules can backfire.
"Turning the vote out might not be a problem, but wooing disengaged citizens now requires banal sloganeering and crass misleading negative advertising," Manning wrote. "To me, this can diminish the democratic experience for those who take the time to think through the issues." SourceHe's really not shying away from the controversial topics huh? Floating out mandatory voting is bound to get him some backlash, but I do think voter turnout in this country needs to be addressed. It doesn't really feel like a government by and for the people when only a third of the people decide to weigh in on electing officials. EDIT: Also, while I'm sure there are many arguments against mandatory voting, I don't really buy the one provided by Australia in this case. I'm not sure there's anywhere to go but up when it comes to political advertising and our democratic experience. Why do we want to force a bunch of politically and socially disengaged and uninformed rubes to vote? We won't be doing anyone any favors. While they are more socially engaged, would you seriously make the argument that the vast majority of the people who do vote are somehow more informed? As an example, the level of political discussion in this thread is far above what any of my friends and/or family are willing to discuss, and they are all fairly well educated professionals who vote in every election. It's one of the reasons I'm more of a lurker than a poster, I don't have very much to say because I don't feel as informed as I would like to be. I don't feel like the people who vote are, on the whole, any more informed than those who don't, just more engaged. That said, using the word mandatory for it is a red flag and people will immediately shut people down. But I see no reason why we can't provide better incentives to get people to vote without making it only about incentives. The last thing we want is people showing up and putting down "C" for all the answers without reading the questions.
I would make the argument they are more informed than the non-voters, but still not as informed as we'd like them to be. Obama noted the demographics of the non-voters skew young and uneducated. It would be quite a stretch to think they are equally as informed as a group that is older and more educated, and chooses to engage in politics. This is an empirical question though so we don't really have to speculate about whether non-voters vs voters reads news, follows political issues, can name their representative, other things that pollsters have probably done.
EDIT: here's one from Pew, I think we can take registered vs non-registered as a stand in for likelier to vote and unlikely to vote. I'll also posit that the subset of people who actually vote are more politically knowledgeable than the group that is merely registered.
PEW
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Norway28784 Posts
On March 19 2015 09:46 Nyxisto wrote:
The Anti-Israel circlejerk is strong on the internet and apartheid comparisons are very ridiculous. Fact of the matter is that 20% of the Israeli population are Arab Muslims and 10% hold political positions, serve in a military etc.. It's probably a better representation than most minorities in other countries have. Sure there is a lot of shitty rhetoric going around but given the geopolitical situation in the region the ethnic situation in Israel doesn't justify the criticism.
how are the apartheid comparisons ridiculous? The first person I ever saw make them was desmond tutu, who should be about as big of an authority on the actualities of apartheid as anyone.
whether arabs living in some regions of Israel have rights doesn't change the fact that a third of them live in the gaza strip which is little more than a giant prison.
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On March 20 2015 01:02 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 09:46 Nyxisto wrote:
The Anti-Israel circlejerk is strong on the internet and apartheid comparisons are very ridiculous. Fact of the matter is that 20% of the Israeli population are Arab Muslims and 10% hold political positions, serve in a military etc.. It's probably a better representation than most minorities in other countries have. Sure there is a lot of shitty rhetoric going around but given the geopolitical situation in the region the ethnic situation in Israel doesn't justify the criticism. how are the apartheid comparisons ridiculous? The first person I ever saw make them was desmond tutu, who should be about as big of an authority on the actualities of apartheid as anyone. whether arabs living in some regions of Israel have rights doesn't change the fact that a third of them live in the gaza strip which is little more than a giant prison.
I think the apartheid comparisons are grounded in the fact that you essentially have two groups of people, largely split along ethnic lines (I say largely because, as many have mentioned, arabs do make up a minority in Israel), that inhabit a territory/state in which one of those ethnic groups are legally recognized citizens with the various rights that entails, and the other ethnic group do not. One group essentially controls and is represented by a governing state body/a legal entity with sovereign power over the whole territory, whereas the other group has a pseudo-government relegated to governing the internal affairs of the minority group that lacks the same legal status within that territory.
Where this analogy breaks down is that, in theory, Palestinians were moving towards their own sovereign state where they would largely have full citizenry status, just in a separate full autonomous legal state (although I doubt anyone realistically expected Israel to cede full control).
But that's pretty much off the table now, and I actually think the analogy is quite appropriate. If you're not working towards a two state solution, what you're working towards is a one-state solution with two-tiered legal status, largely driven along ethnic lines. Palestinians, in this scenario, would never be recognized as full citizens within an Israeli state, they would be confined to their territorial "Bantustans" of the occupied territories, never have the same rights as Israeli citizens (e.g. voting, legal protections, etc.), and continually have their own profitable property gradually taken away from them through ever-expanding settlements.
Full disclosure here: I don't like Hamas, or Islamic fanatics of any stripe. Their attitudes towards women and human rights are deplorable. For example, I'm pretty sure that to be openly gay in the occupied territories is largely a death sentence, based on their reaction to gay pride parades in Jerusalem (but note that fanatical Jewish settlers are not really any better on these counts, either). Blowing up innocent people is never going to okay (although I would actually consider settlers to be an occupying force, so referring to them as innocents is not necessarily accurate), particularly when you specifically target children (even settler children should never, ever be victims, children are inherently innocent). That shit is fucked up.
But that doesn't mean what's happening to the Palestinians is a morally acceptable thing to support. What's happening to them, as a people, is really fucked up too.
TLDR: A one-state solution in which you have two tiers of people (citizens, non-citizens, largely drawn along ethnic lines), with the lower tier restricted to limited geographic territories (except when used as cheap labour outside of those territories) and limited legal rights is pretty damn comparable to apartheid (in fact it's basically exactly what apartheid was...). The proposed final two-state solution was the only area where the analogy really broke down (the other being that a small minority of arabs in Israel do have full rights, it'll be interesting to see if/how long that lasts). Now that it's gone, Israel is pretty much there.
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On March 20 2015 00:31 always_winter wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2015 00:12 Velr wrote:
Uhm... Isn't it unnessesary hard to vote in the US?
Why go for mandatory voting if you might as well first make it EASY and QUICK for people to vote...
Hint: If there are waiting times before your voting locals, your doing something wrong. Voting is incredibly quick and easy to do in the US. Applying for my voter ID entailed all of me driving three miles to my local civic center, submitting my driver's license and signing a form, and then receiving the ID card in the mail one week later. Voting entails me driving less than a mile to my local community center/church to wait in a line of about ten people, cast my vote and leave within the span of ten minutes. All of this is perfectly reasonable to me. Online voting opens the door to gross misrepresentation. I do think mandatory voting is an incredibly interesting topic of debate, and I was actually on my way to post the very same article. Certainly there are advantages, and particularly for the Dems, as a large portion of non-voters are minorities more closely aligned with liberal ideology. There are also inherent disadvantages, most notably unleashing a massive population of uneducated non-voters who would now be forced to inject their misguided views/opinions into a democracy that quite frankly does not value their opinion and has no need of it. There is a reason majority rules, as opposed to appeasing everyone, and that is because a lot of people, in every country, are idiots.
Yeah. So... you have a driver's license and a car. Now imagine you are a poor latino and have to take the bus 10 miles instead of 3, and get told that your green card is not a legal ID documentation, and you need a legal state ID instead, which you can get at a different office, 10 miles in the other direction.
EDIT: back on topic. Mandatory voting is a terrible idea. I have lived in Brazil for a while now, and voting is mandatory. It leads to ridiculous situations when elections roll around. If people are so disinterested they can't even go to a ballot office to vote for their leaders, let them stay home!
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On March 20 2015 00:49 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2015 00:37 xDaunt wrote:
So is there actually a consensus around here now that voter ID laws are, in fact, generally reasonable? the issue was never with voter id laws in general, but how they tend to be used in America, and why they were pushed by the republican party.
A majority of the public wants them. The laws aren't always flawless, but that's something to be corrected, rather than bullshitted over.
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On March 20 2015 01:48 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2015 00:31 always_winter wrote:On March 20 2015 00:12 Velr wrote:
Uhm... Isn't it unnessesary hard to vote in the US?
Why go for mandatory voting if you might as well first make it EASY and QUICK for people to vote...
Hint: If there are waiting times before your voting locals, your doing something wrong. Voting is incredibly quick and easy to do in the US. Applying for my voter ID entailed all of me driving three miles to my local civic center, submitting my driver's license and signing a form, and then receiving the ID card in the mail one week later. Voting entails me driving less than a mile to my local community center/church to wait in a line of about ten people, cast my vote and leave within the span of ten minutes. All of this is perfectly reasonable to me. Online voting opens the door to gross misrepresentation. I do think mandatory voting is an incredibly interesting topic of debate, and I was actually on my way to post the very same article. Certainly there are advantages, and particularly for the Dems, as a large portion of non-voters are minorities more closely aligned with liberal ideology. There are also inherent disadvantages, most notably unleashing a massive population of uneducated non-voters who would now be forced to inject their misguided views/opinions into a democracy that quite frankly does not value their opinion and has no need of it. There is a reason majority rules, as opposed to appeasing everyone, and that is because a lot of people, in every country, are idiots. Yeah. So... you have a driver's license and a car. Now imagine you are a poor latino and have to take the bus 10 miles instead of 3, and get told that your green card is not a legal ID documentation, and you need a legal state ID instead, which you can get at a different office, 10 miles in the other direction.
People who do not have the wherewithal to get a driver's license or other form photo ID have such a hobbled capacity that they should not be voting anyway.
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On March 20 2015 01:51 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2015 01:48 Acrofales wrote:On March 20 2015 00:31 always_winter wrote:On March 20 2015 00:12 Velr wrote:
Uhm... Isn't it unnessesary hard to vote in the US?
Why go for mandatory voting if you might as well first make it EASY and QUICK for people to vote...
Hint: If there are waiting times before your voting locals, your doing something wrong. Voting is incredibly quick and easy to do in the US. Applying for my voter ID entailed all of me driving three miles to my local civic center, submitting my driver's license and signing a form, and then receiving the ID card in the mail one week later. Voting entails me driving less than a mile to my local community center/church to wait in a line of about ten people, cast my vote and leave within the span of ten minutes. All of this is perfectly reasonable to me. Online voting opens the door to gross misrepresentation. I do think mandatory voting is an incredibly interesting topic of debate, and I was actually on my way to post the very same article. Certainly there are advantages, and particularly for the Dems, as a large portion of non-voters are minorities more closely aligned with liberal ideology. There are also inherent disadvantages, most notably unleashing a massive population of uneducated non-voters who would now be forced to inject their misguided views/opinions into a democracy that quite frankly does not value their opinion and has no need of it. There is a reason majority rules, as opposed to appeasing everyone, and that is because a lot of people, in every country, are idiots. Yeah. So... you have a driver's license and a car. Now imagine you are a poor latino and have to take the bus 10 miles instead of 3, and get told that your green card is not a legal ID documentation, and you need a legal state ID instead, which you can get at a different office, 10 miles in the other direction. People who do not have the wherewithal to get a driver's license or other form photo ID have such a hobbled capacity that they should not be voting anyway.
Lol. Entitled much?
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On March 20 2015 01:54 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2015 01:51 xDaunt wrote:On March 20 2015 01:48 Acrofales wrote:On March 20 2015 00:31 always_winter wrote:On March 20 2015 00:12 Velr wrote:
Uhm... Isn't it unnessesary hard to vote in the US?
Why go for mandatory voting if you might as well first make it EASY and QUICK for people to vote...
Hint: If there are waiting times before your voting locals, your doing something wrong. Voting is incredibly quick and easy to do in the US. Applying for my voter ID entailed all of me driving three miles to my local civic center, submitting my driver's license and signing a form, and then receiving the ID card in the mail one week later. Voting entails me driving less than a mile to my local community center/church to wait in a line of about ten people, cast my vote and leave within the span of ten minutes. All of this is perfectly reasonable to me. Online voting opens the door to gross misrepresentation. I do think mandatory voting is an incredibly interesting topic of debate, and I was actually on my way to post the very same article. Certainly there are advantages, and particularly for the Dems, as a large portion of non-voters are minorities more closely aligned with liberal ideology. There are also inherent disadvantages, most notably unleashing a massive population of uneducated non-voters who would now be forced to inject their misguided views/opinions into a democracy that quite frankly does not value their opinion and has no need of it. There is a reason majority rules, as opposed to appeasing everyone, and that is because a lot of people, in every country, are idiots. Yeah. So... you have a driver's license and a car. Now imagine you are a poor latino and have to take the bus 10 miles instead of 3, and get told that your green card is not a legal ID documentation, and you need a legal state ID instead, which you can get at a different office, 10 miles in the other direction. People who do not have the wherewithal to get a driver's license or other form photo ID have such a hobbled capacity that they should not be voting anyway. Lol. Entitled much?
No, I'm just honest enough to recognize that the only people who are unable to get photo ID in this day and age are the terminally lazy and the retarded. Neither group should be voting.
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What if you get you voter ID card when you file your taxes? Sounds like the easiest solution to me. How about say changing voter ID laws a year ahead of an election instead of a month? Is that still too hard for a poor latino?
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On March 20 2015 01:48 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2015 00:31 always_winter wrote:On March 20 2015 00:12 Velr wrote:
Uhm... Isn't it unnessesary hard to vote in the US?
Why go for mandatory voting if you might as well first make it EASY and QUICK for people to vote...
Hint: If there are waiting times before your voting locals, your doing something wrong. Voting is incredibly quick and easy to do in the US. Applying for my voter ID entailed all of me driving three miles to my local civic center, submitting my driver's license and signing a form, and then receiving the ID card in the mail one week later. Voting entails me driving less than a mile to my local community center/church to wait in a line of about ten people, cast my vote and leave within the span of ten minutes. All of this is perfectly reasonable to me. Online voting opens the door to gross misrepresentation. I do think mandatory voting is an incredibly interesting topic of debate, and I was actually on my way to post the very same article. Certainly there are advantages, and particularly for the Dems, as a large portion of non-voters are minorities more closely aligned with liberal ideology. There are also inherent disadvantages, most notably unleashing a massive population of uneducated non-voters who would now be forced to inject their misguided views/opinions into a democracy that quite frankly does not value their opinion and has no need of it. There is a reason majority rules, as opposed to appeasing everyone, and that is because a lot of people, in every country, are idiots. Yeah. So... you have a driver's license and a car. Now imagine you are a poor latino and have to take the bus 10 miles instead of 3, and get told that your green card is not a legal ID documentation, and you need a legal state ID instead, which you can get at a different office, 10 miles in the other direction.
Only citizens can vote.
Moreover, IDs last years. I just renewed my license and it expires in 2019. If you can't go 10 miles in 4 years, how will you get to the voting booth anyways?
Edit: It's good to have an ID anyways. Getting one isn't really a hardship.
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On March 20 2015 01:51 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2015 00:49 zlefin wrote:On March 20 2015 00:37 xDaunt wrote:
So is there actually a consensus around here now that voter ID laws are, in fact, generally reasonable? the issue was never with voter id laws in general, but how they tend to be used in America, and why they were pushed by the republican party. A majority of the public wants them. The laws aren't always flawless, but that's something to be corrected, rather than bullshitted over.
if you can fix all the flaws in them fine. but it's not bullshitting when the intent behind the laws actually proposed was nefarious. Also that the laws don't address an actual need.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On March 20 2015 01:51 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2015 01:48 Acrofales wrote:On March 20 2015 00:31 always_winter wrote:On March 20 2015 00:12 Velr wrote:
Uhm... Isn't it unnessesary hard to vote in the US?
Why go for mandatory voting if you might as well first make it EASY and QUICK for people to vote...
Hint: If there are waiting times before your voting locals, your doing something wrong. Voting is incredibly quick and easy to do in the US. Applying for my voter ID entailed all of me driving three miles to my local civic center, submitting my driver's license and signing a form, and then receiving the ID card in the mail one week later. Voting entails me driving less than a mile to my local community center/church to wait in a line of about ten people, cast my vote and leave within the span of ten minutes. All of this is perfectly reasonable to me. Online voting opens the door to gross misrepresentation. I do think mandatory voting is an incredibly interesting topic of debate, and I was actually on my way to post the very same article. Certainly there are advantages, and particularly for the Dems, as a large portion of non-voters are minorities more closely aligned with liberal ideology. There are also inherent disadvantages, most notably unleashing a massive population of uneducated non-voters who would now be forced to inject their misguided views/opinions into a democracy that quite frankly does not value their opinion and has no need of it. There is a reason majority rules, as opposed to appeasing everyone, and that is because a lot of people, in every country, are idiots. Yeah. So... you have a driver's license and a car. Now imagine you are a poor latino and have to take the bus 10 miles instead of 3, and get told that your green card is not a legal ID documentation, and you need a legal state ID instead, which you can get at a different office, 10 miles in the other direction. People who do not have the wherewithal to get a driver's license or other form photo ID have such a hobbled capacity that they should not be voting anyway. did you read that from the constitution?
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On March 20 2015 02:01 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2015 01:51 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On March 20 2015 00:49 zlefin wrote:On March 20 2015 00:37 xDaunt wrote:
So is there actually a consensus around here now that voter ID laws are, in fact, generally reasonable? the issue was never with voter id laws in general, but how they tend to be used in America, and why they were pushed by the republican party. A majority of the public wants them. The laws aren't always flawless, but that's something to be corrected, rather than bullshitted over. if you can fix all the flaws in them fine. but it's not bullshitting when the intent behind the laws actually proposed was nefarious. Also that the laws don't address an actual need.
Statements from liars like yourself is what is nefarious.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On March 20 2015 02:04 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2015 02:01 zlefin wrote:On March 20 2015 01:51 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On March 20 2015 00:49 zlefin wrote:On March 20 2015 00:37 xDaunt wrote:
So is there actually a consensus around here now that voter ID laws are, in fact, generally reasonable? the issue was never with voter id laws in general, but how they tend to be used in America, and why they were pushed by the republican party. A majority of the public wants them. The laws aren't always flawless, but that's something to be corrected, rather than bullshitted over. if you can fix all the flaws in them fine. but it's not bullshitting when the intent behind the laws actually proposed was nefarious. Also that the laws don't address an actual need. Statements from liars like yourself is what is nefarious.
are you going to call a statement like "repulbicans pushing voter id law" nefarious lying? it's a pretty obvious fact.
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On March 20 2015 02:05 oneofthem wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2015 02:04 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On March 20 2015 02:01 zlefin wrote:On March 20 2015 01:51 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On March 20 2015 00:49 zlefin wrote:On March 20 2015 00:37 xDaunt wrote:
So is there actually a consensus around here now that voter ID laws are, in fact, generally reasonable? the issue was never with voter id laws in general, but how they tend to be used in America, and why they were pushed by the republican party. A majority of the public wants them. The laws aren't always flawless, but that's something to be corrected, rather than bullshitted over. if you can fix all the flaws in them fine. but it's not bullshitting when the intent behind the laws actually proposed was nefarious. Also that the laws don't address an actual need. Statements from liars like yourself is what is nefarious. are you going to call a statement like "repulbicans pushing voter id law" nefarious lying? it's a pretty obvious fact.
Don't reply to me if you aren't going to read my post. He claimed the intent was nefarious. Unless he can prove the intent, he is lying (again).
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EPT
