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On August 26 2016 05:51 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
It's getting old hearing 'we shouldn't worry about x crime because it rarely happens'
I think it's not "we should worry about x crime" but "we shouldn't make it disproportionately harder for a bunch of people to vote just because x crime, which rarely happens, is possible."
I'm sure there's ways to make voter impersonation and voting multiple times a non-issue without a) riling people in a rally up and telling them to watch for it, and b) passing laws that make it difficult for low-income peoples to vote (and doesn't really stop someone with money from voting multiple times anyways...).
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On August 26 2016 06:03 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
I'll rephrase it
"We shouldn't worry about x crime because it rarely happens or when it does happen it has no 'significant' impact"
is a poor argument
You probably missed my edit. Like I said, I agree it's better to do something about it than not, but Trump is doing a lot more than say "do something about it". He's saying "the only way I'm going to lose here is if it's rigged". Which is wrong because it's basically impossible for that level of rigging to actually change the outcome. Doing something about it is good, but there's basically no case in which multiple-voting would actually have an impact.
I agree that we should do what we can to stamp out voter fraud, but it's mostly on principle. In practice, let's not pretend that voter fraud is actually practically impacting elections.
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On August 26 2016 06:03 GGTeMpLaR wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2016 06:00 TheYango wrote:On August 26 2016 05:51 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
It's getting old hearing 'we shouldn't worry about x crime because it rarely happens' With voter fraud it's not so much that it never happens, but that it never impacts outcomes even if it does happen. Individual votes matter so little to the actual outcomes of the election that the scale on which voter fraud has to happen to have any impact at all is basically impossible through individuals voting more than once. I'll rephrase it "We shouldn't worry about x crime because it rarely happens or when it does happen it has no 'significant' impact"is a poor argument
not once you add in the cost of enforcement and the estimated amount of damage the crime causes. it's also far rarer than "rare".
Though really, if republicans would pass a law to address it that wasn't a thinly disguised excuse to attack minorities, maybe we'd get somewhere.
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On August 26 2016 06:03 GGTeMpLaR wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2016 06:00 TheYango wrote:On August 26 2016 05:51 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
It's getting old hearing 'we shouldn't worry about x crime because it rarely happens' With voter fraud it's not so much that it never happens, but that it never impacts outcomes even if it does happen. Individual votes matter so little to the actual outcomes of the election that the scale on which voter fraud has to happen to have any impact at all is basically impossible through individuals voting more than once. I'll rephrase it "We shouldn't worry about x crime because it rarely happens or when it does happen it has no 'significant' impact"is a poor argument
Why should people be worried about crimes that are not likely to happen and will not effect the outcome of the race? If we are worried about unlikely things, should we also be on the looking out for North Korea invading on election day?
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The concern that voter fraud laws makes it disproportionately difficult for underprivileged individuals to vote is a valid one.
The assertion that voting fraud doesn't exist or doesn't matter is a few steps too far and undermines the original argument.
On August 26 2016 06:07 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2016 06:03 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On August 26 2016 06:00 TheYango wrote:On August 26 2016 05:51 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
It's getting old hearing 'we shouldn't worry about x crime because it rarely happens' With voter fraud it's not so much that it never happens, but that it never impacts outcomes even if it does happen. Individual votes matter so little to the actual outcomes of the election that the scale on which voter fraud has to happen to have any impact at all is basically impossible through individuals voting more than once. I'll rephrase it "We shouldn't worry about x crime because it rarely happens or when it does happen it has no 'significant' impact"is a poor argument Why should people be worried about crimes that are not likely to happen and will not effect the outcome of the race? If we are worried about unlikely things, should we also be on the looking out for North Korea invading on election day?
Thankfully there is a military that does exactly that.
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From Bannon himself in July this year:
"We're the platform for the alt-right," Bannon told me proudly when I interviewed him at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/stephen-bannon-donald-trump-alt-right-breitbart-news
It isn't hard to tie alt-right back to Trump. Trump picks Bannon as campaign chief. Bannon is CEO of Breitbart. Bannon brags about Breitbart being platform for alt-right in July. Thus, Trump endorses alt-right.
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On August 26 2016 06:07 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2016 06:03 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On August 26 2016 06:00 TheYango wrote:On August 26 2016 05:51 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
It's getting old hearing 'we shouldn't worry about x crime because it rarely happens' With voter fraud it's not so much that it never happens, but that it never impacts outcomes even if it does happen. Individual votes matter so little to the actual outcomes of the election that the scale on which voter fraud has to happen to have any impact at all is basically impossible through individuals voting more than once. I'll rephrase it "We shouldn't worry about x crime because it rarely happens or when it does happen it has no 'significant' impact"is a poor argument Why should people be worried about crimes that are not likely to happen and will not effect the outcome of the race? If we are worried about unlikely things, should we also be on the looking out for North Korea invading on election day?
I disagree with the statement that we shouldn't be worried about crimes that are not likely to happen. People can worry about those crimes if they want to, and if they propose a solution that is proportional to the crime with the chance factored in, then by all means it's fine.
It's only when we have a disproportionate response (whether disproportionate in punishment, or in cost to implement) that it makes no sense to worry about that type of crime.
On August 26 2016 06:08 LegalLord wrote:The concern that voter fraud laws makes it disproportionately difficult for underprivileged individuals to vote is a valid one. The assertion that voting fraud doesn't exist or doesn't matter is a few steps too far and undermines the original argument. Show nested quote +On August 26 2016 06:07 Plansix wrote:On August 26 2016 06:03 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On August 26 2016 06:00 TheYango wrote:On August 26 2016 05:51 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
It's getting old hearing 'we shouldn't worry about x crime because it rarely happens' With voter fraud it's not so much that it never happens, but that it never impacts outcomes even if it does happen. Individual votes matter so little to the actual outcomes of the election that the scale on which voter fraud has to happen to have any impact at all is basically impossible through individuals voting more than once. I'll rephrase it "We shouldn't worry about x crime because it rarely happens or when it does happen it has no 'significant' impact"is a poor argument Why should people be worried about crimes that are not likely to happen and will not effect the outcome of the race? If we are worried about unlikely things, should we also be on the looking out for North Korea invading on election day? Thankfully there is a military that does exactly that.
Not just disproportionately difficult for underprivileged people, but it also doesn't prevent privileged people from breaking those laws. Require a voter ID? Well someone with money could make fake IDs. A poor person can't, nor can they sometimes afford those said IDs.
Make the ID free - I'm good with that. Won't stop a person with money from faking it though.
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On August 26 2016 06:08 LegalLord wrote:
The assertion that voting fraud doesn't exist or doesn't matter is a few steps too far and undermines the original argument.
The only reason the argument that voting fraud "doesn't matter" even came up is that Trump outright said that it does matter and that the only way he would lose in places that he's basically polling at 0% is if the elections were rigged.
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On August 26 2016 06:04 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2016 05:57 oBlade wrote:On August 26 2016 05:41 Trainrunnef wrote:On August 26 2016 04:54 oBlade wrote:On August 26 2016 04:21 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
I don't think anyone has ever teamed up with the media to deliver an entire prepared speech about insulting and delegitimizing the other side's voters before. The only time she insulted and deligitimized any voters of the "other side" was when she talked about the students in the highschool basketball game taunting players on the other team because of their race. The rest of the entire speech was specifically and directly aimed at Trump. If you feel in any way that she attacked the voters it means that those voters somehow identify with those beliefs she outlined as bigoted, and not that they were mislead by a charismatic and misguided candidate. So really it's you who is insulting the "other side's" voters, even if you were one of them. EDIT: and thinking back on it, the highschool kids arent even voters. I'm not the one really calling the "right-wing" racist. + Show Spoiler +
The latest shake-up was designed to – quote – "Let Trump be Trump." To do that, he hired Stephen Bannon, the head of a right-wing website called Breitbart.com, as campaign CEO.
To give you a flavor of his work, here are a few headlines they’ve published:
"Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy."
"Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?"
"Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement’s Human Shield"
"Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage."
That one came shortly after the Charleston massacre, when Democrats and Republicans alike were doing everything they could to heal racial divides. Breitbart tried to enflame them further.
Just imagine – Donald Trump reading that and thinking: "this is what I need more of in my campaign."
Bannon has nasty things to say about pretty much everyone.
This spring, he railed against Paul Ryan for, quote "rubbing his social-justice Catholicism in my nose every second."
No wonder he’s gone to work for Trump – the only Presidential candidate ever to get into a public feud with the Pope.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, Breitbart embraces "ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas.
Race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-Immigrant ideas –– all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’"
Alt-Right is short for "Alternative Right."
The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loosely organized movement, mostly online, that "rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity."
The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the "Alt-Right." A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.
This is part of a broader story -- the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.
Just yesterday, one of Britain’s most prominent right-wing leaders, Nigel Farage, who stoked anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum on leaving the European Union, campaigned with Donald Trump in Mississippi.
Farage has called for a ban on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and health services, has said women are quote "worth less" than men, and supports scrapping laws that prevent employers from discriminating based on race -- that’s who Trump wants by his side
The godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism is Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In fact, Farage has appeared regularly on Russian propaganda programs.
Now he’s standing on the same stage as the Republican nominee.
Trump himself heaps praise on Putin and embrace pro-Russian policies.
He talks casually of abandoning our NATO allies, recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and of giving the Kremlin a free hand in Eastern Europe more generally.
American presidents from Truman to Reagan have rejected the kind of approach Trump is taking on Russia.
We should, too.
All of this adds up to something we’ve never seen before.
Of course there’s always been a paranoid fringe in our politics, steeped in racial resentment. But it’s never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone. Until now.
On David Duke’s radio show the other day, the mood was jubilant.
"We appear to have taken over the Republican Party," one white supremacist said.
Duke laughed. There’s still more work to do, he said.
No one should have any illusions about what’s really going on here. The names may have changed… Racists now call themselves "racialists." White supremacists now call themselves "white nationalists." The paranoid fringe now calls itself "alt-right." But the hate burns just as bright.
It'd be like Trump giving a speech about how Buzzfeed's readers are satanist fascists who hate freedom just like those commies in Sweden whose politicians by the way support Clinton. Ah yes, false equivalencies to try to make Trump's shortcomings a wash. Because Buzzfeed's leader is now Hillary's campaign CEO, and commies in Sweden are appearing on stage with her.
Having a famous speaker and a campaign manager with a media resume aren't things that need defending.
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On August 26 2016 06:09 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2016 06:08 LegalLord wrote:
The assertion that voting fraud doesn't exist or doesn't matter is a few steps too far and undermines the original argument. The only reason the argument that voting fraud "doesn't matter" even came up is that Trump outright said that it does matter and that the only way he would lose in places that he's basically polling at 0% is if the elections were rigged.
Not really. I've seen that argument been put forth quite frequently over a long period of time.
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United States44393 Posts
On August 26 2016 06:03 GGTeMpLaR wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2016 06:00 TheYango wrote:On August 26 2016 05:51 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
It's getting old hearing 'we shouldn't worry about x crime because it rarely happens' With voter fraud it's not so much that it never happens, but that it never impacts outcomes even if it does happen. Individual votes matter so little to the actual outcomes of the election that the scale on which voter fraud has to happen to have any impact at all is basically impossible through individuals voting more than once. I'll rephrase it "We shouldn't worry about x crime because it rarely happens or when it does happen it has no 'significant' impact"is a poor argument
We're talking winner takes all elections here. It's not like "we shouldn't worry about petty theft because it's petty". These people, if they exist, have no impact on anything because they have never succeeded in carrying out their goal of changing the result due to the way the system is set up.
It's not even like someone stealing a handful of sand from a private beach, that beach would still have less sand on it, even if the amount is negligible, that'd still be theft. Voting twice is incredibly unlikely to change the outcome.
Imagine a world in which a person may only ever buy one powerball ticket in their lifetime and buying a second one is illegal. What these people are doing is like buying a second ticket. It doesn't really address the issue of fraudulent lottery wins because anyone trying to win the lottery isn't going to do it by doubling their chances with a second ticket, they're gonna go to the draw and rig the numbers to match the one ticket they already legally have. What Trump is doing is like demanding that his supporters go into the stores and make sure nobody ever buys more than one ticket instead of demanding they watch the guy drawing the winning numbers extremely carefully. It shows that it's theatre, nothing more.
Does that make sense?
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On August 26 2016 06:11 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2016 06:09 TheYango wrote:On August 26 2016 06:08 LegalLord wrote:
The assertion that voting fraud doesn't exist or doesn't matter is a few steps too far and undermines the original argument. The only reason the argument that voting fraud "doesn't matter" even came up is that Trump outright said that it does matter and that the only way he would lose in places that he's basically polling at 0% is if the elections were rigged. Not really. I've seen that argument been put forth quite frequently over a long period of time.
In other discussions, sure. The specific context we're discussing right now is Trump's current assertion of voter fraud from the linked rally.
In the general case, I can agree that voter fraud being unimpactful is not a reason not to do anything about it. But Trump asserting that he's only going to lose in Pennsylvania due to voter fraud is straight bullshit.
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Canada11607 Posts
On August 26 2016 06:03 GGTeMpLaR wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2016 06:00 TheYango wrote:On August 26 2016 05:51 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
It's getting old hearing 'we shouldn't worry about x crime because it rarely happens' With voter fraud it's not so much that it never happens, but that it never impacts outcomes even if it does happen. Individual votes matter so little to the actual outcomes of the election that the scale on which voter fraud has to happen to have any impact at all is basically impossible through individuals voting more than once. I'll rephrase it "We shouldn't worry about x crime because it rarely happens or when it does happen it has no 'significant' impact"is a poor argument
If the solution is worse than the problem, then it's a fine argument.
Example (and another reason I voted against my party): We had our own voter fraud hoopla up here with the Conservatives getting rid of the third tier identification (vouching). While there were some discrepancies (and boy did they have a hey day with that number) they were pretty much all errors of slight misspellings of names by the volunteers running the voting booths. Whereas it was demonstrable that a significant number of people including First Nations in northerly regions used the vouching system. The solution impacted more people was worse than the problem, which was virtually non-existent.
I'm still mad that our perfectly good three tier method of identifying voters had the bottom safety net cut away. It was one of the few times I wrote to my MP and received a generic reply defending the bill in general, but did not even touch the one and only part of the bill I had actually written about.
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Furthermore, what is he telling his supporters to do on election day could lead to voter intimidation. There are specific rules for observing the voting process and challenging a vote. There are rules about where people can stand. Where the police are allowed to be and when they can become involved. Trump has skipped over the step of explaining that process to his supporters to assure they don’t fuck up and intimidate voters.
Which is pretty standard for Trump, but also super stupid since the version of voter fraud he is talking about is so unlikely. He is risking voters being harassed by his supporters to prevent a crime that will likely never take place.
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This is like listening to people try to justify illegal pirating of digital goods as not being stealing..
The way I see it you should require Voter ID to vote on election day. An electronic system registers your vote so it knows you voted.
The government would provide all citizens with their first ID for free so any complaints about 'defrauding voters' are null and void. Ideally they wouldn't be expensive to replace either.
All problems solved. No one should find this problematic.
Getting to a point where this actually is the functioning system is the only problem.
This is a far better solution than 'oh it doesn't really happen that much and when it does it isn't impactful so let's just ignore it'
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On August 26 2016 06:22 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
This is like listening to people try to justify illegal pirating of digital goods as not being stealing..
The way I see it you should require Voter ID to vote on election day. An electronic system registers your vote so it knows you voted.
The government would provide all citizens with their first ID for free so any complaints about 'defrauding voters' are null and void. Ideally they wouldn't be expensive to replace either.
All problems solved. No one should find this problematic.
Getting to a point where this actually is the functioning system is the only problem.
This is a far better solution than 'oh it doesn't really happen that much and when it does it isn't impactful so let's just ignore it'
And you will find few people here who disagree with this.
The problem is that this is never the system that is sought to be implemented.
Every time it happens ID laws have been struck down not because the premise is wrong. But because the implementation is obviously partisan focused.
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That is fine. They can write laws to require IDs. The courts have ruled that they are fine if written correctly.
All of the laws written by the GOP in the last 2 years violate those guidelines, so they were overturned.
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On August 26 2016 06:22 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
This is a far better solution than 'oh it doesn't really happen that much and when it does it isn't impactful so let's just ignore it'
Again, the only reason the argument of "it isn't impactful" came up is because Trump specifically said it is impactful.
We had the discussion of voter fraud months ago, and we're not reiterating that discussion. This is Trump *specifically saying that voter fraud is actively going to impact an election result*, not just saying that voter fraud is bad and we should do something about it.
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United States44393 Posts
On August 26 2016 06:22 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
This is like listening to people try to justify illegal pirating of digital goods as not being stealing..
The way I see it you should require Voter ID to vote on election day. An electronic system registers your vote so it knows you voted.
The government would provide all citizens with their first ID for free so any complaints about 'defrauding voters' are null and void. Ideally they wouldn't be expensive to replace either.
All problems solved. No one should find this problematic.
Getting to a point where this actually is the functioning system is the only problem.
This is a far better solution than 'oh it doesn't really happen that much and when it does it isn't impactful so let's just ignore it'
I'd be fine with this solution. I just don't think that taking away voting rights when the crime itself has yet to actually have any impact is proportionate. Did you read and understand my lottery ticket metaphor? Do you think Trump telling his supporters to monitor voting is a response to a real fear of rigging? If so how do you reconcile that with the negligible value of any specific vote and the likelihood of rigging, if it takes place, being the miscounting or misreporting of ballots? Given that Trump's solution does nothing to address the problem he claims to be concerned about I think we're forced to doubt either his intelligence or his true motives.
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EPT
