US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3136

On April 06 2021 07:49 Cbole wrote:
But in reading the bill it also allows for the contingency that someone doesn't have a driver's license or state issue identification card. From the bill,

On April 06 2021 08:18 Introvert wrote:


PLus for people who are removed from the rolls there is often the option of casting provisional ballots.

The outright lies over the Georgia law (including by most of the media) is designed to give them to pass the monstrosity that is HR1. The law expanded voting for almost all voters and will, in all probability, no impact on turnout.

And as usual local media is better at this than national media. But Biden is gonna be the same Biden he was decades ago, where he lies with impunity.

Some things were tightened up, but on net no one is being disenfranchised. The biggest complaint of all, long lines, should actually be far less of a problem with this new law. Listening to known liar Biden and Abrams, who still asserts that the 2018 gov race was stolen from her, is a bad idea.

On April 06 2021 08:18 Introvert wrote:


PLus for people who are removed from the rolls there is often the option of casting provisional ballots.

The outright lies over the Georgia law (including by most of the media) is designed to give them to pass the monstrosity that is HR1. The law expanded voting for almost all voters and will, in all probability, no impact on turnout.

And as usual local media is better at this than national media. But Biden is gonna be the same Biden he was decades ago, where he lies with impunity.

Some things were tightened up, but on net no one is being disenfranchised. The biggest complaint of all, long lines, should actually be far less of a problem with this new law. Listening to known liar Biden and Abrams, who still asserts that the 2018 gov race was stolen from her, is a bad idea.

On April 06 2021 08:34 KwarK wrote:

Out of curiousity, do you acknowledge that historically local clerks and registrars in the south have systematically used their roles to disenfranchise African Americans? I say used rather than misused because it was by design and what they were appointed to do.

If yes, do you think that’s all in the past and it’s different this time around?

On April 06 2021 09:07 Cbole wrote:

This much I concede I didn't consider. Purging voter rolls imo should be something done regularly, but the ease of getting back on voter rolls is something I need to look into. If there is a specific hardship for a demographic, that should be targeted in my opinion.

In 1861, as now, the negro was the prominent factor in the issue. . . . And what is it that we want to do? Why it is
within the limits imposed by the Federal Constitution, to establish white supremacy in this State. . . . The justification for
whatever manipulation of the ballot that has occurred in this State has been the menace of negro domination. . . . These
provisions are justified in law and in morals, because it is said that the negro is not discriminated against on account of his
race, but on account of his intellectual and moral condition

On April 06 2021 08:31 farvacola wrote:

This is precisely the kind of duplicitous nonsense that folks have been trotting out alongside voter suppression laws for decades. The notion that a bill that empowers the endemically Republican legislature to do all sorts of discretionary things to election processes is somehow neutral and of little consequence is as laughable as it is disingenuous.

On April 06 2021 08:34 KwarK wrote:

Out of curiousity, do you acknowledge that historically local clerks and registrars in the south have systematically used their roles to disenfranchise African Americans? I say used rather than misused because it was by design and what they were appointed to do.

If yes, do you think that’s all in the past and it’s different this time around?

On April 06 2021 10:13 Introvert wrote:


You and Kwark and both free to point to actual provisions, or analysis from someone who knows what they are talking about, on this one when making the case that this is the "new Jim Crow," as Democrats have ludicrously labeled it.

Shifting a lot of power to the legislature is not everyone's favorite move, but even then it's a long, drawn out process for them to exercise their power.



Of course it's different, and you can, you know, read the law. But "it's Georgia" is of course a bad argument.

Critics are being very vague. Going back to 1901 does not make your argument stronger. Apparently everyone is so sure that this is suppression that they don't even feel the need to demonstrate how. Kind of embarrassing.

On April 06 2021 10:52 Introvert wrote:
Most (if not all) states that require voter ID do offer it for free if you don't have an acceptable form already, including Georgia.

And again, I'd like to point out that the single biggest complaint from Democrats regarding "suppression" in recent years has been long voting lines, which this bill addressed.

On April 06 2021 11:11 KwarK wrote:

If you don’t like the 1901 example because it was so long ago you’re going to be very upset to learn that the racist constitutional provisions they wrote in 1901 are still there after all this time. Things don’t become less relevant over time unless they cease to become relevant. These didn’t.

There is a very long established history of passing voting restrictions that are, on their face, racially neutral but are, in practice, racially biased. This isn’t ancient history, this is ongoing. Those racially biased laws are still being enforced and those that were struck down for being too obvious were reformed and restored. I’m not pointing to the slavery years because, as I’m sure you’d be quick to point out, slavery ended 150 years ago. I’m pointing to the post slavery years of which 2021 is still one.

The main tactic of these laws has always been to erect barriers that disproportionately impact African Americans and to place control over voting in the hands of good old boys with plausible deniability. Literacy tests, character qualifications, land ownership requirements, and so on and so on. This is a very old story that never reached any kind of conclusion. The fact that it started so long ago doesn’t make it less relevant, it makes it more so. If I was accused of murdering someone this year and the prosecution pointed out that I had murdered someone in the exact same way once a year for fifty years I wouldn’t convince anyone that the established pattern for decades didn’t count because it was so long ago. I’m not picking an example from 1901, I’m showing that this shit has been going on year after year in the same way by the same people since 1901. I’m showing that the people currently insisting the present restrictions aren’t racist still defend the 1901 restrictions which were openly racist.

So when a new voting restriction comes along that disproportionately impacts African Americans and the proposed fix to said law places the power to grant relief in the hands of local registrars and clerks I can’t see how this is anything other than the same old shit they’ve done every year since emancipation.

On April 06 2021 11:13 KwarK wrote:

As I noted from personal experience, if the staff at the DMV don’t want to give you an ID you can’t make them.

On April 06 2021 11:19 Introvert wrote:


So far there is no demonstration of disparate impact. You are reduced to accusing individual DMV employees of rejecting applications.



This is sad at this point. Maybe Farv will come up with something, but so far no one is actually able to identify anything they did that is "suppression" so therefore you are going to assert that, say, DMV employees in the majority black counties in Georgia, presumably staffed by many black people, are going to deny IDs on a mass scale. This is conspiracy level stuff.

I'll just say it, if that happens then I will acknowledge you are right, until then I will treat it with heavy skepticism.


edit: the fact that apparently most posters in this thread didn't even know that states offer cards FOR FREE even tho it's been that way for years shows how much people are willing to accept from Democrat politicians without checking a single claim they make, even if it's as ridiculous as saying something is the "new Jim Crow."

On April 06 2021 11:30 KwarK wrote:

You’re making up something I never said to argue against a straw man. Please don’t do that. It’s not clever and it forces me to tell you to stop being an idiot and saying things that an idiot would say.

I didn’t allege there was a conspiracy of self hating Black DMV employees trying to rig the election. You said that. Because you’re saying stupid things.

I said that my experience getting an ID was that it was paywalled and that there were arbitrary barriers that prevented it until I bypassed these by paying extra. Therefore the claim that access is simple and universal is contrary to my lived experience.

I said that groups less likely to have IDs are penalized by this and that those aren’t racially neutral groups. That this is a classic example of a group that isn’t specifically African American but disproportionately contains African Americans.

I said that tying provisional ballots to voter rolls that were routinely purged by local officials is exactly the kind of loophole they’ve always exploited.

Out of curiousity, do you acknowledge that historically local clerks and registrars in the south have systematically used their roles to disenfranchise African Americans? I say used rather than misused because it was by design and what they were appointed to do.

If yes, do you think that’s all in the past and it’s different this time around?

On April 06 2021 12:05 Introvert wrote:


If I have indeed misinterpret you, then I apologize. I was doing something else (as the typos evidenced) When I read



I took the implication to be

1) it's not different

2) therefore, that "local clerks and registrars" (or other people with such power) would be trying to disenfranchise citizens.

Are you saying that you don't think that's a danger? If so, then good.

I think looking at it now I assume you would say that such officials, on the basis of state law, would be compelled to enforce laws that would end up with disproportionately fewer minorities voting. But if I recall from your recollection of your "lived experience," you had the proper documentation, so I really don't see how a moronic bureaucrat is a systemic danger here.

The evidence that ID laws which Georgia has implemented significantly reduce voter participation is scant to non-existent, or to be charitable, "mixed." Your worry, while historically based on things that actually happened, is nowhere demonstrated to be applicable here. One of the reasons the courts have continuously upheld ID requirements is because, when they go searching for people who want to vote but can't, it's almost impossible to find a significant number of them. There's no evidence that different levels of "voting convenience" as they called it ,lower turnout, as the NYT link I provided pointed out. There is no reason to think adding an ID requirement to requesting an absentee in Georgia is going to stop a would-be voter from voting.

Again, getting IDs to vote Is VERY EASY is every state that requires it. If somehow you don't have the means, chances are you aren't voting anyways.


edit: lots of small edits to clarify what I am and am not saying. Also, reducing this to talking about Georgia because I don't have all night.

So in summary

There is no reason to think adding an ID requirement to requesting an absentee in Georgia is going to stop a would-be voter from voting. (This is the only new ID requirement in the law).

Other methods of voting were made easier.

On April 06 2021 12:48 KwarK wrote:

People without IDs are not a group that represents all members of society equally. I think everyone would be agreed on that. There is a disproportionate impact of restricting voters to people who can present an ID, it would hurt the groups I mentioned earlier (children of immigrants, disabled individuals, people living in poverty, racial minorities) more.

I think we can all also agree that there are hurdles to getting IDs that impact different groups differently. If you have a stable living situation it’s much easier than if you’re homeless because proof of residency within the state is often required and homeless people cannot obtain that. It’s not that the DMV are selectively difficult to work with, it’s that some groups are better equipped to defeat their bureaucracy. Those who are less able to are not a racially neutral group because we do not live in a society in which wealth and privilege are evenly distributed.

Hopefully you’re with me this far because I think nothing that I’ve said is controversial. It can be as simple as “getting an ID when you’re homeless is very hard and black people are more likely to be homeless and therefore are more likely to find getting an ID hard”. This can’t easily be fixed because documenting some groups is difficult, instability is a part of their lives.

The plan to mitigate the impact of ID requirements through voter roll verification is an example of the dependence on flawed systems that can be gamed by local officials. For example in December 2019 Georgia mistakenly removed 22,000 voters from its rolls.

https://apnews.com/article/57a6119af18b84c0444532c23c3dc6cb

It had incorrectly identified them as inactive voters but they had voted. These are citizens who, had they shown up without an ID, would not have been covered under the proposed safety mechanism of verifying against the electoral roll. You cannot in good faith argue that there is no risk of disenfranchisement because of the option to be verified against electoral rolls in a state that 15 months ago mistakenly removed thousands of people from those electoral rolls. I would love it if I was able to have faith in the system but, as we can see, it doesn’t work. The safety net being proposed accidentally dropped 22,000 people in the last 2 years. Whether by incompetence or malice, it’s not a good safety net.

I am alleging that there is a historical systematic pattern of making the decision of whether someone votes dependent upon the whims of local bureaucrats. I can get into the various tricks that have been tried over the years and which of them are still in force if you like but you have said you want to keep this current. It is currently hard to get an ID if you are a member of an out group and the people behind this law know that. They don’t need to manually rig the system against Black people, they just need to place the system between Black people and voting and trust in the systemic injustices within society to do the rest.

As for whether undocumented citizens want to vote, I don’t really think that’s relevant for whether they should be allowed to. Voting is the most fundamental right we have and, given the historical context of minorities in America, I strongly disagree with that kind of paternalism. Arguing that the minorities disproportionately impacted by the voting restrictions probably didn’t want to vote anyway is a non starter for me.

On April 06 2021 07:28 KwarK wrote:
When I first came to the US and tried to get a drivers license I printed out the requirements ahead of time from the DMV website, brought in what I needed and expected to get it pretty simply. I ran into the following hurdles.

1) My lease paperwork was 28 days old. The requirement said a lease signed within the last 90 days. The lady told me that it had to be older than 30 days. I showed her their internal requirements and that it just said less than 90. She said that the requirement wasn’t specific about the age but that she knew it was greater than 30. I pointed out that it was specific, it was specifically less than 90, but she wouldn’t take it.

2) My bank statement was deemed unacceptable as proof of address. They hadn’t yet mailed me one because I’d just come to the US so I went to the bank and explained and they were nice enough to print one out for me on bank letterhead paper and put a business card from the branch manager on it. This was not good enough. It had my address at the top, it was a statement of my account, and I got it from the bank but apparently it wasn’t a bank statement showing my address.

3) I was told I needed an authorized translation of my British drivers license so that they could read it. I asked her which language they needed it translated to and she said English. I told her that in England we speak English and asked which part of the license she was unable to read. She pointed at the expiration date which was in DD/MM/YYYY format. However given it was something like 03/04/2016 she couldn’t have known it wasn’t MM/DD/YYYY. In any case I told her those were numerals and that I couldn’t translate those. She wouldn’t accept that explanation. In retrospect I’m lucky I didn’t say they were Arabic numerals, I’d have ended up in Gitmo.

I then drove to a business called MVD Express, gave them the same documents, paid $70, and got my US license. The secret ingredient to getting documented was money.