Even if it were the case that the majority of those people were not racial minorities, why wouldn't you try and make voting as accessible as possible for all people regardless of the circumstances? There is literally no downside to this...
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Serious I hear the U.S. Supreme Court did some things... (with a twist)
- Thread starter capefeather
- Start date
Even if it were the case that the majority of those people were not racial minorities, why wouldn't you try and make voting as accessible as possible for all people regardless of the circumstances? There is literally no downside to this...
On the VRA, I don't like Ginsburg, but this quote of her's sums up my thoughts on it: "Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet."
I mean why? Don't answer that because I read the reasons and still makes no fucking sense.
I mean why? Don't answer that because I read the reasons and still makes no fucking sense.
Well then you should be all the more against laws that curtail the liberties of others.
You can claim to be anything, but it won't make it mean anything.
I actually disagree with the philosophy that more votes is always better. Many of our founding fathers did, too. For example, Thomas Jefferson said that "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." This doesn't mean I have some driving urge to clear all voters who don't watch nightly news from the rolls or want to implement suspect test paragraphs at the polling places but it does mean I care more about potential voter fraud than about the thirty minutes it would take those cleared people to reregister to vote if they even gave one quarter of a shit.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." The VRA ruling is at least justified under the fifteenth amendment, but I'm a little peeved Husted should need to contact Holder about 'seemingly conflicting federal laws' about something that's not even under federal juristiction. I'm a lot more peeved Holder should stonewall Ohio, responding to their queries in order 'nothing,' 'no comment,' and 'no comment.' And since the feds have locked it up, "Even the 70,000 registered voters who have told the U.S. Postal Service they are moving out of state cannot be purged." As someone who already doesn't trust the government, this reeks to me.
(also, from the same article: "The research found: more than 1.8 million dead people listed as voters; about 2.75 million with voter registrations in more than one state; and about 12 million voter records with incorrect addresses, meaning either the voters moved or errors in the information make it unlikely any mailings can reach them." So voter fraud can very easily exist.)
1) You claimed that you believe in the civil liberties of others (which is also one of the cornerstones of the ideology and constitution that your founding fathers championed) yet you are happy to impose restrictions on the liberty of people to vote. These two statements cannot coexist. Unless there is some context to that quote that I don't understand as a non-American then it makes absolutely no sense and I don't understand why you are quoting it. And also given that you didn't actually read the article you posted concerning the clearing of these voters and cim called you out on it, isn't your position about voters not watching the nightly news a little hypocritical?
2) All of point 1 is in specific response to the part of your post that responded to me. Even if you don't accept any of that, given that the point of representative democracy is to represent the people's desires regarding how that country is run, how is it all consistent to have only a portion of that country (generally from specific socio-economic backgrounds (this is a euphemism for: straight white men have an enormously disproportionate say in how your country is run due to the restrictiveness of the election policy)) deciding who gets to make those decisions? Just because you deem them to be comparatively "uninformed" because they don't conform to your particular paradigm doesn't mean they don't have the right to vote and you have no right to judge the validity of that vote based on your own political views.
i find the claim that our election system 'enormously' unduly represents white voters to be laughable. Could you not do some quick googling to find that 18% of voters in 2012 were not white while only 22% of the country is not white? It is true that white males have a disproportionately high level of influence in our or any Western society but don't be accusing the US government of institutionalized racism like this is 1950. I don't know where you live but you're probably just as bad ¬_¬
Now, in response to the point you raised in both of those statements:
I'm not saying that only people who support smaller government are informed (though i do question your sanity if you're trusting the masterminds behind indian reservations and the TSA with your health care) and i'm certainly not saying that we should restrict anyone's access to the vote. I'm responding to your question of "shouldn't I want everyone to vote" by saying that no, I only want informed people to vote, because only informed people can be trusted to keep this country's future safe. this doesn't mean i want the government to enforce some sort of legislation against it—hell, if they did, i'd be in line to protest it because that's tyranny.
Is it really continuing to work? Why do you think so?
Do you realise that you didn't actually respond to either of the arguments I made at all?
^ lol such an edick
ok the argument in the first point was that my statement was wrong because i want to restrict liberties. to which i responded pretty clearly that no, i don't want to restrict your liberty, i just wish people who didn't really care about politics would choose not to exercise it—kind of like how i wouldn't restrict people's liberty to smoke, but i wish they wouldn't exercise it.
the argument in your second was basically calling me a racist (?) or saying i want to block liberals from polling places (?) or whatever else implies i am bigoted to which i responded that i didn't say only people who agreed with me did i consider informed on politics, and i also pretty expressly said that i would be the first to protest if anyone's vote was thrown out for any of those reasons.
i don't see how i failed to address your arguments?
unless you mean your original question of there being "literally no downside" to making the vote as universally accessible as possible, which i thought was pretty clearly the increased potential for voter fraud (the rest of my argument being why that increased potential is more important to me than the votes of a handful of uninformed people).
edit: random point i wanted to bring up a while ago and forgot
the argument in your second was basically calling me a racist (?) or saying i want to block liberals from polling places (?) or whatever else implies i am bigoted to which i responded that i didn't say only people who agreed with me did i consider informed on politics, and i also pretty expressly said that i would be the first to protest if anyone's vote was thrown out for any of those reasons.
i don't see how i failed to address your arguments?
unless you mean your original question of there being "literally no downside" to making the vote as universally accessible as possible, which i thought was pretty clearly the increased potential for voter fraud (the rest of my argument being why that increased potential is more important to me than the votes of a handful of uninformed people).
edit: random point i wanted to bring up a while ago and forgot
i love it when people who don't follow american politics try to opine on american politics!shiruba1000posts said:
Tell me more about these people who allegedly don't care about politics, but who are still standing in line to vote.
well apparently they do exist—we can't clear voter rolls because the people who haven't voted in forever might decide that 2012 is the year they want to start!
i love it when people of the same country are at each others throats for ridiculous reasons and tend to distance themselves in such huge ways that it's like they're on opposite sides of the planet, yet i'm not allowed to comment on that. i also love it when i'm not allowed to make an observation about a country that shoves its politics in the face of the world so much that half of the time we know what is going on in the US better than what is going on in our own countries.
i mean japan has an action figure of obama for god's sake.
but then again it's japan.
still, he looks like he's ready to cut some serious taxes.
Did you check out that Australian shitstorm? You'd love the shit out of that man.
Wouldn't it be a better plan then to help voters become more informed instead of any other alternative given all of the benefits that a large, informed voting base has?
This point was not about that though, rather the effects that such legislation (such as voter fraud legislation etc.) has on stopping certain groups from voting.
No the second point was about the importance of democratic representation and why it is probably better to have the government held more accountable to more people (see also why we should keep voters more informed).
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.policymic.com/articles/6...-rarer-than-the-odds-of-winning-mega-millions
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt7zgg1
Voter fraud is virtually non-existent and any claims to the contrary are generally lies that attempt to make it much more difficult for certain racial / age / political groups to vote. I also think it is disingenuous of you to say that making the vote more accessible would open the door to voter fraud - obviously making the vote more accessible doesn't mean letting people randomly walk into voting stations and cast whatever ballot they want. Given that in Australia literally 100% of the population votes and voter fraud also isn't a problem there are obviously systems that work to counter the potential for electoral / voter fraud that are actually effective...
Hi I'm a registered voter. I actually despise politics and am not too informed most of the time. I do not care about voting but I did vote in the presidential election just because my parents encouraged me to do so.
That's all I have to say in this thread because I saw this while lurking.
You're still a political agent, and regardless of whether you "care" about the electoral process, the activities you engage in (the jobs you hold, the subjects you study, where you spend your money) and the way you approach society have political consequences. Voting is merely the most tangible interaction you have with politics in your society. That you "despise" politics says something about the political system you live in, it's an implicit critique of that system in some sense. Everyone participates in politics, we are inundated in the political structures that we live in. This is my response from my theoretical understanding of what politics consists of.
Pwnemon proposed that people who don't care about politics (which he defined as people who haven't voted "in forever") should be discarded in attempts to keep the registry up to date to prevent voter fraud and my point is basically that there is no way of identifying these people before they choose not to vote. If you hadn't voted in your last election because of your disinterest, you would be indistinguishable from someone who really cared about the political process, but had to work/family emergency/w.e that kept him from voting. It is impossible to know why a very large group of people behaves the way they do for the purposes of passing legislation. This is my tangible, pragmatic, material response.