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You're cute if you think that the Retardicans haven't investigated the shit out whatever they could. They absolutely did not find anywhere near the 2016 difference of almost three million votes, not by multiple orders of magnitude.

You're cute if you think that the Retardicans haven't investigated the shit out whatever they could. They absolutely did not find anywhere near the 2016 difference of almost three million votes, not by multiple orders of magnitude.

Is this a thing? My state has no online voter registration. To register I needed to visit the town clerk in person and fill out the registration form. This is a one-time activity.

I found that 38 states have online voter registration. https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/voter-registration-modernization-states I would support the automatic voter registration referred in this link, however that is unlikely to happen where I live for some time given the various databases are unlinked.

They enjoy the extra votes from illegal immigrants to much.

Yeah. The both of them.

Come on, man. This one isn't even difficult to rebut.

Abortion doctors are contentious, so they must be making obscene profits?

Here's some suggested reading to help you with your problem.

It's ALL of those people's fault that I got busted for shoplifting, or selling crack, or whatever.

Let us know how awesome it is when it's your dumb ass in the slammer due to the actions of corrupt cops or prosecutors.

I don't know which Harvard study you're talking about, so I did a search for 'in-person voter fraud peer-reviewed study'. These were the first two links from Duck Duck Go:

But a look at the facts makes clear fraud is vanishingly rare, and does not happen on a scale even close to that necessary to “rig” an election.

In-person voter fraud ‘a very rare phenomenon’

That first link has many links of its own, to papers from NYU, Columbia University, Arizona State, etc. Nothing from Harvard though.

I appreciate your willingness to accommodate my distaste for video references, but I don't see how recordings of shenanigans are supposed to demonstrate anything. If you show me an hour's worth of video showing people committing fraud, and I show you nine hours of people voting without fraud, does that mean that 10% of votes are fraudulent? No. What If I show you ninety nine hours, does that mean it's 1%? No. So what have we actually demonstrated here? Nothing, it's just anecdote.

That's what the studies are for. If you see an event, you can't just assume that event is commonplace. That's something you have to measure, and that takes work.

How would spending millions of dollars running for president and thrust in the political lime light to be alienated by friends, donors, business associates, and politicians be in any way a winning strategy for getting richer? Have you thought this through at all?

Yes. Have you?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/08/11/amid-all-the-craziness-dont-forget-trump-is-using-the-presidency-to-enrich-his-family

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-07/the-art-of-the-trump-enrichment-program

https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/trump-already-profiting-2020-campaign

Trump's 2020 campaign has already paid $395,000 for space in New York’s pricey Trump Tower, ensuring the president and his family will profit.

From this: https://www.brennancenter.org/...

"At a statewide level, Wisconsin is a quintessential battleground where races are often decided by only a few percentage points. Contrast that to the state assembly map the Republicans drew: In 2012, they won 60 of the 99 seats in the Wisconsin Assembly despite winning only 48.6% of the two-party state-wide vote; in 2014, they won 63 seats with only 52% of the state-wide vote."

Don't get me wrong, this is not a partisan issue as both sides have historically tried to use gerrymandering to influence elections, it is just that lately the Republicans have been particularly aggressive and good at it.

Um...no, considering that there's no evidence that voter fraud is significant.

https://www.brennancenter.org/...

Admit it: you're just an elitist/racist who doesn't want poor/brown people to be able to vote.

According to the decision it wasn't just robbery:

At his signal, the robbers entered the store, brandished their guns, herded customers and employees to the back, and ordered the employees to fill the robbersâ(TM) bags with new smartphones.

There's a world of difference between shoplifting or even smashing a window and stealing phones after closing and an armed robbery where you put a gun to the face of some poor clerk. In the former cases, I would probably be inclined to leniency and rehabilitation (at least for the first 8 offenses) because they are crimes that don't involve direct violence against another human being.

I would also be inclined to leniency if this was a one-time offense or something else indicating a particular lapse of judgment or other thing. Instead, the record shows this was a string of similar, premeditated robberies in which the perps carefully planned and prepared, divided up the tasks and made arrangements to destroy the evidence and sell the stolen goods.

I would also be inclined to leniency if the individual was a bit player who was recruited to the scheme by others. This is especially true of those with mental handicaps, who are often pressured or duped into the worst roles in a criminal scheme. They are also the ones most often turned-against by co-conspirators who will be willing to assign them the blame for the worst in exchange for a lenient plea. Instead, the record shows that Carpenter was the ringleader of the criminal enterprise.

So yeah, the leader of a criminal group that repeatedly and violently assaulted innocent people with a firearm in the course of robbing them? This is not the case that I would push for as far as leniency.

[ Of course, I can see the government losing their case because they illegally relied on cell site evidence without a warrant. But that's not the issue at sentencing. ]

Small, but nonzero, even within a single American state. Several months ago I became curious about whether the incidence of First/Middle/Last name matching exactly was more or less common than First/Last name and exact birthdate. I found myself reading an interesting analysis of "duplicate" voter records in New Jersey. From one section:

Applying the “Birthday Problem” to voter registration lists is fairly straightforward. By including the year (and thus the full birth date), the statistics change somewhat, but the threshold is still surprisingly small to many: given some reasonable assumptions about the average lifespan, the probability that at least two of 150 people have the same exact birth date – day, month, and year – is 50%. And in a group of 300 people, the probability that two share a birth date match is approximately 90%.

Imagine that our group contains all of the registered New Jersey voters with a
given first name and last name – such as all of the 417 Robert Smiths who are listed on New Jersey records as voting in 2004. The probability that at least two of these 417 individuals have the same birth date – day, month, and year – approaches 100%. The fact that two Robert Smiths with the same birthday voted in 2004 thus indicates not voter fraud, but a straightforward application of the “Birthday Problem.”

Indeed, the probabilities above likely underestimate the chance that a group of voting Robert Smiths share the same birth date, because the above calculations assume that birthdays are randomly distributed when, in fact, they are not. Certain given names are more common in certain years (it would be unsurprising to find two Jessica Smiths born on the same day in 1985, or Lisa Smiths in 1965, or Mildred Smiths in 1925). Likewise, the prevalence of surnames will fluctuate with the immigration patterns of particular ethnicities, which vary from decade to decade. Because older individuals vote at higher rates than younger people, too, we would expect a clustering of voting “Robert Smiths” weighted toward years past. Finally, birth dates themselves are not evenly distributed, as obstetricians are more likely to induce labor during the work week.

Jaywalking in NYC is rarely prosecuted therefore jaywalking in NYC isn't a problem.

Yeah... You're talking about "the Heritage Foundations's" lament that there are more than 1000 convictions. But notice that sums up ALL the past elections in the "last few years". In CO, the oldest is in 2005. So... 1000 convictions over a decade+ of election is... wait for it... "~an incident rate between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent". That's not convictions, that's suspicions as well. 0.0025% of the votes did not affect elections. As much as it galls me, Trump won that election because enough people in the right states voted for him.

Election tampering has happened for generations (Vote Early. Vote Often.) But you think it doesn't occur anymore?

Slavery happened for generations too. We've gotten better.

Are you concerned about who makes voting machines? How they're counted?

Yes, introducing new procedues opens the door for new vectors. As a conservative, you should be on board with this. New things are scary. Old ways are tried and true. While we are more than technically advanced enough to have online voting (or even electronic voting), the people in charge are laughably bad at technical implementations.

Then you ought to be also concerned about who votes. It's simple.

Sure. And it is federally illegal to commit that fraud and the safeguards we have against it APPEAR TO BE WORKING. In a similar fashion, planes running into each other is a serious concern, but we have a system in place to keep that from happening and so far no one is trying to get all the air-traffic controllers fired because they're killing thousands every year. Because they aren't.

Present a state issued ID in order to vote. Are you worried about poor people? Then make these IDs free.

I'd be down for that. But try to give anything away for free and the republicans will choke you out and whine a storm about how it will cost them the price of 1/8th of a new fighter jet that they could have bought with that money. And trying to standardize anything into a natitonal ID gets them screaming about state's rights. And I honestly agree with them there, it's a power play by the feds that they don't have the authority for. I'm not a huge fan of having to have papers to exist. Papers, papers please... papers. If you wanted to go full dystopian hellscape, we might as well use the off-the-books database of biometrics and facial recognition that the FBI, CIA, and NSA all have likely built up in parallel.

Umm I think you might want to do a little reading before just discounting him like that. Heritage Foundation goes on and on about massive voter fraud, and was the driving force behind establishing the ridiculous Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

They claimed 1100 cases of fraud based on their research, yet that number is highly deceptive at best, and more frankly not true. Their own research: https://www.brennancenter.org/... makes their claims look ridiculous, and in fact makes a very strong case for the opposite of their claims of massive fraud.

Per the numbers from their own database, the 1100 is actually just a worst case scenario, possibly fraudulent cases. But if you actually look at the numbers, it's nowhere close to as bad as they claim. Just a just a couple highlights:
1. They looked at votes going back at least to 1948, only 105 possible instances were in the past 5 years.
Just 10 in person impersonations out of BILLIONS of votes examined.
And for Trumps claim of OMG MILLIONS of illegals voting to STEAL the popular vote from him? 41 cases, again, out of billions.

So yeah, when a private organization essentially gets to create a government commission and uses spin and deception to paint a far more dire situation than their own research suggests, I think it's fair to suspect they may have ulterior motives.

Whenever I see "analysis" like this, I always question the matching criteria. Quite often it is naive and not validated.

If you use first name, last name and birth date you can produce THOUSANDS of _false_ matches. Throw in the address, maybe a few hundred. But then if the address is not correct on either side, you miss the match.

A good brief: http://www.brennancenter.org/a...

11 counties have more voters registered than people.

11? Man, that's terrible. Out of over 3000, there are 11, with registration greater than the number of people.

Heavens no. In our highly mobile society, people like Jared Kushner, Tiffany Trump, and Steve Bannon, can't keep their voter registration up to date! The horrors! And it's not even a crime!

LA alone is at 144% of people register vs actual population but they haven't cleaned the lists.

What are you talking about? The county says they have 4.3 million registered voters, and the Census says the County's population is over 10 million.

That's not tracking with your claims. Where do you get your numbers from?

This alone doesn't mean there was voter fraud but increases the chances there actually is significant amount of voter fraud in CA, but CA doesn't want anyone to check.

And Trump's voter commission chair has a history of lying and evasion.

Not only that, states have a history of failing in voter purges. And yes, that is evidence of illegality. Criminal behavior to suppress the vote.

The otter convient fact is that the voter roles are being looked into because there are wide scale voter fraud.

When Kobach was Kansas Secretary of State, he made ferreting out voter fraud a centerpiece of his administration and conducted a two-year investigation. He found nine cases, mostly older Republicans.

http://www.politico.com/magazi...

There is no wide scale voter fraud. It doesn't exist.

https://www.brennancenter.org/...

The Democrat party should have exited autopsy mode already: After all, the principal actor has declared it's not her fault.

And she's right. There's really little in the way of fault on Hillary Clinton, the election turned on a centuries old mechanism that is flawed and broken, for anyone living to be at fault, they'd have had to have a time machine. At most, you can regret not fixing it, but it isn't like they didn't try.

Sure, you can say Hillary could have done things differently, including attacking Trump more effectively in the debates, as like Obama in 2012, she seem ill-prepared for that avenue, and let's face it,

The problem isn't they got it wrong, but their entire machinery got (so) much wrong.

Not really, the problem is the election machinery is so wrong. Just check out the gerrymandering lawsuits for the documented flaws, not to mention the whole Voter ID issue. Notice how badly Trump's "election commission" has handled things. Trump even picked Kris Kobach to lead it. Kris Kobach.

There's no point going to work with broken tools so the Democrats need to change, but what and how?

Do they? Things have already changed for them. They're the clear opposition party now. Now it's the GOP's burden to govern up and down the line. And they haven't. They've failed.

They don't have time to reflect upon themselves, yet failure to do so will guarantee another defeat.

Actually, introspection and navel-gazing is likely to lead to actions that cause a defeat. Instead, look outside and see what happened. And what keeps happening.

One solution is to pick a point in the machination as a critical failure (such as dumping a strong contender; Sanders) and do it differently next time.

Sanders was an outsider, and weak, you just don't know it because he never was in the position of exposure.

That said, a more viable VP candidate might have helped. Tim Kaine was just too boring.

Successful voter fraud isn't detected.

That's a brilliant self-perpetuating delusion, worthy of the best conspiracy theorists. If a voter-fraud study turns up no evidence, it's not because there's no voter fraud, it's because the fraudsters are too good at it! And there are millions of them! Millions, I say!

You can't state that it's rare or a "minuscule" problem without at least a basic investigation into the votes cast and counted.

Well, you have a point there. Oh wait, you don't:

https://www.brennancenter.org/...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://www.politifact.com/flor...
http://www.scholarsstrategynet...
http://fortune.com/2016/10/18/...
http://www.projectvote.org/blo...

[Ignoring the remainder of your speculative, strawman-filled, fact-challenged rant.]

It isn't about citizens proving anything.

Check out the process for getting ID. You do need to prove it.

It is about preventing those without the right to vote from voting and altering elections.

Really, and what will do you if you find out that that is not happening?

Should we just trust everyone who shows up to vote? Really?

Should we deny anybody the right to vote, just because some government bureaucrat isn't satisfied with the paperwork?

A govt photo ID is the cheapest way I know to do that which still actually works well enough.

And denying people their legitimate right to vote is working well enough to you?

In the USA, probably 95% of all adults have a drivers license.

Nope

Where I live, you can get a govt photo ID for free if you are low income and don't have a DL.

I don't have a better idea than that. Do you?

Recognizing that states across the land have been found to have deliberately chosen to make it harder to get ID?

Recognizing that states across the land have been found to have deliberately targeted racial bias for the ID they found acceptable?

All of those would be pretty good ideas, wouldn't they?

Here's my idea: If the states don't think the people registered to vote are legitimate, they prove it. The state's governor can visit every single person in the state and ask them who they are.

What, is he too busy?

Brennen Center, Washington Post, Atlantic, Mother Jones, UCSD, UW, Cornell, Cambridge. There is a mix a academic original research and easily accessible, but thoughtful articles in that list.

We have no measurements at all on what any sort of fake news could of did. You cannot compare a nebulous quantity like this.

Hmm, I suspect that advertisers would disagree with you. They spent lots of money, they want results. You may not trust them, but they do have measurements.

While we have real studies on the likely number of illegals who voted. Studies that show the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands to millions.

Oh really, and you can cite these studies? Sean Spicer couldn't. And I can find other reports that say numbers such as you and Trump claim are bogus.

Sorry, but actual prosecutions are so low, that you have to ask, if your allegations were true, why isn't anybody being charged? You know that does include Trump voters.

I'll believe you care when you get that woman charged. Absent that, I'll believe you don't even care.

Meanwhile, half of the votes in the recounts we did, in Hillary majority districts, could not even be recounted because of problems.

And these problems were? How many Trump votes were included? You know what I noticed about Michigan though?

2,279,543(DT) 2,268,839(HC)
2,564,569(BO) 2,115,256(MR)
2,872,579(BO) 2,048,639(JM)
2,479,183(JK) 2,313,746(GWB)

Hmm. Something odd about how the vote dropped precipitously in 2016. Perhaps you should explain that, instead of chasing a dubious phantom that is ENTIRELY the responsibility of the Republican state government. Because they could have improved the voting systems if they wanted, they could have managed any errors. Mysteriously, they instead chose to gerrymander the state.

And while I suspect you don't want to admit it, if you believe there are indeed millions of unlawful voters, the you can't trust ANY election returns, there are no legally elected officials anywhere.

That means we have an illegitimate government. At all levels. Federal, state, and local.

Good luck calling for all of them to be removed.

I doubt you have the integrity to try.

I don't think you're being honest. I can't think of a state that requires anything definitive.

You must be dishonest, so dishonest, you don't think anybody has heard of Voter ID.

Somehow that's racist. Black people they tell us can't either get an ID or they can't be trusted to have it on election day. I'd think they're the racist ones saying black people are so stupid and irresponsible, however somehow it's not.

Nothing racist about saying that IDs are deliberately made hard to get for many people, due to mysteriously shutting down locations, only opening them at certain hours, and other effects.

Maybe it's just the black people that are also Democrats, which seems consistent.

Yep, that's what happened in North Carolina.

I have a voter reg card, I've never been asked for it nor any other identification in the 30+ years I've been voting. Not once. I've lived in three different counties. Same thing.

Counties are not states. See

Here are the dead voting - http://watchdog.org/57643/md-d...

Then you read the article, and it says:

"At least two dead voters showed up to vote at least once in a Maryland general election between 2004 and 2008, according to a voter registration watchdog group that has reviewed thousands of voter records this year, 1 percent of the rolls in the largest counties."

According to them. But...

"The group – Election Integrity Maryland – filed a complaint with the State Board of Elections Aug. 30. The group said it found several potential dead voters, voters who registered after they had died and a living Maryland resident who has been voting twice in elections for years."

But potential is the key word.

Here's another article:

Which says other things.

http://articles.baltimoresun.c... - in this case they were able to prove in court a lot of dead people voted. The Democratic judge didn't care. He didn't invalidate the results even though it's clear the ballot box was stuffed and Sourbrey lost by less than 6000 votes.

No, they weren't able to make that proof.

Again, from your own article:

"But others, including city elections administrator Barbara Jackson, said incorrect registrations are common in Baltimore and not necessarily evidence of fraud. Many people fail to notify the election board when they move and continue to vote from their old address, she said."

"The Sun did locate one voter identified by the Sauerbrey campaign, Ora L. Lewis, who listed 913 Whitelock St., a building that was razed several months ago, as her home address on her voter registratio

Obama misunderstood the question because of the host's incorrect use of the word "citizen". If you listen to what he says it's clear.

Oh piss off. Questions like this aren't even unscripted, that was as scripted of an interview as you can get. Not only did Obama know the questions beforehand, the people surrounding him did as well.

Even if it was scripted, the host clearly fumbled the question. Like, I don't see how there could possibly be any dispute about that. So if it was scripted then that explains it even better, as Obama was answering the slightly different (scripted) version of the question instead of what was actually asked.

And they can't. Only Citizens can vote, you have to be a Citizen to get on the voter roles in the first place and they always check the voter roles.

Sure explains those cases of illegals voting multiple times doesn't it? Sure explains all those times the democrats are against voter ID laws doesn't it. "Only citizens can vote" and the only way you can tell who's a citizen is with voter ID laws, and ensuring that those voter rolls are accurate. Keep in mind that multiple elections have been lost with a hundred votes or less.

Evidence please? All the actual evidence shows that in-person voter fraud does not really happen.
https://www.brennancenter.org/...

The only form of voter fraud that voter ID laws could possibly prevent, is to prevent someone from showing up and giving a false name and address. That's the whole idea, because your picture and name and address would be on the ID. The ID does not tell you who is a citizen and who is not any more than the voter role does, it merely confirms that you are who you say you are. So to commit that fraud right now a non-citizen would have to walk up and give the name and address of a citizen, and vote under that name. Not only would that already be doubly-illegal, but it's also easily detectable, as when the actual real citizen goes to vote they'll be flagged for voting twice and an investigation will ensue.

Democrats tend to oppose Voter ID first of all because if you're charging for the IDs then that is essentially a poll tax, which is blatantly unconstitutional (24th Amendment). No one should have to pay to vote; the right extends to all citizens, regardless of how poor. They also tend to oppose Voter ID because it's typically a blatant attempt by Republicans to suppress the vote of people who don't already have Driver's Licences (usually poor and Democratic, typically also a minority), not to solve any actual real fraud problems.

Then you have not been paying attention for the last 60 years.

Every single election, the democrats trot out their army of race-baiters to gin up energy in their base. Every single election they allege "voter suppression" efforts are keeping minorities from the polls. Every election year any traffic accident or road construction in a minority neighborhood is touted as a Republican conspiracy to suppress the minority vote.

They just use different language. Instead of "rigged", use the words "voter suppression". Here's Huffpo from the 2012 cycle with a top ten list. Here's the Brennan Center from 2008. Here's the Daily Kos covering 2000-2006.

So no, there is no partisan ownership of "rigged election" or "voter fraud". Both parties are fully willing to use this sort of rhetoric to gin up their base. Both parties are perfectly willing to use whatever tool they can grab to gain an upper hand. If that means getting people all riled up about stolen elections, then so be it. If that means falsely accusing people of racism, well, this ain't softball, kid.

And no, talking about rigging elections isn't exclusively tinfoil hat conspiracy theory nuttery. Many serious historians will opine that the election of JFK over Nixon was due to a few fraudulent precincts. Here's a sample from the Wiki, just to appease those who like to ask for citations

Kennedy won Illinois by less than 9,000 votes out of 4.75 million cast, or a margin of 0.2%.[43] However, Nixon carried 92 of the state's 101 counties, and Kennedy's victory in Illinois came from the city of Chicago, where Mayor Richard J. Daley held back much of Chicago's vote until the late morning hours of November 9. The efforts of Daley and the powerful Chicago Democratic organization gave Kennedy an extraordinary Cook County victory margin of 450,000 votes—more than 10% of Chicago's 1960 population of 3.55 million,[49] although Cook County also includes many suburbs outside of Chicago's borders—thus barely overcoming the heavy Republican vote in the rest of Illinois. Earl Mazo, a reporter for the pro-Nixon New York Herald Tribune, investigated the voting in Chicago and "claimed to have discovered sufficient evidence of vote fraud to prove that the state was stolen for Kennedy."[43]

So allegations of rigged elections and voter fraud go back as far as democracy, I'd suppose. And no, it isn't just people on the other team who claim such things.

I can get a US drivers license in 40 minutes from the DMV in Florida no less. I should know, a few years ago I had my wallet stolen and all my ID. The only things I had were a Florida bill for my phone and a bill from Ontario(not with my current address)--NO picture ID, I walked in and had the entire thing done the same day, temporary full permit done and got a full FL permit in a week.

That was actually faster then getting my ID replaced in Ontario, including the affirmation under oath I needed at the police service for various replacement ID. The 3 week wait and dickering to get my OHIP card replaced, the 2mo wait for replacement credit cards.

A few years ago? Not today? Oh my. A lot can change in a year. And you hadan existing ID somewhere (perhaps Florida itself?), which meant you were in the database, rather than having to start from nothing. Your experiences may have been all fine and dandy, doesn't mean everybody else gets along with it. Some have real problems.

Here is a review of the problems others have had

Look, here's the question you have to answer: Is it a bad thing if someone cannot vote due to the burden placed on them due to the government?

Think and consider what it means.

Then ask yourself why the GOP would do what they've done, and whether you'd allow it. Be honest. Do you think it's a good thing that they're allowed to use the strictures of government to shape the electorate? Or should that be avoided?

But ok, let's say you have an honest interest in Voter ID. You genuinely believe in it. Then what you have to do is commit to one thing. The obligation has to be the state's. It has to provide ID. If nothing else, make them put a camera with a printer at the ballot box.

Have you considered listening to what the big bad Democrats are saying,

Yes, I have. They are liars and cheaters, and I don't believe anything they say, unless it is proven true. Same for Republicans.

In that case, one wonders at your ability to honestly listen to what they are saying, let alone represent it accurately.

1. Minority voters are disproportionately unlikely to have an existing photo ID (say, a driver's license.)

This is fucking racist. There is absolutely no evidence that this exists.

Except, you know, the actual evidence.

And that is not the argument when "free government issued ID" is included in the Voter ID laws. There is NO ability loss just because skin color. The fact that you're making excuses as to why skin color actually matters in getting a photo ID (often Free, low cost), when so many other government services and purchasing things like alcohol, opening a bank account, getting welfare, having a job ... all requires a photo ID. You're basically saying that skin color matters in ABILITY (and without proof, I might add) .. which is patently racist at face value. You are so blinded you can't even see how your view of Race is remarkably ... sad.

Oh my, are you confused, and think that it's individual ability that matters? You should know by now that it's about the purpose of the Voter ID law. Which is to restrict voter's to those desired by Republicans.

2. Once enacted, states with Voter ID laws have a habit of erecting roadblocks to make it harder to get them if you live in areas with high minority populations. For example, closing offices that issue driver's licenses.

Strawman and slippery slope fallacy. And Racist. You're making the case that Government is racist (I wouldn't disagree), is an excuse to continue racism in other forms.

Oh no, you're the one making that excuse, since you want to perpetuate these voter ID laws.

And You have no facts to actually back up this claim, because there are no Voter ID laws that are actually valid, since "black people are not capable of getting IDs to vote" (See racist point #1)

That is what this judicial ruling said. Because as already noted, it is illegal to impose a disparate burden.

3. If you've never had ID, it can be - depending on your situation - difficult to meet the criteria for obtaining ID, requiring the gathering of paperwork that most people don't actually keep, and in some cases is - in practice - impossible to obtain.

Bullshit. And fucking Racist. It is so easy to get Voter approved ID, that Illegal immigrants without any form of ID can get Driver's Licenses in many many states. You're saying that a Hispanic person ("undocumented worker") is more capable of getting ID than a black person, do you realize how fucking racist that is?

The fact is, you're making excuses for people based solely upon the color of their skin, and don't even realize how fucking racist that actually comes across when someone actually questions your motivations.

Oh no, you'll find that states which issue such licenses do not correlate with the Voter ID states very well. But even then, as you can see, they also require documentation. Just not for citizenship.

Yes, I believe you're unintentionally racist because you think your

https://www.brennancenter.org/...

Do a little searching of the news. You should find references that there are at least 850 registered voters over 150 in New York City.

You mean like this?

s vote fraud common in American politics? Not according to United States District Judge Lynn Adelman, who examined the evidence from Wisconsin and ruled in late April that “virtually no voter impersonation occurs” in the state and that “no evidence suggests that voter-impersonation fraud will become a problem at any time in the foreseeable future.”

Or this?

The Brennan Center’s ongoing examination of voter fraud claims reveal that voter fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is nearly non-existent, and much of the problems associated with alleged fraud in elections relates to unintentional mistakes by voters or election administrators.

Or this?

Investigators tell the paper they don't consider the discrepancy fraudulent; the number of votes attributed to deceased voters is too small and their votes are spread out over more than two dozen elections.

County elections commissioner Bill Biamonte said simple clerical errors make it seem as if the dead are voting. For example, a person voting could accidentally sign their name next to a dead person's name rather than their own in a poll registry book.

In several pages' worth of "ny voter fraud" results on Google, the only ones describing anything like what you describe were shamelessly partisan articles on sites regularly described as "right wing echo chambers" (e.g. Fox News, NY Post, Breitbart, National Review, redstate.com, etc.).

Because I should believe "Ungrounded Lightning"'s facially implausible anecdote about an "illegal immigrant" bragging with hostile neighbors about his crimes that could get him 30 years in prison over Justin Levitt's professional, multi-year research project studying the issue.

Critical thinking indeed.

I was just about to post something similar. The full PDF report implies that all this we see in the USA now was brought about by the events of 11 Sep 2001. I believe this is disingenuous since it artificially ties surveillance to terrorism. By making even a slight connection, people would tend to approve of the situation, even if tacitly.

It's true that the Department of Homeland Security was created after the attacks, however we would be lying to ourselves if we were to believe the machine was not already in place, and used terrorism as an excuse to launch it full-scale.

Oh really?

Top Civil Rights Groups Join Challenge to NSA Spying

New York, NY Today, the NAACP and five other leading civil rights organizations joined the growing challenge to the Administrations illegal National Security Agency spying program.

Due you want your crow hot or cold?

The NSA has been monitoring HAM radio since at least the 1970's. Here's a mention of this from yesterday: http://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/crisis-fear-have-driven-us-national-security-state. I suppose you could speak in code, but it is unlikely that they would be unable to break a code that a human could speak and understand. They can probably at least tell which repeater or autopatch you are near. And whether they can track you down or not, it is conceivable that your verbal communications would be processed into something understandable more rapidly than an AES-256 message.

The people saying this is justified to combat voter fraud seem especially ridiculous here on slashdot, which theoretically is a bastion of scientific skepticism and empiricism, when there is absolutely no evidence at all for it being anything more than a tiny fraction of a percent of votes. It's a scare tactic used by authoritarians to drum up support for antidemocratic measures such as this. It's extremely depressing to see a site like this use anecdotal "well I saw plenty of people spoofing votes, trust me" as somehow equal to actual evidence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
http://www.thestate.com/2012/02/23/2164540/state-election-commission-finds.html#.UF4CX1H5DZQ
http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20120524/APC010405/305240040/Recall-Roundup-Numbers-don-t-support-fraud-fears-story-video-?nclick_check=1
http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/policy_brief_on_the_truth_about_voter_fraud/
http://www.salon.com/2008/04/28/scotus_2/

Show me a case of a liberal judge making a similar "cross-party-line" decision on a major piece of legislation.

That's an easy one.

Because:
- You have to get to a government office to obtain the free ID
- Many government offices have reduced hours, particularly in poor / rural areas (which have the largest concentrations of voters who would need IDs)
- The cost to obtain the documentation needed to get the free ID can be prohibitive (birth certificate, marriage license, passport, etc)

Let's pretend you are a married woman living near Sauk City, Wisconsin. Maybe you work 8-5 at a diner to help make ends meet. Want to get your free ID? No problem!
- Just show up between 8:15am-4:15pm on the 5th Wed of the month
- Bring a certified birth certificate (don't have one? It's only $20, and takes about a month via mail.)
- And bring a certified marriage license (because of your name change) Another $20, and one month to process via mail.

So yeah, not a burden on the poor at all.

See: http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/policy_brief_on_the_truth_about_voter_fraud/

The justice department could not find a single verified case of voter fraud during the G.W.Bush administration, so one can only conclude that it is very rare. On the other hand putting an extra roadblock in the way of voters will cause some voters to decide to stay home. No matter that the IDs will be provided for free (as required by 24th amendment), even a small burden will cause some voters to not vote.

So given that voter fraud is rare, and that the people most likely to find these new ID laws a hassle will be poor people, and poor people tend to lean towards Democrats, and because Republicans are so gung-ho over getting these laws passed and seem ecstatic when another one passes, and because Pennsylvania state senator Mike Turzai stated that the voter id law was going to help Romney win in Pennsylvania... I can only conclude that the primary reason for these laws is to disenfranchise voters. Turzai goofed by revealing one of the motives for this bill.

Of course another big motive is that so many Republicans firmly believe the myth that the elections keep being stolen by Democrats, that illegal immigrants are voting, etc, that any reasonably smart politician knows that they can get make conservative voters happy by supporting these sorts of bills. Even if the politicians think the bills will do neither harm nor good they will support them in order to get votes even though they end up being a big expense to the states.

And I am not a democrat or a republican, I am not a member of any political party. But I can not help but be cynical here.

Well.. there is a nice system in the USA for fixing that without killing, that many, people.....

1. Create a police-state where everyone is afraid of the police. Especially the 'non-wanted groups'.

2. Erode the Judicial system and allow even more corrupt people to control it.
http://boingboing.net/2009/02/02/judges-jailed-for-ta.html
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2010/03/house-impeaches-bribed-fed-judge/
http://medicolegal.tripod.com/govtcrime.htm
http://www.judiciaryreport.com/bribing_a_judge.htm

3. Convince people that taking a plea is in their best interest since otherwise they might face much harder punishments.. Even if they are innocent.. Thereby reducing the number of votes from non-wanted groups.
http://www.brennancenter.org/content/section/category/voting_after_criminal_conviction/ (~5 million not allowed to vote!)

With a voter turnout of only 57% during presidential election years and 38% rest of the years it's quite easy to start influencing where it all will go.... Especially since lower-income families usually have a much higher rate of crime, and also a higher rate of taking pleas since they cannot afford lawyers..

Ie what's been happening is that the power to influence the country is shifting upwards towards where the money is...

There are a few things a country never should be able to remove from a person.
- The right to vote.
- The right to privacy.
- The rights to a fair trial. Without the need of having money for a lawyer.
- The right to education for all children.

Individual voter fraud is extremely rare. The sort of fraud that would be prevented by photo ID is almost nonexistent. On the other hand, the requirement to obtain a photo ID excludes a nontrivial percentage of the population, and creates an additional burden that falls disproportionately on poor and/or nonwhite voters. Voters who usually vote democratic, making this a partisan issue.

Much more likely than fraud by individuals is a systematic effort to exclude voters unlikely to vote for your party, and the usage of methods to purge legitimate voters from the rolls, add additional hurdles (the modern poll test), or gerrymander districts so voting doesn't work at all.

It's not a "special interest" to want democracy to work for everyone, not just the well off.

Individual voter fraud is extremely rare. The sort of fraud that would be prevented by photo ID is almost nonexistent. On the other hand, the requirement to obtain a photo ID excludes a nontrivial percentage of the population, and creates an additional burden that falls disproportionately on poor and/or nonwhite voters. Voters who usually vote democratic, making this a partisan issue.

Much more likely than fraud by individuals is a systematic effort to exclude voters unlikely to vote for your party, and the usage of methods to purge legitimate voters from the rolls, add additional hurdles (the modern poll test), or gerrymander districts so voting doesn't work at all.

It's not a "special interest" to want democracy to work for everyone, not just the well off.

Reasoning: Because, at the maximum ever recorded in a modern election, about 100 people or about .005% of voters in an election are convicted of casting fraudulent ballots, we should keep about 11% of people who are entitled to cast a vote from making one.

And we aren't even getting into why we always hold our elections on work days...

"It doesn't contradict the practical fact that judges are presumed to be bound by the principle of judicial restraint, they are taught the concept of judicial restraint in law school, and they consider themselves bound by the concept of judicial restraint."

Yet I've pointed out two judges, one a supreme court justice and the other an appellate court justice, that point blank say that, no, they don't consider themselves bound in that way. Rather than talking about what law students are taught in classrooms, what judges on the bench actually think seems far more pertinent to the question at hand.

You may not like the reasoning of Posner and Homes. (For that matter, I don't like it much either.) But what's interesting about their view is that it is the stated view of practicing judges. You can argue that such views are in the minority. (Probably not cogently, but an argument can certainly be made.) But, when it comes to brass tacks, and you look at the way that judges behave, I think Posner and Holmes describe the facts on the ground far better than the hypothetical situations covered in law school classes.

Now as to the $20 it costs to buy Posner's book, there is always the library. Posner is a fascinating author that brings up conundrums well worth considering even if you disagree with him. Alternatively, you could just use Google a bit to find things like a synopsis of a Lecture given by Posner where he details that the rise of the theory of judicial restraint was a relatively recent innovation (first clearly formulated in American jurisprudence in the late nineteenth century) and has largely come to be ignored.

You might like that link as it does give some space to the opposing view as the comments made by legal scholars after the lecture itself are described. But I think the comment made by Dean Kramer who mostly agreed with Posner is the most telling, "both sides still adhere to the doctrine of judicial restraint when it serves their ends: for examples, conservatives believe judges should be restrained in entitlement and civil rights cases, liberals tend to think judges should be restrained in economic matters." In other words, everyone believes in legal restraint when it suits their purposes and no one believes in it when it doesn't.

According to everything I've read, this is *not* an attempt to achieve "broader Internet wiretap authority" but rather to force providers to put systems in place so that they can easily and quickly comply with *existing* authority.

Will that be before or after the White House is forced to put systems in place so that they can easily and quickly comply with existing authority (44 U.S.C. 2201–2207 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Records_Act)? The existing authority that both the Bush II and Obama administrations want to ignore http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/report_card_presidential_records/ outright let alone make it easier and quicker for the White House to comply with.

True: "I've always felt that the poor security and poor implementation on the voting machines is intentional to allow for the possibility of fraud..."

Articles and a free movie about the the unprecedented organized vote fraud:

Rolling Stone magazine has an article about vote stealing in 2008: Block the Vote: Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president? That article is also available as a PDF file.

The Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law has another article: Voter Suppression Incidents 2008. A PDF is available.

See the free online movie Stealing America: Vote By Vote. The evidence presented in the movie shows that both of the previous presidential elections were stolen. The evidence is that the corrupters plan to steal the 2008 election, too. We will know in a few days.

Neither of the articles mentioned discusses how votes are stolen using computer fraud. Slashdot has run 17 stories in 2007 and 2008 about computer vote fraud and electronic voting, listed here in reverse order by date. Note that the evidence in the Slashdot stories also is that the last two presidential elections were stolen:

West Virginia Voters Say Machines Are Switching Votes.
Black Box Voting 2008 Election Protection Toolkit
How To Spot E-Vote Tampering?
Hard Evidence of Voting Machine Addition Errors
New Jersey E-Voting Problems Worse Than Originally Suspected
The Cost of Electronic Voting
Sequoia Vote Machine Can't Do Simple Arithmetic?
Ohio Investigating Possible Vote Machine Tampering Last Year
Diebold Voter Fraud Rumors in New Hampshire Primaries
Ohio's Alternative to Diebold Machines May Be Equally Bad
All Fifty States May Face Voting Machine Lawsuit
Judge Voids Un-Auditable California Election
Re-Vote Likely After E-Vote Data Mishandling
A Flawed US Election Reform Bill
House To Vote On Paper Trail and OSS Voting Bill
U.S. To Certify Labs For Testing E-Voting Machines
U.S. Bars Lab From Testing E-Voting Machines

True: "I've always felt that the poor security and poor implementation on the voting machines is intentional to allow for the possibility of fraud..."

Articles and a free movie about the the unprecedented organized vote fraud:

Rolling Stone magazine has an article about vote stealing in 2008: Block the Vote: Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president? That article is also available as a PDF file.

The Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law has another article: Voter Suppression Incidents 2008. A PDF is available.

See the free online movie Stealing America: Vote By Vote. The evidence presented in the movie shows that both of the previous presidential elections were stolen. The evidence is that the corrupters plan to steal the 2008 election, too. We will know in a few days.

Neither of the articles mentioned discusses how votes are stolen using computer fraud. Slashdot has run 17 stories in 2007 and 2008 about computer vote fraud and electronic voting, listed here in reverse order by date. Note that the evidence in the Slashdot stories also is that the last two presidential elections were stolen:

West Virginia Voters Say Machines Are Switching Votes.
Black Box Voting 2008 Election Protection Toolkit
How To Spot E-Vote Tampering?
Hard Evidence of Voting Machine Addition Errors
New Jersey E-Voting Problems Worse Than Originally Suspected
The Cost of Electronic Voting
Sequoia Vote Machine Can't Do Simple Arithmetic?
Ohio Investigating Possible Vote Machine Tampering Last Year
Diebold Voter Fraud Rumors in New Hampshire Primaries
Ohio's Alternative to Diebold Machines May Be Equally Bad
All Fifty States May Face Voting Machine Lawsuit
Judge Voids Un-Auditable California Election
Re-Vote Likely After E-Vote Data Mishandling
A Flawed US Election Reform Bill
House To Vote On Paper Trail and OSS Voting Bill
U.S. To Certify Labs For Testing E-Voting Machines
U.S. Bars Lab From Testing E-Voting Machines

MOD PARENT UP! It's infantile to believe that the U.S. government can spend money on people. The U.S. government HAS NO MONEY, it is DEEPLY in debt. The U.S. government has no money.

It amazes me how little most U.S. citizens know about their government, and how little they care. It appears to me that the U.S. government is corrupt in may ways, not just in starting a war to help make weapons and oil investors rich, and to act out anger. Read House of Bush, House of Saud. Bush and his friends and associates sell U.S. government power to those who pay the most. Saudis have paid them 1.4 Billion dollars, so the Saudis got EXACTLY what they wanted: Higher oil prices, the U.S. taxpayer paid for defending Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein, and a weaker United States.

Politics is certainly not a primary interest of mine, but I educate myself about what's happening. Here's just ONE area of corruption, the unprecedented, organized vote fraud:

Rolling Stone magazine has an article about vote stealing in 2008: Block the Vote: Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president? That article is also available as a PDF file.

The Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law has another article: Voter Suppression Incidents 2008. A PDF is available.

Neither of those articles discuss how votes are stolen using computer fraud. Slashdot has run 17 stories in 2007 and 2008 about computer vote fraud and electronic voting, listed here in reverse order by date. Note that the evidence is that the last two presidential elections were stolen:

West Virginia Voters Say Machines Are Switching Votes.
Black Box Voting 2008 Election Protection Toolkit
How To Spot E-Vote Tampering?
Hard Evidence of Voting Machine Addition Errors
New Jersey E-Voting Problems Worse Than Originally Suspected
The Cost of Electronic Voting
Sequoia Vote Machine Can't Do Simple Arithmetic?
Ohio Investigating Possible Vote Machine Tampering Last Year
Diebold Voter Fraud Rumors in New Hampshire Primaries
Ohio's Alternative to Diebold Machines May Be Equally Bad
All Fifty States May Face Voting Machine Lawsuit
Judge Voids Un-Auditable California Election
Re-Vote Likely After E-Vote Data Mishandling
A Flawed US Election Reform Bill
House To Vote On Paper Trail and OSS Voting Bill
U.S. To Certify Labs

MOD PARENT UP! It's infantile to believe that the U.S. government can spend money on people. The U.S. government HAS NO MONEY, it is DEEPLY in debt. The U.S. government has no money.

It amazes me how little most U.S. citizens know about their government, and how little they care. It appears to me that the U.S. government is corrupt in may ways, not just in starting a war to help make weapons and oil investors rich, and to act out anger. Read House of Bush, House of Saud. Bush and his friends and associates sell U.S. government power to those who pay the most. Saudis have paid them 1.4 Billion dollars, so the Saudis got EXACTLY what they wanted: Higher oil prices, the U.S. taxpayer paid for defending Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein, and a weaker United States.

Politics is certainly not a primary interest of mine, but I educate myself about what's happening. Here's just ONE area of corruption, the unprecedented, organized vote fraud:

Rolling Stone magazine has an article about vote stealing in 2008: Block the Vote: Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president? That article is also available as a PDF file.

The Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law has another article: Voter Suppression Incidents 2008. A PDF is available.

Neither of those articles discuss how votes are stolen using computer fraud. Slashdot has run 17 stories in 2007 and 2008 about computer vote fraud and electronic voting, listed here in reverse order by date. Note that the evidence is that the last two presidential elections were stolen:

West Virginia Voters Say Machines Are Switching Votes.
Black Box Voting 2008 Election Protection Toolkit
How To Spot E-Vote Tampering?
Hard Evidence of Voting Machine Addition Errors
New Jersey E-Voting Problems Worse Than Originally Suspected
The Cost of Electronic Voting
Sequoia Vote Machine Can't Do Simple Arithmetic?
Ohio Investigating Possible Vote Machine Tampering Last Year
Diebold Voter Fraud Rumors in New Hampshire Primaries
Ohio's Alternative to Diebold Machines May Be Equally Bad
All Fifty States May Face Voting Machine Lawsuit
Judge Voids Un-Auditable California Election
Re-Vote Likely After E-Vote Data Mishandling
A Flawed US Election Reform Bill
House To Vote On Paper Trail and OSS Voting Bill
U.S. To Certify Labs

It amazes me how little most U.S. citizens know about their government, and how little they care. Politics is certainly not a primary interest of mine, but I educate myself about what's happening.

Rolling Stone magazine has an article about vote stealing in 2008: Block the Vote: Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president? That article is also available as a PDF file.

The Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law has another article: Voter Suppression Incidents 2008. A PDF is available.

Neither of those articles discuss how votes are stolen using computer fraud. Slashdot has run 17 stories in 2007 and 2008 about computer vote fraud and electronic voting, listed here in reverse order by date:

West Virginia Voters Say Machines Are Switching Votes.
Black Box Voting 2008 Election Protection Toolkit
How To Spot E-Vote Tampering?
Hard Evidence of Voting Machine Addition Errors
New Jersey E-Voting Problems Worse Than Originally Suspected
The Cost of Electronic Voting
Sequoia Vote Machine Can't Do Simple Arithmetic?
Ohio Investigating Possible Vote Machine Tampering Last Year
Diebold Voter Fraud Rumors in New Hampshire Primaries
Ohio's Alternative to Diebold Machines May Be Equally Bad
All Fifty States May Face Voting Machine Lawsuit
Judge Voids Un-Auditable California Election
Re-Vote Likely After E-Vote Data Mishandling
A Flawed US Election Reform Bill
House To Vote On Paper Trail and OSS Voting Bill
U.S. To Certify Labs For Testing E-Voting Machines
U.S. Bars Lab From Testing E-Voting Machines

It amazes me how little most U.S. citizens know about their government, and how little they care. Politics is certainly not a primary interest of mine, but I educate myself about what's happening.

Rolling Stone magazine has an article about vote stealing in 2008: Block the Vote: Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president? That article is also available as a PDF file.

The Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law has another article: Voter Suppression Incidents 2008. A PDF is available.

Neither of those articles discuss how votes are stolen using computer fraud. Slashdot has run 17 stories in 2007 and 2008 about computer vote fraud and electronic voting, listed here in reverse order by date:

West Virginia Voters Say Machines Are Switching Votes.
Black Box Voting 2008 Election Protection Toolkit
How To Spot E-Vote Tampering?
Hard Evidence of Voting Machine Addition Errors
New Jersey E-Voting Problems Worse Than Originally Suspected
The Cost of Electronic Voting
Sequoia Vote Machine Can't Do Simple Arithmetic?
Ohio Investigating Possible Vote Machine Tampering Last Year
Diebold Voter Fraud Rumors in New Hampshire Primaries
Ohio's Alternative to Diebold Machines May Be Equally Bad
All Fifty States May Face Voting Machine Lawsuit
Judge Voids Un-Auditable California Election
Re-Vote Likely After E-Vote Data Mishandling
A Flawed US Election Reform Bill
House To Vote On Paper Trail and OSS Voting Bill
U.S. To Certify Labs For Testing E-Voting Machines
U.S. Bars Lab From Testing E-Voting Machines

C'mon, don't make this a partisan issue.

I stand or rather sit amazed at how poorly informed many /.'ers are on this crucial issue.

Full Disclosure: I worked providing tech support for the ES&S M-100 in NC's March primary. I have also been active in getting a law passed that required a voter verifiable paper trail in NC. NC's Law

Paperless is absurd. Currently the best electronic solution is paper ballots scanned by an optical scan machine with random audits required. Without the random audits citizens are still trusting the computer (optical scan device) which can be comprimised. Currently only 26 states require a VVPT, of those only 12 require random audits of the paper.

There is a law in the House now that would create a Federal requirement for VVPT. It is HR 550. In North Carolina it took a multi-partisan effort to get a good law passed. The only thing missing from our law is a requirement for open source, although our law does require vendors to supply their source code for review. It also requires a $7.5M bond to cover any problems that may occur as well as felony level offence for violations (like switching source code). No wonder Diebold and Sequoia, though certified, decided they didn't want to do business in NC!

More good reading on this can be found at The Brennan Center for Justice.