Slashdot Mirror
How We Used To Vote
Mr. Slippery writes "Think hanging chads, illegal purges of the voter rolls, and insecure voting machines are bad? The New Yorker looks back at how we used to vote back in the good old days: 'A man carrying a musket rushed at him. Another threw a brick, knocking him off his feet. George Kyle picked himself up and ran. He never did cast his vote. Nor did his brother, who died of his wounds. The Democratic candidate for Congress, William Harrison, lost to the American Party's Henry Winter Davis. Three months later, when the House of Representatives convened hearings into the election, whose result Harrison contested, Davis's victory was upheld on the ground that any "man of ordinary courage" could have made his way to the polls.' Now I feel like a wuss for complaining about the lack of a voter-verified paper trail." The article notes the American penchant for trying to fix voting problems with technology — starting just after the Revolution. This country didn't use secret ballots, an idea imported from Australia, until quite late in the 19th century.
Wait, what?
Last time I checked more accountability for elected officials is always better.
The Chicago (and lately, the Ohio) way! Until we get a handle on voter fraud, we'll never have free and fair elections. What's so wrong with voter ID?
Some American please explain me: why do you have voter registration at all? In my country (Netherlands), everyone above 18 is registered by default. I assume this is similar in most of Western Europe. The only caveat is that you have to be registered with your municipality, which you have to do anyhow for various different reasons (municipal tax, getting passports/ID/driving licence ...). A few weeks before an election, you simply get your 'voting ticket' in the mail. You typically take this to a neighborhood school to cast your vote, usually electronically.
Making everyone eligible to vote by default would save a lot of those voter-fraud claims and a lot of effort by the campaigns to get the people registered.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
Then on what grounds would you be able to judge if your congressperson should be reelected or not?
Regardless of any possible benefits this is a terrible, terrible idea. A legitimate public financing system would be more of a step in the right direction.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Personally I don't think it makes sense to deny anyone their voting rights for any reasons.
Honestly, I don't feel it's fair to make anyone subject to the decisions of a legal system based on the voting system, if they can't affect that process.
It does make sense to not allow infants to vote (because the parents would likely misuse that) but with that exception anyone who can be punished under a countries laws should have a right to vote.
You'd be surprised how honest people can be when their job doesn't rely on what the average dimwit thinks.
... which is an excellent argument against electing judges.
The article makes the interesting point that our founding forefathers considered secret balloting cowardly. Clearly they did not anticipate violence as a tactic to tamper with elections. Our founding forefathers thought it was important to include an amendment stating that you could not be forced to quarter troops against your will in times of peace, clearly not anticipating that it would not really be an issue today. Some of our founding forefathers thought that slavery was alright. Not all of our founding forefathers thought separation of church and state as we take it today was a good idea.
It always strikes me as strange that people take the constitution as more than just a set of generally good ideas and precedents written by talented individuals. People act like because our founding forefathers said X, it was handed down by God himself.
I usually run up against this when the constitution seems to disagree with my liberal leanings (I'm sure someone will want to get into a pointless discussion of the second amendment, but we've all been down that road), but it's not limited to just that, and I'm sure it runs both ways.
More specific to elections though, isn't it about time we abolished the electoral college and go right to a popular vote? There is clearly no legitimate reason for it to still be around. Electors rarely switch their votes, and, as the article points out, the founders saying it's a good idea does not make it so.
Besides the simple moral objections to making someone a half citizen, we can just do the math and see why this is a bad idea. Around 7 million in prison, Kerry lost by 3 million and Gore from even less. Which doesn't include those who got out of prison but can't vote. Simply make laws that target certain demographics and you've got yourself an election. Whether or not this has been done, it's an obvious flaw in the system.
Nothing, as long as the state pays for the ID, and provides transportation to get the ID. Otherwise "Voter ID" essentially becomes "Poll Tax" and you have people with little or no income unable to vote because they can't afford an ID or the local DMV is two cities over.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
You'd be surprised how honest people can be when their job doesn't rely on what the average dimwit thinks.
... which is an excellent argument against electing judges.
True.
Having 3 equal groups within a government and one that isn't accountable to the uneducated masses works best. It keeps thing balanced.
... which is an excellent argument against electing judges
You have it all wrong.
All judges get elected or put into their positions through some political process be it vocal or non-vocal. Ascension to such a job still will pass through other human beings with opinions of their own. It's an undeniable fact of life.
The correct question you should be asking is this. "How and by whom should judges be put into power?
Life is not for the lazy.
This is a great point! If you were thrown in jail because you broke a that you morally disagree with, shouldn't you be able to vote against those who brought the law in? Allowing felons to vote seems like a safe guard against corruption to me. It seems like it wouldn't be too hard to make a law to turn a group of people who you didn't want to vote into felons so they couldn't. Make sleeping on a park bench a felony if you want to stop homeless people from voting, for example.
Isn't the greatest trick the devil ever pulled convincing the world that he didn't exist?
He helped steal an election, out an undercover CIA agent, formulated lies that led our nation to war, may not see one day of jail for it, and can continue to deny that he was involved (of course, not on record). He can now join G. Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, and many others of the faithful party who have broken US and international law, and yet are somehow immune to the legal system.
I mean, the chick in the scarlet letter was smoking hot. If smoking hot chicks that put out had to wear a scarlet letter, what's really so bad about that, if you are a guy?
This is my sig.
We do have a handle on voter fraud. It is so rare as to be practically non-existent. Between 2002 and 2005, the Department of Justice convicted just two dozen people for voter fraud. Eight a year. Not exactly a pressing problem.
I know it's difficult for many middle-class suburban Americans to grasp this, but millions of people - mostly poor - don't have identification cards. They don't drive, they don't ride on airplanes, they don't have bank accounts. If they wanted to get an ID, they might have to take a day off of work (already an impossibility for many), travel to the other side of the county (without a car), and pay a substantial (to them) sum.
Until such time as IDs can be obtained easily and for free, requiring them to be displayed to vote is nothing more than a subtle form of poll tax.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Allowing felons to vote seems like a safe guard against corruption to me. It seems like it wouldn't be too hard to make a law to turn a group of people who you didn't want to vote into felons so they couldn't.
Sounds like the War on Drugs to me.
Interesting about the transportation, I'd like to see more information about that. Have a link?
The ID itself might be free, but one has to provide copies of various documents to get it. Obtaining these documents can be difficult and expensive. When a mother of seven has to choose between paying bills or spending $50 to get a copy of her out-of-state birth certificate in order to get a "free" voter ID card, there's a problem.
Not everybody even has a birth certificate, you know. I had a housemate who didn't; as I recall, she had to go back to her home state and obtain some affidavits attesting to her existence before she could get a driver's license.
There are really no excuses for throwing obstacles in the way of people's exercise of the franchise, when the claimed problem of "voter fraud" is non-existent.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is one of the problems we have these days, and one of the things that has lead us down this road of abuses of freedom of speech and so on. You, like many others, have this idea that the Constitution is just some document that we should ignore when convenient. Well, that's not how it works. Our legal system is such that the Constitution is the highest law of the land. All other laws must conform to it. It isn't just something to be disregarded when convenient. That's how our legal system works.
So for example if you want the electoral college changed or abolished fair enough, however that requires a constitutional amendment. In case you don't know what that requires, I'll tell you: 66% of both houses of congress need to pass it, then 75% of the states. It isn't easy to amend the Constitution, and that was done on purpose.
Also you might want to learn more about it because you might come to respect it as more useful. Barring a Constitution, any of the crap the Bush administration wanted to pull would be perfectly legal. If federal law was the be all end all, then so long as congress said "ok, it's legal." Now if you are ok with the government just trampling on rights, well then fine. However I don't want to hear bitching when they trample on the first, but silence when they trample on the 2nd.
I can make a compelling public safety and order argument for trampling on/abolishing ANY amendment.
The Constitution isn't just some quaint little document, it is the very foundation of the US government. It is what united the states in to a union, it is what defines the limits of the federal republic we live in (the US is a republic, not a democracy, there's a difference) and so on. It is also the document on which just about every other free nation has based theirs on. So it is something important to understand, especially if you live in the US and are thus subject to it's law. This idea that it is just a quaint piece of paper to be ignored at various times is extremely ignorant.
Ok..so, put the free ID places near where the polls are. If they can make it to the poll to vote, they can make it there to get an ID.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I was saying two things. One: it's not infallible, and does need to be changed occasionally. Two: one of the things that should be changed, now, is the electoral college system.
Nothing about how we should junk the whole thing. Nothing about it being trivial. Nothing about it should be easier to amend the consitution. Nothing about getting rid of the second amendment.
Calm down.
Since many years ago now you have to show ID to become legally employed in the US. If someone hasn't shown it, the employer just fudged something. If they are working a job and didn't show any ID, they are working illegally and off the books most likely and not paying taxes. In other words, shouldn't be eligible to vote. All states provide non driver's licenses picture ID for free or very cheap, if someone can't be arsed enough to go get it, who cares? It isn't *that* hard. If you can't do the bare minimum to establish your legal bona fides, it isn't the states lookout to do it for you. Really, why not come out and say it out loud, why be a chickenshit about it, here's reality: the people claiming it is hard to prove you are a legal citizen over age of 18 and eligible to vote want to shoot the vote to 20 million ILLEGAL aliens. You know I am right, doncha? C'mon, admit it, that's the real scam here, amnesty for the illegals. And I worked hard back in the day (a long time ago probably before you were born) to help black folks and poor white folks get to vote, because they had a *legal* right to do so, and that was wrong, so this isn't racism, it's just reality, illegal aliens do NOT have a right to vote here and nor should they, and trying to run some scam claiming all the legal folks are having a hard time coming up with ID is just that, a scam.. And it has nothing to do with being middle class or not, even homeless *legal* folks can vote if they have ID, a recent court case affirmed the right of some dude to use a park bench as his legal address, but he still needs an ID to vote. Anything beyond that you are talking about completely crazy/insane/mentally incompetent people and...oh well, no vote, and do you really want those folks to vote? It wouldn't be those folks voting anyway, it would be their "handler" voting for them in the booth. Fail. People who can't establish a really low threshold of adult competency..well..we will always have some cracks to fall through, for 99.9999% of everyone else, it just isn't that hard to go get some three dollar picture ID.
Where does this magic number 3 come from? Is it just because you're American/French? Most democracies get by fine with anything between 2-5 groups. (Calling the groups "equal" is, of course, ridiculous and meaningless in any government.)
Either you made the story up or you let 20 other people vote for you. Which one makes you look better?
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
If there are enough people in jail to impact the turnout of a vote over something like that then we probably have bigger issues.
The application of the law is not "by the people, for the people", nor can it ever be. The application of the law, is by the law for the law with a smattering of justice thrown in depending on how just the law is in the first place. The people can(in theory) change the law, they can certainly change the people who made it, they can change the people who enforce it, and they can even change the constitution if enough of them want to.
They can't decide how the laws which have been written will be applied(without rewriting them at least), and should not be able to. It is the judiciary's job to decide whether the law is in violation of the constitution, and whether everything has been done according to the law. We have juries to decide facts, but we need independent and ideally impartial judges to decide the law.
We need this because neither the mob, nor the government can be trusted to protect the rights of those it believes guilty of a crime. If either group had complete control of the application of the law then anyone who the public(or government) believed was guilty of a crime would have no protections under the law. No judge who has to face reelection will ever throw out evidence against someone accused of a crime which the public finds particularly heinous because it was illegaly obtained. No judge who has to face reappointment by the government will protect the rights of someone who speaks out against that government.
The law must presume that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and must protect the rights not only of the innocent, but also the accused, and even the guilty. It must do this because the protection of those rights is what makes the USA what it is, it is, or at least was, the shining light of our society, it's what allows any degree of fairness in our legal system whatsoever, and allows us the freedoms which construct our lives.
The people have the right, and the ability to determine what those rights are, they have the right and the ability to determine both the content and the enforcement of the law, but they cannot control its application, because they cannot(at least as a group) be trusted to treat everyone, even the guilty, as equal before the law.
That doesn't mean that judges are perfect, or that they are always capable of the impartiality which they are charged to uphold, but an educated, reasoned individual has a lot better chance than a mob. If you want to continually reelect/appoint judges then you can kiss you rights goodbye if anyone ever accuses you(guilty or not) of anything which gets the mobs blood boiling.
Wow, way to fly off the handle at polite scepticism. It's not as if the poster said "You're full of shit". The poster merely pointed out that parts of your story seemed funny to them and politely asked you to explain them.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Honestly, I don't feel it's fair to make anyone subject to the decisions of a legal system based on the voting system, if they can't affect that process.
Felons are disproportionately impoverished. It's the same reason there used to be a poll tax, although by very different means.
Property is theft.
Kerry lost by 3 million electoral votes? Wow!
Or maybe you are under some strange impression the system works using popular vote...?
The Republican party you're referring to has quite a few similarities to our modern Democrats.
Except for that part about being biblical and fighting wars for an ideological cause. Abe Lincoln === religious nut. You need to understand that in Lincoln's time a black man had about the same level of humanity as a fetus is considered to have today. The whole reason slavery worked was because in the western mind, blacks weren't really people... they were animals, didn't have souls, were more like horses or something and any display of intelligence they did was chalked up to simple mimicry rather than any actual intelligence.
It's like everyone talks about the likes of Frederick Douglas, but, in those days, people went to go see Frederic Douglas weren't going to see an eloquent speaker, per se... it was like, going to see a horse that can count... "oh dear, instead of seeing the counting horse, let's go see the speechgiving negro". There was no black civilization on the planet even close to within 500 - 1000 years technologically of what European nations had and so arguing in favor of equality was genuinely an act of faith. Even Lincoln pretty much said that, he didn't really think that blacks were up to the same level as whites, but it was a religious thing to treat them right.
This is my sig.
No, I'm claiming that age discrimination is essentially the same as all these other kinds. If you want to predicate the vote on cognitive ability then you ought to test for that. Otherwise you end up with intelligent 17-year-olds being denied the vote (try to tell me that is not the moral and logical equivalent of disenfranchising women!) and idiotic 18-year-olds voting for the guy with the better hair.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
I quite agree, and feel that many young people become disenfranchised under the current system. Because of increasing fear of crime, children as young as ten are being tried as adults in certain localities. Yet they (including teenagers up to 18) have no say in how that system is run.
Either they are able to make decisions for themselves, and should be granted the right to vote, or they are incapable of making decisions and should not be punished for crimes, etc.
Using the infant example, if an infant smothers their sibling to death, they are unlikely to be sent to a maximum security prison as they probably had no idea what they were doing. They also shouldn't have the right to vote, as they would have no idea what it is about.
Unity in Diversity
that change had more disastrous consequences than almost anyone today realizes. it fundamentally altered the balance of power between the state and federal governments far more than anything since the civil war (and one could plausibly argue which was a bigger effect). compare the growth of our military before and after that change, and notice particularly the progressive, gradual federalization of the state's National Guard units. the states no longer have any direct, systematic method of checking the federal government, and instead have to rely on ad-hoc and after-the-fact methods.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
"If smoking hot chicks that put out had to wear a scarlet letter, what's really so bad about that, if you are a guy?"
True. I'd personally like to easily know who all the sluts were.