Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[Nicolae Carpathia]

The ~~**possibility**~~ versus the very concrete demonstration of voter suppression and disenfranchisement. What are your opinions of the tiger that will eat you unless you buy this rock.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Getting fake votes in-person is the stupidest fucking way to get fraudulent votes, if you want fraudulent votes you ballot stuff and break paper trails, and you don't solve that by preventing people from voting in-person.

[AdrienIer]

It's the same guy who two years ago was ranting in this thread about his conviction that non-whites are inherently less intelligent (but it's cool, because they're better at sports!).

What? I need to ask you to take this back or it will be very hard for me to keep this in politics thread.

He is referring to this :

However, I'm open even to such heretical ideas as "whites are inherently smarter than black" - assuming that they are supported by a sound biological proof.

Well, you may call me a black racist then. Because I believe that blacks are better basketball players than whites and that this is biological.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Right wingers always talk about fraudulent voting every time the issue of immigration rights gets bought up, because they fundamentally consider some classes of people illegitimate and undeserving of personhood. This same drive explains why they constantly try to close voting booths in african american neighborhoods and purge them off the voter rolls, or construct rickety gerrymandered districts to section off all their votes into irrelevance.

[Bacchus]

'I'm open to ideas, provided they can be proven' -> 'ranting about his conviction'

Could say something about ideological lensing here, but that'd probably make me a racism-apologist.

[Gavagai]

Thanks, Adrien. I hope Bob would now admit he misremembered my words.

[Gavagai]

Fraud issue aside, voter ID laws are good to filter out low motivated voters. I would go even further. How about that: on election day you may vote OR receive a token sum of money, say, 50 USD. But if you take the money, you do not get to vote. In this way votes of those people who are ready to sell their votes for fifty bucks will not taint the election results

[Trasson]

Fraud issue aside, voter ID laws are good to filter out low motivated voters. I would go even further. How about that: on election day you may vote OR receive a token sum of money, say, 50 USD. But if you take the money, you do not get to vote. In this way votes of those people who are ready to sell their votes for fifty bucks will not taint the election results

Such a policy has a very large issue. Fifty dollars is nothing to some people and an incredible sum of money to those with lower incomes. Every vote is equal in the results, but the bribe being offered is not of equal value to each voter. After all, to one person you're saying "you can either vote or buy a bunch of games in the next Steam Sale" and to another you're saying "you can either vote or you can afford food/medicine/school supplies/transportation/some emergency expense this week".

We can make fun of someone who decides that spending fifty dollars on video games is more important than civic engagement, but no one but the most cruel and heartless would condemn someone for choosing food for themselves and their family over civic engagement. In such a system, the only people who would choose to vote are those who are already well-off and thus can afford to (and thus are more privileged and are less likely to experience the negative effects of their voting decision) or those who choose principle over not starving to death (which is something I would argue is not a sound choice). In effect, you would create a government representative of only the haves and not the have-nots.


The simple fact is that, from what I can read, you seem to believe that ID is easy to get. It's as simple as going down to the DMV and paying a processing fee, right? But what if the DMV isn't nearby? What if it's only open weekdays 8 AM to 4 PM and there's no way to get there that doesn't take four hours out of your workday that you can't afford because every hour worked is needed to pay for bills? There's a lot of "what-ifs" here that come down to the fact that obtaining voting ID can be non-trivial, and a non-trivial prerequisite for one of the most fundamental rights a person can have in a country is, I feel, too high a prerequisite. Additionally, as mentioned, this is a prerequisite that disproportionately affects those with less. Put simply, people who make less money already have the deck stacked against them significantly in a capitalist society. Stacking that deck against them further is just moving farther and farther from any ideal of equality.

An important note: I'm speaking primarily in terms of philosophy and morality, not legality. Legally, each right granted to people in the United States is assumed to be equal to their other rights unless logic, precedent, or other parts of the Constitution say otherwise. Morally, I would argue that some rights are more fundamental and less eligible for reasonable restriction than others.

[Gavagai]

2 Trasson. This is exactly my point. If you are in such a desperate situation that fifty dollars is a lot of money for you, you would vote for anyone who offers you food. And I do not my fate to depend on decisions of such voters.

[AdrienIer]

This sounds like the worst idea ever proposed in this thread