US Supreme Court Says: Need ID to Vote

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by David Floyd
If this stops poor liberals from voting, I'm all for it. The country doesn't need to get any more ****ed up, as it would if poor liberals turned out en masse.

What we should do is make voting largely irrelevant on the federal level, by actually enforcing a strict construction of the US Constitution. Then, no matter what ******* you vote into office, he can't actually do all that much anyway.

........and while David has the floor, No More Electoral college votes

[Ramo]

They're taking census info and determining a causation between lower than expected turnout and voting requirements, without anything else to back up their claim.

That's the idea behind the regression analysis. Identify the significance of independent variables. Maybe the sample size was too small or they neglected some important factors, but, again, I don't know how one trivially arrives at that conclusion...

[asleepathewheel]

Look at the survey I posted, it's their source for data I believe. It doesn't have a question regarding people not voting due to requirements. Granted, if the census did have one, then the paper would be redundant.

It just seems to me that they are trying to use data for their purposes that may or may not actually reflect reality. It may, don't get me wrong, but I think they're making a leap of faith.

[Ramo]

The voter ID law in the locality is, of course, another piece of data that's thrown into this fit. I have no idea what your objection is.

[asleepathewheel]

What can I say then, I thought my objections were pretty clear:

1. Not an over time analysis, instead a nationwide comparison.
ie-voting %s were measured against other states without regard to historical voting %'s in the district, before and after enactment of the laws.
2. Census data doesn't have an entry for voting requirements keeping them away.

Basically, they are using voting numbers and determining that a causal link exists between voting requirements and lower turnout that isn't supported by the data they have.

Hey-voting turn out was 3%lower in x state than y state. hmm, voters there also have to show an id. There must be a connection there! Maybe, maybe not.

[snoopy369]

1.) is a valid objection... 2.) isn't really. The point of this sort of analysis is to determine if a link exists without asking directly, because asking directly doesn't necessarily get valid results.

I'd say that the lack of over-time analysis dooms this to not being that useful, because it's hard to say whether there could be factors linking 'lower turnout' and 'voted in ID requirements' other than the requirements themselves (say, southern states generally have more stringent ID requirements, and it was hot in the south on voting day, so people stayed inside). Even things as silly as that could be caught by over-time analysis that wouldn't be caught by a one-year analysis.

[asleepathewheel]

Good point.

I was trying to state that the census didn't address this issue, therefore trying to shoehorn the census data into a theory doesn't necessarily result in accurate results.

[snoopy369]

I don't think that's an issue. Their argument is "Areas where ID laws are in effect have lower voter turnout," and that can be fairly easily weighed through census data that shows whether people voted or not. It is of course much more difficult to show the causality (and you can never do more than show it is <5% likely [or whatever %] that the correlation is random; it is always up to the reader to decide if there may be other causes that would cause the linkage). However, eliminating this sort of research in general would pretty much eliminate the field of social sciences from existing...

[asleepathewheel]

I thought the point was that they were trying to show causality, hence my objections in the first place. Correlations are far less interesting than causations, I know.

[Monk]

Originally posted by David Floyd
If this stops poor liberals from voting, I'm all for it. The country doesn't need to get any more ****ed up, as it would if poor liberals turned out en masse.

What we should do is make voting largely irrelevant on the federal level, by actually enforcing a strict construction of the US Constitution. Then, no matter what ******* you vote into office, he can't actually do all that much anyway.

I'm curious - without starting a total threadjack, what would be within the powers of the President to actually do and accomplish, if you had your way? Judging from your posts the last couple of years, it seems to me the US as you'd like it will put so many limits on gov't powers that I'm wondering if that hypothetical nation should even bother electing somebody to the position in the first place.

[Krill]

If this stops poor liberals from voting, I'm all for it. The country doesn't need to get any more ****ed up, as it would if poor liberals turned out en masse.

Too obvious...

[David Floyd]

Gramps,

........and while David has the floor, No More Electoral college votes

No, I'm fine with the Electoral College - it kept Gore out of office, at least

Monk,

I'm curious - without starting a total threadjack, what would be within the powers of the President to actually do and accomplish, if you had your way? Judging from your posts the last couple of years, it seems to me the US as you'd like it will put so many limits on gov't powers that I'm wondering if that hypothetical nation should even bother electing somebody to the position in the first place.

Well, he would be the chief foreign policy creator, for one. The Executive Branch is responsible for diplomacy, with the advice and consent of the Senate. The President is also the commander in chief of the military. The President is responsible for judicial appointments, again, with the advice and consent of the Senate, as well as appointments to federal agencies and Cabinet level posts. The President, with his domestic policy team and Congressional allies, can initiate legislation. That oughta keep the President plenty busy, to start with.

[chequita guevara]

We all know libertarians hate democracy. DF's views shouldn't surprise anyone.

[David Floyd]

I can't speak for all Libertarians, and I'm certainly not a "pure" Libertarian. It just doesn't seem right, though, that the masses can vote in any law they want without regard to the minority. It wasn't fair to black people years ago, and by the same token it's also not fair to rich people today.

But I'm not going to post any more about that here. If you want to discuss further, start a new thread.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by snoopy369
I agree with this, so long as it's available to the poor and minorities of course. I'm not sure how I feel about the 'free' part - most IDs have a negligible cost to them ($7 every 5 years, in IL, I believe) but that's nonzero; I probably would support making the basic ID free, unless there was a negative I'm not aware of here (fraud being easier with free ID, for example).

The "free" part is absolutedly necessary. Otherwise, the State would be essentially charging a fee so that its citizens could exercise their right to vote.