Fight against so-called voter "fraud" unwittingly targets legitimate voters.

[Felch]

Ummm... yes, they are. I thought this was well-known.

No, blacks being more likely to suffer from epilepsy is not well-known. It's certainly hasn't come up in the public debate over voter IDs.

[DaShi]

No, don't take the Ben approach to this argument.

[Dr Strangelove]

No, blacks being more likely to suffer from epilepsy is not well-known. It's certainly hasn't come up in the public debate over voter IDs.

Has the issue of people unable to obtain the most common type of picture ID, the driver's license due to disability come up in the public debates you're aware of?

[Felch]

A photo ID is not the same as a driver's license. Every state issues non-driving IDs, and as I said, I used to have one when my license was suspended. They're easier and cheaper to get than a driver's license, and in states that require IDs to vote, they are entirely free. The driver's license issue is a red herring, and has nothing to do with the issue.

I needed a photo ID to buy a gun, and gun ownership is a Constitutionally protected right. I didn't feel violated when they asked me for ID, and nobody else should feel violated when asked for ID to vote. There are countless reasons why you'd need ID, from flying on a plane to buying cold medicine. Anybody who doesn't have an ID should ****ing grow up and get one. It's 2012, come out of the caves and join civilization.

[DaShi]

You're personal feelings about photo IDs still don't change the fact that requiring photo IDs to vote disenfranchises specific groups of people.

Also, I can't see the connection with desiring more freedoms (as you claim you want), yet wanting everyone to have to carry around a photo ID. What's the point of a photo ID other than to apply an often needless restriction on people? They can be faked easily enough that people who want to abuse the system can and will do it, and those who are honest will be more likely to be harmed or inconvenienced by it.

[kentonio]

is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.

Yeah it's all about fair elections.

Seriously all you folks who bark about constitutional rights and then are happy to ignore the disenfranchisement of potentially millions of voters need to wake the **** up. They're cutting back on early voting and making it increasingly hard to register new voters. They're pissing on democracy so they can win an election and half the time they don't even bother to hide it. If you support this **** you're either a moron or a political stooge who doesn't give a toss about constitutional rights.

Oh and incidentally if you have to travel to get to a state office to apply for a form of ID, then that isn't free. Especially if you're a working single parent, elderly and infirm, living in a rural area etc.

[Wezil]

Heavens, how would they ever find time to vote?

[Wezil]

I'm neither a moron nor a political stooge but I don't think the requirement is too onerous. Quite frankly you would have to try hard in this day and age to not have some form of valid ID and if for some reason you are that disconnected from society that you don't, would you really give a **** about voting anyway?

We currently have a riding election result before the courts as there are serious concerns many voters voted that weren't eligible. Surprise, surprise, it is a Liberal challenging a Conservative win... This isn't a partisan issue but one of election fairness.

[kentonio]

Federal convictions for election fraud, 2002-05

Voting while ineligible: 18
Voting multiple times: 5
Registration fraud: 3

Major problem there that needs dealing with?

[Wezil]

Those are convictions, not occurrences.

Any potential election fraud that can be dealt with this easily should be.


Also, nobody is being disenfranchised. They are disenfranchising themselves by not taking a basic, minimal step to vote. If they fail to register they are not being disenfranchised.

[Wezil]

Do we have a case study of a real life person about to be disenfranchised? Preferably one that wants to vote?

I'm willing to be persuaded....

[kentonio]

Those are convictions, not occurrences.

So it's worth a huge national campaign to stop something that is not proven to be happening from happening, no matter the cost?

Any potential election fraud that can be dealt with this easily should be.

Also, nobody is being disenfranchised. They are disenfranchising themselves by not taking a basic, minimal step to vote. If they fail to register they are not being disenfranchised.

Of course they are being disenfranchised, these laws stop people who can currently vote from voting. You can argue that they can go out and fulfil the new conditions, but that still acts as an impediment on voting. As it keeps being pointed out, many of these laws make it very difficult for some people to receive the proper ID, including people who are infirm, people who cannot easily travel to the required locations, people who lack acceptable birth certificates (which is a suprisingly large number of people) and many more.

It comes back every time to why this is being done though. There is no evidence that there is a problem and there is a mass of evidence showing that the 'solution' is going to screw over a huge number of people. What possible justification can there be for this other than voter suppresion?

[DaShi]

I'm neither a moron nor a political stooge but I don't think the requirement is too onerous. Quite frankly you would have to try hard in this day and age to not have some form of valid ID and if for some reason you are that disconnected from society that you don't, would you really give a **** about voting anyway?

Unfortunately, this is not the case at all. Photo IDs do disenfranchise minorities and don't reduce voter fraud. It's becoming obvious that those supporting them don't care about equal rights or even freedom. They just care about getting the guy from their party in office, even if he is against their values as well. Simply ridiculous.

[Wezil]

So it's worth a huge national campaign to stop something that is not proven to be happening from happening, no matter the cost?

Are you arguing that the convictions are the only occurrences? With loose controls convictions will be difficult, with tighter controls the fraud will be difficult. I'll take the later. And since you edited into the next part of your response a pertinent bit of my answer (instead of here where it belongs) I will repeat: Any potential election fraud that can be dealt with this easily should be.

Of course they are being disenfranchised, these laws stop people who can currently vote from voting. You can argue that they can go out and fulfil the new conditions, but that still acts as an impediment on voting. As it keeps being pointed out, many of these laws make it very difficult for some people to receive the proper ID, including people who are infirm, people who cannot easily travel to the required locations, people who lack acceptable birth certificates (which is a suprisingly large number of people) and many more.

So you keep saying but I simply don't believe this is as huge a number as you claim, certainly not millions. If it is then a case study should be easily available...

It comes back every time to why this is being done though. There is no evidence that there is a problem and there is a mass of evidence showing that the 'solution' is going to screw over a huge number of people. What possible justification can there be for this other than voter suppresion?

Again, it is a reasonable requirement that should be easy enough to do for anyone that for some reason (!!) still lacks proper ID. Election fairness requires that not only are all allowed to vote but that the voting will be done fairly.

Getting ID once is certainly easier than trotting out to the polls every 4 years.

[Wezil]

This is the sort of **** that happens when elections are not tightly controlled:

Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj is not waiting for the Supreme Court's decision before firing another volley in his battle over last year's election in Etobicoke Centre.

The court is expected to rule next week on whether Tory MP Ted Opitz can keep the seat which he won by just 26 votes. Either way, though, Wrzesnewskyj says "difficult questions" surround what he calls "problematic" new evidence presented to the court at the last minute by Elections Canada.

The former Liberal MP alleges that the agency failed to mention relevant facts which should have been disclosed to the justices. For example, he says, Elections Canada argued that many voters whose ballots were rejected by the lower court because of missing paperwork were really valid, because their names had since turned up on the voters' list.

What wasn't mentioned, Wrzesnewskyj says, was that nearly half of these were on the list in other ridings — not in Etobicoke Centre.

In April, Wrzesnewskyj persuaded Judge Thomas Lederer of the Ontario Superior Court to throw out the election results because of 79 ballots which he ruled invalid. In many cases, Judge Lederer found that registration certificates, by which voters get added to the list of qualified electors, were missing or never existed.

Opitz appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court, which came back from its summer recess to hear the case. That's when Elections Canada claimed to have found "new evidence" that 44 "invalid" ballots were, in fact, cast by valid voters, even though their registration certificates could not be found.

The justices did not indicate whether it would even consider this new evidence — and Wrzesnewskyj's lawyers urged them not to. However, Wrzesnewskyj says his side didn't have time to fully examine Elections Canada's submission and to discover some revealing details.

In particular, he points to one voter whose name was quietly dropped, without explanation, from Elections Canada's list of newly-discovered "valid" voters. That, he suspects, is because the same name occurs twice among those who cast ballots.

"We've since found that one individual slipped off the list and it appears that person voted twice," says Wrzesnewskyj.

That should have been disclosed, he says — although, in a second case, it was: a small footnote on the Elections Canada's chart concedes that two other names also appear to be the same person.

Wrzesnewskyj finds it even stranger that, in the very same polling station, Elections Canada provided 26 names of voters whose names had been "found" on the voters' list. On closer examination, 17 of those 26 names are actually registered in other ridings — as far from Etobicoke as Niagara Falls and Jonquière, Que. That means they could not have cast valid votes in Etobicoke.

Besides that, says Wrzesnewskyj, Elections Canada seems to have "found" all these names by trying multiple different spellings, sometimes changing several letters before finding a match.

That, at least, does seem to have been disclosed to the Supreme Court — if the justices can read it. In very small letters, a note appears next to eight names, saying, "Handwriting difficult to make out. Many iterations of name were tried."

What the court did not hear is that some of these alternative spellings produced a match with the voters' list only after a bit of a stretch.

In one case, the handwritten initials in the Etobicoke poll records look like "C" and "S." The match that Elections Canada says it found on the voters' list has the initials "Q"and "J." A second surname had five letters beginning with an "R" — but, in the match allegedly found, all but one letter was different and it began with an "L."

For Wrzesnewskyj, all this calls into question the credibility of Elections Canada's "new evidence" — although he stops short of accusing the agency of trying to hoodwink the Supreme Court.

"I'd hate to think that would even be possible in Canada," he says. "What we do know is that there are very difficult questions that need to be answered about this last-minute evidence."

That is, if it matters. Even if the Supreme Court were to reinstate all 44 votes on Elections Canada's list, that would still leave 35 other votes ruled invalid by the lower court. That's nine more than the 26-vote margin which gave Opitz his seat.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/07/24/pol-wrzesnewskyj-opitz-elections-canada-etobicoke-centre.html

It's only a handful of votes. Perhaps we shouldn't worry about it?