George Weigel below and my friends at the Ancient and Noble Order of Gormogons are having fun with E.J. Dionne’s column today. But there’s a simple point being obscured here. Dionne writes of efforts to tighten-up voting requirements around the country:
These statutes are not neutral. Their greatest impact will be to reduce turnout among African Americans, Latinos and the young. It is no accident that these groups were key to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 — or that the laws in question are being enacted in states where Republicans control state governments.
Again, think of what this would look like to a dispassionate observer. A party wins an election, as the GOP did in 2010. Then it changes the election laws in ways that benefit itself. In a democracy, the electorate is supposed to pick the politicians. With these laws, politicians are shaping their electorates.
Paradoxically, the rank partisanship of these measures is discouraging the media from reporting plainly on what’s going on. Voter suppression so clearly benefits the Republicans that the media typically report this through a partisan lens, knowing that accounts making clear whom these laws disenfranchise would be labeled as biased by the right. But the media should not fear telling the truth or standing up for the rights of the poor or the young.
Obviously, I think this is all overdone. But here’s what EJ leaves out. Many of these voting laws were loosened up in the first place in order to make it easier to vote because liberals knew it would help Democrats. Since before the Motor Voter law was signed by Clinton in 1992, Democrats have understood that the easier it is to vote, the better it is for Democrats. The same dispassionate observer Dionne invokes would just as likely see a long history of Democrats crafting policies (immigration non-enforcement anyone?) that help them at the polls.
I’m not condoning tit-for-tat. When it comes to congressional districting, I’d be for getting rid of the whole corrupt process. I’d like to see competitive, rationally designed, districts everywhere. As for voting itself, I’ve been on record for years that I think it should be harder to vote. I think you should have to pass the same test immigrants have to pass to vote (that’s legal immigrants. I don’t think you should have to climb a fence or cross a desert to vote). Would that help Republicans? I don’t know, maybe. But I think it would help the republic. The value of a thing — in this case voting — often increases when you raise the price. I’d rather fewer people vote, but take it seriously, than many more people vote, who really don’t care or know much.
Oh, I also love Dionne’s claim that it is precisely because this is such a racist, partisan, evil thing the Republicans are doing that the mainstream press won’t report on it adequately. It’s an interesting world Dionne lives in where the New York Times and the Washington Post are terrified to call Republicans racists. I would love to visit it sometime.
Regardless, Dionne takes it as a given that laws passed that benefit Democrats are wholly good and worthwhile, but laws passed that benefit Republicans must be part of some racist, dastardly, plot. Meh. Why can’t it all simply be politics, with the usual mix of principle and partisanship? Besides, I agree with George Weigel. It’s awfully early to be complaining about a stolen election.
Spot on. How could any rational person consider requiring proof of identity and legal citizenship as voting prerequisites for ALL AMERICANS an act of racism? It's unfathomable.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse{How could any rational person consider requiring proof of identity and legal citizenship as voting prerequisites for ALL AMERICANS an act of racism?}
Because they know that black people are less likely to possess such proof?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIs that true? If so, why are they less likely to possess such proof? And if it becomes the law for the next election, are you saying that black people are not capable or able to comply with that law when notified this far in advance? Most states issue photo ID for non-drivers, and the cost is minimal, and I've read that in some states, it's free. Finally, is America required to only pass laws that are easy for all groups to comply with?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBut it is not awfully early to lay down markers that justify why your side should start skewing, buying, tweaking, railroading, etc. the "process" because that's what those dastardly Rethuglicans are doing! In other words Dionne is pre-excusing what will certainly be election-stealing actions on the Democrat side since he's telling us the Reps are already trying to steal it for us.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDionne only needs to talk to Obama tool Axelrod to regain her confidence in the one.
To hear Axelrod speak, not only has Obama won 2012, but we've made him dictator for life - gladly.
November 2012 can't arrive fast enough.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDionne is a man.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe problem is, who's going to do the "rational designing"? There's nobody here but us Americans.
Roe v. Wade should really have put paid for once and for all to the idea of the "independent" expert making policy without all that pesky democratic accountability.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou could apply mathematical tests. For example you could declare that whatever map had the most compact districts was automatically the winner.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnother possibility is to emphasis tying district lines to county lines. Which ever map has the greatest coincidence between county lines and district lines, wins.
Young people around the country - many of them ages 16 and younger - rush out to get their drivers licenses on the very first day they're eligible, but liberals believe college-age young adults won't be able to figure out how to obtain a voter I.D. card. That's a very cynical and offensive view of America's younger generation.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf you assume good faith (which you shouldn't), this is what's going on.
The Democrats want 'every vote to count.' They are willing to accept improperly cast votes so as to insure every one who wants to vote has their vote counted. If this were a medical test being ordered, they would prefer sensitivity to specificity.
Republicans, on the other hand, are willing to accept uncast votes rather than permit improperly cast votes to be counted. They are choosing specificity to sensitivity.
Each side, obviously, benefits from their thoughts on voting. But, because we will never have a perfect system where only properly cast votes are cast exclusively, they will advocate for their side of the issue.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBut a vote doesn't count if an illegally cast vote negates it.
And unlike a science experiment or medical test, when it comes to voting the presence of some mistakes creates encourages more mistakes. That is, while a few false positives in a TB test don't encourage other TB strains to play the same trick, allowing some false voting means encouraging more false voting.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf I understand Dionne's primary practical concerns, they are 1) Requiring ID is inherently biased against minorities and the young, and 2) Reducing the amount of time for early voting is likewise biased.
Objection #1 is belied by the fact that any number of other transactions (airline travel, using a check at many stores, etc.) also require the user to provide legally acceptable ID with no complaint from Dionne. Why is it such a burden that no person below the age of 40 - not that the older people are guaranteed to vote conservatively anyway - can suddenly be bothered to come out and vote? Getting a legally viable ID is not that difficult or expensive, is it?
As for Objection #2, I suspect if I could be bothered to look it up I could identify the precise date of every US election from now until the end of the Republic (which may not be far off anyway.) If you can't be bothered to figure out when you have to vote if you're voting early, mark it on your calendar, and remember to do it, you don't deserve to vote. Though perhaps Dionne means procrastinators are to be a protected class, in which case maybe it is discriminatory.
As I understand them, Poll Taxes were designed specifically to be impossible to comply with, thus disenfranchising voters. Asking them to go out and get an ID and remembering to vote on time - both within easy reach of all but the most impoverished and the illegal immigrant - strikes me as the most basic of prerequisites for exercising one's civic duty and right.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOnce again, the Left is accusing those ole evil Republicans of something that they are most likely guilty of.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLike a bunch of kids caught stealing cookies, "But HE did it FIRST!!!"
Interesting... not one word on the overall philosophy that maybe should underpin our election laws. Should it be easier or should it be harder to vote? Should more eligible citizens be in the electoral process, or should fewer?
So long as we protect the system from illegal voting, the answer should be EASIER and MORE. So... please tell me of the actual vote fraud cases that might lead one to think we haven't protected the process? Not ineligible registration, but ineligible voting.... there's a big difference.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI believe that it should be more difficult to vote than to buy an alcoholic beverage and both should require a legally accepted and certified identification clearly stating that you meet the minimal requirements.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJonah,
FWIW, a couple points about Motor Voter.
1) Before Motor Voter, voting registration required some forethought. You at least had to say to yourself "hey, I want to vote in the next election and so I have to go fill out the forms."
2) Democrats loved the Motor Voter law because people who normally wouldn't bother to vote--college students, for instance--would suddenly find themselves automatically registered because of Motor Voter and when the Dems launch their last minute October surprise, well, they should benefit.
3) Motor Voter ended up backfiring on the Dems as most of the young who took advantage of it voted Republican in that first election following Motor Voter. Hilarious.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseClinton didn't sign anything in 92, because he wasn't POTUS yet. If he did that would have been real vote fraud!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMost of these bills have provisions that state (to "slightly" exagerate), "If you have trouble with obtaining ID we will come to your home, pick you up in a limosine and hire Annie Leibowitz to take your ID picture".
Yet according to Dionne, Democrat voters seem incapable of getting ID. If that is in fact true then like Jonah inferred with his immigrant test idea, you shouldn't be able to vote cause you're an idiot.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIs Dionne a voter fraud denier?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"The value of a thing... often increases when you raise the price"
Huh?
The price is reflective of the value buyers and sellers place on the item, it's not the other way around.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse