DOE launches investigation into Maines compliance with title IX

[finesse]

I'm always amazed that the US does not have a national ID (or even a uniform state ID). I get the resistance from both ends of the political spectrum. I guess this is the challenge of little country vs big country comes into contrast. For us, national IDs are used in every facet of life. They're also free and easy to get (go to a centralized location, wait in line maybe 10-30 minutes depending on the day, time of year, then wait an hour, ready).

I thinks its interesting that the Pubs are behind the much for ID to vote...from what we've seen in some red counties, feel like an attempt to suppress votes. But this feels like something that has possible solutions.

It does but it requires people to act in good faith. There is a concerted effort by one party to disenfranchise people and manipulate elections to their benefit through gerrymandering. NC alone cost Democrats control of the House. I guess, "If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying."

Not like this is something new. Gore didn't lose to Bush on Election Day so much as he lost it in the fraudulent voter purge in the summer before it when huge numbers of eligible voters, largely black, were disenfranchised.

 

[ZenMode]

This is my previous post on this topic and will post it again for those of you in the back who didn’t hear it the first time….

I have never had an issue with the concept of voter ID, the problem comes in the practice. Alabama passed a voter ID law and promptly shut down 31 of the 67 DMV locations in the state (where state-issued IDs are obtained.) Most of those 31 offices were in poor black-majority counties in the Alabama Black Belt although the state legislators assured us that race had nothing to do with determining which locations to close. I am sure they were sincere (and also wrong.)

I have no problem with requiring an ID to vote (and I certainly have no problem with allowing only citizens to vote) but obtaining those IDs must be simple, accessible, and free. That is not the case in most jurisdictions. This middle-class white notion of "everybody has a driver license" or "all you need is a birth certificate to get a state ID" doesn't apply to thousands of mostly older poor folks. My father never had a birth certificate. He and his twin brother were born at home to poor white sharecroppers in 1914 in Effingham SC with the help of some church ladies, and there were notations in a family Bible. That's it.

This same situation that my impacted my father over 100 years ago applied for decades afterwards to poor rural black folks across the south. Not having a birth certificate is unthinkable to people born in hospitals after WWII, but there are thousands of people who never had a birth certificate, or whose birth certificate was lost over the years, and the process of getting a copy is a mystery (and costly) to many of these folks. I realize there are people who believe anyone unable to manage the process of getting a copy of their birth certificate has no business voting, but I don't believe that is how our right to vote should work.

Devise a simple, free system of providing a voter ID to every eligible voter, and I will be fully on board with requiring an ID to vote. Designing such a system (and enforcing compliance if the states are involved in the process) should be part and parcel of any voter ID requirement.

"I have no problem with requiring an ID to vote (and I certainly have no problem with allowing only citizens to vote) but obtaining those IDs must be simple, accessible, and free."

I'm fine with giving everyone a free ID as long as it's in tandem with voter ID requirements.

That aside, what percentage of the population do you believe is currently navigating life with no valid form of government ID and what portion of that population do you believe is planning to vote?

 

[Enigma94]

"I have no problem with requiring an ID to vote (and I certainly have no problem with allowing only citizens to vote) but obtaining those IDs must be simple, accessible, and free."

I'm fine with giving everyone a free ID as long as it's in tandem with voter ID requirements.

That aside, what percentage of the population do you believe is currently navigating life with no valid form of government ID and what portion of that population do you believe is planning to vote?

You aren't allowed to use arguments that weigh the pervasiveness of any problem here. Only what you feel might be a problem, potentially in the future.

 

[heelinhell]

Trump and the GQPers are just dusting off the Bush playbook from back in 2004. The GQPers ran on an anti-gay marriage platform with "ban gay marriage" initiatives to inflame the culture war and scare homophobic voters into believing that people would be marrying their horses !

Transgender is the new gay marriage

Everything old is new again

 

[Mulberry Heel]

You aren't allowed to use arguments that weigh the pervasiveness of any problem here. Only what you feel might be a problem, potentially in the future.

I love how Republicans create these non-existent issues that need drastic solutions (new laws, new restrictions, new agencies) to solve. And if you question them they'll say "well, it might become a problem in the future, so we've got to something about it now" even though the "problem" doesn't actually exist. You'd think a party that claims to support small government wouldn't be in favor of pushing new laws and red tape, but here we are. I wonder what paranoid fantasy they will have next that will require laws to "solve" and pretzel-defying leaps of logic to support?

 

[finesse]

I love how Republicans create these non-existent issues that need drastic solutions (new laws, new restrictions, new agencies) to solve. And if you question them they'll say "well, it might become a problem in the future, so we've got to something about it now" even though the "problem" doesn't actually exist. You'd think a party that claims to support small government wouldn't be in favor of pushing new laws and red tape, but here we are. I wonder what paranoid fantasy they will have next that will require laws to "solve" and pretzel-defying leaps of logic to support?

I prefer Procrustean logic. It caters to the pain they like to inflict and encompasses both the stretching and truncations involved.

 

[StrangePackage]

Ok I believe you

Again you claim to be here in good faith. Responses like these do not comport with that claim.

You have asserted something without evidence. You cannot complain that it was dismissed without evidence.

You're claiming that despite an absence of evidence, there is an actual occurrence of some issue which this legislation will address, and that the potential benefits of this legislation outweigh the potential harms. That's a substantially high bar, even if we were to assume that you were posting in good faith.

 

[rodoheel]

Trump not backing down! FAFO!

It's pretty shocking that anyone, even you, would think that this is how a federal system of government is supposed to work. You want our country run like a mob racket where as a state government, you either fall in line behind unconstitutional executive orders or the federal government seeks to punish you?

 

[Silence Dogood]

It's pretty shocking that anyone, even you, would think that this is how a federal system of government is supposed to work. You want our country run like a mob racket where as a state government, you either fall in line behind unconstitutional executive orders or the federal government seeks to punish you?

Trump ran on the issue, and voters backed him, now he's following through. No men in women's sports, don't complicate it.

 

[Mulberry Heel]

I think a great many Trumpers would be perfectly happy with that kind of setup, as long it was people and groups they don't like who are the ones getting punished and arrested and losing their jobs and so forth. If it happens to them then we get all these social media complaints that they never thought Dear Leader and his buddy Musk would cut their job or program or funding, it was all supposed to happen to somebody else who deserves it.

 

[OGtruthhurts]

Again you claim to be here in good faith. Responses like these do not comport with that claim.

You have asserted something without evidence. You cannot complain that it was dismissed without evidence.

You're claiming that despite an absence of evidence, there is an actual occurrence of some issue which this legislation will address, and that the potential benefits of this legislation outweigh the potential harms. That's a substantially high bar, even if we were to assume that you were posting in good faith.

or maybe he just gets tired of the constant pissing contests that changes no ones mind. i could probably count on no fingers the amount of times an old tired pissing contest has changed anyones mind on here or anywhere else. i realize you think you are owning a pub or that a pub thinks he owns you......its still nothing but an egotistical herd pissing contest that accomplishes nothing but go on with feeling important as the boards good faith police.

 

[finesse]

Jellyfish like you need to stay off political threads. Nobody cares about your me onlyism and your moral cowardice.

 

[rodoheel]

"I have no problem with requiring an ID to vote (and I certainly have no problem with allowing only citizens to vote) but obtaining those IDs must be simple, accessible, and free."

I'm fine with giving everyone a free ID as long as it's in tandem with voter ID requirements.

That aside, what percentage of the population do you believe is currently navigating life with no valid form of government ID and what portion of that population do you believe is planning to vote?

I'm not sure I would agree that any significant number of eligible voters being barred form voting due to not having a photo ID is acceptable, but just for the sake of the exercise let's do a rough and dirty estimate. I have no idea the exact figure - or if there even is an exact figure - but a quick Google search suggests somewhere between 9% and 15% of adults in the US don't have a drivers license. Some of them may have passports, but I would suspect the vast majority don't. If they don't have one of those things, what form of government photo ID are they likely to have? Non-photo IDs like social security cards and non-government-issued IDs generally aren't accepted as voter ID.

If you take the low end of that range above and say that 9% of adult Americans don't have a drivers license, then let's say 10% of those have a passport (I think that's likely high) to knock it down to 8%, then say that 10% of those people would like to vote (I think that's likely low), you would be left with a number of people who would like to vote but don't have photo ID equal to roughly 0.8% of American adults, which would be roughly 2.2-2.3 million people.

 

[finesse]

I'm not sure I would agree that any significant number of eligible voters being barred form voting due to not having a photo ID is acceptable, but just for the sake of the exercise let's do a rough and dirty estimate. I have no idea the exact figure - or if there even is an exact figure - but a quick Google search suggests somewhere between 9% and 15% of adults in the US don't have a drivers license. Some of them may have passports, but I would suspect the vast majority don't. If they don't have one of those things, what form of government photo ID are they likely to have? Non-photo IDs like social security cards and non-government-issued IDs generally aren't accepted as voter ID.

If you take the low end of that range above and say that 9% of adult Americans don't have a drivers license, then let's say 10% of those have a passport (I think that's likely high) to knock it down to 8%, then say that 10% of those people would like to vote (I think that's likely low), you would be left with a number of people who would like to vote but don't have photo ID equal to roughly 0.8% of American adults, which would be roughly 2.2-2.3 million people.

Those are numbers and he has feelings. How can you hope to win?

 

[farce©]

or maybe he just gets tired of the constant pissing contests that changes no ones mind. i could probably count on no fingers the amount of times an old tired pissing contest has changed anyones mind on here or anywhere else. i realize you think you are owning a pub or that a pub thinks he owns you......its still nothing but an egotistical herd pissing contest that accomplishes nothing but go on with feeling important as the boards good faith police.

If he’s tired of pissing contests, why do you reckon he starts and continues with them? You’d think if he was tired of it he would simply move on. But he doesn’t so he must enjoy it, no?

 

[heelinhell]

I'm not sure I would agree that any significant number of eligible voters being barred form voting due to not having a photo ID is acceptable, but just for the sake of the exercise let's do a rough and dirty estimate. I have no idea the exact figure - or if there even is an exact figure - but a quick Google search suggests somewhere between 9% and 15% of adults in the US don't have a drivers license. Some of them may have passports, but I would suspect the vast majority don't. If they don't have one of those things, what form of government photo ID are they likely to have? Non-photo IDs like social security cards and non-government-issued IDs generally aren't accepted as voter ID.

If you take the low end of that range above and say that 9% of adult Americans don't have a drivers license, then let's say 10% of those have a passport (I think that's likely high) to knock it down to 8%, then say that 10% of those people would like to vote (I think that's likely low), you would be left with a number of people who would like to vote but don't have photo ID equal to roughly 0.8% of American adults, which would be roughly 2.2-2.3 million people.

Keeping in mind that voter photo ID is a solution in search of a problem...

 

[rodoheel]

Keeping in mind that voter photo ID is a solution in search of a problem...

I generally agree with you, but given the way the public's mind has been twisted on this I think the best position for Dems to take is that they will support voter ID requirements at the federal level if it is coupled with clear and robust provisions for making a free and accessible government ID available to every citizen.

 

[ZenMode]

I'm not sure I would agree that any significant number of eligible voters being barred form voting due to not having a photo ID is acceptable, but just for the sake of the exercise let's do a rough and dirty estimate. I have no idea the exact figure - or if there even is an exact figure - but a quick Google search suggests somewhere between 9% and 15% of adults in the US don't have a drivers license. Some of them may have passports, but I would suspect the vast majority don't. If they don't have one of those things, what form of government photo ID are they likely to have? Non-photo IDs like social security cards and non-government-issued IDs generally aren't accepted as voter ID.

If you take the low end of that range above and say that 9% of adult Americans don't have a drivers license, then let's say 10% of those have a passport (I think that's likely high) to knock it down to 8%, then say that 10% of those people would like to vote (I think that's likely low), you would be left with a number of people who would like to vote but don't have photo ID equal to roughly 0.8% of American adults, which would be roughly 2.2-2.3 million people.

Let's say 9% of all adults don't have a license. They may, as you mentioned, have a passport or a state issued ID, which isn't legal for driving but would be valid for voting.

The reason I mentioned "navigating life" in my original post is because it's very, very difficult to navigate life without an ID. You can't get a job. You can't open a bank account. You can't cash a check. You can't drive. You can't fly. I don't know about all states but, at least in AZ, you can't sign up for SNAP/welfare without an ID.

So, are the people who are existing in life in this manner, likely to be looking to vote? Do you think they are people who are likely to be in a mental state that they should be permitted to vote?

 

[Mulberry Heel]

Keeping in mind that voter photo ID is a solution in search of a problem...

+1. Voter ID is a solution in search of a problem, banning transgenders from women's sports is a solution in search of a problem, mass firings of "lazy" government employees in the name of efficiency and rooting out corruption is a solution in search of a problem, banning Critical Race Theory from schools was a solution in search of a non-existent problem, and on and on. Do Trumpers actually want to solve any real problems, or just the ones that live in their heads because Dear Leader and Fox News and their local preacher told them it was a problem?

 

[Silence Dogood]

Again you claim to be here in good faith. Responses like these do not comport with that claim.

You have asserted something without evidence. You cannot complain that it was dismissed without evidence.

You're claiming that despite an absence of evidence, there is an actual occurrence of some issue which this legislation will address, and that the potential benefits of this legislation outweigh the potential harms. That's a substantially high bar, even if we were to assume that you were posting in good faith.

That explains DEI initiatives.