Desert_Power
Footballguy
Ah, I see. Voter suppression has a long history in the South post Reconstruction. It's a constant struggle.
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HR1-For the People Act (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter shadrap
- Start date
the moops
Footballguy
Tell that to the woman in Texas who was sentenced to 5 years in prison for illegally voting even though she didn't know she was ineligible. And this was upheld by a TX appeals court.
I would certainly think the government would throw the whole damn book at someone who knowingly voted multiple times with different names in different places.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/20/crystal-mason-texas-upholds-sentence-voter-suppression
Desert_Power
Footballguy
timschochet
Footballguy
Odds of enough people choosing to risk this in order to affect the results of an election? Even more minuscule.
massraider
Footballguy
It's a major concern, you only need a few hundred people to vote 4 times, and then all of them keep a secret.
Keeps me up at night. This and the chupacabra.
Mile High
Footballguy
As Mark Twain said 2 people can keep a secret if 1 of them is dead. That's why this idea of massive voter fraud involving 100s falls apart.
massraider
Footballguy
Texas AG Ken Paxton's office spent 22,000 hours looking for voter fraud and uncovered just 16 cases of false addresses on registration forms, according to The Houston Chronicle. Nearly 17M voters are registered in Texas.
renesauz
IBL Representative
Me too....but there were poll workers with a checklist there, who marked off the person voting. IE: They still had to be registered.Maybe? I really don't know. I've lived places where I just gave them an electric bill and voted. No cameras in the place, so I have no idea how they'd have tracked me down.
Even in places where ID requirements are pretty light, it isn't so simple to vote fraudulantly.....let alone do so in large enough numbers to make a difference.
joffer
Footballguy
FairWarning
Footballguy
Dinsy Ejotuz
Footballguy
Coming up with a # of people actually prevented from voting is really hard, and relies on models.
But given that the "vote fraud" crusaders have never managed to turn up more than a dozen or two votes that might have been fraudulent the ratio of votes suppressed to fraudulent votes is likely pretty high.
I've seen estimates that local restrictions have reduced the vote by 8-10%. Which would add up to 10,000x or more votes suppressed than there are fraudulent votes.
I can't find the #s now, but between the Civil War and the Jim Crow era black turnout in the South was very high. I want to say 65-70%, but that might be off some.
But after 25 years of intimidation, poll taxes, literacy tests and outright terror, roughly 5% of blacks voted in Confederate States between 1900 and 1940.
It rose to 65% again between ~1950 and 1970 as the Civil Rights era rolled back Jim Crow.
So we know voter suppression can be very effective if it's not stopped, and there's a long history of it in the US. In a lot of the same places that are trying to implement voter restrictions today. None of this is happening in a vacuum.
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massraider
Footballguy
There are 253 voter integrity/suppression bills in 43 states right now.
That's staggering.
That's staggering.
timschochet
Footballguy
This is like saying that pandemics are bad, but invaders from space attacking the planet is equally bad.
Well sure, but one is slightly more of a concern than the other at this point.
FairWarning
Footballguy
In your opinion. Big city election fraud has gone on forever. Do you know who runs the cities?
Dinsy Ejotuz
Footballguy
That's actually a great example. Surprised no one's brought it up in here before.
But existing law and regulations eliminated all that stuff in the 70s and 80s. And partisan poll watching nationwide and networked electronic systems make it almost impossible now. (The electronic machines are a new weak point for systemic fraud, but voter suppression laws don't deal with it.)
Regardless, voter suppression laws wouldn't have prevented most of it because you had an entire party machine in on it and willing to commit fraud. As we found out in the Trump era, at some point any system relies on honest law enforcement to police the law.
FairWarning
Footballguy
There is still election fraud in the cities. Maybe not as much due to the decreased power of the unions, but the unions are all D.
Dinsy Ejotuz
Footballguy
You're going to have to show your work on this one. Systems today are pretty robust.
Also, unions are not all D. Reagan and Trump almost go 50% of union vote.
parasaurolophus
Footballguy
Multiple issues have occurred in philadelphia alone. Sure they have caught people, but I think it would be a bit unreasonable to think they catch everybody. iirc one guy got caught for voting 12 times. If one guy did it, you know others did it. 4 were caught stuffing as poll workers. An election commission official pled guilty to fraud in 3 past elections. Several more instances in the last 10 years.
I think the point that much of what gets proposed wouldnt address these issues is a better one.
sho nuff
Footballguy
Id also guess the odds of the three votes being counted and them not verifying its an actual person are quite low.
FairWarning
Footballguy
shadrap
Footballguy
your trying pretty hard here. miniscule chance of getting caught. jail time? Nope.
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
shadrap
Footballguy
so you think it a good idea to sign a form saying you are Jimmy Smith, without ID, witness, or Notary & then voting?
doesn't surprise me though.
shadrap
Footballguy
maybe not trying at all? so someone recognizes me at a polling place & I'm going to fill out a form saying I'm Jimmy Smith? No, I just go to the next place. So tell me how I'm going to get caught?
just wondering.
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
I might not be understanding your hypos. If your name is Bob Jones and you go to a polling place and say you’re Jimmy Smith and somebody there is like “that’s not Jimmy Smith that’s Bob Jones” then I think you’re screwed. Are you saying that would never happen or that there would be no consequence if it did happen?
Dinsy Ejotuz
Footballguy
shadrap
Footballguy
Yes, you would be screwed. If you walk in as Bob Jones & want to vote as Jimmy Smith & see someone you know I doubt you vote unless drunk, impaired, or a raving idiot.
you just go to the next voting site. this one statute of this bill is insane. can't believe people can't see this, but I suppose that if sponsored by a Dem must be good?
insane. IMHO
shadrap
Footballguy
massraider
Footballguy
Right. I mean, where are all these registered voters who are not voting, how do these fraudsters KNOW those voters aren't voting, and ummm, are all these fraudsters voting the same way? There are only fraudsters on one side? Why would we believe that?
shadrap
Footballguy
massraider
Footballguy
Um, what if you see someone who knows Jimmy Smith, but not Bob Jones? Now there's someone there who knows you aren't Jimmy Smith, and you, Bob Jones, wouldn't know that.
Handcuffs time
shadrap
Footballguy
Dinsy Ejotuz
Footballguy
shadrap
Footballguy
yea, I'm pretty sure they have law enforcement on site or not. Wait right here dude because we are calling the police. dude waits for police to arrest him or not. Let's say he doesn't wait for police to arrest him. How do they know who he is to arrest him at a later date?
remember, no ID.
maybe DNA from the form he signed?
Jail???????
don't make me laugh.
I would think there is more than one Jimmy Smith even in Spearfish SD.
massraider
Footballguy
shadrap
Footballguy
humor me, how does that "someone" know that Bob is voting as Jimmy?
What, looking over his shoulder as he is filling out the form?
timschochet
Footballguy
No.shadrap said:
And that’s the whole point: we should not be restricting voting in order to humor paranoia.
shadrap
Footballguy
urbanhack
Fight The Power!
The Commish
Footballguy
shadrap said:
People have gone to jail for going to the wrong voting place and voting there by mistake. You don't think, if caught, people doing it intentionally wouldn't go to jail? What do you base that on exactly?
shadrap
Footballguy
blanket statement that makes no sense. so a 12 year old kid can vote?
I'm making the point that one element of HR 1 is stupid. Maybe deal with that and get back.
shadrap
Footballguy
massraider
Footballguy
The Commish
Footballguy
It hadn't occurred to me until these last several posts, but I wonder how many of the "WE MUST CHANGE THE SYSTEM!!!!!!!!!" people even understand the system as it CURRENTLY works in their districts 
shadrap
Footballguy
off my meds, thought I was Bob Jones. Jail?
People have gone to jail for going to the wrong voting place and voting there by mistake. You don't think, if caught, people doing it intentionally wouldn't go to jail? What do you base that on exactly?
Well, at least here in California, in order to get my ballot at the polling place, I have to say who I am to a poll worker, confirm my address to another poll worker who checks it against the voter registry and then sign the voter roll so that my signature can be verified against my registration when they validate signatures. At that point they generate a 4 digit code that I need to enter into the voting machine when I go into a booth so that it will count my vote.shadrap said:
May be (and likely is) a bit different in other states/counties, but it is a lot of hoops to go through with a fair amount of verification (ETA: even without showing ID). I would have to know someone fairly intimately, as well as be capable of forging their signature in order to successfully cast a fraudulent vote for them. And I would need that person to not show up and vote themselves, cause if they did, then they would be able to cast a provisional ballot, my fraudulent vote and theirs would get flagged and investigated, and while I may not get caught, my fraudulent vote would be caught and would not be counted.
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