Interesting article. Even more so in light of the fact that so many states, including my own, have been busy passing laws headed in exactly the opposite direction -- making it more difficult to register, and to vote.
Tim
Tim
America Shuts Down!
- Thread starter NorthStar
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Almost sounds like "oppression". What? In a Democracy? You gotta be sh!ttin' me!
The reason I bring this up is quite simple. This I know from direct experience. The ONLY thing that can scare a politician out of his wits is losing.
The lower the voter turnout, the easier it is to patronize the remainder. The easier also for the remainder, in this case a minority of the constituency to influence/lobby the politician one way or another. You know what they say about the squeaky wheels. These are the organized civil or business groups. Where is the real majority? Them being the unaffiliated voters? Well, anywhere in the world, they only show up at the polls when things are really bad AND they are angry as all hell.
Any wonder then why some States and States (Countries) are making it harder to register and vote?
The US is lucky. You can change your Representative every two years. It is the shortest I know of excepting dissolved parliaments. Thing is, whining or even screaming will not get their attention much less their fear. Large and broad sampled regular polls on a district level certainly will.
Whip: I want you to vote Aye
Rep: If I do we could lose this seat.
Whip: $^%$*&%*^%!!!!! We don't want that.
Rep: Thanks for understanding.
That is basically what happens to most everyone that crosses party lines. Survival trumps ideology.
The lower the voter turnout, the easier it is to patronize the remainder. The easier also for the remainder, in this case a minority of the constituency to influence/lobby the politician one way or another. You know what they say about the squeaky wheels. These are the organized civil or business groups. Where is the real majority? Them being the unaffiliated voters? Well, anywhere in the world, they only show up at the polls when things are really bad AND they are angry as all hell.
Any wonder then why some States and States (Countries) are making it harder to register and vote?
The US is lucky. You can change your Representative every two years. It is the shortest I know of excepting dissolved parliaments. Thing is, whining or even screaming will not get their attention much less their fear. Large and broad sampled regular polls on a district level certainly will.
Whip: I want you to vote Aye
Rep: If I do we could lose this seat.
Whip: $^%$*&%*^%!!!!! We don't want that.
Rep: Thanks for understanding.
That is basically what happens to most everyone that crosses party lines. Survival trumps ideology.
Nothing so blatant as clear oppression. Here we have shortened early voting, stiffened id requirements, and have made registration more difficult. The proponents say it is all to suppress voter fraud. But voter fraud is not a significant problem and there is little doubt that the new laws will keep many more legal voters out of the process than it will fraudulent ones. It's not a good thing, and it will keep some of the young, the poor, and the elderly away from the polls who would otherwise go, but I think it's impact on representative democracy is small compared to the levels of efficiency to which gerrymandering has risen in recent years. That takes entire Congressional districts, thousands of voters at a time, effectively out of the general election. These districts become so partisan that winning the primary is all that matters, so the most partisan voters are he only ones who are represented.
A very large % of the congressmen driving the current deadlock are from such districts, which is why it doesn't matter to them that a substantial majority of the American people don't agree with what they're doing. The don't represent the American people. But don't get me wrong, it is only currently a Republican problem. It has been around for a long, long time and is a bi-partisan problem.
Tim
Gerrymandering is short term. There is no such thing as a safe district for a Rep that screws up.
I've said it before and I will say it again, we should all vote for only non-incumbents and throw every last politician out of office. Everyone I talk to swears they are going to do just that. We need to get a "herd" mentality going and have everyone follow through.
Why some people trust corporations so much more than the govt. is a mystery to me. Additionally, there's also obvious tension between profit motive and healthcare/education/incarceration/environmental protection, etc, etc.
I vote, frustrating as the choices can be sometimes. I think it's a good point that while a president can maybe move the ship only a few degrees this way or that way domestically, from a foreign policy standpoint, there is much wider latitude. Hey, if Ralph Nader put his ego aside in '00, we would not have wound up in Iraq and Gore never would have lost 4-3. More to the story than that obviously, but a Gore victory = no Iraq war.
Congressional districts in the US are re-drawn every 10 years. That's 5 Congressional terms. I wouldn't call that short term. I know the effects. I wouldn't call them short-term either.
Tim
North Carolina --
The law requires a photo ID. If you're elderly, become disabled, lose your hearing or eyesight or have any other reason to stop driving, you are required to send your driver's liscence - the only photo ID most people have - back to DMV. They do not send you a non-drivers photo ID, and you no longer drive, so getting one becomes difficult. My father went through this, he has me to drive him around and chase down agencies and options on the internet for him. Trust me, it makes voting difficult.
The law eliminates 7 day of early voting. Allow me to turn this one around: How does limiting access to voting not make it more difficult to vote?
The law eliminates same-day registration. Two trips - one to register, one to vote.
This is not blatant voter obstruction, by any means. It is subtle, and I don't think it will have a huge impact, but it will make it harder for some people to vote. Me? No problem. I'll do what I've always doe - get in line at the neighborhood school and vote. And when they ask me for a photo ID, I'll pull out my license, No big deal. I won't have as many days, as much opportunity to do that, so the lines will be longer (ie: harder to vote), but no big deal.
But it will make voting a bit more hassle for me (fewer days of access to the polls) and a lot more of a hassle to folks who need to register or don't have a photo ID. Are they throwing up a huge roadblock in front of the democratic process? No. But they're making it a bit harder for it to work for everybody.
The question is why. Voter fraud? In 2012, nearly 7 million ballots were cast in elections in NC. 121 alleged cases of fraud were referred to DAs offices (and this is politics we're talking about). In 2010, a non-presidential year, 3.9 million ballots were cast, and 28 alleged cases of fraud were reported.
Can I prove that these laws will keep more legitimate voters from the polls than the alleged fraud they were supposedly meant to address? Honestly, I don' t think I have to. So if a set of laws is going to prevent more lawful votes than alleged unlawful votes (like criminals can't make fake IDs?) what is the real point of the laws?
A: To prevent lawful votes.
Well, either that or the people who wrote the laws are just stupid.
Tim
Try getting Social Security, Food Stamps, a US Passport, or even a library card without a photo ID. Let me know how that works out.
The same people opposed to this measure are the very same people who refused to prosecute Black Panthers who intimidated voters at the polls. That makes me skeptical, very skeptical. Bear in mind, I am not a Republican.
The same people opposed to this measure are the very same people who refused to prosecute Black Panthers who intimidated voters at the polls. That makes me skeptical, very skeptical. Bear in mind, I am not a Republican.
I'm assuming that the creation or re-apportioning must be based on the two usual criteria, population and contiguity. Let's suppose one district is represented by party A and the contiguous district is represented by someone in party B. Now census says their districts must be re-apportioned in order for populations to be equitable. Who chooses which towns go where and what body approves the same?
I still maintain however given the context of this thread that no pol is safe if he screws up. What would constitute a screw up would differ from region to region however based on sub-cultural sensitivities. I also maintain that the larger the "wasted vote" the less hardline the sitting pol will be as this goes from safe, safer, swing to lost.
Coming from a country that likewise has voter turn out that is less than stellar, I've seen so called safe districts fall regularly. What makes them fall is almost always the silent majority.
With typical turnout at 40%, all one would need to win and be re-elected is 20%+1 of the voting population. Now let's suppose the incumbent has really buttered up his faithful and he wins by landslide and gets 75% of the 40%. That's still only 30% of the total voting population. If this guys screws up bad enough, that margin can be diluted very, very quickly by the silent non-voters even if he keeps his flock intact and active. Voter turnout spikes during bad times. My wish is that voter turnout be high ALL the time. Patronage becomes, to be really cold blooded about it, uneconomical. It becomes a performance/voting record game.
I still maintain however given the context of this thread that no pol is safe if he screws up. What would constitute a screw up would differ from region to region however based on sub-cultural sensitivities. I also maintain that the larger the "wasted vote" the less hardline the sitting pol will be as this goes from safe, safer, swing to lost.
Coming from a country that likewise has voter turn out that is less than stellar, I've seen so called safe districts fall regularly. What makes them fall is almost always the silent majority.
With typical turnout at 40%, all one would need to win and be re-elected is 20%+1 of the voting population. Now let's suppose the incumbent has really buttered up his faithful and he wins by landslide and gets 75% of the 40%. That's still only 30% of the total voting population. If this guys screws up bad enough, that margin can be diluted very, very quickly by the silent non-voters even if he keeps his flock intact and active. Voter turnout spikes during bad times. My wish is that voter turnout be high ALL the time. Patronage becomes, to be really cold blooded about it, uneconomical. It becomes a performance/voting record game.
I haven't a clue how hard it is to get any of those things without a photo ID. Is it hard? Then we need to address those issues as well, because people in need of Social Security and Food Stamps are among the most likely to not have a photo ID. But the fact that other things are difficult without photo IDs doesn't change the very high likelihood that these laws will suppress more legal votes than they will prevent fraudulent ones. And really, the Black Panthers remark doesn't even deserve a response.
You asked a simple question, I gave you a direct answer with detail and supporting data. Evidently it left you with no substantive response, because you came back with irrelevant, inflammatory nonsense.
Tim
Jack -- Of course no district is completely safe, that's not really the point. The point is that the extreme geographic manipulation of districts makes them safe enough that all some of these guys have to do is win a primary. The general election becomes irrelevant. The representative process is usurped. If you think drawing a district that isolates the heavily Democratic central neighborhoods of a metro, or one that cuts a serpentine path around them to pick up the Republican-dominated outer suburbs, will give us representatives who come to Washington to represent the will of the people instead of the will of the ones they hand-pick who agree with them, I can't argue with your opinion. But I don't think that's a true representative democracy and I don't think it is consistent with the intention of the constitution. I don't know how it has survived constitutional muster so far, but I'll look into it.
Tim
Tim
Irrelevant, inflammatory nonsense? Let's leave that for the reader to determine.
Sure, we can do that. In a discussion of a law supposedly enacted to prevent voter fraud I provide detail about the law and data showing that voter fraud is so insignificant that the number of legal voters impaired by this law is likely to be higher than the total alleged fraud. You, in respons, suppose that everyone who has questioned such a law was a defender of the Black Panthers. Yeah, we can leave it to the readers to decide if that's inflammatory nonsense.
Tim
Mark, you are disrupting. ...You should delete your own post if you have any common sense. ...You do that and I'll follow you.
__________________
Yes, a picture ID with a matching code number (password) is important because you could be anyone and many ones... in the other's eyes.
- Even in Canada I have difficulty in voting because my driver's licence has expired a long time ago, and same for my passport.
And my birthday certificate is without a picture. ...My Social Insurance number? ...It's just that; a #.
*** What would happen if the elections were during a government's shutdown?
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