RE: What is the fuss about voter supression about?
August 14, 2013 at 6:21 pm
(This post was last modified: August 14, 2013 at 6:33 pm by Anomalocaris.)
The US has a hallowed tradition of pretending everything on god's flat earth that's worth seeing by a christian must lie within the borders of US of A, most likely on this side of disneyland, therefore it is not all that common for poorer American families to actually have passports for other reasons.
The cost of US passport is $135, and it generally takes longer than 2 weeks from application to delivery. $135 is not an insubstantial sum for a family living at or below the poverty level. Furthermore, if you never had a passport and are applying for the first time, you must do so in person on a weekday at a designated passport office or post office, thus requiring you to take some time off from you low hourly wage job.
The central point is many surveys have shown that incidence of voter identity fraud in the US is generally very low. There isn't a significant problem of people ineligible to vote using fradulent identities to vote. Therefore the voter ID law addresses no problems.
On the other hand, it can be shown that voter ID law would in effect reduce participation by some people who are eligible to vote. Furthermore, the likely effected are overwhelmingly of the segment of the population who tend not to vote for those who would prepetrate this law.
So, voter ID laws address no problem, introduces problems, and the problems it introduces so happen to creat a electroal advantage for those who would introdice voter ID laws.
The cost of US passport is $135, and it generally takes longer than 2 weeks from application to delivery. $135 is not an insubstantial sum for a family living at or below the poverty level. Furthermore, if you never had a passport and are applying for the first time, you must do so in person on a weekday at a designated passport office or post office, thus requiring you to take some time off from you low hourly wage job.
The central point is many surveys have shown that incidence of voter identity fraud in the US is generally very low. There isn't a significant problem of people ineligible to vote using fradulent identities to vote. Therefore the voter ID law addresses no problems.
On the other hand, it can be shown that voter ID law would in effect reduce participation by some people who are eligible to vote. Furthermore, the likely effected are overwhelmingly of the segment of the population who tend not to vote for those who would prepetrate this law.
So, voter ID laws address no problem, introduces problems, and the problems it introduces so happen to creat a electroal advantage for those who would introdice voter ID laws.
