scrubbedexpat091

If the girl in the article really cared about voting, she would go and get her birth certificate replaced. The article say's she was born in WA, in 2 seconds I found that you can obtain a birth certificate applying through the mail or applying online, if applying online you can have it within a week or for an extra $15 within 3 business days of ordering.

A hurdle, yes, but not one that requires much work or effort to obtain.

sir_eccles

Maybe she isn't the best example but it isn't always that easy.

Take Alabama where they've also introduced a strict voter ID law yet simultaneously closed all the DMV offices in poor black neighborhoods.

To you or I, $15 dollars doesn't sound like much but what if that $15 dollars has to last you to the end of the month and if you don't fill up your car you can't get to work and you lose your job. Plus you don't have internet access so have to queue up in the library to use their computers. Oh but the library is only open until 5 and you can't get time off from work...

I could think of dozens of scenarios that for many of us here would have no problem to overcome but for many less well off it is insurmountable.

Not to mention the other part of the article where they are purging records. I'm sure that will be done fairly too.

zargof

Not to mention the fact that if you have to pay for proof that you are eligible to vote, then it effectively becomes a poll tax, which is a big no no.

kimilseung

I hate to get all constitutional about it, (but why not use it against them), it is against the 24th amendment.

zargof

You know they read the Constitution like they read the Bible. Twist the bits they like to support their view.

sir_eccles

Unfortunately I believe the supreme court has already recently ruled in favor of voter id laws.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawfo...Election_Board

kimilseung

In keeping with the spirit of taking a leaf out of their book: They are wrong, the Supreme Court is not up holding the constitution. bloody liberals, the lot of them.

scrubbedexpat091

We are in the same boat financially. But if we needed something like a birth certificate we do without something else.


I just dont get the whole ID issue down there. Guess ive been in Canada too long. They have ID requirements and it doesnt seem to be an issue at all.

sir_eccles

Two points:

1) the hue and cry that there is a wide spread voter fraud issue without any credible evidence.

2) the blatantly targeted discriminatory aspects of the introduction of these laws, see Alabama closing DMV offices.

scrubbedexpat099

Probably very few people use IE, so not a major issue.

kimilseung

Currently 7.2%
But did I miss a post?

Nutmegger

I use Firefox and it was doing it -- ditto on the iPhone.

FlaviusAetius

I suppose the core question on the question of who should be allowed to vote is whether there should be any distinction whatsoever between residents of the US who are citizens and those who aren't. California appears to have made that decision by automatically registering as voters everyone, including undocumented aliens, all those who are awarded driver's licenses. It may safely be assumed that there is a political advantage to the governing party by doing that.

I'd love to be able to drop in on Canada and vote in their elections and maybe vote in Mexico as well - but I don't think that would be allowed to happen in either country.

username.exe

Time for a little brevity?

Funniest segment on Bill Maher for a loooong time - Bernie Sanders and what Republicans heard:

FlaviusAetius

Actually, I have it on good authority from the RNC, that what Maher presented as what Republicans heard Bernie say, is what he actually said. And the sane stuff he purportedly said - that Maher heard - was dubbed in afterwards.

I also heard from other authority, that the DNC believes that Bernie is a Republican plant whose brief is to throw the Democratic race into such turmoil and force Hillary to swing so far left that she would lose the general to any of the top four Republican hopefuls. They also suspect that most of the so-called "little" donations to his campaign have actually been money funneled to him by the Koch Brothers through an army of Republican activists.

She's right: it's a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.