mail in voting

[Dill]

(06-17-2020, 03:03 AM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: However, I am a big fan of showing your id to vote in person amd I believe everyone should. People keep claiming its hampering minorities, but I've never met a person that didn't have a valid ID (unless DL suspended). Cash check places and banks require an ID so most people will have one anyways. Makes no sense to me why that one is so heavily argued against.

Lots of people who live in urban areas argue like this.

"Most people" is not all.   "Not all" can be thousands.

People keep claiming voter ID laws hamper minorities because they do. And because they are designed to do exactly that.

My favorite is still the North Dakota law which required voters to present an ID with a street address, knowing that many Native Americans do not have that. (I lived on a Montana reservation while in HS, and had no street address.) Fortunately, the Spirit Lake Nation and the Standing Rock Siioux brought a successful lawsuit against the state to rectify the measure.

North Dakota And Native American Tribes Settle Voter ID Lawsuits
https://www.npr.org/2020/02/14/806083852/north-dakota-and-native-american-tribes-settle-voter-id-lawsuits


My mother-in-law never had a birth certificate. No one knew whether she was actually born in 1917 or 1918. (She preferred 1918).  And yet some states have made a birth certificate a requirement for getting an ID. In 2012, Mississippi was requiring a voter id based upon a valid birth certificate which thousands of elderly (black) Mississipians did not have. Fortunately, with the help of the ACLU, that problem has been fixed.

State Facing Voter ID Hurdles
https://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2012/jul/05/state-facing-voter-id-hurdles/

U.S. Appeals Court Strikes Down North Carolina's Voter ID Law
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/29/487935700/u-s-appeals-court-strikes-down-north-carolinas-voter-id-law

One should see these laws as part of a larger strategy to reduce minority (=Democrat) votes which includes not only disenfranchisement of felons but purging voters lists immediately before elections, forbidding college students to vote on campus and same day registration, and early voting.


1 Out Of Every 8 Milwaukee Registered Voters Is On Purge List
https://patch.com/wisconsin/milwaukee/1-out-every-8-milwaukee-registered-voters-purge-list

Lawsuit: Mississippi Constitution still disenfranchising thousands
https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2018/03/27/mississippi-still-disenfranchising-thousands/458068002/

The motivation for all these changes in voting laws is the supposed danger of unregistered, illegal voters--a fear not born out by data over the last 40 years.