But most of them are rational people and they tend to think that a democratic republic, flawed as it can be, is the best governmental system out there and that natural law favors democracy.

And I have to say that the link you gave was rather dense. I plowed though about 2 paras and then gave it up as a low priority. Not that you’re responsible for that, mind you.

Don’t worry, I fully understand that such opinions are in the extreme minority when taken among American conservatives as a whole. But that margin rises up exponentially when we go from “American conservatives” to “online Right wingers who troll discussions with rants about the homeless”.

Actually, the viewp0int of the denizens of Free Republic take their cue from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Now, your mileage may differ, but from the rather extensive discussions of this from time to time on Free Republic the general consensus of how to interpret this there is that a) rights are granted by God, b) governments exist to secure rights (not grant them), c) a government’s legitimacy can only be granted though the consent of the governed, and d) if that consent is withdrawn, the government has no right to govern and the people have the God-given right to form a new government according to whatever forms they choose. They consider Natural Law to hold that the people have the right to determine their form of government, which is the essence of democracy.

Now, you may argue against the proposition that the above passage is rightly interpreted in this fashion, but the issue at hand is not your personal opinion but the assertion you have made regarding the opinions of Freepers. I would be very interested to see you point to any discussions on Free Republic where there is established a consensus that democracy violates Natural Law.

If six generations of activists hadn’t been toiling to raise the educational opportunities for blacks prior to LBJ, would securing them the franchise do any good?

I acknowledge that in the real world all progress is intertwined. But do you see anything wrong with LBJ’s analysis? Flash back to the 60’s: what do you think was more important: momentary civil rights legislation from a white congress (however benevolent) or securing the franchise for Black citizens? Extrapolate that to today, and for all disadvantaged citizens of all races.

It isn’t the repubs who are faking the eligibility of the uninvited guests–did I get that right?–the Alzheimers patients in nursing homes, the homeless.

Or, the Republicans push policies that hurt senior citizens and those in poverty, so it’s in their interest to prevent these people from voting. Add to that an insular cabal of crotchety men whose last scruples were ravaged from bitterness over feminism, civil rights, and the fact that bosses are no longer referred to as “sir”, and you have a recipe for unethical, degenerate clusterfuck.

Really, why do need to push such demonstrably false claims to defend a system you hate? Listen to your fellow Freepers - democracy violates natural law.

There’s an example of this, actually. Consider that in the North, blacks were not prevented from voting, but their educational opportunities were limited. You ended up with a easily influenced electoral bloc that, especially in urban areas, often voted according to the directives of political machine operatives against what we would perceive to be against their actual best interests.

Of course, there are many people who think that this is, to a lesser extent, the current situation, as a means to explain why so many blacks vote Democratic. But I digress ….

If six generations of activists hadn’t been toiling to raise the educational opportunities for blacks prior to LBJ, would securing them the franchise do any good?

That is why perfect access to voting is more crucial than perfect access to education or food stamps, even though the latter are still important and I have no idea why you would think it would be considered otherwise.

Perfect access to anything is not achievable. All we can do is “good enough”. For me, good enough means that any reasonably motivated person is able to exercise their right. YMMV.

What defines a democratic election is one in which mass participation from the greatest number is consideration number one.

What defines a democratic election is one in which all adults can vote.

Read my statement in context. What was being proposed was that securing a better position for the higher-information, right kind of voters* was more important than that more people get to vote. Under a democracy, the goal should be the former.

Education is more important than the franchise. Our public educational system places burdens, tests, requirements for behavior, etc., on its constituency that are several orders of magnitude more significant than those imposed on people trying to vote. They are often onerous, and certainly have significant effects on people’s lives, to the point of folks having to move to certain places in order to be able to get the schooling they want. Yet you tolerate this with nary a peep that I’ve ever heard.

Heck, food stamps are a lot more urgent than either the franchise or the educational system, and you should see the crap those folks have to put up with.

Only in the short term. In the long term, the franchise is more important. I’m reminded of LBJ remarking that securing the franchise for Black citizens was more important than civil rights legislation, because it would force Strom Thurmond to “kiss every Black ass in South Carolina”. I don’t think he anticipated the extent of the Southern Strategy, but he was right in the fundamentals. The problem with putting programs and legislation first is that it puts the disenfranchised minority at the mercy of the group in power. Even if that group is open and benevolent, that is still undesirable. That is why perfect access to voting is more crucial than perfect access to education or food stamps, even though the latter are still important and I have no idea why you would think it would be considered otherwise.

What defines a democratic election is one in which all adults can vote. So far, I haven’t seen anyone state an actual reason why an eligible voter can’t register and vote in the U.S.

There you go with “can’t” again. i really don’t understand why that’s the standard, unless you completely ignore equatability. Do you support criminal defense lawyers for the poor, a la Gideon? because half the people who get those probably can afford a lawyer.. if they sold their house, their car, quit their job, etc.

I’m sorry, but the risk of voter fraud is not something we can simply dismiss. And all this whimpering about suppressed voter turn-out is just a bunch of hooey.

Here’s my proposal: Before each election let’s require each voter to check him- or herself into a cell to undergo genetic testing to corroborate his or her identity. We’d keep them in custody until the test results returned, generally in about a week, and then accept their ballot. Not to worry, the state would pick up the tab for the tests and prison accommodations, and would even provide compensation equal to the rate of compensation for jury duty. Surely no one could complain that they COULDN’T vote as a result of these policies. And since the policies are facially neutral, they couldn’t result in skewing voting results in favor of one social group and against another, right?

Whadaya say?

Education is more important than the franchise. Our public educational system places burdens, tests, requirements for behavior, etc., on its constituency that are several orders of magnitude more significant than those imposed on people trying to vote. They are often onerous, and certainly have significant effects on people’s lives, to the point of folks having to move to certain places in order to be able to get the schooling they want. Yet you tolerate this with nary a peep that I’ve ever heard.

Heck, food stamps are a lot more urgent than either the franchise or the educational system, and you should see the crap those folks have to put up with.

I don’t think you actually believe what you say you believe. I don’t think you’re lying, I just think you’re grabbing on to a universalist theoretical justification that you don’t apply with anything like universality.

We do. So far I’ve seen it proposed that it takes an entire day to vote and that polling places are apparently located in obscure places that require transportation requirements beyond the means of people who otherwise manage to have access to sufficient transportation to survive.

2) don’t you realize that there are many, many, people in the country who are citizens, and who don’t have “ordinary resources?” What about them?

They can and do vote as well. Someone who’s homeless and has become so disconnected from society that they have no money and no ID would have a problem voting, but that’s a pretty low number of people. If you want to propose some way of assisting such people, I’d be interested to hear it. Otherwise I don’t see who is excluded from registering and voting by the present systems for such things.

But the requirements can only be those which, as applied to EVERY CITIZEN (not only rich ones) do not in any way be onerous enough to have a significant effect on their life.

I think that this is the present situation. I hvaen’t seen anything that would put significant barriers in the way of registering or voting to people who aren’t rich.

RonF Writes:
March 14th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
What defines a democratic election is one in which all adults can vote. So far, I haven’t seen anyone state an actual reason why an eligible voter can’t register and vote in the U.S.

There you go with “can’t” again. i really don’t understand why that’s the standard, unless you completely ignore equitability. Do you support criminal defense lawyers for the poor, a la Gideon? because half the people who get those probably can afford a lawyer.. if they sold their house, their car, quit their job, etc.

I have no problem with the concept of personal choice, or that we will be OK with requirements that are less than zero. But th requirements can only be those which, as applied to EVERY CITIZEN (not only rich ones) do not in any way be onerous enough to have a significant effect on their life.

It’s true that some people have on occasion tried to create discriminatory barriers; those are abuses that have been corrected, and vigilance is due to ensure that such things don’t recur.

I think that peopl are constantly trying to create discriminatory barriers–in particular against the poor and POC–and that they do so by the death of a thousand cuts.

But overall, people who have the ordinary resources to live have the resources to vote.

Sure. two problems, though:

1) isn’t it a bit insane that even ordinary people with ordinary resources won’t always be able to vote? It’s not that hard to provide; why on earth don’t we provide it?

2) don’t you realize that there are many, many, people in the country who are citizens, and who don’t have “ordinary resources?” What about them?

problem is, a large percentage

As far as the voting location goes; see, I don’t trust electronic balloting at all to sort out results as reliably, as accurately and as secure as physical balloting. Understand that I’m not taking a Luddite viewpoint, nor do I have some ulterior motive in retaining any present methods of corruptingresults. I’m a network engineer. I’m not an expert on encryption, but even so I know a fair amount about networking and data and I just don’t trust the technology at this point. Absent the technology, you can’t vote in one spot and get the right ballots for where you live unless it’s just the right spot.

Instant runoff I have to think about.

As long as you need to prove citizenship to get that ID, cool.

The idea would be that the identification required would have had citizenship as a prerequisite. I’m not in favour of getting people to clean out their bureaus to find their passport so that they can vote. In addition to looking suspiciously like a ploy to depress turnout, there’s something very “B-movie-about-Nazis”-esque about always being asked for your ‘papers’.

Not sure where you’re going with this.

My main concern is countering the intentional shuffling of precincts in order to disenfranchise those most likely to move around and least likely to be informed of such matters. Basically, I think that if there’s a statewide election, such as for the Senate, Governor, or the President, I think you should be able to cast your vote from anywhere within that state. Ditto for Congressional races and congressional districts. I don’t see how this should be impossible given our current level of technology; if your vote for municipal comptroller is invalid because you showed at the wrong polling station in Illinois, I don’t see why your vote for Governor for the State of Illinois shouldn’t count also. (State laws may differ; maybe this is how it already works in Illinois.) I also think that with electronic voting, this sifting can be made instantaneous and hassle-free. I don’t trust the current provisional ballot system.

Will it be possible for someone else to determine how RonF voted through examination of that record?

No, because that would defeat the whole purpose of having that record in the first place. Anyone who can secretly keep track of everyone’s votes is capable of secretly manipulating everyone’s votes. What I have in mind is a paper receipt that is for the voter’s to keep, so that in the event of a disputed election or manual recount, we have something to go on. And if there’s any truth to the claims that some voting machines are rigged, this would make it fairly obvious to spot.

What’s the problem, and what does this do to alleviate it?

The problem is a bit of an “Emperor Has No Clothes” scenario, something that the more pompous among us might call a pernicious Nash equilibrium. Third parties are unpopular not because of their platform or their candidates (for the most part), but because people perceive other people as perceiving them unpopular. Instant runoff voting works by listing your votes in order of preference, and weeding out the least popular candidate in each step of vote-counting until we arrive at a majority winner.

For instance, my primary votes under an instant runoff system would have been thus:

(Democrat)
1. Al Gore (write-in)

2. John Edwards

3. Barack Obama

(Republican, forgetting for the moment that I’m not allowed to vote in both primaries)

1. Ron Paul

2. Chuck Hagel (write-in)

3. John McCain

Let’s say the Democratic vote broke down thus:

Clinton 29%
Obama 26%
Edwards 16%
Gore (write-in) 14%
Kucinich 9%
Biden 4%
Gravel/Dodd/Vilsack/That guy from Minnesota running as a vampire 2%

From here, there’s no universally agreed upon method to jump to second-balloting. Let’s say we winnow the vote to all but the top three candidates, since no one candidate has the majority (it’s impossible to win with a mere plurality under instant runoff). So it becomes:

Clinton 39%
Obama 38%
Edwards 23%

-with my Gore vote shifting to Edwards, since he was my number two choice. Since we still don’t have a majority, we do another round:

Obama 53%
Clinton 47%

-with my Edwards vote shifting to Obama, since he was my number three choice.

Thus, I get to vote for the candidates I really feel connected to, while retaining the ability to vote for the “least worst” option. Under such a system, people will free to vote for the candidate and/or party they really want with no fear of wasting their vote. I think they’d be surprised just how many other people would vote the same way, who were in turn shied away from voting according to true allegiances based on how *they* were expected to vote. It’s the best way I think to break the two-party gridlock, as well as the two-or-three-acceptable-candidate gridlock *within* those two parties.

If you truly think that third parties are unpopular because they deserve it, instant runoff voting will have no effect whatsoever. People would just vote Democrat or Republican as their first choice, and a clear majority would be found on the first ballot in most safe districts. In swing districts, Greens and Libertarians may hold something of a trump card, but they already do under our current system.

What defines a democratic election is one in which all adults can vote. So far, I haven’t seen anyone state an actual reason why an eligible voter can’t register and vote in the U.S. It’s true that some people have on occasion tried to create discriminatory barriers; those are abuses that have been corrected, and vigilance is due to ensure that such things don’t recur. But overall, people who have the ordinary resources to live have the resources to vote.

I did a little research. I haven’t nailed down the list, but apparently not every state has a law requiring employers to provide their employees paid time off of work to vote if their shift is such that they do not have 2 or 3 consecutive hours outside of their shift to vote. I would wholeheartedly support a Federal law to that effect for Federal elections and State laws for non-federal ones in the states that do not have such laws. Note that none of the existing laws (apparently there are at least 30 states that have such laws) grant a day off; nobody seems to think that you need to take a whole day off to vote, so I can’t see why the idea that people need to take a day off to vote persists here.

I think it’s the business of the government to make sure that everyone who wants to vote can do so. I don’t think it’s the business of the government to make sure that everyone votes, or to try to motivate people to vote. Voting is a personal decision. Our schools should make sure that their graduates understand the principles of democracy, the principles and mechanisms of how our democratic republic works and what the value of voting is. Past that, it’s up to the candidates and political parties to try to motivate people to vote, and it’s up to the voters to provide their own motivation to get informed and to vote. I think that the low voter numbers we have in the U.S. is an indictment of the electorate, but it’s not the business of the government to change that.

The extreme example of governmental motivation is in Australia, where you are fined if you don’t vote. An Australian friend of mine had to pick up and cast a ballot at an Australian consulate in Chicago to avoid a fine.

As long as you need to prove citizenship to get that ID, cool.

Build an official voter database that precludes the need to make eligibility dependent on current geography, at least within the the same state.

Not sure where you’re going with this. I live in Illinois. I live in a municipality, a county, a fire protection district, a sanitary district, an elementary school district, a high school district, a community college district, a mosquito abatement district, a township, a forest perserve district, a county judicial district, a state judicial district, a State Representative district, a State Senate district, and others. One of these changes if I walk across the street from my house. Others change if you walk a half-block. Two blocks, and a few more change. Eight blocks, and it’s a different county. All of these have officials, referenda or both on the ballot. When I go to vote there are people from a 1/2 mile radius there, but there’s 4 different precincts to vote in depending on where you live. How else do you accomodate this?

Mandate a paper trail or some sort of independent record for all voters.

Will it be possible for someone else to determine how RonF voted through examination of that record?

Create a law that says excess voting equipment, by a certain margin (say, by 20%), must always be provided to every precinct where there was a shortage during the last election cycle of its type. Allow random federal inspections of all voting machines, without so much as a reason or a prior warning, even as they are still in the factory - the same way they do with slot machines, based on the premise that the integrity of our democratic elections is at least as important as gamblers’ money.

Cool.

And as for the persistent problem of third party representation, just institute instant runoff voting.

What’s the problem, and what does this do to alleviate it?

Show me the person who wasn’t able to vote because of the hurdle.

Show me the person who can’t spare 20 bucks once every four years.

As for the Georgia ID requirements, it was in a sense a special case because the abuse was blatant and obvious; they made sure not to place a single ID office inside Atlanta, thereby decreasing the genuine-ness of black and urban voters.

But perhaps it’s not a special case. Every time we need to decide what slight barriers or filters are appropriate, we need to decide on what metric is appropriate, who counts as “genuine”, and what “slight” really means. Someone somewhere is making these decisions, and I’ll bet dollars to donuts they prefer closed doors.

When put to the test, you didn’t defend the voting rights of people of color; you make excuses for disenfranchisement, and looked for any excuse to say that it didn’t happen. Actions talk louder than words; say all the pretty words about rifles in the street you want, when push comes to shove you defend disenfranchisement.

It’s notable that the poll tax is fully defensible with all the arguments you’re making here. Presumably, you would have defended it as reasonable and desirable when it was around.

In practice, it’s rare that POC are denied equal voting rights primarily because of armed racists in the street; your party’s leaders figured out long ago that other methods are more effective and defensible.

Short of that? There are worse problems more demanding of attention.

That might be a reason not to advocate for measures to make it easier and simpler for people to vote. It’s not a reason to oppose such measures.