Plain Talk About Georgia

When Rahm Emmanuel made his argument today ( if Trump had won the November election there wouldn't have been any changes made to the Georgia voting law), Christie didnt disagree on substance, he just said Joe Biden is a liar. 

Christie could not disagree on substance. 

The changes to Georgia's do not keep one single person from casting their vote

They just need to follow a few simple rules

 Sure they don’t PREVENT anyone from voting but they make it a bigger pain in the ass with the obvious intent being so lower turnout especially in places like Atlanta. Maybe the law will do what the GOP intends, maybe it won’t. With any luck it will have the opposite effect and turnout will be higher specifically because certain people do t want to start turning the clock back 70 years.

If you (left wingers collectively) support fair and honest voting for ALL, then you should support photo ID's for all.

None of these changes restrict voting or make it harder for anyone to vote.

If you (left wingers collectively) support fair and honest voting for ALL, then you should support photo ID's for all.

I'm not left, but I'm all for photo ID and proof of residency to vote. I need to present those where I vote now. It's just common sense and no big deal.

There is nothing wrong in general with the idea of requiring more id in order to vote. 

There is something wrong when the purpose is to see if you can get more people from certain groups to not vote. 

No one has ever proven or convincingly demonstrated that requiring photo id will prevent voter fraud. Signature checking ALREADY eliminates voter fraud, and Georgia has signature checking.

So why the craving for photo id? Because they either know or believe that a photo id voting law will decrease the number of Democratic voters. 

The intention is wrong.  That makes the law the wrong thing to do. 

Not sure about proof of residency. What if someone is only 18 and lives at home or with friends and has no bills in their name or no lease.

I still say voting should have a national standard. We already have a national data base.

Having patchwork laws in different states is ridiculous. As we have seen in the past, some states cannot be trusted to be fair.

What was not fair and honest in the last election?

What do these new laws do to protect honesty?

Nothing...

What if someone is only 18 and lives at home or with friends and has no bills in their name or no lease.

Anything with their address listed would work, be it junk mail, Amazon package, college mail ads, ect.

I still say voting should have a national standard.

That would make things so much easier and more efficient.

So why the craving for photo id? Because they either know or believe that a photo id voting law will decrease the number of Democratic voters. 

Photo ID seems like basic common sense to prove you are who you say you are and that you have voted.

No one has ever proven or convincingly demonstrated that requiring photo id will prevent voter fraud.

Photo ID is just a basic requisite to vote. It shouldn't be the only one.

When a person registers to vote they sign their name which is then saved at the Election Board. When you vote, in person or by mail , the election workers check the signature when voting against the signature from the registration. Totally effective. 

The idea that someone is going to convincingly forge hundreds or thousands of signatures is nonsense. 

the election workers check the signature when voting against the signature from the registration. Totally effective. 

Good!

The idea that someone is going to convincingly forge hundreds or thousands of signatures is nonsense. 

All you need is a photo ID and proof of address after registering. That should be quite effective.

the election workers check the signature when voting against the signature from the registration. Totally effective.

How much training and expertise do you imagine the average poll worker has in evaluating handwriting to detect forgeries?

The idea that someone is going to convincingly forge hundreds or thousands of signatures is nonsense. 

It’s a lot easier to fake a signature than it is to fake a state-issued ID card.

It’s a lot easier to fake a signature than it is to fake a state-issued ID card.

I'm sorry, this is nonsense.  In order to successfully, aka convincingly, forge someone else's signature you would first of all have to have their signature in your possession, and then practice it CONSIDERABLY  to be able to reproduce it on demand at the polling place.  You think someone is going to put that sort of effort into stealing one vote?  It borders on ridiculousness. 

If someone did try to sign someone else's name on a ballot or a in person voting slip I guarantee you that in almost every single instance it would be EASY to detect the fraud, because no effort will have been made to make a good forgery, because it takes a lot of time.

What you need is honest poll workers who will actually check the signatures, that is all.  The same thing would be true with photo id's. 

All you need is a photo ID and proof of address after registering. That should be quite effective.

You apparently dont understand that the reason Republicans want photo id is to disenfranchise certain voters. 

The reason people want something matters. 

In order to successfully, aka convincingly, forge someone else's signature you would first of all have to have their signature in your possession, and then practice it CONSIDERABLY  to be able to reproduce it on demand at the polling place.  You think someone is going to put that sort of effort into stealing one vote?  It borders on ridiculousness. 

That’s a good argument for doing away with any kind of remote voting, as much as possible.

What you need is honest poll workers who will actually check the signatures, that is all.

Most of the poll workers I see are ancient humans with failing eyesight. You’re lucky if they even realize a human being is standing in front of them.

That process has been satisfactory for both parties until just recently.

It’s just not accurate to imply that people haven’t been arguing about election procedures until just since November.

You apparently dont understand that the reason Republicans want photo id is to disenfranchise certain voters. 

I'm not buying that! Photo ID's are a good idea. It's not difficult to get an ID either. Go to a voting poll, flash your ID, and you should be good to go.

When Republicans tell you they want voter id laws in order to disenfranchise Democrats, believe them

Last spring , for example, Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai told a gathering of Republicans that their voter identification law would “allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” That summer , at an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation, former Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund conceded that Democrats had a point about the GOP’s focus on voter ID, as opposed to those measures—such as absentee balloting—that are vulnerable to tampering. “I think it is a fair argument of some liberals that there are some people who emphasize the voter ID part more than the absentee ballot part because supposedly Republicans like absentee ballots more and they don’t want to restrict that,” he said.

After the election, former Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer told The Palm Beach Post that the explicit goal of the state’s voter-ID law was Democratic suppression. “The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told the Post . “It’s done for one reason and one reason only ... ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’” he said. Indeed, the Florida Republican Party imposed a host of policies, from longer ballots to fewer precincts in minority areas, meant to discourage voting. And it worked. According to one study , as many as 49,000 people were discouraged from voting in November 2012 as a result of long lines and other obstacles.

One could spend hours going through the abundant evidence that these laws are meant to discourage Democratic voting with burdens that harm blacks, Latinos, and other disproportionately low-income groups. In 2011 an Associated Press analysis found that South Carolina’s proposed voter-identification law would hit black precincts the hardest, keeping thousands from casting nonprovisional ballots. Likewise, if Alabama’s voter-ID law goes into effect, it will place its largest burden on black voters who lack acceptable forms of identification and don’t have immediate access to alternatives. And while most of these laws—which, it’s worth noting, have been passed in most of the states of the former Confederacy—provide for free identification, it’s not an easy reach. To get one in Mississippi, for instance, residents need a birth certificate, which costs $15 and requires the photo identification they don’t have. They’ll also need time to travel to the state office to pay or a computer to do the transaction online.

For the one in five Mississippians who live below the poverty line, there’s no guarantee of the time to go to an office, a computer to access the website, or a credit card to make the transaction. After all, more than 10 million American households don’t have bank accounts, and the large majority of them are low income. Most voters will know the steps they need to get an ID. They just aren’t easy to complete, and that’s the point.

Republicans Admit Voter ID Laws Are Aimed at Democratic Voters (thedailybeast.com)

You apparently dont understand that the reason Republicans want photo id is to disenfranchise certain voters. 

How are certain voters disenfranchised?

I think a better question would be...How are they helped...

 A national standard for the purpose of containing the Covid virus would also have been so much easier and more efficient, and a hell of a lot more effective.

I don't think I have ever been able to sign my name the exact same way twice.  Can anyone?  

My signature is a scribble only I understand, but I can’t guarantee I could replicate it satisfactorily over and over. When you’re just starting out in life, you think it’s really important, but then you realize no one looks at that stuff. You can sign your checks “Abraham Lincoln” and the bank would still cash them.

And what is supposed to happen at a polling place? Is the retired lady working the table supposed to analyze signatures expertly and throw people out of line? That’s just never going to happen.

Your ID picture might not look exactly like you (people change weight and hairstyles, after all), but at least those cards are a lot harder to counterfeit.

If Trump had won last November there would be no new voting law in Georgia . People who don't understand that probably deserve to have their all star game taken from them. 

This is ignorance or denial, probably mixed with the usual political agenda of getting everyone outraged over nothing.

The pandemic drove anxiety over elections far more than - and looonnng before - Trump lost in November. It was an issue in Georgia and many other states. And this came on top of debates that have been boiling for years about how best to run an election.

The pandemic drove anxiety over elections far more than - and looonnng before - Trump lost in November.

Anxiety over the election was entirely driven by Donald Trump via his followers. 

He said the same damn things in 2016, the difference being because he won he didnt have to follow through on his threat not to accept the election result in '16. 

Anxiety over the election was entirely driven by Donald Trump via his followers.

That’s simply not true. I wish you guys would go back and look through the old news. Here are some headlines from liberal sources and commentators from before November. You could have done this without my help.

Georgia's pandemic primary was a disaster. Experts fear the state is still vulnerable to a repeat.

Georgia’s Failure Shows How Not to Run an Election in the Pandemic

Anatomy of an Election ‘Meltdown’ in Georgia

And those are just Georgia. There were similar stories in other states. And everywhere you might look, both liberals and conservatives were complaining.

Yep.

State lawmakers are considering more than 100 laws that would make it harder to vote, according to an analysis conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. This number represents almost triple the number of similarly restrictive bills under consideration this time last year, according to the analysis.

These bills, in the works in 28 states, primarily seek to limit mail-in voting access, add voter ID requirements and make it harder to get on or stay on the voter rolls, according to the Brennan Center. There are nearly 2,000 bills moving through state legislatures aimed at addressing election-related issues overall, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Mail-in voting proved key to Biden's victory, as more Democrats than Republicans embraced the method rather than congregating at the polls as an uncontrolled pandemic raged. Experts have attributed this split to then-President Donald Trump's unrelenting effort to sow doubt in the integrity of the 2020 race with false claims that vote-by-mail is inherently fraudulent, and appeals to his supporters to vote in person.

Now, Republicans have zeroed in on mail-in voting for new restrictions and rollbacks, in some cases targeting laws the GOP had championed years before the pandemic.

nbcnews

If some think all these bills were not fueled by unexpected Democrat wins and donald and his minions yelling and screaming about fraud, I got a bridge for sale.

“People are planting the seeds, laying the groundwork, and then saying, ‘Look, people are fearing exactly what I told them to fear’ even though there’s no evidence or basis for that,” said Eliza Sweren-Becker, an attorney at the Brennan Center who worked on the analysis of the state legislative proposals.

Says Jim Kavanagh (R Arizona):

” Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they’re totally uninformed on the issues,” Kavanagh said to the outlet. “Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.”

The most unAmerican thing an elected official can say.  If they thought the uninformed were equally inclined to vote R as D, they would never say this.  They know how unpopular their brand is even to the unknowing.

“Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.”

I guess he means that a vote of quality is a vote for the GOP and otherwise it shouldn't qualify.