(01-26-2017 12:21 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(01-26-2017 12:10 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(01-26-2017 11:58 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(01-26-2017 10:16 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  I too think the right to vote in the US is the exact same as the right to enter a foreign country or be provided government assistance. One in the same.

I guess we just view the right to vote differently - that to me it should be denied to as few people as possible, while you don't believe that.

I wish that people who voted were all well informed and understood civics, but I worry that putting any sort of poll tax (be that monetary or intelligent based), would unintentionally (or intentionally) keep swaths of people from voting in elections that directly effect them.

Well, it certainly would keep stupid, umimformed minimally caring people from voting. I can see how that would slant the results toward good policies. We sure don't need that.

Out of curiosity, who do you think would have been most affected if my plan was in place, Trump or Clinton? Who would have lost the most voters?


You misunderstood my point about passports. If asking people for ID to vote is restricting their right to vote, then asking them for ID to get a passport must be restricting their right to travel. Yet there s an uproar over one and silence on the other.

Passports are only restricting their rights to travel to foreign countries - passports are not needed to travel within the states.

And I agree that having a more informed voter base would be better, but I still value the ability of more legal voters to vote over having less uninformed voters voting. IMO, voting should be as much of a right as the right to free speech, so we should only restrict it in very limited cases, like if someone is currently incarcerated for a crime they have committed (but I think people who have already served time should be able to vote).

And if you think Dems have the market cornerned on uninformed voters, you've got that wronbr. Plenty of uninformed voters to go around.

Thus my question, which did not have the slant you read into it.

To put it another way, if uninformed and ignorant voters did not vote, would Trump still have won?

We have the right to life, LIBERTY, and...well, you know.

But if you don't have Liberty to leave the country and re-enter, where do you live? Cuba? North Korea?

Point remains, how is THIS instance of requiring ID different from all the others? Maybe we should stop requiring ID to get...well, everything else.

I think we're conflating two issues.

Presenting adequate ID to vote or secure state assistance is valid, I think.

Selective enforcement of requirements is not.

As for other requirements, an educated electorate would be nice, but:

"The Negro citizen may go to register only to be told that the day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the
official in charge is absent. And if he persists, and if he manages to present himself to the registrar,
he may be disqualified because he did not spell out his middle name or because he abbreviated a word on the application.

And if he manages to fill out an application he is given a test. The registrar is the sole judge of whether
he passes this test. He may be asked to recite the entire Constitution, or explain the most complex
provisions of State law. And even a college degree cannot be used to prove that he can read and write.

For the fact is that the only way to pass these barriers is to show a white skin."