Just Wondering

[jack]

why would Texas Democrats oppose a bill that requires voters to produce a photo id?

[J.R.E.]

Jack,

Got this info fron the following two articles :


http://www.examiner.com/a-690564~Texas_House_approves_voter_identification_bill.html


http://www.examiner.com/a-732202~Voter_ID_drama_consumes_Senate_for_second_day.html


"Democrats who opposed her bill said voter fraud is already a crime. They equated Brown's proposal with the poll taxes of years ago and other obstacles to people going to vote.

"I want to make it to where they feel comfortable coming in to the polls," said Rep. Marc Veasey, a Fort Worth Democrat. "People have died for this right."

Opponents of the voter ID bill have said it would disenfranchise thousands of Texans who do not have identification, especially those who are poor, minorities, elderly, students and disabled. But supporters say the stricter rules are needed to combat voter fraud."


Ray

[jack]

the only reason someone would feel funny bringing a photo id to the polls was if he was an illegal alien or criminal, and they cant vote anyways, can they?
I just dont understand why people shouldnt have photo ID for something as important as elections.
I know why Texas Dems dont want photo IDs, I was just wondering what the party line was.
The reason they dont want them is so they can have the same people vote over and over under different names and pay illegal aliens to vote. Its been going on for years. LBJ was the king of voter fraud.
Voter fraud.  When I was growing up in Pa., they would close bars and liquor stores on election day because candidates from both parties would bribe voters at the bars and then bus them to the polls.

[J.R.E.]

the only reason someone would feel funny bringing a photo id to the polls was if he was an illegal alien or criminal, and they cant vote anyways, can they?
I just dont understand why people shouldnt have photo ID for something as important as elections.
I know why Texas Dems dont want photo IDs, I was just wondering what the party line was.
The reason they dont want them is so they can have the same people vote over and over under different names and pay illegal aliens to vote. Its been going on for years. LBJ was the king of voter fraud.
Voter fraud.  When I was growing up in Pa., they would close bars and liquor stores on election day because candidates from both parties would bribe voters at the bars and then bus them to the polls.

I remember when a voter ID card was sufficient for voting. In Florida, you need your voter ID card and a Florida drivers license, or other picture ID.(Florida identification).

I got to go back to bed. I am not supposed to be up this time of day !


Ray

[bocker3]

With the dismal voter turnouts we get in this country, we should not be making it MORE difficult to vote.  While I agree that voter fraud needs to be controlled, you would be foolish to think that this would do it.  Part of the plan of BOTH PARTIES is not only to get their supporters to the polls, but to stop their opponents supporters from coming.  This has been done in many different ways -- in fact, the evil Karl Rove is a veritable master at it!
So, Jack -- you need to stop thinking that the Democrats have some sort of monopoly on dirty voting tricks.  Pulling the "gay" card out for national elections has gotten the Republicans elected quite a bit over that last decade -- Bush could give a rat's ass about Gay Marriage -- it's just a great way to get voters out who will vote for Republicans -- if he really cared, he's be pushing for an Amendment (not that I want him to do so -- it just points out that this is only a point of political gamesmanship).

Mike

[Basquo]

Although I don't get the partisan part, and please DON'T explain it to me, I don't understand the opposition to such a bill.  Why is there a problem for eligible voters to produce an I.D.?  before I go any deeper, is it because a low-income person might be denied a vote because he couldn't get to the DMV last month, or maybe didn't have the money to renew, but today he'd still like to vote?

I totally understand letting your state-issued photo-ID expire.   The more I think about it, the more I think about it, the more I think about 86-year-old Oma Gretchen, who watches TV news everyday but can't leave the house very often.  She has a community organization that will give her a ride to the polls, but where were they when she needed to go to the DMV last month when her driver's license expired?

Are there really that many poll rapists that will steal ID from the living or dead to make this a law?

Shit, I'm turning more Democratic as we speak!

Sorry, Jack!

[libvet]

why would Texas Democrats oppose a bill that requires voters to produce a photo id?

Better yet, why would you need to produce one?

You have to register to vote and no ID is really required for registration, although you can rest assured that if you try to register and you aren't eligible to vote, they don't put your name on the voting rolls.

Then when you go into the polling place, they ask for your name and you may even have to sign your name next to your own on the list of eligible voters for that precinct.

Seems pretty cut and dried to me.   And what about absentee ballots?  Do they require an ID card be mailed along with the ballot?

Not hardly.

Besides....as I recall, the justice department went looking for "widespread voting fraud" and out of hundreds of millions of votes cast, they found a mere handful of cases of people trying to commit voter fraud (meaning 24 people trying to cast a fraudulent ballot total out of 4 years worth of elections).

Illegals and criminals are hardly going to risk drawing attention to themselves by trying to vote to begin with.  I must admit I amused by the idea that illegal immigrants who live in fear of discovery and deportation are going to risk exposing themselves by attempting to register to vote.  It's ludicrous and defies any sense of reality. You have to provide a social security number to register to vote and that number is checked to see if you have a felony conviction or if the number is valid as part of the process.

So I'm a little unclear on what putting yet ANOTHER obstacle to voting would be.   As it stands now, it's asinine that we don't have voting over a few days or on a weekend instead of 7am-7pm on a Tuesday.

Fortunately, I live in a state where they actually promote voting and we have vote by mail.  I voted about three weeks before the last election day.  My signature on the ballot is checked against my voter registration on file and if they have any questions, they contact you to determine if that vote was authentic.  And the upshot is that voter turnout has increased substantially in my state and the other state that does it.

[jimw]

the only reason someone would feel funny bringing a photo id to the polls was if he was . . . [a] criminal, and they cant vote anyways, can they?

A convicted felon looses his/her right to vote.  Jim

[Bucko]

A convicted felon looses his/her right to vote.  Jim

This is actually a state-by-state thing. In Massachusetts (where I grew up) people can't vote from prison, but once they are out, their full civil rights are restored.

And in terms of the actual topic of this thread: I have always been required to present photo ID when voting, in MA, CT or FL. I never thought twice about it.

Brent
(Who only started voting in 1992)

[J.R.E.]

This is actually a state-by-state thing. In Massachusetts (where I grew up) people can't vote from prison, but once they are out, their full civil rights are restored.

And in terms of the actual topic of this thread: I have always been required to present photo ID when voting, in MA, CT or FL. I never thought twice about it.

I am probably getting off track here :

In a Break From the Past, Florida Will Let Felons Vote



http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/us/06florida.html?ex=1180152000&en=934c4551e492a797&ei=5070

 
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
Published: April 6, 2007
Corrections Appended

MIAMI, April 5 — Gov. Charlie Crist persuaded Florida’s clemency board Thursday to let most felons easily regain their voting rights after prison, saying it was time to leave the “offensive minority” of states that uniformly deny ex-offenders such rights.


Felons and the Right to Vote The change is a major step for Florida, which bans more people from the polls than any other state, but it did not go as far as Mr. Crist had hoped. Two of his fellow Republicans on the clemency board rejected his original plan to grant speedy restoration to everyone except murderers and sex criminals.

Florida has as many as 950,000 disenfranchised ex-offenders — far more than any other state — about 21 percent of them black. Other states have repealed or scaled back similar bans in recent years, but roughly five million felons remain barred from the polls nationwide.

The ban, added to Florida’s Constitution in 1868, has been the subject of especially bitter debate since the 2000 presidential election. Some legal voters were removed from the state’s rolls that year after being misidentified as felons, adding to the drama of a recount that gave George W. Bush a razor-thin margin of victory over Al Gore.

Only two other states, Kentucky and Virginia, constitutionally require all felons to forfeit their voting rights. A federal lawsuit seeking to overturn Florida’s ban made its way to the United States Supreme Court in 2005, but the court declined to hear the case.

Until now in Florida, most felons who finished prison and probation time had to submit to a lengthy review and waiting period, and sometimes an investigation and hearing, if they wanted to regain the right to vote.

Under the new rules, the roughly 80 percent of ex-offenders whose crimes were not considered violent will win automatic rights restoration after the state makes sure they have paid any restitution to victims and have no pending criminal charges.

Convicted murderers, sexual predators and “violent career criminals” will still need an investigation of their case and a hearing before the clemency board. Most will probably not regain the right to vote, serve on a jury or get jobs that require state licenses, like as a barber or nurse.

“This is Holy Week, a week that is all about forgiveness,” Mr. Crist said before the vote at a special meeting of the clemency board in Tallahassee. “Restoring civil rights is the right thing to do.”

Of the four clemency board members, only Attorney General Bill McCollum opposed the change, saying the board should carefully investigate and deliberate before restoring any convicted criminal’s rights. Agriculture Secretary Charles Bronson, a Republican, and Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, a Democrat, voted for the rule change.

Mr. Crist, who sat on the clemency board as the attorney general under Gov. Jeb Bush, said he had only recently come to believe that most felons deserved swift restoration of their rights.

“It’s something I’ve been thinking about for quite some time,” he said, “but it came to fruition last year. You’d always like more, but this is historic, what happened today in Florida.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida has fought the voting ban for years, and Howard Simon, its executive director, said Thursday that the changes appeared significant.

“This seriously addresses, finally, some of the wounds from the Civil War era,” Mr. Simon said.

But Mr. Simon said he worried that nonviolent ex-offenders who have been out on the streets for years might slip through the cracks and not have their rights automatically restored. A spokeswoman for Mr. Crist said such people — who number in the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands — would have to take the initiative.

The state will encourage them to make themselves known by running advertisements and other forms of outreach. But Mr. Simon said the burden should be on the state, not the ex-offender.

“This is progress,” he said, “but for people who are already out, it is not as truly automatic as it could be.”

Christine Jordan Sexton contributed reporting from Tallahassee.

Correction: April 7, 2007


An article yesterday about a decision by Florida’s clemency board to let most felons easily regain their voting rights after prison misstated the year a ban on voting by felons was added to the state Constitution. It was 1868, not 1968.


Correction: April 17, 2007


An article on April 6 about a decision by Florida’s clemency board to let most felons easily regain their voting rights after prison misstated the proportion of blacks among the state’s disenfranchised ex-offenders. About 21 percent of the estimated 950,000 ex-offenders are black, according to the Sentencing Project, a liberal advocacy group in Washington — not “the vast majority.”




Ray