Voting

So, thinking about the new Wisconsin Voter ID law and Gerrymandering, I got to thinking about how political parties attempt to use policy to keep their parties or selves in power.

now, the Voter ID law has the effect of keeping people from voting. Gerrymandering is redistricting in such a way that your district has a majority which votes purely or almost for you or your party.

Is either a right or good thing to do in this day and age, or should the districts be simple blocks? What should be done?

Voluntary association blocks.

Basically the option to form a group of people with a common interest and receive representation through that means.

Sort of proportional voting, but not entirely party based, though I could live with that.

edited 21st Jun '11 7:41:33 PM by blueharp

Can you elaborate? Sorry, tired.

There's voter ID required to vote in Colorado and that doesn't keep folks away. All you need is a 15 dollar piece of plastic like a driver's license.

There's a difference in WI. I'm not objecting to voter id laws, I object to voter id laws which have the effect of stifling votes, which is what is happening in WI.

How? Please show the part in question.

List of amendments which would have assisted in accessibility, or clarified the law:

Further, the manufacturing of the ID required is now being outsourced to California, which will take several days as opposed to the current system of getting it at the DMV.

edited 21st Jun '11 8:02:14 PM by Enkufka

Both are shady practices.

Me, I don't vote. If my vote is my voice, it's drowned out by millions.

Truth be told, I could try to bang foreign royalty and it'd be a more worthwhile endeavor.

^ That's why you vote in state/local elections. The smaller the scale the more your vote matters.

There have been quite a few times in recent Colorado history where state/local ballot issues and initiatives were decided by less than 500 votes. At that margin, every vote matters.

I agree. Despite the dubious nature of a recent election, it looked as if it was down to an about 100 vote difference.

Electoral College system makes my vote feel worthless.

Michigan just chooses the opposite of whoever was in power when thing goes tits up (which is always)

I haven't seen a single noticeable political act in my city.

I admit that I'm generally skeptical of voter ID laws, because based on what I know they're solutions in search of a problem: a lot of research shows that voter fraud is not nearly as large a problem as conservatives claim. I seem to remember hearing about an investigation that showed only 11 voter fraud cases from one year, six of which being from felons voting before finishing their time. That said, I do concede that a voter ID law, done properly, isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The Wisconsin ID law is not done properly. Intended or not, my lay opinion is that this law will make it much more difficult for the disadvantaged–who conveniently tend to vote Democratic–to vote. I've heard that they've since added an amendment that does in fact allow religious-objection exemptions, but one thing that does really concern me is the defeated mobile DMVs and the requirement to give three hours off (presumably unpaid) to get to a DMV. I don't know how things are in Colorado, Tom, but in Wisconsin if you don't live close to a reasonably-sized city, then getting to a DMV is a pain in the ass. It's entirely possible that if your boss is a jerk, they could deny you any time to actually get to a DMV for your ID, and it would be legal.

There's also the matter of the voter ID being free. It is required under the US Consitution (specifically, the 24th Amendment) that it be free, otherwise it's an effective poll tax. I see no reason to make this as clear as possible, but the Republicans defeated an amendment that would do so.

edited 21st Jun '11 10:49:59 PM by Linhasxoc

It's a pain in the ass in Colorado, the argument fails. (Most counties have to merge their stuff like that into the one courthouse in the entire county if they even have that.) Where I live, Pueblo County has exactly one Dept. of Revenue (driver's license/state ID facilities are inside) and the county itself is almost 1000 square miles in size. Yet you don't see picketing by folks saying it disadvantages the poor folks. (The poor folks stick to Pueblo itself, if anything it prevents Republicans and conservatives from voting by your logic. That's who dominates county politics out here outside the city of Pueblo itself. Irony's a bitch ain't it?)

Yes, but how often is it open? Wisconsin DMVs have had to cut back seriously on hours due to budget cuts, and it's worse the further out you get.

Also, it may be a culture thing: until recently, Wisconsin had some of the most liberal voting laws in the country, so this is kind of a big shock to some people. Possibly as a result, it also consistently had among the highest turnout, so if the theories about voter discouragement are correct, we should be able to see it in the voter turnout rates. I have no idea about the history of Colorado voting laws though.

Voter fraud makes up almost nothing of votes. Requiring ID (they did the same here) had a significant several percentage point drop in voter participation overall and almost entirely within the poor classes. Statistics show the argument has significant merit.

So I think *any* form of ID is good enough (in particular, here everyone has a health card, you can't not have one).

Districts here are decided by committee to prevent gerrymandering. It's done at the same time as the census. The voting geographical units are determined by population.

If you aren't protesting in Colorado, that's your fault for your own disregard for your rights.

Nobody has ever shown me that voter fraud is a significant issue for voting.

OTOH, they have shown me that access to the state ID is, with some states lacking DMV offices in over 1/3rd of their counties.

How many people do you want to disenfranchise and why?