Tom Toles for June 08, 2015

Why are Republicans terrified of democracy?

I mean, didn’t we spend a trillion dollars or so and 4500 soldiers’ lives, and 32,000 casualties, etc. in a failed attempt to establish democracy in Iraq?

And now they don’t want it at home.

Or is it just another case of ‘mistakes were made’?

I think we should use the system they use in Iraq and Afghanistan of ink that don’t wash off. Best ID you need

Are we seeing an attempt at a one party dictatorship?

“other side’s voters” is ridiculous. This is not a case of “both sides do it.” Only Republicans want to destroy democracy by preventing people from voting.

Why do Republicans idolize the founding fathers? Because under their system, only wealthy white males were allowed to vote. There are many R’s today who would love a return to those times.

In recent elections there has only been 23 cases of voter fraud nation wide. Clearly with that small a problem any additional requirements do not make any logical or economic sense. The ID and other changes in the laws are clearly an attempt to take the vote away from the opposition. This should be unacceptable in a democratic country.

Any attempt to keep guns out if the hands of criminals and the mentally ill in order to prevent thousands of injuries and deaths every year is an assault on Constitutional rights, but inserting obstacles to voting in order to prevent a handful of fraud cases is necessary to protect the Constitution. Who can argue with logic like that?

What’s truly pahetic is that the Republicans do this and then they accuse President Obama of, ’shredding the Consitution".

Conservatives are making an issue of a problem that barely exists. The amount of voter fraud that a voter ID would prevent is about .00000013% not going to overthrow any election. The real issue is how little people do vote and how many roadblocks we put in front of them. The strength of a democracy is elections. The voter fraud issue is just a distraction from other real issues of voting. Election day should be a national holiday. “Over the past decade Texas has convicted 51 people of voter fraud, according the state’s Attorney General Greg Abbott. Only four of those cases were for voter impersonation, the only type of voter fraud that voter ID laws prevent.Nationwide that rate of voter impersonation is even lower. Out of the 197 million votes cast for federal candidates between 2002 and 2005, only 40 voters were indicted for voter fraud, according to a Department of Justice study outlined during a 2006 Congressional hearing. Only 26 of those cases, or about .00000013 percent of the votes cast, resulted in convictions or guilty pleas. But the push for voter ID laws is not all about preventing fraud, said Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, who sponsored his state’s voter ID law. “The driving factor is common sense,” Metcalfe told ABC News. “It only makes sense that when you show up to vote, to exercise that very important right and responsibility, that you prove you are who you claim.” http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/voter-fraud-real-rare/story?id=17213376&page=2Conservatives are for a license to vote, but against license for other constitutional rights like owning a gun, also a very important right and responsibility. Notice a lot of this small number of voter fraud cases are in conservative states and many of these involve people that vote conservative, like the conservative, gun owning, Australian who voted in Florida.

“don’t ask what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country” (I’m paraphrasing here) The very least you can do is get proper documentation, its needed for everything else why not voting. In Cuba, North Korea, China, Venezuela and some other countries, the only people who can vote are the party members, and in esense that is what the democrats are looking for. Out of so much confusion and fraud order will be establish by limiting the vote to party members only. First you create chaos then you dictate order. Interestingly enough that is how the actual government got in power in Venezuela, through fraud, and now they have a dictatorship. The sad part is spite of all the many, many, comments against documentation, they are all petty, and unfounded, especially since the vote is supposed to be secret, and when is taken out of the ballot box no one knows who voted for who, unless there is fraud. Then take up with the election commission.

Nationally, 36.4 percent of eligible voters turned out in 2014 for the mid-terms (with plenty of governors up for election, all kinds of local issues in all kinds of locales, a third of the Senate and all of the House). Lack of early voting in some places plays a part, the idiotic Tuesday (instead of Saturday) vote plays a part, long lines to vote in poorer precincts (but that would only be for presidential elections, when the turnout is much higher)—plenty of obstacles. BUT the low turnout was mostly the result of people just not caring enough to vote. The lack of interest in fighting new obstacles will play a part the next time around, for sure.

If you’re too dumb or lazy to get an ID or show up to vote, then you really have no business deciding the future of our country.Why do liberals always assume these lazy/dumb people are Democrat voters? Hmmm……

Cost of Voter ID:“Those who oppose photo voter ID often say that voter ID is a solution in search of a problem. This is true, but it would more accurate to say that photo voter ID is an expensive solution in search of a virtually non-existent problem,” says Michael Slater, executive director of Project Vote.Take Pennsylvania as an example. According to news reports, there have been no instances of voter fraud in the state, but estimates show that the cost of the state’s free ID and related voter-education program to be between $5 – $11 million.Texas and New Mexico have similar stories. According to My San Antonio, the 20 allegations of election law violations in the 2008 and 2010 elections mostly involved mail-in ballot or campaign finance violations, electioneering too close to a polling place, or a voter blocked by an election worker. There were only five illegal voting complaints, and only one remains pending, according to agency records. In fact, according to Sen. Rodney Ellis (D-Houston), “There are more UFO and Bigfoot sightings than documented cases of voter impersonation.” Yet, the cost of implementing photo voter ID in Texas could be $2 – $10 million.In New Mexico, an analysis shows that the voter photo ID would likely cost taxpayers more than $1.8 million per year, or $5.5 million over the next three years.Wisconsin’s voter ID bill, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, would cost more than $5.7 million to implement. South Carolina’s photo voter ID bill proponents say the program will cost $1.3 million in the first year, with ongoing costs of $260,000 per year.“In this down economy, cash-strapped states are being forced to spend limited funds to fight a problem that doesn’t exist,” says Slater. “And all they’re getting for their money are laws that make voting less convenient and also risk disenfranchising their neighbors.”http://www.projectvote.org/blog/2012/04/the-real-cost-of-voter-id/

ALEC is behind most of this voter ID laws and hysteria.Paul Weyrich, a co-founder of ALEC, made that group’s agenda clear as long ago as 1980, when he spoke to a group of religious conservatives: “I don’t want everybody to vote,” Weyrich said. “Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”We have not even gotten to the purging of voter rolls of actual people alive and registered to vote.

http://www.factandmyth.com/voter-fraud/are-dead-people-voting-fraud

I love the way the conservatives are zeroing in on the “photo ID” issue, like that’s the only way this is being done. The approaches are far more comprehensive in their exclusion than that. Some have eliminated early voting and extended voting hours (which makes it harder on hourly workers, who are more often Democratic); some have eliminated Sunday voting, knowing that African-American churches often get together and vote together on Sundays; some places are actually proposing a fee to vote, which is explicitly banned as a “poll tax.” And that doesn’t even count things like different numbers of voting machines in different district (plenty in Republican districts, waiting in hours in Democratic districts, which means some people can’t vote, won’t vote or give up because they can’t afford the time).And in practice, ANY vote that requires photo ID at an additional expense — any additional expense — is a poll tax and is forbidden by law. The exceptions are cases where the ID is paid for by the government, but even then it can constrain people’s ability to vote if they don’t know how to get there.

And please there is no federal “right” to vote. .Really?Because the following Text appears in 5 Different Places in the constitution:“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged . . . .” .

Not all US citizens own or want a state ID. Requiring one for voting is like requiring a credit card as ID. It discriminates against the poor.

gop is bad trying to stop non citizens and dead from voting

One consideration in the choice of Tuesday was to prevent interference with anyone’s Holy day of the week. Workers needing time off wasn’t a consideration because workers didn’t vote, owners did, & owners could take off to vote if they wanted.

Since Texas is usually brought up by the whiney, fake-problem, full of excuses Democrats……..How to Get a State ID in Texas:

Visit a Texas DPS office.Complete an Application for Texas Driver License or Identification Card (Form DL 14-A).Provide proof of your identity, legal presence, and residency.Pay the $16 identification card fee (Varies with age).http://www.dmv.org/tx-texas/id-cards.php

If u don’t wat to come up with 16 dollars for a Drivers License or ID, even with all your Welfare and Food Stamp money, I doubt voting is really a concern of yours.Go buy another XBox game or better yet, GET A JOB!

Someone described the internet and facebook as root for a new narcissism, posting in Go comics seems to be no different, it does not matter if your reasons are reasonable or unreasonable, you can have your say, however, in 2015 in a civilized country and you don’t have even a birth certificate with your name on it, how do you get by. Not only are you financially poor, you are poor in your mind and soul, what sort of contribution you afford to society, even your children need to know your name and date of birth so they could get married. No ID, your are cheating yourself and cheating all those around you. As I said before all the reasons for allowing vote without ID are petty and unfounded. US citizens are not allowed to vote in Canada, and Canadian are not allowed to vote in the US, nothing wrong with that. Neither, as guests knows the political intricacies of either country. Until such persons takes upon him/her self to be a citizen no vote is correct. It’s all about integrity.

ROFL!!! The party that used the IRS to perpetrate the largest and most successful voter supression campaign in history is spreading this lie. How do all those Democrats cash their welfare checks or use the foodstamp card. Don’t you need to show ID to get an Obamaphone. Seriously though, to enter a gov’t building, most workplaces, cash a check, check into a hotel, board a plane you need a picture ID, voting should be no less.

you can get a state photo id for free if your are on assistance or social security // braindead I found a 3% vote fraud in my precinct in 2008of the 70 people I know 2 had died before the primary but voted in general election [ note my state senator won by 1.75% ] // dear cedwards I guess honest elections are " petty"

How are they “working poor” if they don’t have an ID to get a job?

dear 49 they died before the primary so they could not vote in the general election /// dear braindead08 prosecute who? you have to spot the the criminal doing the voting