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I'm sympathetic to Rowe's argument that people who don't care or don't know what they're talking about shouldn't vote, but that's different than saying they sho

I'm sympathetic to Rowe's argument that people who don't care or don't know what they're talking about shouldn't vote, but that's different than saying they should be prevented from voting. If I'm remembering correctly, Rowe said that we shouldn't encourage people to vote who aren't otherwise motivated. I don't see anything wrong with that, but the issue then becomes what barriers you're setting up. If the barriers we set up are costs, either for an ID card or lost wages, I think it's pretty easy to argue that we're excluding poor people, not uninformed people. If, on the other hand, the barrier is you have to mail in a ballot, then that's probably acceptable. I think the best thing we can do is try to find ways to inform more people about public policy issues, not ways to casually disenfranchise apathetic or uninformed citizens.

CWuestefeld 10y ago
You're right that I'm taking it a step farther than Rowe did. The thing is, those who oppose this really are putting forward a strawman, at least relative to what SCOTUS has told us is in-bounds. They've found that a law requiring ID for in-person voting was OK, because it also provided for A) A means to obtain IDs for free; or B) People without ID could still vote by (as I recall) going to city hall and showing other identifying documents With these conditions, I think it clearly changes from a question of excluding people because of money, to one more like I said, where it's just testing whether people are willing to get off their butts and invest a little bit of effort.