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Thomas Sowell has been debunking the "disparate outcome means racism" fallacy for decades. I wish more people were listening. He's the most underrated genius of

Thomas Sowell has been debunking the "disparate outcome means racism" fallacy for decades. I wish more people were listening. He's the most underrated genius of his time. https://www.amazon.com/Discrimination-Disparities-Thomas-Sowell/dp/1541645634 https://www.amazon.com/Discrimination-Disparities-Thomas-Sow... In short, if voter ID laws cause some groups of people to vote less than others, that doesn't make the law discriminatory or make the law bad. Scanning over this ACLU article, I see nothing to convince me that voter ID laws are bad. Many of us here are programmers and understand there is a tradeoff between usability and security. Our current voting process errs far too heavily on the side of usability at the expense of security.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
I don't really see how that applies to a well documented history of voter suppression? Yes, in theory, you could have a color blind system and some random change could have a negative impact on some group randomly. That's not what happened in reality though. "In theory, I might not have killed him" isn't a great argument for someone found standing over a body with a knife, you're generally looking for something a bit more concrete. Someone standing on top of a giant pile of bodies and saying "As I've said for decades, I theoretically might not have killed them" is even less convincing.
- PathOfEclipse 5y ago
  Similarly, I don't see how "a well documented history of voter suppression" applies to increasing election security. I don't see that phrase in your first link, but I found it here: https://www.studioatao.org/post/understanding-the-u-s-government https://www.studioatao.org/post/understanding-the-u-s-govern.... From there I found a link to the evil Brian Kemp who dared to purge voter rolls! https://newrepublic.com/article/151858/americas-relentless-suppression-black-voters https://newrepublic.com/article/151858/americas-relentless-s... Many believe that one of the greatest opportunities for fraud come from outdated voter rolls. We need more effort to purge them, not less. Again, I am not hearing a single thing from you that convinces me laws like voter ID laws are more harmful than beneficial. If this weren't a deeply partisan issue for an insanity-driven culture of divisiveness, there would be little argument against voter ID laws in this day and age. Lastly, it is very partisan to focus on efforts of republicans to suppress democrat votes while ignoring democrat efforts to continuously game the system in their favor, like: * Making Washington D.C. a state, which makes zero sense unless you just want to win. * Stacking the supreme court, which, again, makes zero sense unless you just want to win. * Abolishing the filibuster, which completely undermines the purpose of the senate. The founders of the constitution purposely did not set up a pure democracy and they had many good reasons for it. * Federalizing election laws, obviously in ways that favor democrats, even ignoring the complete unconstitutionality of the law. if anything is obvious about the democrats, they see the constitution as an obstacle more than as a founding document. * Purposely not enforcing existing immigration laws (this should be illegal and Biden should be in jail for it), and then fighting to allow non-citizens to vote (this is already legal in NYC), or to grant citizenship to illegal entrants. Fortunately, the Hispanic vote seems to be shifting right, so we can hope this evil strategy will backfire against the democrats. * Gerrymandering that rivals or exceeds republican gerrymandering efforts. But, when it's the democrats doing it, the corporate media like to call it "redistricting". The democrats have long ago made it clear that they will fight as dirty as possible to win. If anything, Republicans need to start fighting dirtier back.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    It appears we dont really have enough commonly accepted facts to have a fruitful conversation. The article you linked to talks about a lot of really horrible things, which I guess you agree with based on your linking to it and describing removing voters from the voters role for simply not voting in the previous election as no big deal? My big picture take is that democracy is good, and depriving people of votes is bad. If thats partisan then I'm glad I'm not in the party fighting to reduce democracy.
    - PathOfEclipse 5y ago
      It appears we dont really have enough commonly accepted facts to have a fruitful conversation. Welcome to American politics. That you were willing to have a dialog at all with someone who disagrees with you might set you above the average. My big picture take is that democracy is good, and depriving people of votes is bad. How about this big picture take? Democracy is good, and citizen votes deserve protection. Every fraudulent vote dilutes a legitimate vote. Even the appearance of insecurity undermines faith in the democracy. And yes, it's incredibly partisan for you to claim that republicans are trying to "reduce democracy." An attitude like that will both fail to convince anyone who disagrees with you, and also keep you in the dark about truths your party in general are unwilling to accept.
      - dustyleary 5y ago
        > And yes, it's incredibly partisan for you to claim that republicans are trying to "reduce democracy." Is it, though? My belief is that voter fraud is basically a non-issue, that it doesn't really happen very much at all, and that it is a bogus argument put forth by the Republicans to give an excuse for why they are so consistently fighting to not allow people to vote. Google search "does voter fraud really happen", and "how bad is voter fraud": https://www.google.com/search?q=does+voter+fraud+really+happen https://www.google.com/search?q=does+voter+fraud+really+happ... https://www.google.com/search?q=how+bad+is+voter+fraud https://www.google.com/search?q=how+bad+is+voter+fraud I can't find any results that don't back up my belief. Can you? The Heritage Foundation, a far-right think tank, has a page on voter fraud: https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud But, in my opinion, it's kind of amazing that they leave the page up. The purpose of this page is to document and expose how bad voter fraud is, and they provide a searchable database on all the cases they have found and confirmed. Their database goes back to 1982, and they have found... 1340 cases of voter fraud. This is an embarrassingly low number, isn't it? A few thousand fraudulent votes over the last 40 years? Also, it's not like these cases are cases of people manufacturing thousands of votes. You can check for yourself, the entire list is here: https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud-print/search https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud-print/search These are overwhelmingly on the order of "a single extra vote was cast" because someone voted in two districts, or mailed in an absentee ballot for a deceased relative. Meanwhile, do Republicans work to suppress votes? I think it's hard to argue otherwise in good faith: https://www.google.com/search?q=do+republicans+suppress+votes https://www.google.com/search?q=do+republicans+suppress+vote... Why does Mitch McConnell say that the idea of making election day a national holiday is a "naked power grab" for Democrats? Shouldn't making it easier for people to vote be a "good idea that strengthens our democracy"? https://www.google.com/search?q=mitch+mcconnell+election+day+power+grab https://www.google.com/search?q=mitch+mcconnell+election+day... Another belief of mine is that it's common knowledge in politics that the more people who vote, the worse Republicans fare in elections. The Republican professional politicians are usually better at not openly admitting such things, but Trump gave us another example of "saying the quiet part out loud" with his usual eloquence: "They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again" https://www.google.com/search?q=They+had+levels+of+voting%2C+that+if+you+ever+agreed+to+it+you%27d+never+have+a+Republican+elected+in+this+country+again https://www.google.com/search?q=They+had+levels+of+voting%2C... Why would Trump say that? The Republicans are trying to reduce democracy. They lost the support of the people. They have only won the popular vote once in the past 30 years. Rather than changing their platform to try to appeal to more voters, they've decided that the people are their enemy.
standardUser 5y ago
This is just a weak attempt at re-framing the issue. There is a much simpler way to approach suffrage - are governments making it more difficult or less difficult for voters to lawfully cast a ballot in elections? If you apply that simple question to the scores of voter suppression laws being proposed and passed all over the country, it becomes painfully obvious that these laws are by and large making it more difficult for citizens to lawfully cast a vote. Which makes sense since that is the goal of these laws.
- native_samples 5y ago
  No, the goal of the laws is to make it more difficult for non citizens to vote. Claiming otherwise is, um (re-reads up thread), disingenuous.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    How does criminalizing providing food and water to people standing in line support that goal? https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/block-the-vote-voter-suppression-in-2020/ https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/block-the-vote-vot...
    - native_samples 5y ago
      It's amazing that in every democratic country other than the US this stuff is uncontroversial, yet has to be explained here on HN. You can't have partisan activists hanging around outside voting booths all day and "helping" people no more than you can have votes being cast by having voters step up to a loudspeaker and announcing their preference to the crowd. I live outside the US and was honestly quite surprised to learn just now that such practices are tolerated outside of Georgia?! Voting is meant to be a private activity free of all external influence. The solution to long queues is to set up more voting booths so the queues are smaller. The solution to getting thirsty standing in line is the same as for any other queue - bring a bottle of water with you. The solution to people not having ID they can use to prove citizenship is to get them that ID, not eliminate citizenship requirements for voting. This is, like, Intro To Civics level stuff.
guelo 5y ago
By what metric is there not enough security? If we go by documented fraud then there's no problem. If we go by the ability of powerful sore losers to bend the system to their will then, again, things seem fine.
epgui 5y ago
I don't know how things work in the US, but what you describe would be legally considered "indirect discrimination" in Canada, and it would be treated exactly the same way as "direct discrimination". In fact many scholars argue that indirect discrimination can be just as problematic, if not more, than direct discrimination. [1] [1] https://www.canlii.org/en/commentary/doc/2019CanLIIDocs1747 https://www.canlii.org/en/commentary/doc/2019CanLIIDocs1747
8note 5y ago
What's missing from these voter id laws is provisions to make it easy to get voter id, and to pay people to spend time getting it. They aren't bad on the face of it, other than being chosen specifically because black people are less likely to have an ID, or be able to get one. A new restriction like "you aren't allowed to give out water anymore" because black people were sharing water in the ultra long lines in the heat black people are forced to wait in to vote doesn't impact security at all though, only useability

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

I don't really see how that applies to a well documented history of voter suppression? Yes, in theory, you could have a color blind system and some random change could have a negative impact on some group randomly. That's not what happened in reality though. "In theory, I might not have killed him" isn't a great argument for someone found standing over a body with a knife, you're generally looking for something a bit more concrete. Someone standing on top of a giant pile of bodies and saying "As I've said for decades, I theoretically might not have killed them" is even less convincing.

PathOfEclipse 5y ago
Similarly, I don't see how "a well documented history of voter suppression" applies to increasing election security. I don't see that phrase in your first link, but I found it here: https://www.studioatao.org/post/understanding-the-u-s-government https://www.studioatao.org/post/understanding-the-u-s-govern.... From there I found a link to the evil Brian Kemp who dared to purge voter rolls! https://newrepublic.com/article/151858/americas-relentless-suppression-black-voters https://newrepublic.com/article/151858/americas-relentless-s... Many believe that one of the greatest opportunities for fraud come from outdated voter rolls. We need more effort to purge them, not less. Again, I am not hearing a single thing from you that convinces me laws like voter ID laws are more harmful than beneficial. If this weren't a deeply partisan issue for an insanity-driven culture of divisiveness, there would be little argument against voter ID laws in this day and age. Lastly, it is very partisan to focus on efforts of republicans to suppress democrat votes while ignoring democrat efforts to continuously game the system in their favor, like: * Making Washington D.C. a state, which makes zero sense unless you just want to win. * Stacking the supreme court, which, again, makes zero sense unless you just want to win. * Abolishing the filibuster, which completely undermines the purpose of the senate. The founders of the constitution purposely did not set up a pure democracy and they had many good reasons for it. * Federalizing election laws, obviously in ways that favor democrats, even ignoring the complete unconstitutionality of the law. if anything is obvious about the democrats, they see the constitution as an obstacle more than as a founding document. * Purposely not enforcing existing immigration laws (this should be illegal and Biden should be in jail for it), and then fighting to allow non-citizens to vote (this is already legal in NYC), or to grant citizenship to illegal entrants. Fortunately, the Hispanic vote seems to be shifting right, so we can hope this evil strategy will backfire against the democrats. * Gerrymandering that rivals or exceeds republican gerrymandering efforts. But, when it's the democrats doing it, the corporate media like to call it "redistricting". The democrats have long ago made it clear that they will fight as dirty as possible to win. If anything, Republicans need to start fighting dirtier back.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  It appears we dont really have enough commonly accepted facts to have a fruitful conversation. The article you linked to talks about a lot of really horrible things, which I guess you agree with based on your linking to it and describing removing voters from the voters role for simply not voting in the previous election as no big deal? My big picture take is that democracy is good, and depriving people of votes is bad. If thats partisan then I'm glad I'm not in the party fighting to reduce democracy.
  - PathOfEclipse 5y ago
    It appears we dont really have enough commonly accepted facts to have a fruitful conversation. Welcome to American politics. That you were willing to have a dialog at all with someone who disagrees with you might set you above the average. My big picture take is that democracy is good, and depriving people of votes is bad. How about this big picture take? Democracy is good, and citizen votes deserve protection. Every fraudulent vote dilutes a legitimate vote. Even the appearance of insecurity undermines faith in the democracy. And yes, it's incredibly partisan for you to claim that republicans are trying to "reduce democracy." An attitude like that will both fail to convince anyone who disagrees with you, and also keep you in the dark about truths your party in general are unwilling to accept.
    - dustyleary 5y ago
      > And yes, it's incredibly partisan for you to claim that republicans are trying to "reduce democracy." Is it, though? My belief is that voter fraud is basically a non-issue, that it doesn't really happen very much at all, and that it is a bogus argument put forth by the Republicans to give an excuse for why they are so consistently fighting to not allow people to vote. Google search "does voter fraud really happen", and "how bad is voter fraud": https://www.google.com/search?q=does+voter+fraud+really+happen https://www.google.com/search?q=does+voter+fraud+really+happ... https://www.google.com/search?q=how+bad+is+voter+fraud https://www.google.com/search?q=how+bad+is+voter+fraud I can't find any results that don't back up my belief. Can you? The Heritage Foundation, a far-right think tank, has a page on voter fraud: https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud But, in my opinion, it's kind of amazing that they leave the page up. The purpose of this page is to document and expose how bad voter fraud is, and they provide a searchable database on all the cases they have found and confirmed. Their database goes back to 1982, and they have found... 1340 cases of voter fraud. This is an embarrassingly low number, isn't it? A few thousand fraudulent votes over the last 40 years? Also, it's not like these cases are cases of people manufacturing thousands of votes. You can check for yourself, the entire list is here: https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud-print/search https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud-print/search These are overwhelmingly on the order of "a single extra vote was cast" because someone voted in two districts, or mailed in an absentee ballot for a deceased relative. Meanwhile, do Republicans work to suppress votes? I think it's hard to argue otherwise in good faith: https://www.google.com/search?q=do+republicans+suppress+votes https://www.google.com/search?q=do+republicans+suppress+vote... Why does Mitch McConnell say that the idea of making election day a national holiday is a "naked power grab" for Democrats? Shouldn't making it easier for people to vote be a "good idea that strengthens our democracy"? https://www.google.com/search?q=mitch+mcconnell+election+day+power+grab https://www.google.com/search?q=mitch+mcconnell+election+day... Another belief of mine is that it's common knowledge in politics that the more people who vote, the worse Republicans fare in elections. The Republican professional politicians are usually better at not openly admitting such things, but Trump gave us another example of "saying the quiet part out loud" with his usual eloquence: "They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again" https://www.google.com/search?q=They+had+levels+of+voting%2C+that+if+you+ever+agreed+to+it+you%27d+never+have+a+Republican+elected+in+this+country+again https://www.google.com/search?q=They+had+levels+of+voting%2C... Why would Trump say that? The Republicans are trying to reduce democracy. They lost the support of the people. They have only won the popular vote once in the past 30 years. Rather than changing their platform to try to appeal to more voters, they've decided that the people are their enemy.

standardUser 5y ago

This is just a weak attempt at re-framing the issue. There is a much simpler way to approach suffrage - are governments making it more difficult or less difficult for voters to lawfully cast a ballot in elections? If you apply that simple question to the scores of voter suppression laws being proposed and passed all over the country, it becomes painfully obvious that these laws are by and large making it more difficult for citizens to lawfully cast a vote. Which makes sense since that is the goal of these laws.

native_samples 5y ago
No, the goal of the laws is to make it more difficult for non citizens to vote. Claiming otherwise is, um (re-reads up thread), disingenuous.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  How does criminalizing providing food and water to people standing in line support that goal? https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/block-the-vote-voter-suppression-in-2020/ https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/block-the-vote-vot...
  - native_samples 5y ago
    It's amazing that in every democratic country other than the US this stuff is uncontroversial, yet has to be explained here on HN. You can't have partisan activists hanging around outside voting booths all day and "helping" people no more than you can have votes being cast by having voters step up to a loudspeaker and announcing their preference to the crowd. I live outside the US and was honestly quite surprised to learn just now that such practices are tolerated outside of Georgia?! Voting is meant to be a private activity free of all external influence. The solution to long queues is to set up more voting booths so the queues are smaller. The solution to getting thirsty standing in line is the same as for any other queue - bring a bottle of water with you. The solution to people not having ID they can use to prove citizenship is to get them that ID, not eliminate citizenship requirements for voting. This is, like, Intro To Civics level stuff.

guelo 5y ago

By what metric is there not enough security? If we go by documented fraud then there's no problem. If we go by the ability of powerful sore losers to bend the system to their will then, again, things seem fine.

epgui 5y ago

I don't know how things work in the US, but what you describe would be legally considered "indirect discrimination" in Canada, and it would be treated exactly the same way as "direct discrimination". In fact many scholars argue that indirect discrimination can be just as problematic, if not more, than direct discrimination. [1] [1] https://www.canlii.org/en/commentary/doc/2019CanLIIDocs1747 https://www.canlii.org/en/commentary/doc/2019CanLIIDocs1747

8note 5y ago

What's missing from these voter id laws is provisions to make it easy to get voter id, and to pay people to spend time getting it. They aren't bad on the face of it, other than being chosen specifically because black people are less likely to have an ID, or be able to get one. A new restriction like "you aren't allowed to give out water anymore" because black people were sharing water in the ultra long lines in the heat black people are forced to wait in to vote doesn't impact security at all though, only useability