Sorry, your argument isn't very good. So your mom was in a nursing home and your brother was on SS disability? That means they would not be missing a day of work to get photo ID since they weren't working. It also does not cost a days pay to get a birth certificate or a social security card. I had to get a social security card once when I lost it in college and again when I changed my name after I was married. Both times is was pretty simple, quick, and cheap. Your arguments are just lousy excuses. If it is important for someone to vote then they should need to prove they are legally in the US and registered to vote and be willing to make the effort to do so. And yes, you do need to show ID to buy alcohol and pick up your mail at the Post office. Whenever I put my mail on a vacation hold and go to the post office to pick it up I'm required to show ID to prove I am who I say I am and for them to verify my address. I also have to show ID at the grocery store to prove I am over 21 to buy alcohol. Sorry, there are way too many things and sitiuations where a photo ID is required in the US so requiring one to vote is far from discriminatory. And if it's a deal-breaker for people to miss a couple hours of work to ensure they have a photo ID then how are they ever going to afford to miss a couple hours of work to vote? Why couldn't you help your mother or brother my taking them to get a photo ID or helping them find someone who ca? It really is not nearly as difficult as you are trying to claim it is.

Sigh. My brother and mother are not examples of the financial difficulties that voter ID laws create. And not everyone in a nursing home or on SS Disability has a relative standing by to help. And getting a copy of a birth certificate from out-of-state can cost low-wage earners a day's wages ($50, for example).

No I'm telling you that it would be nearly impossible to detect individual cases of somebody fraudulently voting, arresting them, and convicting them. Therefore your argument that no arrest = it isn't happening is based on false logic. So the lack of detection controls coupled with the lack of preventive controls (penalties are not controls) means the risk is very high. For an official to come out and say their is not risk is ludicrous as their is always risk not matter what controls are in place. So I'm assuming you meant they said it was insignificant, but based on the two criteria above, it could only be insigificant if their risk appetite was high. So I'm telling you the risk is very real that it will or already is happening and the lack of arrest of convictions is a foolish measure of risk or that it isn't happening at all.

But in another debate on this same topic here we provided examples of errors, the OP then argued that errors are not the same as fraud. A valid point, however, the errors noted are also a significant issue with an easy, an ID. It therefore addresses both risk with a preventive control. I'm sorry if this well established standard conflicts with your political agenda.

Absolutley and there are to the extent of the constitution will allow and sometimes quesionably. Now we can debate the effectiveness all day, and we might even agree on a lot regarding effectiveness. For instance:

Here in Florida, we created laws that created controls to address the "Pill Mill" problem that other states seemed more interested in fixing then we did. So we created a database to track and monitor excessive prescriptions from individual doctors. We funded law enforcement to enforce crime through monitoring and sting operations. And we funded education. All control, and all reasonable to most people. But has it worked. Depends on your measure. While we might have limited the number of pain pills in the streets, it drove up the black market value of such pills and now we are now seeing a sharp increase in heroine use. This is much more dangerous both in procurement and use then acquiring pain medication. So while the controls were effective for the given problem "pill mills", did it really solve any problem? The education and rehabilitation controls probably had the most potential but received the least attention and funding for the much prefered heavy handed and visible law enforcement controls.

As for controls for specific crimes, well use the search function. I think I have been pretty vocal about controls over crime that I find ineffective and given my opinion on what I think would be more effective. And usually the more effective control over crime doesn't even involved additional law enforcement measure in my opinion. And should be more behavioral and preventive.

What article are you reading?

At a recent meeting of the Pennsylvania GOP State Committee, the top Republican in the state House of Representatives, Mike Turzai, declared that a new requirement for voters to show identification with a photograph on it “is going to allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” He drew wild applause from Republicans in the crowd.

“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation – abortion facility regulations – in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done,” Turzai said at Saturday’s Republican State Committee meeting

Read more: http://www.politico.com/...1.html#ixzz22lyTQ0Su

(as Governor Perry would say: "oops.")

The new law being referred to won approval under the state’s Republican Governor Tom Corbett and the GOP majority in the state legislature.

The result is that 9.2 percent of the state’s 8.2 million voters are suddenly at risk of losing their right to vote. Eighteen percent of the registered voters in Philadelphia do not have government issued photographic identification.

That means they won’t be able to vote.

According to a July report from the Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth, more than 758,000 voters statewide do not have the necessary photo identification cards issued by the State Department of Transportation. President Obama won the state by about 600,000 votes in 2008.

A suit to block the new law – by the American Civil Liberties Union – has been filed on behalf of a 93-year-old great grandmother who has voted in nearly every election for the past 60 years but who is unable to obtain the photo ID necessary for her to vote this year.

In response to the ACLU suit Pennsylvania officials admitted in court documents that they do not have one shred of evidence of significant voter fraud in the state.

“There have been no investigations of prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania; and the parties do not have direct personal knowledge of any such investigations or prosecutions in other states,” according to official state papers sent to the court.

But when Pennsylvania’s Republican made the case for the new law they did not say that. They instead followed a script being used by Republicans nationally and claimed that the identification laws are necessary to prevent voter fraud.

Let me offer an analogy:

What is going on here is that the GOP is yelling ‘Fire’ when there is no fire. Their goal is to reduce the number of Democrats casting ballots in the November election. The GOP has created a fictional controversy about voter fraud to hide the reality of efforts to suppress likely Democratic voters.

In this fall’s presidential election the elimination of a few thousand Democrats from voting booths could determine which candidate gets the Keystone State’s 20 electoral votes and the potentially the presidency.

The latest Quinnipiac poll gives President Obama an 11 percent lead over Romney in Pennsylvania. But depressing the number of Democrats voting is a sure technique for wiping out that lead.

The Republican search for evidence of voter fraud has increased since the razor close 2000 election. That is when higher percentages of young people, minorities and first generation immigrants – all likely Democratic voters – began to make it hard for Republicans to win national elections.

The George W. Bush administration’s controversial firing of US Attorneys was rooted in their upset that Republican appointees said they could not find evidence of significant voter fraud to prosecute.

In 2007 a New York Times story on the Bush Justice Department’s effort to find and punish voter fraud reported that the Justice Department “has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.” The reporters found: “Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process.” But the reporters concluded that after five years only 86 people in the whole nation had been convicted and most of those involved misunderstandings of the rules, not intentional fraud.


Similar investigations of claims of voter fraud by GOP officials in Wisconsin, Kansas and South Carolina have also uncovered mistakes, such as bad data at the department of motor vehicles, but no evidence of fraud.

The failure to find evidence of voter fraud has not stopped this Republican charade.

Sixteen states, all with Republican controlled state legislatures, have passed these restrictive new voting laws since 2011. These include battleground states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin and New Hampshire.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University estimates that more than 5 million Americans could be prevented from voting this November. They estimate that one in ten Americans do not have the necessary identification.

Their latest Brennan report shows that more than 10 million eligible voters live “more than 10 miles from their nearest state ID-issuing office.” Many of these voters do not have public transportation readily available to them and many of the offices that issue the IDs are only open during weekdays for limited hours when most people are working.

The report also says that copies of birth certificates needed to get these ID scans cost between as much as $25. It shows how marriage licenses, which are required for women whose birth certificates only show their maiden name, can cost up to $20. Adjusted for inflation, those fees are more than the poll tax in many Southern states during the Jim Crow era. Poll taxes have historically been used to disenfranchise minorities and poor people.

As the executive summary for the most recent Brennan report state “The result is plain, Voter ID laws will make it harder for hundreds of thousands of poor Americans to vote. They place a serious burden on a core constitutional right that should be universally available to every American citizen.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/.../print#ixzz22lvHZeeT