Federal law already allows only U.S. citizens to vote in elections for president and Congress. Yet Republicans are raising concerns about the potential for noncitizens voting in this year's elections.
It just made my morning to see that not only is the AP reporting this correctly, but the headline explicitly states the insane rarity of voter fraud. (Non-citizen or otherwise.) You have a better chance of getting a clear picture of Bigfoot than you do of having a voter fraud incident in your jurisdiction.
You have a better chance of getting a clear picture of Bigfoot than you do of having a voter fraud incident in your jurisdiction.
Just because you don't see it. doesn't mean it's not there. It would be entirely possible that there is no enforcement... and thus no records of those events happening.
Just like "illegal" border crossings. Current numbers state "Nationwide Encounters" is the number that CBP publishes. That's not the number of border crossings. That's the number of people that law enforcement has encountered and handled. This clearly ignores those who weren't "encountered" but still made it over. Part of that "encountered" number would be things like, "how many border guards do we have to actually 'encounter' these people?" If you fired 100% of the border guard force. Well your "Nationwide Encounters" stats would also drop to near 0. That doesn't mean that there are no longer any border crossings.
Poll workers collecting votes on voting day have no way to validate if your voter registration is not valid. It's either you're on the list or not. And in a lot of jurisdictions, simply getting a driver's license is enough to get your name on that list, even if you aren't allowed to vote otherwise.
Let's make some safe presumptions. There are at least some non-zero amount of people who vote illegally (ignore if they're "illegal immigrants" or not, just in general). How is discarding their votes and pursuing those felony charges enforced? Is that effective? If the answer is "poll workers", how are they supposed to know who on their registers are not supposed to be there in states that do auto-registration? There is discussion to have here without even bringing up a singular specific source of fraud like this article does.
Multiple massive audits of elections in the US have shown that voter fraud is so rare that it can be described as non-existent. Claims of dead voters have been disproven, claims of mail votes being fraudulent have been disproven.
The absense of evidence doesn't apply when we have evidence that the exiting votes are overwhemlingly proven to be valid on the voter's end.
Now election fraud, where Republicans get people pulled off voter rolls and their votes discarded as a strategy to suppress votes does exist. But thst is election fraud, not voter fraud.
If it happens so little that it doesn’t matter, then why relax the standard? It’s clearly working then. You spook people who think it could happen when you do that. There’s no positive to doing that. So why do it?
Novody is talking about relaxing the standard. People are opposed to additional barriers to voting designed to disenfranchise minority voters and sow distrust in the election process that is already proven to be secure.
You're moving the goalposts. Neither the person you're replying to nor the article mention anything about relaxing the standard. All of the legislation and proposals in this area come from Republicans trying to make it harder for non-citizens to vote.
The article is pointing out the boogyman nature of this focus from the right. I would go a step further and say that this focus is an effort to disenfranchise working class voters by throwing more paperwork between them and their vote. I might even go another step and say that it's an effort to delegitimize our elections by claiming fraud to pave the way for illegitimate power grabs (like Jan 6).
All of the legislation and proposals in this area come from Republicans trying to make it harder for non-citizens to vote.
The ballot initiatives only clarifies and fixes verbiage to make it more clean. Nothing about this is actually making it any harder for legitimate citizens to vote.
I might even go another step and say that it’s an effort to delegitimize our elections by claiming fraud to pave the way for illegitimate power grabs (like Jan 6).
If you say so.
This article is referencing new bills that will disenfranchise legitimately registered voters, and is not about bills loosening current voting laws. Current voting laws, as you yourself have stated, are clearly working.
This article is referencing new bills that will disenfranchise legitimately registered voters
Please quote where it says that. I see no such statement.
What’s on the ballot?
Republican-led legislatures in eight states have proposed constitutional amendments on their November ballots declaring that only citizens can vote.
Proposals in Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin would replace existing constitutional provisions stating that “every” citizen or “all” citizens can vote with new wording saying “only” citizens can vote. Supporters contend the current wording does not necessarily bar noncitizens from voting.
In Idaho and Kentucky, the proposed amendments would explicitly state: “No person who is not a citizen of the United States” can vote. Similar wording won approval from Louisiana voters two years ago.
Voters in North Dakota, Colorado, Alabama, Florida and Ohio passed amendments between 2018 and 2022 restricting voting to “only” citizens.
What about changing verbiage to be clear is "Disenfranchise"?
3rd paragraph in:
Some Democrats contend the measures could create hurdles for legal voters, are unnecessary and lead people to believe the problem of noncitizens voting is bigger than it really is.
Legislatures pass bills. Sometimes they are called resolutions, or other names, but the items that are voted on are bills. Prior to the passage of these bills, only citizens could legally vote anyway. Noncitizens face fines, jail, and deportation for an act that has no mathematical influence on these elections even if it were to happen, which it generally does not.
By changing the language from "all citizens", it sets up opportunities to selectively disenfranchise those citizens who are able and registered to vote. This selective enforcement will fall disproportionately on those people who belong to the targeted group - in this case, those who look like the people immigrating across the southern U.S. border - similar to how poll taxes and literacy tests were used to prevent other groups from exercising their legitimate right to vote. And that's by design, else these measures would not be coupled with fear mongering about these people.
Some people believe the world is flat. That doesn't make the statement true. They provided no clear example of how any of it could be doing what they claim it would do. So that random statement starting with "some democrats"... is meaningless.
By changing the language from “all citizens”, it sets up opportunities to selectively disenfranchise those citizens who are able and registered to vote.
No it doesn't because the verbiage is "ONLY citizens" as the replacement. It's still VERY clear that citizens are to vote. What it clears up is any argument that non-citizens should also be allowed to vote.
You're moving goalposts again, as I provided the excerpt from the article that you asked for in your prior comment.
The truth of the matter is that each of the racially motivated hurdles to voting I've previously noted follow a clear pattern of aiming to prevent certain groups from voting and this latest one is no different. No fluctuation of strawman arguments will change that
This article is referencing new bills that will disenfranchise legitimately registered voters
No. This is what you stated. Instead of showing where any disenfranchisement would happen you quoted
Some Democrats contend the measures could create hurdles for legal voters
This is not evidence of any disenfranchisement is occurring Instead you're just wildly speculating that there's some random clear pattern of some sort that simply doesn't exist.
Just because you don't see it. doesn't mean it's not there. It would be entirely possible that there is no enforcement... and thus no records of those events happening.
My brother in Christ, I once pored over Kris Kobach's office records when he was Kansas's attorney general, and over the course of fifteen years he found less than ten cases of it affecting even fewer votes. That's a dude who built his entire career on the specter of voter fraud and even he couldn't prove its existence.
Those records may still be on the ACLU's website for public consumption if you want to do the same.
Voter fraud doesn't exist, and pretending it does is getting sillier by the day.
Where the fuck do you think their list comes from?
And in a lot of jurisdictions, simply getting a driver’s license is enough to get your name on that list,
This is a gross misunderstanding of how DMV voter registration works. The standard voter eligibility checks which are already built into the voter registration process do not disappear at the DMV.
