I do actually appreciate the pedantic comment. However you make an implicit and false dichotomy between communist and authoritarian states. These two are much more similar, in some cases identical, than to a liberal democracy.
We currently have this problem in Germany. The right-wing party AfD is claiming to be constitutional and democratic, yet they have constantly shown through small actions that they are 1. extremists, 2. unconstitutional and 3. not democratic.
The most clear example happened last year, when they tried to take power of the parliament of the state Thuringia. They attempted to remove voting rights to parliament members during a transition in order to strengthen their position.
While this was clearly unconstitutional, they pretended it wasn't, until the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that they were in the wrong. Only then they were like "Of course we accept this ruling", just to pretend to be democratic.
Their current path is to attempt to gain power in the Federal Constitutional Court, in order also influence future rulings so that the they can succeed next time.
This now brings the problem, that while there are many who want to rule the AfD to be unconstitutional, that is, to forbid the party to exist, it is a risky move to bring this case to court, because if it fails just barely to succeed, it would strengthen that party.
So they are always walking on the edge of legality and democracy in order to stretch the bounds, to get away with shortly doing illegal things like saying banned slogans to show the right-wing extremists that they can rely on this party to work for their interests or saying things like "Real men are right-wing, then they will be capable of getting girlfriends" [0]
In the case of the US, I think they now crossed this line. Let's hope that democracy is strong enough, but I still believe it is. In both countries.
By voting for their people to become judges, just like it has been done in the US.
This is why the current democratic parties voted recently to change how this voting is weighted [0], in order to make it more resilient.
> Central guidelines on the structure and working methods of the court are now anchored in the Basic Law, meaning that they can only be changed with a two-thirds majority.
> In order to prevent a blocking minority and blockages in the election of judges in the event of a possible change in the majority situation in the future, the SPD, the Union, the Greens and the FDP have agreed on a replacement election mechanism. If there is no two-thirds majority, the right to vote can be transferred from the Bundestag to the Bundesrat and vice versa.
This reason is the same as everywhere in the west. Capitalism has created a massive wealth inequality where the normal person have less and less, with increasing costs they can’t afford.
Right wing parties come in and blame the immigrants as the reason for the decline. They offer simple answers rather than the hard truth that the system is inherently unfair and unjust.
The real solution is to move to a post capitalism economic system but no politicians from the mainstream parties are pushing for this as companies have to much influence and power in society.
There are more empty homes in the US than there are homeless. Housing is expensive because they have become an investment vehicle. Low income or affordable housing is not being built because the profit margins are not nearly as high as they are for luxury housing.
The empty homes are largely where people don’t want to live.
You have cause and effect completely backwards. Housing has become an investment vehicle BECAUSE it is expensive.
And it is expensive to build because government policies make it expensive to build. Safety codes, building codes making previously common types of housing illegal, environmental reviews, zoning, “affordable housing” requirements, development permit fees and delays.
I’m not saying all of those are bad but they have a cost but the legislators and bureaucrats who impose them don’t have to pay them.
in burgerland we built 1.6 million houses last year, and imported three million people. Your suggestion is, well, keep importing millions more people than there are homes being built yearly, but that doesn't matter because le evil KKKapitalism is what's truly behind housing inflation. Import ten million, execute the kulaks
maybe, before we overthrow capitalism for the global communist revolution, we could - just hear me out - TRY the easier solution?
The imported people didn’t buy the houses champ. Capital did. Capital is ensuring most won’t be able to own, not the immigrants. Typical fascist wanting to blame the Other and not capital.
Oh, by the way, who wants the immigrants and H1Bs? Capital! So they can exploit them further.
No, it's just the direct consequence of worldwide resources depletion, in particular the EROEI of all scale-relevant energy sources. Add to this the first round of climate-change induced demographic movement (cough Syria) and there you go. I blame it on lack of education, and wishful thinking.
If they do believe that, I'd have to wonder why. Having people that don't look like you or disagree with you on school boards and in military service doesn't mean you've been "infiltrated" by an adversary. Liberals certainly don't act that way towards conservative service members or even private schools.
Conspiracy to infiltrate, arranged by an adversarial power. Gay people are not "infiltrating" the military on behalf of anyone. School boards are not being "infiltrated" by Democrats that pay the same taxes for public education that Republicans do.
These are basic tenants of political representation and personal liberty. They are, in principle, the most American things imaginable.
No, they claim that the far left has been doing it as an excuse to do the same. It's lesson one from the authoritarian textbook: always accuse the enemy of your own misdeeds. Very similar to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO.
> Says the democrat who did nothing when Gavin Newsom made it illegal to check for ID at California polls. All these other countries check ID for voting, you democrats don't want it, why is that? https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/california-gover... Here you go, I know
I'm a little confused as to your point here.
The article you link says that to register to vote, you have to prove your identity and validity to vote via a driver’s license number, a California identification number, or the last four digits of their social security number.
To vote, you need to verify your voter registration information.
What exactly does requiring you to verify your registration in addition to the information previously validated to register? Is the belief that illegal voters are able to fraudulently register but wouldn't use the same fraudulent information the day of the vote?
Phantom voters would require an ID to be created before they can register to vote, so an ID check wouldn't help.
With thousands registered at one address. From your article, the proposed law didn't limit valid voters based upon their id address. So I don't see how it would help.
Dead voters are removed from the registration database and wouldn't be counted, unless they passed away out of country.
Moved out of state would be a possibility, but the person that moved would have to have not received a new id or license in their new state, which may happen but seems largely unlikely.
Do you have any data showing how large these potential issues are?
Checking id correctly at time of vote slows down the process and causes less people to vote. If there's a meaningful amount of fraud, it should be investigated and fixed, but we should strive towards allowing as many of our fellow citizens to vote as we can. I'm just unsure that there's a level of fraud from your examples that would balance out the reduction in people voting. But if you have data to back it up, I'm happy to read it and possibly change my opinion.
Do you realise without an ID to vote, you can literally just walk into a polling place and pretend to be your brother vote, then walk into another polling place pretending to be a male friend you know and vote, then walk to another polling place and pretend to be your neighbor and vote. And you won't get caught if you are certain that the original voter won't vote.
"just go to to the registration table. Say your name and address and sign the list of voters. A poll worker will give you a ballot." That's it. That's all you need. Just your name, the address, and just forge a signature.
Checking id correctly at time of vote slows down the process and causes less people to vote.
I have always used my ID to vote for decades and it's always been instant, I just scan it at the polling location and in less than 2 seconds I'm given a ballot. I do agree that some demographics do not have the money or simply do not care to get an ID, drivers license. I support a law that gives them one for free.
My reasoning is this. If you know someone else's information you can pretend to be them to vote.
If you have a family of 5, all registered voters because they registered decades ago, and none of them want to vote. You can literally just walk into a polling location and pretend to be one of your brothers or a friend you know isn't voting, and cast a vote on their behalf. And keep doing this over and over at different polling locations if you're in a state that allows you to go to any polling location.
Seriously, is it really that hard to just ask for ID when voting? I support giving ID cards for free, I support making voting day a national holiday or forcing it to be on a Saturday or Sunday when everyone is off.
Hard to do in practice. Arouse any suspicion and now the authorities are contacting the real voter asking them why their signature doesn’t match and the jig is up.
And you have to scale up 1000x to make an impact, which means conspiracy, which multiplies the likelihood of getting caught.
No, despite what you’ve been told the way to rig an election is not at the ballot box.
It’s a scheme to disenfranchise the poor who don’t drive, plain and simple.
Voting holiday and a massive, ongoing, census-level government outreach to ensure everyone gets and maintains an ID would be fine, but of course the right wing legislatures don’t want that.
> My reasoning is this. If you know someone else's information you can pretend to be them to vote.
That's a fair call out. I was addressing the concerns you brought up in the first comment, this is a different concern and requires a different response.
I understand the concern and don't have a response right now. I am curious as to if you have data to indicate the amount of found fraud of this style. My gut feel is that it's an inconsequential amount of fraud, but that's just a gut feeling.
> Seriously, is it really that hard to just ask for ID when voting? I support giving ID cards for free, I support making voting day a national holiday or forcing it to be on a Saturday or Sunday when everyone is off.
Would you be for eliminating voter registration and have it be "If you have a ID, you can vote"?
Also, not everyone is off on Saturdays or Sundays. There are plenty of people that work weekends and still should be allowed to vote. Sadly there are a fair number of folks that work 7 days a week.
All my Republican friends tell me this kind of talk is 'shrill' and would never happen. I certainly hope they're correct, but that story about Pinochet is terrifying.
41 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 89.9 ms ] threadThe most clear example happened last year, when they tried to take power of the parliament of the state Thuringia. They attempted to remove voting rights to parliament members during a transition in order to strengthen their position.
While this was clearly unconstitutional, they pretended it wasn't, until the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that they were in the wrong. Only then they were like "Of course we accept this ruling", just to pretend to be democratic.
Their current path is to attempt to gain power in the Federal Constitutional Court, in order also influence future rulings so that the they can succeed next time.
This now brings the problem, that while there are many who want to rule the AfD to be unconstitutional, that is, to forbid the party to exist, it is a risky move to bring this case to court, because if it fails just barely to succeed, it would strengthen that party.
So they are always walking on the edge of legality and democracy in order to stretch the bounds, to get away with shortly doing illegal things like saying banned slogans to show the right-wing extremists that they can rely on this party to work for their interests or saying things like "Real men are right-wing, then they will be capable of getting girlfriends" [0]
In the case of the US, I think they now crossed this line. Let's hope that democracy is strong enough, but I still believe it is. In both countries.
[0] https://www-br-de.translate.goog/nachrichten/netzwelt/wie-di...
This is why the current democratic parties voted recently to change how this voting is weighted [0], in order to make it more resilient.
> Central guidelines on the structure and working methods of the court are now anchored in the Basic Law, meaning that they can only be changed with a two-thirds majority.
> In order to prevent a blocking minority and blockages in the election of judges in the event of a possible change in the majority situation in the future, the SPD, the Union, the Greens and the FDP have agreed on a replacement election mechanism. If there is no two-thirds majority, the right to vote can be transferred from the Bundestag to the Bundesrat and vice versa.
[0] https://www-deutschlandfunk-de.translate.goog/bundesverfassu...
So they came with a bit adjustes slogan "Alice für Deutschland" (Alice Weidel Afd candidate)
Right wing parties come in and blame the immigrants as the reason for the decline. They offer simple answers rather than the hard truth that the system is inherently unfair and unjust.
The real solution is to move to a post capitalism economic system but no politicians from the mainstream parties are pushing for this as companies have to much influence and power in society.
You have cause and effect completely backwards. Housing has become an investment vehicle BECAUSE it is expensive.
And it is expensive to build because government policies make it expensive to build. Safety codes, building codes making previously common types of housing illegal, environmental reviews, zoning, “affordable housing” requirements, development permit fees and delays.
I’m not saying all of those are bad but they have a cost but the legislators and bureaucrats who impose them don’t have to pay them.
hey look, I made a problem, why aren't they fixing it? because they're evil
maybe, before we overthrow capitalism for the global communist revolution, we could - just hear me out - TRY the easier solution?
Oh, by the way, who wants the immigrants and H1Bs? Capital! So they can exploit them further.
>Taking over school boards and local boards of elections
Just to play devil's advocate, is it possible that the far right has been under the impression that the far left has been doing the same thing?
These are basic tenants of political representation and personal liberty. They are, in principle, the most American things imaginable.
I'm a little confused as to your point here.
The article you link says that to register to vote, you have to prove your identity and validity to vote via a driver’s license number, a California identification number, or the last four digits of their social security number.
To vote, you need to verify your voter registration information.
What exactly does requiring you to verify your registration in addition to the information previously validated to register? Is the belief that illegal voters are able to fraudulently register but wouldn't use the same fraudulent information the day of the vote?
With thousands registered at one address. From your article, the proposed law didn't limit valid voters based upon their id address. So I don't see how it would help.
Dead voters are removed from the registration database and wouldn't be counted, unless they passed away out of country.
Moved out of state would be a possibility, but the person that moved would have to have not received a new id or license in their new state, which may happen but seems largely unlikely.
Do you have any data showing how large these potential issues are?
Checking id correctly at time of vote slows down the process and causes less people to vote. If there's a meaningful amount of fraud, it should be investigated and fixed, but we should strive towards allowing as many of our fellow citizens to vote as we can. I'm just unsure that there's a level of fraud from your examples that would balance out the reduction in people voting. But if you have data to back it up, I'm happy to read it and possibly change my opinion.
"just go to to the registration table. Say your name and address and sign the list of voters. A poll worker will give you a ballot." That's it. That's all you need. Just your name, the address, and just forge a signature.
Checking id correctly at time of vote slows down the process and causes less people to vote.
I have always used my ID to vote for decades and it's always been instant, I just scan it at the polling location and in less than 2 seconds I'm given a ballot. I do agree that some demographics do not have the money or simply do not care to get an ID, drivers license. I support a law that gives them one for free.
The following is an incomplete MAP of countries that require ID to vote: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/tujqxf/voter_id_la...
The following is an incomplete list of countries that do and do not require ID to vote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_identification_laws
My reasoning is this. If you know someone else's information you can pretend to be them to vote.
If you have a family of 5, all registered voters because they registered decades ago, and none of them want to vote. You can literally just walk into a polling location and pretend to be one of your brothers or a friend you know isn't voting, and cast a vote on their behalf. And keep doing this over and over at different polling locations if you're in a state that allows you to go to any polling location.
Seriously, is it really that hard to just ask for ID when voting? I support giving ID cards for free, I support making voting day a national holiday or forcing it to be on a Saturday or Sunday when everyone is off.
79% of Americans surveyed by Gallup support voter ID: https://news.gallup.com/poll/403052/eight-americans-favor-ea....
Hard to do in practice. Arouse any suspicion and now the authorities are contacting the real voter asking them why their signature doesn’t match and the jig is up.
And you have to scale up 1000x to make an impact, which means conspiracy, which multiplies the likelihood of getting caught.
No, despite what you’ve been told the way to rig an election is not at the ballot box.
It’s a scheme to disenfranchise the poor who don’t drive, plain and simple.
Voting holiday and a massive, ongoing, census-level government outreach to ensure everyone gets and maintains an ID would be fine, but of course the right wing legislatures don’t want that.
That's a fair call out. I was addressing the concerns you brought up in the first comment, this is a different concern and requires a different response.
I understand the concern and don't have a response right now. I am curious as to if you have data to indicate the amount of found fraud of this style. My gut feel is that it's an inconsequential amount of fraud, but that's just a gut feeling.
> Seriously, is it really that hard to just ask for ID when voting? I support giving ID cards for free, I support making voting day a national holiday or forcing it to be on a Saturday or Sunday when everyone is off.
Would you be for eliminating voter registration and have it be "If you have a ID, you can vote"?
Also, not everyone is off on Saturdays or Sundays. There are plenty of people that work weekends and still should be allowed to vote. Sadly there are a fair number of folks that work 7 days a week.