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Notes -
Trump appears to be embracing his role as the late Republic's Gracchus.
I missed this announcement the first time around buried as it was under all the talk about Iran but it looks like the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act may be moving to a vote and Trump has "tweeted" that he will refuse to sign other bills until it pases. The SAVE act is a measure that would require individuals to furnish proof of citizen when registering to vote, and significantly curtail the circumstances under which absentee and mail-in voting are allowed. Strictly speaking these rules would only be binding for federal elections but as the majority of precincts bundle their, federal, state, and municipal ballots together for cost reasons it's going to effect all elections except those in states that spend the extra time and resources to run federal and local in parallel rather than together. Naturally the GOP has framed this in terms of election integrity, while the Democrats frame it as an attempt to disenfranchise the under privileged, and (a bit ironically) usurp state authority.
This is happening in context of a recent FBI report suggesting that Fulton County Georgia had tabulated approximately 20,000 more absentee votes than they had recorded sending out. This is the same Fulton County that was the subject of a "conspiracy theory" alleging that after a broken water main had supposedly forced counting to be suspended for the night only for the poll workers to resume counting after the candidates' representatives had left. It's probably just a coincidence but it feels noteworthy that Biden won the State of Georgia by a little under 12k, IE just over half the number of allegedly dubious ballots.
For those who didn't recognize the historical allusion in the opening line, in latter part of the second century BCE the Roman republic was wracked with civil and economic unrest prompted in part by the importation of cheap foreign (slave) labor undercutting local wages and the ability of smaller family-owned farms to compete with large commercially owned estates. Tiberius Gracchus was a scion of wealth and privilege, the grandson of Scipio Africanus, he ran for the position of Tribune of the Plebes on a platform of Land Reform. The Senate used every procedural trick in the book the could to thwart him only for Gracchus to retaliate by famously(infamously?) using his veto powers to gridlock the senate until they acquiesced.
"Having to show ID/proof of citizenship to vote" is one of those things that even when I was quite left-wing I didn't think was at all unreasonable.
I know, I know, my German statism is showing, but what ever was the counterargument in the first place?
Here there are campaigns to let resident foreigners vote, but even then they need to provide documentation.
The primary argument by opponents to such a policy is that everyone who has the legal right to vote ought to have the option to have their vote counted, and this policy would place a burden on those who have the right but lack a government-issued ID for whatever reason. There are many other arguments surrounding this, but this is the core point that all their arguments come down to.
Yes, but if you can't prove you have the right to vote, then there's no reason to believe you have that right, and therefore there is no burden, since someone who is ineligible to vote is not being burdened in any way.
And if you can't prove that you have the right to vote, why should anyone believe you?
This is just weak apologia for lax voting, which favors the party importing millions of foreigners and putting them on welfare while signing them up to vote automatically when they give out IDs and driver's licenses.
the steelman would be something along the lines of "they CAN prove it (because they are a natural born citizen) but not necessarily within the required timeframe due to scheduling issues or other paperwork hangups"
I think the adoption rate of real ID is a decent stand in for approximating how many people have their birth certificate, original SSN card, and a tax return available at the ready.
when only 20% of the population in some states meets the bar for the new voting regulations, i think the onus falls back on the side that wants to disenfranchise over half of the census answering people.
The big obstacle with Real ID is getting an appointment in the first place. Every time I hear about it, the waitlist is months long.
Wow, that’s… insane. I thought my red state ran the DMV poorly but here you can walk in to an office and get a temporary ID document same-day, and a card in the mail within a month. You might have to wait an hour for everything, but you’ll get it done. Appointments for the DMV aren’t even a concept, lol.
And the only difference between a standard state ID and a real ID is you need ONE MORE piece of mail sent to your address. When I realized that was the difference I laughed at how much of a political fight it was for and against it.
If that’s the reality for a lot of the country, then no wonder voter id is controversial. Y’all need to fix the DMV before anyone talks about voter ID.
I believe this is known as the Moldbug Speedrun.
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