You're conflating whether people think it's wrong with whether they think there's anything to debate and what they think we can do about it.
Many Muslims countries are quite repressive to religious minorities. Egyptian Muslims have been attacking Coptic Christians both under Mubarak and since the revolution. Some of the Syrian rebel groups, who are Sunni (like the majority of Syrians), have been attacking all sorts of minorities, including Syrian Christians (and Kurds, who are mainly Sunni, but non-Arab).
This is clearly awful. Hence there's not going to be a lot of debate about whether it's awful.
But what should the US/West do about it? Well, we have some limitations in what we can achieve and what might backfire. We cannot invade for the protection of Christians without it being turned around by the Muslim fanatics as evidence of a Christian Crusade against Islam. Which could only make things worse.
It also doesn't have anything to do with the subject of the thread. Almost your entire post is just a gigantic tu quoque ad hominem argument.
What you people probably don't know is that the absolute majority of gay rights movements in Russia are sponsored from the west (or have extremely close ties to the liberal opposition, which in turn is sponsored and controlled by the west).
Do you have any evidence of this?
Sounds like you're just repeating a smear.
Although, yes, gay activists in one country might talk to gay activists in another country - this does not mean they're working for the West. And yes, they probably would ally with the opposition, considering they're opposed to the anti-gay actions of the government.
Do you find it hard to believe that there are Russian gay people and that they would want rights like anybody else? They must be foreign actors
But keep making sarcastic comments about how you we're demonizing you as homophobic on the basis of nothing. You continue to provide the evidence of its truth on your own.
What exactly is your point? You moved pretty quickly from claiming this "Occupy Pedophilia" thing is being exaggerated/distorted into basically being a whiny defensive little nationalist outraged that anyone would suggest there's homophobia in Russia and wildly accusing everyone of hypocrisy, as if that demonstrates that there's anything ok about what the Russian government is doing. Regardless of what's happening with those "skinheads", it's clear that the government is oppressing gay people and that there's significant homophobia in Russia supporting those oppressive actions.
It's also based on which countries we feel we can influence to end which abuses.
I would think that Russia's mistreatment of minorities in the Caucasus would be a good thing to protest, seeing as Sochi is in an area that was previously inhabited by Circassians (a Caucasian people), who Russia committed genocide against in the 1800s.
But, you know, a right of return for the Circassian diaspora (as an example) probably isn't in the cards.
The two largest cities in Russia banning gay pride parades? Not indicative of anything in particular about Russians and gays.
The fine for saying you're gay and that's ok is only $150. Oh, I guess it's NOT reflective of systemic homophobia. I'm not sure you understand how this works. ANY fine is reflective of systemic homophobia. There should be no fine for that.
Questioning why gays should have to stay in the closet? "Keep your agenda to yourself." This thread is about those bullying videos, unless it's about you defending Russia from accusations of homophobia. But you're kinda proving the point by dismissing his point as some nefarious "agenda". Yeah, not having to lie and hide is some agenda.
Also, being gay is not all about sex. A man saying "I'm gay" is not the same thing as giving a treatise on buttsex. You can make excuses like finding out that gay people exists is like telling children about anal sex, but it's really not. At all. It's about love. Telling children that sometimes men love other men and sometimes women love other women is not talking to children about sex. You can pretend that it is, but it's pretty obvious to anyone who realizes that gay people are full people and not sex robots that this is really about ensuring that children don't realize that gay people are normal people, not about protecting children from perverted dirty sex talk.
Sorry, but I'll trust the words of Russian gay activists like Masha Gessen and RUSA LGBT over the word of someone who's clearly just making excuses. And no, America is not perfect. А у вас негров линчуют* is not an argument. I presume you're familiar with that phrase? Some guy getting arrested for chalk on a sidewalk in America is irrelevant to the oppression of gays in Russia.
*Translation: "But at your place Negroes are being lynched" i.e. "And in America, they lynch Negroes." A common refrain of the Soviets in response to accusations of human rights violations.
But you need only point out that lesbians balance that out...
Do they? That homosexuality is equally prevalent among men and women is not something you can take for granted. Tons of conditions show gender imbalances.
They don't exactly balance out, but the disparity is not nearly so large as the disparity between polygynous marriage vs. polyandrous marriage. The evidence worldwide is that polygyny is far more frequent than polyandry. It's not really in dispute.
Polygamous societies definitely show more evidence of what Tiax is talking about than societies with acceptance for gay people. There are societies where you can point to this actually happening (like Mormon compounds, or societies in other places, like Africa). I doubt you can find any evidence that gay marriage has led to an increase in unpartnered men or women.
The number of gay people is relatively stable, and not very large, and the number of gay men and lesbians is similar, if not exactly the same. And only trying to force gays into the closet will cause them to partner with straight people anyhow. If you're not trying to do that, I don't see how gay marriage will have anything but a negligible effect on this issue because of perhaps some bisexuals being more likely to stay in same-sex relationships.
That doesn't mean, however, that I think it's in the end a persuasive argument against allowing polygamy in the US.
It might be a good argument for discouraging polygamy in societies that are largely polygynous.
I'm not sure that just combating sexism wouldn't have the same effect though (empowered women being perhaps less likely to enter into polygynous marriages), and without necessitating the state telling people what kind of marriages they can have.
After all, the implicit assumption in the polygamy argument is that the polyandrous marriages will not balance out the polygynous ones.
I don't really care about polygamy or polyamory.
I'm not arguing that it should be illegal, nor that that's a good argument that polygamy should be.
But I don't think this particular problem has any analogy to the gay marriage argument.
Anyway, I'd expect the Democrats to win more than 60% of the seats, but I imagine that there were also some favorable districts created. But I don't think they contributed as much as you think, given the Citizens Redistricting Committee drew up the plans and the large margin the Democrats won by in the first place.
It would be, in its own way, stupid of the Democrats not to try to gerrymander just as much as the Republicans do.
While I see your point, I'm not sure why you're responding to that part specifically.
Democrats did not control the redistricting process in California, which is done by a non-partisan board. They may have influenced it, but given their lack of direct control I'm skeptical that they managed to have nearly as much influence as the parties did in states where redistricting was controlled by a legislature with single-party control.
The law once said people could only marry people of their race. That was struck down. I not only referenced the ruling in my post, I also posted a link.
So are you in favor of segregated marriage? That law applied equally to everyone to. If not, give a reason why the two are different that isn't special pleading.
To help you out... A useful quote and example is this:
"A tax on yarmulkes is a tax on Jews."
Coincidentally, that statement is cited by both Justice Scalia AND Justice Ginsberg in different Supreme Court cases.
Now, a Christian might argue "Why, I have to pay the tax on yarmulkes just as a Jew would have to! We have equal rights - to buy a yarmulke and pay the tax, or buy something else and not pay the tax."
And that Christian is correct. They both have to pay the tax, so in one sense the law applies to them equally. So it's "equal rights".
But only someone who is a fool or intentionally trying to prop up anti-Semitic laws would argue that a tax on yarmulkes is not actually discriminatory against Jews. It may be equal, but only in a shallow and fatuous manner. In the deeper and more important sense, it is unequal. The tax applies to Jewish religious garb, and not to other religious garb, hence it is discriminatory against Jews.
By the logic of this argument, practically any form of horrible legal oppression heaped on gay people could actually be equal rights, as long as it was worded the right way. Ban on gay sex? Equally banned for straight people. Ban on same-sex holding hands or kissing? Equally banned for straight people. Ban on promotion of gay rights? Equally banned for straight people. The laws in Saudi Arabia and Iran, where gay people are put to death are actually equal rights, because straight people are also banned from having gay sex!
Not only are such formulations just sophistry meant to substitute shallow equality for true equality, but they are recognized for the foolishness that they are by American courts.
Can anyone (Bakgat, ljossberir, Fluffy Bunny?) find this non-argument mentioned anywhere in the Supreme Court decisions or dissents in the Prop 8 or DOMA cases? I'd be quite surprised to see it mentioned, even just to knock it down as the silliness it is. I'd even be surprised to find it anywhere in the legal briefs filed by the primary appellants or any amicus briefs.
Consider my state, California, the Democrats did a fine job gerrymandering after the last census (despite having a "neutral" body determine the lines, I researched the process and they used a map created by a very left-wing company without any attempt to get input from any other company). I doubt the Democrats will lose control of California any time soon.
Uhhh... no ****.
Just look at the popular vote to see why the Republicans won't be winning control of the legislature:
CA State Assembly: 58.5% Democratic, 40.8% Republican - 17.7 point margin of victory
CA State Senate: 62.6% Democratic, 36.0% Republican - 26.6 point margin of victory
Now, it is true that the Democrats won substantially more than 60% of the seats. They have about 75% of the seats in both cases, meaning about a 50 point advantage, twice as large as their popular vote margin.
There is a tendency for the winning party to win more seats than the percentage of the vote which accelerates the further you get from 50-50, because once the result is lopsided enough, the minority party needs either a significant regional base or for there to be districts specifically gerrymandered for them.
Consider if people in California were about evenly distributed (as far as partisan affiliation). Then each district would have voted about 60% for Democrats and 40% for Republicans - Republicans obviously would win no seats at all! Obviously that is not the case. How many seats exactly should the Republicans have won? And would they even have been able to prevent a Democratic supermajority with "fair" districts anyway? To get perfectly proportional representation given that level of victory by the Democrats would probably require gerrymandering itself.
Anyway, I'd expect the Democrats to win more than 60% of the seats, but I imagine that there were also some favorable districts created. But I don't think they contributed as much as you think, given the Citizens Redistricting Committee drew up the plans and the large margin the Democrats won by in the first place.
I'd certainly be surprised if there was more gerrymandering than in the egregious example found in North Carolina, for example. In the two chambers of the NC General Assembly, the Republicans got 54% and 50% of the vote, yet hold 64% and 66% of the seats for supermajority control of the legislature.
A politician trying to ensure his district will continue to vote for him is not racism. Just because minorities happen to vote democrat 80% of the time doesn't make it racism.
That argument won't necessarily stand up in court. Taking actions that hurt blacks and Hispanics out of self-interest rather than out of racial animus doesn't automatically make it acceptable legally.
Minorities vote for democrats for the same reason whites do not vote for democrats: because they take money from whites to give to minorities.
Whites don't vote for Democrats?
Just because the GOP almost only gets white votes doesn't mean that the Democrats don't get any.
I don't think either side is "racist" they are just doing what it takes to get elected.
Well of course you don't, given the fact that you just offered up that explanation of racial voting patterns.
This Texas thing is just status-quo when it comes to gerrymandering, and voter district manipulation.
The interesting thing is that they're outright admitting to doing it, that they know that it disenfranchises minorities, and they don't care.
Not the simple fact that they're doing it, which I agree is nothing new.
--------
ANYWAY
I'm fine with voter ID as long as it's paired with aggressive efforts to register voters and provide them with IDs. And the state bears any costs of finding birth certificates or what have you and makes reasonable accommodations for people like elderly black or rural voters who may not have a birth certificate through no fault of their own. But that's not how these laws are being written, and why it's so obvious that it's not about integrity, it's about suppressing votes.
Combine getting your driver's license or other services with registering to vote, for example. We should be ensuring that there are never lines too long for voters. In North Carolina (my home state), the new law prevents polling places from extending voting hours in the case of unusually long lines. It prevents provisional voting if you accidentally go to the wrong polling place. It disallows 16 and 17 year olds from registering so that they're ready to vote when they turn 18. We should be making it easy to vote for eligible voters, not hard.
But it's so clear that the people proposing these laws aren't concerned with increasing turnout.
Except, I think all voters should be concerned about illegals voting.
You still need to register to vote. It's not like they can just show up and vote and they don't need identifying information to do so.
And why would an illegal immigrant bother anyway? Voting is a lot of work for no tangible benefit. The effect of any one vote is minuscule. Most illegal immigrants are concerned about getting caught. Why would they expose themselves to that risk for basically no benefit at all? The risk of voter fraud is almost certainly far greater than the marginal benefit to you. If you only have a one in a thousand chance of being caught, it's still far greater than the one in hundreds of thousands or one in millions chance you could affect the outcome of an important race.
Each illegal vote reduces the power of MY legal vote. It helps to disenfranchise legal citizens voting.
And no, I shouldn't be that concerned about each "illegal" voting. Each illegal who vote has a minuscule effect on the power of my vote, which is already minuscule to begin with. I see no reason to be more concerned about this than I am about any other issue which affects voting. The importance it has to the integrity of the election is directly proportional to the amount of people affected.
If we stopped 10,000 illegal immigrants from voting, but prevented 100,000 eligible voters from voting, that has harmed the integrity of elections, not helped it. Integrity of our elections is not just about ensuring that every vote was legal, but about ensuring that our elections reflect the true will of the people. Ensuring that every vote was legal is just a means to that end. When people don't vote because voting is too much of a hassle, the results become less representative of the will of the people. Thus, each eligible voter who is dissuaded from voting because of efforts like these harms the integrity of our elections.
And the numbers show that these laws do more harm to our elections than good. The amount of illegal immigrants voting and the amount of other voter fraud is small, and the number of people who have been prevented or discouraged from voting is much, much, much larger. That is something that damages our democracy. That is something that all voters should be concerned about.
The only reason the "left" is portrayed as not caring about illegal votes, is because it's thought (wrongly so) that it's just the "left" who takes advantage of catering to the illegal immigrants they believe can sway an election or two.
Until you can show that it's a real problem, the reason they don't care is because these laws are meant to solve a problem with no evidence of being anything other than negligible. And because these laws suppress far more legitimate votes (who are disproportionately Democrats) than illegal votes.
Truth is, both sides do it, when it suits them, and where their district demographics are beneficial to do so.
The Republicans definitely gerrymander more and to greater effect:
Republican gerrymandering probably gave them a 23 seat advantage over what they would've had without it.
Sam Wang's calculations are that "Democrats were disenfranchised more than Republicans, at a ratio of 10:1."
ALL of us, American citizens, should be outraged if an illegal, non-citizen casts a vote in an election. It usurps our power.
I should be outraged if significant numbers of non-citizens are casting votes, enough to be non-negligible.
In a nation of over 300 million, it is not an outrage if a few people slip through the cracks. And when the elections are close, things will be examined more closely. It's an outrage if hundreds of thousands or millions of people don't vote because we've made the exercise of that right too much of a burden.
Obviously we should take steps to ensure that people aren't voting illegally. But I don't see any evidence that what we already do isn't adequate.
It further metastasizes the cancers that are voter fraud and poor voter involvement.
Voter fraud is not a cancer. You are talking about it as if it is a widespread phenomena that is swinging elections all over the place, when it is not. We should be FAR more worried about the people counting the votes than the people casting them, as far as true fraud. You can change with a few clicks in a voting machine what would take tens of thousands of vote fraudsters to accomplish.
But then you tack on poor voter involvement. These laws are part of that problem! Making it harder for people to vote is what causes that! You think people don't vote because they're concerned about illegal immigrants voting? No, it's because they have to go across town and then wait in line for an hour because there aren't enough polling places and they're understaffed!
Why vote, when not only does my vote hardly count in the first place, but depending on where I live even when it did count a little bit, a few hundred illegal votes were cast and counted and caused a real devaluation of my ballot.
Why vote, when not only does my vote hardly count in the first place, but I have to take the bus across town to get an ID that I don't need for anything else, and I have to pay $20 to get it, and they need my birth certificate, and I don't know where that is, so I have to go somewhere else to get a copy, and then I still have to register separately?
Which one do you think realistically has a larger effect on people voting?
See, they're only trying to disenfranchise Democrats, it's merely coincidental that Democrats HAPPEN to be disproportionately minorities.
Which makes it ok, apparently?
Now, one might also wonder WHY IT IS that Democrats are disproportionately minorities. You might think it has something to do with the GOP not caring about minorities being disenfranchised, for example.
And, of course, voting ID, reducing early voting and other restrictions they've been promulgating don't have anything to do with disenfranchising Democrats and minorities. It's just about the integrity of elections.
Of course, former GOP officials have admitted in the past that those are ALSO about reducing [strike]minority[/strike] Democratic turnout.
But it's still amazing to see GOP government not only admitting that they want to disenfranchise Democrats, but trying to use it as an argument in their favor.
Many Muslims countries are quite repressive to religious minorities. Egyptian Muslims have been attacking Coptic Christians both under Mubarak and since the revolution. Some of the Syrian rebel groups, who are Sunni (like the majority of Syrians), have been attacking all sorts of minorities, including Syrian Christians (and Kurds, who are mainly Sunni, but non-Arab).
This is clearly awful. Hence there's not going to be a lot of debate about whether it's awful.
But what should the US/West do about it? Well, we have some limitations in what we can achieve and what might backfire. We cannot invade for the protection of Christians without it being turned around by the Muslim fanatics as evidence of a Christian Crusade against Islam. Which could only make things worse.
It also doesn't have anything to do with the subject of the thread. Almost your entire post is just a gigantic tu quoque ad hominem argument.
Do you have any evidence of this?
Sounds like you're just repeating a smear.
Although, yes, gay activists in one country might talk to gay activists in another country - this does not mean they're working for the West. And yes, they probably would ally with the opposition, considering they're opposed to the anti-gay actions of the government.
Do you find it hard to believe that there are Russian gay people and that they would want rights like anybody else? They must be foreign actors
But keep making sarcastic comments about how you we're demonizing you as homophobic on the basis of nothing. You continue to provide the evidence of its truth on your own.
What exactly is your point? You moved pretty quickly from claiming this "Occupy Pedophilia" thing is being exaggerated/distorted into basically being a whiny defensive little nationalist outraged that anyone would suggest there's homophobia in Russia and wildly accusing everyone of hypocrisy, as if that demonstrates that there's anything ok about what the Russian government is doing. Regardless of what's happening with those "skinheads", it's clear that the government is oppressing gay people and that there's significant homophobia in Russia supporting those oppressive actions.
I would think that Russia's mistreatment of minorities in the Caucasus would be a good thing to protest, seeing as Sochi is in an area that was previously inhabited by Circassians (a Caucasian people), who Russia committed genocide against in the 1800s.
But, you know, a right of return for the Circassian diaspora (as an example) probably isn't in the cards.
But it's not homophobia, I'm sure.
The two largest cities in Russia banning gay pride parades? Not indicative of anything in particular about Russians and gays.
The fine for saying you're gay and that's ok is only $150. Oh, I guess it's NOT reflective of systemic homophobia. I'm not sure you understand how this works. ANY fine is reflective of systemic homophobia. There should be no fine for that.
Questioning why gays should have to stay in the closet? "Keep your agenda to yourself." This thread is about those bullying videos, unless it's about you defending Russia from accusations of homophobia. But you're kinda proving the point by dismissing his point as some nefarious "agenda". Yeah, not having to lie and hide is some agenda.
Also, being gay is not all about sex. A man saying "I'm gay" is not the same thing as giving a treatise on buttsex. You can make excuses like finding out that gay people exists is like telling children about anal sex, but it's really not. At all. It's about love. Telling children that sometimes men love other men and sometimes women love other women is not talking to children about sex. You can pretend that it is, but it's pretty obvious to anyone who realizes that gay people are full people and not sex robots that this is really about ensuring that children don't realize that gay people are normal people, not about protecting children from perverted dirty sex talk.
I've seen pictures and videos of gay protesters in Russia. And it didn't look like the police were there to aid them much.
Sorry, but I'll trust the words of Russian gay activists like Masha Gessen and RUSA LGBT over the word of someone who's clearly just making excuses. And no, America is not perfect. А у вас негров линчуют* is not an argument. I presume you're familiar with that phrase? Some guy getting arrested for chalk on a sidewalk in America is irrelevant to the oppression of gays in Russia.
Masha Gessen: Get us the hell out of here
*Translation: "But at your place Negroes are being lynched" i.e. "And in America, they lynch Negroes." A common refrain of the Soviets in response to accusations of human rights violations.
I'd rather have someone who didn't lose Harvard a billion dollars on financial derivatives.
Someone who buys into bubbles less would be better.
Polygamous societies definitely show more evidence of what Tiax is talking about than societies with acceptance for gay people. There are societies where you can point to this actually happening (like Mormon compounds, or societies in other places, like Africa). I doubt you can find any evidence that gay marriage has led to an increase in unpartnered men or women.
The number of gay people is relatively stable, and not very large, and the number of gay men and lesbians is similar, if not exactly the same. And only trying to force gays into the closet will cause them to partner with straight people anyhow. If you're not trying to do that, I don't see how gay marriage will have anything but a negligible effect on this issue because of perhaps some bisexuals being more likely to stay in same-sex relationships.
That doesn't mean, however, that I think it's in the end a persuasive argument against allowing polygamy in the US.
It might be a good argument for discouraging polygamy in societies that are largely polygynous.
I'm not sure that just combating sexism wouldn't have the same effect though (empowered women being perhaps less likely to enter into polygynous marriages), and without necessitating the state telling people what kind of marriages they can have.
I don't really care about polygamy or polyamory.
I'm not arguing that it should be illegal, nor that that's a good argument that polygamy should be.
But I don't think this particular problem has any analogy to the gay marriage argument.
Systems with proportional representation don't have this particular problem so much.
While I see your point, I'm not sure why you're responding to that part specifically.
Democrats did not control the redistricting process in California, which is done by a non-partisan board. They may have influenced it, but given their lack of direct control I'm skeptical that they managed to have nearly as much influence as the parties did in states where redistricting was controlled by a legislature with single-party control.
She actually quotes it from Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic which was a decision written by Scalia.
You were defending them as being arguments that shouldn't be just dismissed out of hand.
I was pointing out how hard they fail. It's not an argument worth defending.
But you need only point out that lesbians balance that out...
"A tax on yarmulkes is a tax on Jews."
Coincidentally, that statement is cited by both Justice Scalia AND Justice Ginsberg in different Supreme Court cases.
Now, a Christian might argue "Why, I have to pay the tax on yarmulkes just as a Jew would have to! We have equal rights - to buy a yarmulke and pay the tax, or buy something else and not pay the tax."
And that Christian is correct. They both have to pay the tax, so in one sense the law applies to them equally. So it's "equal rights".
But only someone who is a fool or intentionally trying to prop up anti-Semitic laws would argue that a tax on yarmulkes is not actually discriminatory against Jews. It may be equal, but only in a shallow and fatuous manner. In the deeper and more important sense, it is unequal. The tax applies to Jewish religious garb, and not to other religious garb, hence it is discriminatory against Jews.
By the logic of this argument, practically any form of horrible legal oppression heaped on gay people could actually be equal rights, as long as it was worded the right way. Ban on gay sex? Equally banned for straight people. Ban on same-sex holding hands or kissing? Equally banned for straight people. Ban on promotion of gay rights? Equally banned for straight people. The laws in Saudi Arabia and Iran, where gay people are put to death are actually equal rights, because straight people are also banned from having gay sex!
Not only are such formulations just sophistry meant to substitute shallow equality for true equality, but they are recognized for the foolishness that they are by American courts.
Can anyone (Bakgat, ljossberir, Fluffy Bunny?) find this non-argument mentioned anywhere in the Supreme Court decisions or dissents in the Prop 8 or DOMA cases? I'd be quite surprised to see it mentioned, even just to knock it down as the silliness it is. I'd even be surprised to find it anywhere in the legal briefs filed by the primary appellants or any amicus briefs.
Just look at the popular vote to see why the Republicans won't be winning control of the legislature:
CA State Assembly: 58.5% Democratic, 40.8% Republican - 17.7 point margin of victory
CA State Senate: 62.6% Democratic, 36.0% Republican - 26.6 point margin of victory
Now, it is true that the Democrats won substantially more than 60% of the seats. They have about 75% of the seats in both cases, meaning about a 50 point advantage, twice as large as their popular vote margin.
There is a tendency for the winning party to win more seats than the percentage of the vote which accelerates the further you get from 50-50, because once the result is lopsided enough, the minority party needs either a significant regional base or for there to be districts specifically gerrymandered for them.
Consider if people in California were about evenly distributed (as far as partisan affiliation). Then each district would have voted about 60% for Democrats and 40% for Republicans - Republicans obviously would win no seats at all! Obviously that is not the case. How many seats exactly should the Republicans have won? And would they even have been able to prevent a Democratic supermajority with "fair" districts anyway? To get perfectly proportional representation given that level of victory by the Democrats would probably require gerrymandering itself.
Anyway, I'd expect the Democrats to win more than 60% of the seats, but I imagine that there were also some favorable districts created. But I don't think they contributed as much as you think, given the Citizens Redistricting Committee drew up the plans and the large margin the Democrats won by in the first place.
I'd certainly be surprised if there was more gerrymandering than in the egregious example found in North Carolina, for example. In the two chambers of the NC General Assembly, the Republicans got 54% and 50% of the vote, yet hold 64% and 66% of the seats for supermajority control of the legislature.
Kjeldoran is SHELL-do-ran or at least KYELL-do-ran, not kuh-JELL-dor-un.
Fyndhorn is fynd-horn, not finned-horn or fined-horn!
Haakon is pronounced HOE-koon (koon with vowel of wood), not hock-in or hack-on.
Jötun is pronounced approximately yer-toon (vowel of wood), not Joe-Tunn.
LEARN SOME SWEDISH, *******S.
And don't get me started on how people pronounce Hyalopterous Lemure!
Whites don't vote for Democrats?
Just because the GOP almost only gets white votes doesn't mean that the Democrats don't get any.
Well of course you don't, given the fact that you just offered up that explanation of racial voting patterns.
Yes, being prevented from voting is different from gerrymandering.
But gerrymandering can prevent your vote from mattering which is a type of disenfranchisement, IMO.
The interesting thing is that they're outright admitting to doing it, that they know that it disenfranchises minorities, and they don't care.
Not the simple fact that they're doing it, which I agree is nothing new.
--------
ANYWAY
I'm fine with voter ID as long as it's paired with aggressive efforts to register voters and provide them with IDs. And the state bears any costs of finding birth certificates or what have you and makes reasonable accommodations for people like elderly black or rural voters who may not have a birth certificate through no fault of their own. But that's not how these laws are being written, and why it's so obvious that it's not about integrity, it's about suppressing votes.
Combine getting your driver's license or other services with registering to vote, for example. We should be ensuring that there are never lines too long for voters. In North Carolina (my home state), the new law prevents polling places from extending voting hours in the case of unusually long lines. It prevents provisional voting if you accidentally go to the wrong polling place. It disallows 16 and 17 year olds from registering so that they're ready to vote when they turn 18. We should be making it easy to vote for eligible voters, not hard.
But it's so clear that the people proposing these laws aren't concerned with increasing turnout.
You still need to register to vote. It's not like they can just show up and vote and they don't need identifying information to do so.
And why would an illegal immigrant bother anyway? Voting is a lot of work for no tangible benefit. The effect of any one vote is minuscule. Most illegal immigrants are concerned about getting caught. Why would they expose themselves to that risk for basically no benefit at all? The risk of voter fraud is almost certainly far greater than the marginal benefit to you. If you only have a one in a thousand chance of being caught, it's still far greater than the one in hundreds of thousands or one in millions chance you could affect the outcome of an important race.
And no, I shouldn't be that concerned about each "illegal" voting. Each illegal who vote has a minuscule effect on the power of my vote, which is already minuscule to begin with. I see no reason to be more concerned about this than I am about any other issue which affects voting. The importance it has to the integrity of the election is directly proportional to the amount of people affected.
If we stopped 10,000 illegal immigrants from voting, but prevented 100,000 eligible voters from voting, that has harmed the integrity of elections, not helped it. Integrity of our elections is not just about ensuring that every vote was legal, but about ensuring that our elections reflect the true will of the people. Ensuring that every vote was legal is just a means to that end. When people don't vote because voting is too much of a hassle, the results become less representative of the will of the people. Thus, each eligible voter who is dissuaded from voting because of efforts like these harms the integrity of our elections.
And the numbers show that these laws do more harm to our elections than good. The amount of illegal immigrants voting and the amount of other voter fraud is small, and the number of people who have been prevented or discouraged from voting is much, much, much larger. That is something that damages our democracy. That is something that all voters should be concerned about.
Until you can show that it's a real problem, the reason they don't care is because these laws are meant to solve a problem with no evidence of being anything other than negligible. And because these laws suppress far more legitimate votes (who are disproportionately Democrats) than illegal votes.
The Republicans definitely gerrymander more and to greater effect:
Princeton Election Consortium - Slaying the gerrymander
Princeton Election Consortium - Gerrymanders Part 1 - Busting the "both sides do it" myth
Princeton Election Consortium - Gerrymanders part 2 - How many voters were disenfranchised?
Republican gerrymandering probably gave them a 23 seat advantage over what they would've had without it.
Sam Wang's calculations are that "Democrats were disenfranchised more than Republicans, at a ratio of 10:1."
I should be outraged if significant numbers of non-citizens are casting votes, enough to be non-negligible.
In a nation of over 300 million, it is not an outrage if a few people slip through the cracks. And when the elections are close, things will be examined more closely. It's an outrage if hundreds of thousands or millions of people don't vote because we've made the exercise of that right too much of a burden.
Obviously we should take steps to ensure that people aren't voting illegally. But I don't see any evidence that what we already do isn't adequate.
Voter fraud is not a cancer. You are talking about it as if it is a widespread phenomena that is swinging elections all over the place, when it is not. We should be FAR more worried about the people counting the votes than the people casting them, as far as true fraud. You can change with a few clicks in a voting machine what would take tens of thousands of vote fraudsters to accomplish.
But then you tack on poor voter involvement. These laws are part of that problem! Making it harder for people to vote is what causes that! You think people don't vote because they're concerned about illegal immigrants voting? No, it's because they have to go across town and then wait in line for an hour because there aren't enough polling places and they're understaffed!
Why vote, when not only does my vote hardly count in the first place, but I have to take the bus across town to get an ID that I don't need for anything else, and I have to pay $20 to get it, and they need my birth certificate, and I don't know where that is, so I have to go somewhere else to get a copy, and then I still have to register separately?
Which one do you think realistically has a larger effect on people voting?
Get real.
See, they're only trying to disenfranchise Democrats, it's merely coincidental that Democrats HAPPEN to be disproportionately minorities.
Which makes it ok, apparently?
Now, one might also wonder WHY IT IS that Democrats are disproportionately minorities. You might think it has something to do with the GOP not caring about minorities being disenfranchised, for example.
And, of course, voting ID, reducing early voting and other restrictions they've been promulgating don't have anything to do with disenfranchising Democrats and minorities. It's just about the integrity of elections.
Of course, former GOP officials have admitted in the past that those are ALSO about reducing [strike]minority[/strike] Democratic turnout.
But it's still amazing to see GOP government not only admitting that they want to disenfranchise Democrats, but trying to use it as an argument in their favor.
That's nice.