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Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

nytimes.com

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Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#81

Post by crispyambulance »

biomcgary wrote: post #35

According to the article, moderate Republicans in Ohio insisted on transparency for purging voter rolls. They sent out the proposed list to various voter advocacy groups across the political spectrum, which reviewed the proposed changes and flagged mistakes. 80% were purged correctly. 20% were not. Rather than condemning Ohio, they should be praised for bringing transparency to the process (as long as the mistakes ar…

No one should be praised other than the people who discovered "the mistakes".

The tactic here is voter disenfranchisement. It's a tried and true tool of the Republicans and has been around since forever.

The thing is inactive voters are just that, inactive. There is very small risk that some of their names might get used for voter fraud. But every time this is researched, only a handful of incidents are discovered and it takes thousands to swing an election. Those thousands can _easily_ be achieved, however, with sloppy aggressive and unnecessary purging.

I wish there existed the political will to issue "citizen ID" cards (or other mechanisms) to all citizens, like they do in civilized countries. These could be used for residency and authentication for voting, banking, taxes, and other functions. This authentication mechanism would instantly remove the phony concern of voter fraud amongst republicans while not disenfranchising voters.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#82

Post by andrewla »

kasey_junk wrote: post #67
rdtsc wrote: post #33

> She went online and discovered that her name had also been flagged as an inactive voter. The state was in the process of removing her from its voter rolls. > “I voted three times last year,” said Ms. Miller. I am still baffled at the election system in this country. Every state does its own thing. One state uses paper, other uses some machines which can be easily hacked, some use both. Somehow voter ID is controver…

It’s not a technical problem it’s a political one (or really it’s a whole host of historical and current political problems). One of 2 major parties in the US has made making it hard for people to vote a central strategy. This has happened in the past as well.

I think you're replying to a different point than the GP was making -- the "major party" you are (I assume) referencing is also the party that backs Voter ID laws, which the GP was explicitly pointing out as a solution to the problem.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#83

Post by will4274 »

webwielder2 wrote: post #53

[flagged]

I'd encourage you to read some of the scholarly material related to Bush v. Gore, particularly the distinctions between the first case and the second case as well as materials that cover the actions of the FL court specifically - it's a lot more complex and nuanced than you summarize here.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#84

Post by SkyBelow »

dd36 wrote: post #17
wbronitsky wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think instead of framing this issue as "how easy would it be to re-register" we could instead ask "why should anyone have to register to vote at all?" In the US, voting is a right, which is something that cannot and should not be taken away. Invalidating voting registration, especially in a targeted way, is deplorable.

That’s actually a good argument for registering guns. I have to register for my voting rights, you have to register for your gun rights.

Registering to have, not registering the actual item. Same way you register to have to vote but you do not register the vote itself.

In my mind, the difficulty to do both should be equal, as making either more difficult than the other is suppressing the rights of a group to do which ever is more difficult.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#85

Post by homonculus1 »

dd36 wrote: post #61
homonculus1 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As we see from this very article, the outcome of making people register for their rights is to deny them their rights. Don't race to the bottom, we'll all just end up... at the bottom.

The idea would be to equate the two to get rid of voter registration. Really, it’s to demonstrate the absurdity of both positions.

The way you framed it made it appear the opposite.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#86

Post by vkou »

josefresco wrote: post #3

"And voting rights groups found an unexplained tranche — around 20,000 people — who had been marked to be purged because of inactivity in future election cycles, but were actually active voters in previous Ohio elections. These voters were in Franklin County, a Democratic stronghold in the state." Aaaand there it is.

This is the real voter fraud. Purging eligible voters from the lists.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#88

Post by seanmcdirmid »

wbronitsky wrote: post #47
not_a_cop75 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I update my voter registration sometimes twice a year to match the party I most like at the time, It's always been online - easy peasy. I expect to get downvoted to hell but I also don't get why showing an ID to vote is such a big deal. After all, I have to look up the numbers in my drivers license to vote. Also, how is it hard to vote? Absentee ballots are totally easy to get. If I was blind, I might have to plan ah…

US history is why its a big deal to show your ID to vote. Wikipedia has a great summary of the racist policies voter ID laws were made to enforce, and that voter fraud is "vanishingly rare" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_St...

If only the southern racists during Jim Crow promoted voter suppression tactics as a way of reducing voter fraud like today.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#89

Post by thinkling »

mschuster91 wrote: post #51

In Germany we do not have this problem (neither voter suppression nor voter fraud), for a multitude of reasons: 1) everyone has a government-provided ID document: a passport, for German nationals the ID card Personalausweis also works, and for EU nationals (who can vote in municipal and EU elections) their country's ID document 2) the legal requirement to register at the city/region office ("Meldebehörde") where you…

Yeah, from the European perspective the American situation is hard to understand. In the U.S., requiring everyone to register their address is going to be met with cries of Big Brother and small but vocal resistance. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of people have to declare an address to file their tax return and/or to have a driver's license.

The other piece is that the constitution, written before direct elections were common, explicitly leaves the execution of elections to the states, which makes it hard for the federal government to set standards or require this kind of registration. And it's politically intractable to fix these silly things in the constitution.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#90

Post by zucker42 »

not_a_cop75 wrote: post #40
spamizbad wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this is HN and you're probably young-ish: When you're older and you've set down roots the last time you updated your voter registration was probably a few decades ago. Chances are your polling place hasn't likely changed either. So you know when elections come, you go to your usual polling place, give your name, get your ballet and "pull the lever" so to speak. You're not thinking "Oh I better double-check my…

I update my voter registration sometimes twice a year to match the party I most like at the time, It's always been online - easy peasy. I expect to get downvoted to hell but I also don't get why showing an ID to vote is such a big deal. After all, I have to look up the numbers in my drivers license to vote. Also, how is it hard to vote? Absentee ballots are totally easy to get. If I was blind, I might have to plan ah…

10% of households don't have a computer and 15% of adults don't have a driver's license. Maybe your experiences don't generalize to the rest of the population.

Also, many states require you register to far ahead of time and will arbitrarily purge you from the voting roles. So I guess my point is this is more of issue than you're making it seem.

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