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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%

#161

Post by fencepost »

andrewla wrote: post #120
crispyambulance wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> 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. You claim the risk is small, but I'm not aware of anything that actually supports this assessment. This form of manipulation is nearly impossible to detect in…

If your contention is that vote fraud is hard to detect and probably happens more than we know, look into statistics. The likelihood of detecting a single case of improper voting is low, but if there's a significant volume of it happening then the likelihood of detecting that it's happening at all is pretty high, at which point more detailed investigation can be done.

Edit: this kind of ties back to the allegations of massive voting fraud in the 2016 elections. Lots of people looked into it and found no significant level of improperly cast votes. That leads to either a contention that it did not happen or a contention that all of the people investigating it were either corrupt or incompetent.

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

#162

Post by romwell »

crispyambulance wrote: post #81
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 a…

> "citizen ID" cards

We call them passports :)

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

#163

Post by wbronitsky »

weberc2 wrote: post #110
wbronitsky wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Maybe voter fraud is "vanishingly rare", but that statement in the wikipedia article only links to a NYT article which says: > Academic studies have repeatedly concluded that fraud at the ballot box — the sort that photo identification requirements might reduce — is already vanishingly rare. With no citation. Anyway, "vanishingly rare" could mean that fewer than 1% of votes are fraudulent, but those fraudulent votes…

I want to point out that there is no citation for this straw-man thought experiment.

Even the Heritage Foundation, which is incentivized to dig up as much voter fraud as it possibly can, has only found fewer than 1250 individual cases in what seems to be the last decade. This is overwhelmingly lower than the preposterous 1% presented in the above straw-man. https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud

Indeed my point was not just about voter fraud, but the racist history of Voter ID laws in the US. My overall point was that there is overwhelming and easily accessible evidence that voter ID laws are racist and that voter fraud is not an issue.

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

#165

Post by maskull »

oftenwrong wrote: post #36

There doesn't appear to be an explanation for the purges. I can understand the need to purge the voter lists of "dead" (literally or otherwise) entries, but surely it would be best if the state provided an explanation for each removal?

It would also be important to remove people that have registered to vote elsewhere.

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

#166

Post by neonIcon »

slg wrote: post #154
neonIcon wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly you haven't tried to do half of these things without an ID.. and a good portion of the other half would likely be illegal. You are correct about the constitutional right however.

Most times people say ID is "required" is because they are lazy and don't want to go through the effort of confirming identity using other means. There are certainly things that do legally require ID like opening a bank account, but others just have a strong preference for ID such as flying which can be done without ID if you are committed to fighting through the difficulties.

I am not sure where you live but in the U.S. flying without an ID of some sort is impossible, and an accepted ID other than a drivers license all have an arguably larger barrier to entry than going to the DMV and paying the ~$10 and an hour+ of your time. That or you are someone with an inordinate amount of resources available to you and are looking at this problem through rose colored glasses.

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

#167

Post by pedasmith »

jimmywanger wrote: post #157
crooked-v wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't they issue free IDs and track every voter in a database and call it a day? Because the goal of the Republican Party is explicitly to use these laws to suppress the votes of certain demographics, not to actually secure the vote. For an example direct quote from a court case: https://twitter.com/haroldpollack/status/1051657219899617280

> Because the goal of the Republican Party is explicitly to use these laws to suppress the votes of certain demographics, not to actually secure the vote. Your linked source is talking about an entirely different issue. Does not prove your point about Republicans using voter id laws to suppress the votes of certain demographics, or that it's a point of the Republican party as a national organization to do that. All w…

How about proof of citizenship for the right to a free press? Should we require a passport to get into church? Do only citizens get to walk into a post office? Do I need to show someone an ID before I send a letter to my representative?

Let me put it into computer terms: when your program isn't fast enough and you've got a nice profile trace, do you start your analysis with the functions using up a lot of time? Or do you start among the functions that aren't using lots of time?

Why approach vote fraud any other way? The majority of vote fraud (the 'r' is deliberately dropped, BTW) is by the incumbent party systematically preventing votes and voters from being counted.

Jimmy Carter tells the story, for example, of a town in Georgia where the voters were recorded as having voted in alphabetical order. That's real vote fraud, and something that no amount of pretend voter ids will help.

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

#168

Post by crooked-v »

tathougies wrote: post #127
notfromhere wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the state can't put together a list that doesn't disenfranchise one in every five voters on it, it shouldn't bother. Voter fraud is a non-existent issue and these mass-removals serve no basis except as cover to remove voters that don't support their party.

You don't think removing dead or moved voters is important? This is not about voter fraud. This is just about keeping your records in order, and making sure no one can raise suspicions about your electoral mechanisms.

Removing dead or moved voters is much, much less important than making sure that valid voters can still vote.

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

#169

Post by crooked-v »

tathougies wrote: post #113
will4274 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purging is a legal requirement in all 50 states. Dead voters, those who've moved, and those who are ineligible (felons) must be removed. Red states like Ohio are criminally over-zealous and remove poor people. Blue states like Michigan are criminally under-zealous and have more voters on the rolls than people living in the state.

I don't understand how this has turned into a political issue. Everyone should want expired, duplicate, or downright fraudulent voter registrations removed, while keeping those who are eligible on the books. What a sad state of affairs we are in.

It's a political issue because one party uses it as an excuse to remove active voters of the other party, and the other party rightfully objects to this.

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

#170

Post by weberc2 »

wbronitsky wrote: post #163
weberc2 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe voter fraud is "vanishingly rare", but that statement in the wikipedia article only links to a NYT article which says: > Academic studies have repeatedly concluded that fraud at the ballot box — the sort that photo identification requirements might reduce — is already vanishingly rare. With no citation. Anyway, "vanishingly rare" could mean that fewer than 1% of votes are fraudulent, but those fraudulent votes…

I want to point out that there is no citation for this straw-man thought experiment. Even the Heritage Foundation, which is incentivized to dig up as much voter fraud as it possibly can, has only found fewer than 1250 individual cases in what seems to be the last decade. This is overwhelmingly lower than the preposterous 1% presented in the above straw-man. https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud Indeed my point was not…

I can't tell what the "straw man" argument you're referring to. Could you clarify?
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