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US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

durbin.senate.gov

161–170 of 311 posts

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#161
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely right. There's a vast potential for very real problems. When those problems manifest, we should deal with them. To try to address problems that don't actually exist is absurd overregulation and government overreach. It certainly is wasteful to expend resources on solving problems that don't need solving because they don't exist, isn't it? Is there evidence of voter fraud by undocumented migrants tha…

> When those problems manifest, we should deal with them I think this is one of the key problems with a hyper-conservative government. If your default position is "don't change it" on every issue, then you have a very difficult time solving problems. More liberal governments that frequently change the rules are like startups vs very large corporations. They are more agile and better able to quickly deal with problems…

Personally, I have found that engaging in political conversation with people in a framing they find comfortable and familiar makes it possible to change minds. Doing so makes it possible to address the position at hand without also trying to reorganize a person's worldview. Your experience may differ, but I've generally found that task a daunting prospect. Perhaps you are simply far more skilled than I at getting people to reorganize their worldviews - certainly not a high bar here.

Unfortunately, the results of this sometime goes over poorly with people outside the target audience. Such people are often reacting negatively to a framing they find problematic or otherwise objectionable. At times they prefer challenging the framing to advancing a particular position.

This is a very valuable thing to do! It's critically important to a functioning liberal democracy. It's just perhaps not always the most impactful thing to do in a given moment to advance the goal of swaying someone's position.

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#162
post #153

@dang could we update this very misleading headline to "US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Senate Voting During Emergencies"?

Just one person, but I didn't find this "very misleading". On first read of the title I assumed it was allowing senators to vote on senate votes remotely. Neither the current title nor your proposed title is the original I currently see on the article and I could imagine the title being improved, but I think it's unfair to characterize it as "very misleading".

I don't really think it's unfair. It's obviously not "very misleading" on purpose, but it's a little silly to look at the title "Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting" during a time when there is a lot of worry and argument about the ability of citizens to vote remotely and not assume most people will think they're talking about citizen votes. Hell, even if it weren't a currently relevant topic, I'm confident most people would still assume "voting" refers to the thing people do at the ballot boxes. That's just the default meaning of the word when the topic is US politics.

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#163
I am deeply concerned about the security of any online voting system for anyone. It can be done securely, but I have zero confidence in the IT ability of our government to actually achieve security. The past record of pathetic electronic voting machine security speaks to this.

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The left doesn't support that, why? Because it's a transparent attempt to reduce the ability of some groups of people to vote. The right pushes for voter ID while simultaneously doing everything possible to reduce the availability of ID. Put the Federal Election Commission in charge of voter ID, make the cards free and make it the mission of the FEC to track down and ensure every qualified citizen has one. Then I s…

Do you think with 10+ million undocumented immigrants - a not insignificant portion of the population, but not citizenry - that people should not be concerned about ensuring only valid citizens can vote?

Do you think the government as it is setup right now is highly responsive to the will of voters?

Do you think that adding non-citizen voters will change the answer to the above?

If non-citizen voters made the government more responsive to the will of voters, do you think the will of non-citizen residents is significantly different than the will of citizen residents? How is it different?

Do you think will be inundated by immigrants who want sharia law? Is that where you're going with this? Do you think there could be enough immigrants to enact such a thing? Do you think that's possible given the basic freedoms guaranteed by the constitution?

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#166
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone point to any concrete results of debate on the Senate floor from anytime in the last 20 years or so? I am genuinely asking, because it seems to me that the value of debate on the floor is like you said only pretense at this point. Mandating that pretense and in turn making the Senate slower to react in an emergency seems like an actively harmful requirement.

It's not exactly a pretense, but rather it's playing to the audience, which is the country and the rest of the world. It's theatrics, not intended to sway the lawmakers themselves, who in general are not persuadable by their colleagues. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, lawmakers are horse trading and calling in favors to get their pet projects passed. This is pretty much how Congress has worked for the past 100 years…

This was true in the 19th century as well.

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The left doesn't support that, why? Because it's a transparent attempt to reduce the ability of some groups of people to vote. The right pushes for voter ID while simultaneously doing everything possible to reduce the availability of ID. Put the Federal Election Commission in charge of voter ID, make the cards free and make it the mission of the FEC to track down and ensure every qualified citizen has one. Then I s…

Do you think with 10+ million undocumented immigrants - a not insignificant portion of the population, but not citizenry - that people should not be concerned about ensuring only valid citizens can vote?

In theory maybe but from a practical standpoint this is not a serious problem for the country. Voter fraud is a serious crime and most legal and illegal immigrants are trying to avoid commiting federal crimes that are highly visible. Voting by mail creates a paper trail, making it easy to audit and detect fraud (more so than checking a piece of plastic). All the research suggests that mail in voting has a neutral partisan effect (with a potentially slight win to conservatives since it favors rural and elderly populations). Ultimately questions of fraud detection could be framed according to the cost of false positives vs false negatives. The reason that people on the left get upset over vote ID laws is that they create a lot of false negatives, for a very small decrease in the number of false positives - this is structural to voter turnout (~40% of people don't vote, vs. <1% voter fraud (0 convictions)).

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#169
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly enough, a significant majority of Republican Voters (~65%) actually do support mail in ballots. The opposition largely stems from the RNC and senior party leadership. In any case I am glad that the US senate is taking public health seriously, and I hope that they will take similar precautions in protecting their constituents by passing the Klobuchar-Wyden bill to allow mail in voting: https://www.wyden.…

The right supports mail-in ballots with voter-id, and voter-id in general. The left doesn't support that, why?

My voter registration says "Mike Smith" and my driver's license says "Michael Smith".

Would you let me vote?

I got married and took my husband's name. I've got mix of paperwork during transition.

Would you let me vote?

I voted at the same polling location for 30 years. I've never driven a car. The only photo ID I have is my medical card from the VA.

Would you let me vote?

--

For the record, what The Left demands is modernizing our voter registration infrastructure, like every other mature democracy, mooting this entire debate.

Universal automatic voter registration, issue photo ID for all voters, proper audit log for all VRDBs.

Which would also be cheaper to admin and nearly error free.

Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies

#170
post #60

Oh, I thought the headline meant remote voting for, you know, voters, not Senators, and was very surprised to see an R next to one of the sponsor's names. The bill's just to let the Senate vote remotely. I'd imagine most of the interesting nuance is about "presence" and quorum-making. This is not about expanding remote/by-mail voting in elections, which Republicans have generally been strongly against, including and…

Interestingly enough, a significant majority of Republican Voters (~65%) actually do support mail in ballots. The opposition largely stems from the RNC and senior party leadership. In any case I am glad that the US senate is taking public health seriously, and I hope that they will take similar precautions in protecting their constituents by passing the Klobuchar-Wyden bill to allow mail in voting: https://www.wyden.…

> "Interestingly enough, a significant majority of Republican Voters (~65%) actually do support mail in ballots."

What people want is sadly irrelevant as long as they keep voting blindly for the same people.

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