Driving is a privilege, and if a state wishes to regulate and restict it, then that is with in the state's right.

However the state does not have the right to impeed my Constitutional right to vote.

We dont have poll taxes or literacy tests anymore.

Do you agree with the Republican party that this is done to prevent voter fraud, or is this a ruse to prevent voter turn out?

NPR’s Monday morning story on voting in Florida brings into sharp focus the “moral equivalency” by which reporters become part of the problem they write about.
A problem with NPR’s coverage of laws restricting voting rights in Florida is that their reporter treated Republicans who passed and are implementing the voter-suppression laws as responsible elected officials, instead of partisan operatives working to suppress the minority vote in order game the next election—and others thereafter.

Why give the state’s Republican Party chair the last word?
“The point is, any level of individuals casting a vote that are not eligible to vote is unacceptable. You go back to the 2000 election. Florida was decided in less than 550 votes. You cannot have people that are not eligible to vote casting votes in our election. It completely undermines the integrity of the system.”

The quote is pure common sense. And pure bullshit.
Republican legislators (and a Republican governor) in Florida used the unsubstantiated threat of election fraud by “people who are not eligible to vote” as a pretext to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters who are eligible to vote.

The New York Times story that NPR cites, in fact, reported that since Florida’s voter-suppression law took effect in May, 81,471 fewer Floridians have registered to vote than during the same period in the runup to the 2008 presidential election.

This subtle pressure on voters, with a focus on minority voters, is what the legislators intended.

As we reported in February, the Florida law targets vehicles that get minority voters to the polls: voting on the Sunday before the election; voter-registration drives; extended voting periods.
If you report it as if it were a policy disagreement, listeners (and readers) will come to believe that it is a policy disagreement.

Which it decidedly is not.
Again, of the 26 or 27 voter ID (and other restrictions) bills that have been passed into law since 2006, all have been passed by Republican legislatures and signed into law by Republican governors—with one exception. Rhode Island’s Democratic legislature passed a voter ID bill that was signed into law by the state’s independent governor, Lincoln Chaffee.

What NPR failed to say is that what went down in Florida last year was the codification of the same Jim Crow laws that denied blacks the right vote even after a constitutional amendment reaffirmed voting as “a right” that could not be denied.
http://www.washingtonspectator.org/index.php/Blog/entry/npr-and-jim-crow.html

The New York Times story that NPR cites, in fact, reported that since Florida’s voter-suppression law took effect in May, 81,471 fewer Floridians have registered to vote than during the same period in the runup to the 2008 presidential election.

And if you can show its actually likely true that 81 thousand poor people couldn't register in May then make a case of why that makes sense.

In 2005, Mark “Thor” Hearne, a lawyer who had worked for the Bush-Cheney political campaign, founded the American Center for Voting Rights.

The center produced one 72-page report: “Vote Fraud, Intimidation, & Suppression in the 2004 Presidential Election,” which was submitted to a House committee chaired by Ohio Congressman Bob Ney (who would later do time for his role in the Jack Abramoff scandal).

The report included no documented account of any individual impersonating another at a polling place. Yet it recommended that “[s]tates should adopt legislation requiring government-issued photo ID at the polls and for any voter seeking to vote by mail or by absentee ballot.”

...in 2009, the American Legislative Council drafted the model legislation that Republican legislators would use a template for their bills. (ALEC is a Republican outfit that receives more than 98 percent of its funding from corporate lobbyists.)

In 2011, Republicans in 38 states introduced legislation that would make state-approved photo-ID cards a requirement to vote.

How pervasive was the fraud that informed the voter-ID campaign?

Indiana was one of the earliest states to pass a voter-ID bill, in 2007. In separate opinions upholding the law, Appeals Court Justice Richard Posner and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer observed that attorneys representing the state of Indiana could provide no evidence of voter-identification fraud. “As far as anyone knows,” Posner wrote, “no one in Indiana, and not many people elsewhere, are known to have been prosecuted for impersonating a registered voter.”

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who works with the Brennan Center for Justice, has been gathering evidence of polling-place voter fraud. “I keep an open door,” Levitt said. “I think I’m up to 11 or 12 possible attempts that people have pointed to across the country since 2000. There have been about 400 million ballots cast in general elections...since 2000.”

Levitt won’t comment on intent, but he points to the “character of the electorate” most affected by the voter-ID requirement. Viewed through this lens, intent is evident. Faced with an increase in minority populations—which tend to vote Democratic—Republican state legislatures are holding the future at bay.

The Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, for example, found that 20 percent of Wisconsin’s residents do not now have the identification required to vote. That includes 70 percent of African-Americans under the age of 25, 177,000 elderly people, 36 percent of young voters, and approximately 224,000 college students whose student ID cards fail to meet their state’s new ID requirement. In brief: a lot of potential Democratic voters. Similar biases against minority voters can be found in every voter-suppression bill enacted across the country.

And there is more to voter-ID laws than the voter-ID requirement. Florida has reduced the number of early voting days, cut in half the number of early voting hours, ended voting on the final Sunday before the election, and imposed tough restrictions on civic groups conducting voter-registration campaigns.

Testifying at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on January 25, University of Florida political science Professor Daniel A. Smith questioned the color-blind provisions in Florida’s 2011 law:

[E]ven though African Americans comprised only 13 percent of total voters and 22 percent of early voters in Florida in the 2008 General Election, they accounted for 31 percent of early voters on the final Sunday of early voting. Hispanic voters, who comprised 11 percent of total voters and 11 percent of early voters in the 2008 general election, accounted for 22 percent of the early voters on the final Sunday of early voting.

By closing polling places on Sunday, Florida shuts down the nonpartisan, church-based “Souls to the Polls” campaigns in African-American and Hispanic congregations.

Reducing the period in which volunteer registrars are required to turn in completed forms from 10 days to 48 hours makes voting drives impossible. That single measure will drive down registration among African-Americans and Latinos, who are more than twice as likely as white voters to register through such drives, according to Judith Browne-Dianis, a civil rights lawyer at the Advancement Project.

Bill Clinton.... said: “Why is all of this going on? This is not rocket science. They are trying to make the 2012 electorate look more like the 2010 [Tea Party backlash] electorate than the 2008 electorate [that elected Obama]. There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today.”
http://www.washingtonspectator.org/index.php/Republicans-Rock-the-Vote/how-voter-id-laws-suppress-registration-drives-and-block-democratic-votes.html

Florida, which is expected to be a vital swing state once again in this year’s presidential election, is enrolling fewer new voters than it did four years ago as prominent civic organizations have suspended registration drives because of what they describe as onerous restrictions imposed last year by Republican state officials.

The state’s new elections law — which requires groups that register voters to turn in completed forms within 48 hours or risk fines, among other things — has led the state’s League of Women Voters to halt its efforts this year. Rock the Vote, a national organization that encourages young people to vote, began an effort last week to register high school students around the nation — but not in Florida, over fears that teachers could face fines. And on college campuses, the once-ubiquitous folding tables piled high with voter registration forms are now a rarer sight.

Florida, which reminded the nation of the importance of every vote in the disputed presidential election in 2000 when it reported that George W. Bush had won by 537 votes, is now seeing a significant drop-off in new voter registrations. In the months since its new law took effect in May, 81,471 fewer Floridians have registered to vote than during the same period before the 2008 presidential election, according to an analysis of registration data by The New York Times. All told, there are 11.3 million voters registered in the state.

It is difficult to say just how much of the decrease is due to the restrictions in the law, and how much to demographic changes, a lack of enthusiasm about politics or other circumstances, including the fact that there was no competitive Democratic presidential primary this year. But new registrations dropped sharply in some areas where the voting-age population has been growing, the analysis found, including Miami-Dade County, where they fell by 39 percent, and Orange County, where they fell by a little more than a fifth. Some local elections officials said that the lack of registration drives by outside groups has been a factor in the decline.

In Volusia County, where new registrations dropped by nearly a fifth compared with the same period four years ago, the supervisor of elections, Ann McFall, said that she attributed much of the change to the new law. “The drop-off is our League of Women Voters, our five universities in Volusia County, none of which are making a concentrated effort this year,” Ms. McFall said.

Florida’s law — which is being challenged in court by civic groups and, in counties covered by the Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department — is one of more than a dozen that states have passed in recent years that have made it harder to vote by requiring voters to show photo identification at polls, reducing early voting periods or making it more difficult to register.

Republicans, who have passed nearly all of the new voting laws, say the restrictions are needed to prevent fraud. Democrats note that such fraud almost never happens, and say that the laws will make it harder for young people and members of minorities, who tend to support Democrats, to vote.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/28/us/restrictions-on-voter-registration-in-florida-have-groups-opting-out.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all

Although the new rules have been in effect less than a year, University of Florida political scientist Daniel Smith says its clear they're already having an impact.
An analysis he did that was built upon by The New York Times shows that in the first eight months the law was in effect, 81,000 fewer new voters were added to the registration rolls compared with the same period four years earlier.

"What we've seen very clearly is that there's been a drop-off in new registrations across the state of Florida," says Smith. "And that indicates that these groups like the League of Women Voters, the Boy Scouts and others that have engaged in voter registration in past years that are not doing so have had an effect. We have less younger people registering to vote in the state of Florida."

Along with restricting third-party groups conducting registration drives, Florida's new election rules also cut back on the number of days polls are open for early voting. And they require those who change their addresses on Election Day to cast provisional ballots.

Camila Gallardo of NCLR says those are all measures that disproportionately affect minorities. She doesn't think that's a coincidence.
"Minorities are more likely to register [to vote] through a third-party voter organization like NCLR. So, you know, you can't help but think that this is in some way targeted," says Gallardo. "And if you look at the arguments about, 'Oh, this is to curb voter fraud,' voter fraud does not usually occur at the voter registration level."
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/14/152517589/in-florida-registering-voters-a-whole-new-game

Making a claim that a crime is committed requires facts. Not make believe.

Does that also apply to the alleged necessity for the new restrictive rules? Because, so far, it seems no one has been able to show there actually is wide spread voter fraud, which is the the alleged 'crime' the rules are allegedly designed to prevent.

And as you say, "Making a claim that a crime is committed requires facts".

From 1933 to 2009 (the 73rd Congress through the 111th Congress), the U.S. House of Representatives considered 107 contested election cases. The vast majority of these cases were resolved in favor of the contestee, a term referring to a Member or Member-elect of the House of Representatives whose election was challenged. The term contestant refers to an individual who challenged the election of a Member-elect of the House of Representatives

If a state wants a law requiring ID, then that ID has to be obtainable by all voters with no burden to the voter. If the state wants voter ID, then the state should issue the ID at its expense... not that of the voter.

Can you please describe those that would be impacted?

Basically you will be talking about a very very small minority of people that most likely cannot participate or do not wish to participate.

Also, please show that it is unconstitutional for a state to restrict the right to vote in any way.

More people are hit by lightening in this country every year , than commit voter fraud.

Yeah come on people it is only a small minority that are going to not be able to vote and when you really think of it they are probably just poor and most likely a minority, so do the American thing and sweep them under the rug because they really do not matter.



At the end of the day if you are not able to disseminate what these proposed vote ID laws do, then you have not been able to disseminate the information and or read the information proved in this thread.

Show who they are. They are not mythical creatures right. Who are they? One or two anecdotal stories is not evidence...

...Show the widespread discrimination that is being asserted. Something other than your feelings.

Also, what tangible evidence do you recommend be used to validate a contested election? Just rule it valid and move on?

Unless you are for bigger government and increased spending, then sure go ahead and put more measure in-place to stop something that is not really happening, which then I totally understand.

Only those who want to march hordes of untermensch to the polls would object to a voter ID.

any time I've ever voted in Canada I was required to show photo ID plus hand in my voter registration card that they'd sent me

Now I'm really confused. At least 2 Canadians have posted in this thread that a photo ID is required in Canada to vote. So why on earth are so many other Canadians posting about how outrageous it is that a similar law is being considered in the US?

who cares about godwin's law...

there are no good reasons not to have voter id laws other than alleged racism... hate to be the 1 to break it to you but there are more poor whites in america than any other group why wouldn't they be impacted by voter I d laws?

Now I'm really confused. At least 2 Canadians have posted in this thread that a photo ID is required in Canada to vote. So why on earth are so many other Canadians posting about how outrageous it is that a similar law is being considered in the US?

I believe that as long as provisions are made to ensure that people can receive assistance in obtaining said identification, there is nothing wrong with requiring them to get one.