MarkDaSpark wrote:Except where did they get this "full" transcript. The story is that whoever was filming, "accidentally" stopped for 1 to 2 minutes before they "re-started" it.

So for them to claim they have a "full" transcript, why haven't they posted the video in full?

I don't know. I can't vouch for MoJo, and not trying to. But it does look like there's enough there to provide context for the majority of it. Maybe not for those little snippets about the 47%, I haven't read it yet. It doesn't matter anyway to most people. I think most have already made up their minds.

Serious question: Has a Presidential candidate ever not carried his Home State and won?

I saw on CNN that Bambi has a 52-44% lead over Romneyator in Michigan.

bhodilee wrote:Serious question: Has a Presidential candidate ever not carried his Home State and won?

I saw on CNN that Bambi has a 52-44% lead over Romneyator in Michigan.

According to PresidentElect.org, this has happened twice:
- In 1844, James Polk lost his home state of Tennessee to Henry Clay but was still elected.
- In 1916, Woodrow Wilson lost his home state of New Jersey to Charles Evan Hughes but was still elected.

coynedj wrote:According to PresidentElect.org, this has happened twice:
- In 1844, James Polk lost his home state of Tennessee to Henry Clay but was still elected.
- In 1916, Woodrow Wilson lost his home state of New Jersey to Charles Evan Hughes but was still elected.

WOODY! I wouldn't have thought that, but thanks for looking it up.

coynedj wrote:While Romney can still win the election, his time is running short and his opportunities few. His greatest opportunity is the debates, but with the first debate only two weeks away and more clips from the unfortunate fund-raiser talk still to come, it’s hard to imagine that he won’t spend that first debate doing anything other than defending himself. That’s not how one overcomes a deficit in the polls.

I can’t imagine how this video can be realistically spun as anything but a disaster for Romney.

IMHO the election is Romney's to lose. And Mitt is doing a mighty fine job of that. Campaigning on a lot of empty rhetoric (I am going to create millions of jobs, I will make America strong, I will lead) and not providing many specifics. The 47% video, including the missing minute or two, is just another glimpse into the man's mind and I and many others don't like what we see very much. Like many others as well, I am not always happy with Obama but I truly think the claims that Obama is taking us down the road to socialism are unmitigated horse hockey, and I think 4 more years of Obama is a far better alternative to Romney and god forbid, Ryan. As long as Obama does well in the debates against Romney it will be time to stick a fork in the out of touch, elitist businessman and his nasty little running mate. Just my 2 groszy worth anyway.

edlada wrote:out of touch, elitist businessman and his nasty little running mate.

I feel the same way about them. Whenever I think about them I make a face, involuntarily.

chemvictim wrote:I feel the same way about them. Whenever I think about them I make a face, involuntarily.

And some of us feel the same about obama

ERMD wrote:And some of us feel the same about obama

QFT

ERMD wrote:And some of us feel the same about obama

I realize that.

I'm so looking forward to this election being over with.

chemvictim wrote:I realize that.

I'm so looking forward to this election being over with.

Be careful what you wish for, as they say. Whichever side loses will not take it well, especially if it is close and smacks of vote fraud. If Obama loses, his partisans may well cause trouble, and it will takes years to dig them out of the bureaucracy. If Obama wins, there are a lot of people who will react very badly as well. If the GOP holds the house, you'll see guerrilla warfare, similarly if Romney wins and the Dims hold the senate.

At some point, not so very far away, you will see more and more people going Galt and refusing to be beasts of burden for the government. QE3 is going usher in significant inflation. It will not be pretty.

rpm wrote:Be careful what you wish for, as they say. Whichever side loses will not take it well, especially if it is close and smacks of vote fraud. If Obama loses, his partisans may well cause trouble, and it will takes years to dig them out of the bureaucracy. If Obama wins, there are a lot of people who will react very badly as well. If the GOP holds the house, you'll see guerrilla warfare, similarly if Romney wins and the Dims hold the senate.

At some point, not so very far away, you will see more and more people going Galt and refusing to be beasts of burden for the government. QE3 is going usher in significant inflation. It will not be pretty.

Why do you mention voter fraud?

rpm wrote:Be careful what you wish for, as they say. Whichever side loses will not take it well, especially if it is close and smacks of vote fraud. If Obama loses, his partisans may well cause trouble, and it will takes years to dig them out of the bureaucracy. If Obama wins, there are a lot of people who will react very badly as well. If the GOP holds the house, you'll see guerrilla warfare, similarly if Romney wins and the Dims hold the senate.

At some point, not so very far away, you will see more and more people going Galt and refusing to be beasts of burden for the government. QE3 is going usher in significant inflation. It will not be pretty.

We survived hanging chads once, we can do it again.

kylemittskus wrote:Why do you mention voter fraud?

Because it's very real. And it's 90+% Democrat. It elected JFK in 1960, Linda Sanchez over B-1 Bob Dornan in Orange County a decade or so ago, and Al Franken more recently. A Democrat candidate for the House just quit when it turned out she was not only registered in both Maryland and Florida, but had vote recently in both states. It's the reason Democrats overwhelming oppose voter ID laws.

rpm wrote:Because it's very real. And it's 90+% Democrat. It elected JFK in 1960, Linda Sanchez over B-1 Bob Dornan in Orange County a decade or so ago, and Al Franken more recently. A Democrat candidate for the House just quit when it turned out she was not only registered in both Maryland and Florida, but had vote recently in both states. It's the reason Democrats overwhelming oppose voter ID laws.

I understand that having one person vote in two different states is absolutely a terrible thing. But I find it hard to believe (doesn't make it not true) that there are enough people double voting to change the presidential election. How double voting would be allowed to occur on a large enough scale is beyond my understanding. Similarly, a situation like the Bush Jr. round 1 where votes were allegedly just not counted seems odd to me. How this was allowed to occur is also beyond my understanding.

kylemittskus wrote:I understand that having one person vote in two different states is absolutely a terrible thing. But I find it hard to believe (doesn't make it not true) that there are enough people double voting to change the presidential election. How double voting would be allowed to occur on a large enough scale is beyond my understanding. Similarly, a situation like the Bush Jr. round 1 where votes were allegedly just not counted seems odd to me. How this was allowed to occur is also beyond my understanding.

Double voting is usually not the issue today, but it was not uncommon in the city Democratic machines such as Chicago. There have also been credible reports of people bussed into (say) Milwaukee from Illinois and the like. In the last presidential election there were several places (which went heavily to overwhelmingly for Obama) where there were more votes cast than adult inhabitants, let alone registered voters (I seem to recall Philadelphia was one....), and, of course, there's voting by illegal aliens (which is how Sanchez beat B-1 Bob), and similar tricks with voting the graveyards (the famous Chicago trick) and the "finding" of a convenient number of ballot boxes after the early counts show the Democrat losing (Al Franken, but many, many others). And, I would point out that the problems in Florida were all in Democrat run counties and mostly involved people apparently too stupid not to mark a ballot properly.

rpm wrote:Because it's very real. And it's 90+% Democrat. It elected JFK in 1960, Linda Sanchez over B-1 Bob Dornan in Orange County a decade or so ago, and Al Franken more recently. A Democrat candidate for the House just quit when it turned out she was not only registered in both Maryland and Florida, but had vote recently in both states. It's the reason Democrats overwhelming oppose voter ID laws.

It worked for Bush, twice.

Just ask Diebold.

bsevern wrote:It worked for Bush, twice.

Just ask Diebold.

Dude, you mean it didn't work for Gore & Kerry. The Pregnant Chad (and the other Chads) was just bogus.

Interesting article, in a depressing way, where you realize how true much of it is and how far from ideal we currently are...

A few choice extracts (based on what I found interesting, and not intended to make the post skew in any direction):
Lewis Lapham
Editor of Lapham's Quarterly

Feast of Fools: How American Democracy Became the Property of a Commercial Oligarchy

The ritual performance of the legend of democracy in the autumn of 2012 promises the conspicuous consumption of $5.8 billion, enough money, thank God, to prove that our flag is still there. Forbidden the use of words apt to depress a Q Score or disturb a Gallup poll, the candidates stand as product placements meant to be seen instead of heard, their quality to be inferred from the cost of their manufacture.

The congressional disapproval rating (78% earlier this year) correlates with the estimates of low attendance among young voters (down 20% from 2008) at the November polls.

Contrary to the contemporary view of politics as a rat’s nest of paltry swindling, Niccolò Machiavelli, the fifteenth-century courtier and political theorist, rates it as the most worthy of human endeavors when supported by a citizenry possessed of the will to act rather than the wish to be cared for. Without the “affection of peoples for self-government…cities have never increased either in dominion or wealth.”

Thomas Paine in the opening chapter of Common Sense finds “the strength of government and the happiness of the governed” in the freedom of the common people to “mutually and naturally support each other.”

Published in January 1776, Paine’s pamphlet ran through printings of 500,000 copies in a few months and served as the founding document of the American Revolution, its line of reasoning implicit in Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. The wealthy and well-educated gentlemen who gathered 11 years later in Philadelphia to frame the Constitution shared Paine’s distrust of monarchy but not his faith in the abilities of the common people, whom they were inclined to look upon as the clear and present danger seen by the delegate Gouverneur Morris as an ignorant rabble and a “riotous mob.”

From Aristotle the founders borrowed the theorem that all government, no matter what its name or form, incorporates the means by which the privileged few arrange the distribution of law and property for the less-fortunate many. Recognizing in themselves the sort of people to whom James Madison assigned “the most wisdom to discern, and the most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society,” they undertook to draft a constitution that employed an aristocratic means to achieve a democratic end.

Accepting of the fact that whereas a democratic society puts a premium on equality, a capitalist economy does not, the contrivance was designed to nurture both the private and the public good, accommodate the motions of the heart as well as the movement of the market, the institutions of government meant to support the liberties of the people, not the ambitions of the state.

The making of America’s politics over the last 236 years can be said to consist of the attempt to ward off, or at least postpone, the feast of fools.

President Grover Cleveland in 1887 set forth the rules of engagement while explaining his veto of a bill offering financial aid to the poor: “The lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.”

The shaping of the will of Congress and the choosing of the American president has become a privilege reserved to the country’s equestrian classes, a.k.a. the 20% of the population that holds 93% of the wealth, the happy few who run the corporations and the banks, own and operate the news and entertainment media, compose the laws and govern the universities, control the philanthropic foundations, the policy institutes, the casinos, and the sports arenas. Their anxious and spendthrift company bears the mark of oligarchy ridden with the disease diagnosed by the ancient Greeks as pleonexia, the appetite for more of everything

The hostile intent has been conscientiously sustained over the last 30 years, no matter which party is in control of Congress or the White House, and no matter what the issue immediately at hand -- the environment or the debt, defense spending or campaign-finance reform.

The upper servants of the oligarchy, among them most of the members of Congress and the majority of the news media’s talking heads, receive their economic freedoms by way of compensation for the loss of their political liberties. The right to freely purchase in exchange for the right to freely speak. If they wish to hold a public office or command attention as upholders of the truth, they can’t afford to fool around with any new, possibly subversive ideas.

Oligarchy prefers trifling evasions to real opinions. The preference accounts for the current absence of honest or intelligible debate on Capitol Hill. The members of Congress embody the characteristics of only one turn of mind -- that of the obliging publicist. They leave it to staff assistants to write the legislation and the speeches, spend 50% of their time soliciting campaign funds.

As with the Congress, so also with the major news media that serve at the pleasure of a commercial oligarchy that pays them, and pays them handsomely, for their pretense of speaking truth to power.

The time allowed on Face the Nation or Meet the Press facilitates the transmission of sound-bite spin and the swallowing of welcome lies.

When intended to draw blood instead of laughs, speaking truth to power doesn’t lead to a secure retirement on the beach at Martha’s Vineyard. Paine was the most famous political thinker of his day, his books in the late eighteenth century selling more copies than the Bible, but after the Americans had won their War of Independence, his notions of democracy were deemed unsuitable to the work of dividing up the spoils. The proprietors of their newfound estate claimed the privilege of apportioning its freedoms, and they remembered that Paine opposed the holding of slaves and the denial to women of the same sort of rights awarded to men. A man too much given to plain speaking, on too familiar terms with the lower orders of society, and therefore not to be trusted.

Paine’s misfortunes speak to the difference between politics as a passing around of handsome platitudes and politics as a sowing of the bitter seeds of social change. The speaking of truth to power when the doing so threatens to lend to words the force of deeds is as rare as it is brave.

Our own contemporary political discourse lacks force and meaning because it is a commodity engineered, like baby formula and Broadway musicals, to dispose of any and all unwonted risk.

Happily, at least for the moment, the society is rich enough to afford the staging of the fiction of democracy as a means of quieting the suspicions of a potentially riotous mob with the telling of a fairy tale. The rising cost of the production -- the pointless nominating conventions decorated with 15,000 journalists as backdrop for the 150,000 balloons -- reflects the ever-increasing rarity of the demonstrable fact. The country is being asked to vote in November for television commercials because only in the fanciful time zone of a television commercial can the American democracy still be said to exist.
Copyright 2012 Lewis Lapham

rpm wrote:Because it's very real. And it's 90+% Democrat. It elected JFK in 1960, Linda Sanchez over B-1 Bob Dornan in Orange County a decade or so ago, and Al Franken more recently. A Democrat candidate for the House just quit when it turned out she was not only registered in both Maryland and Florida, but had vote recently in both states. It's the reason Democrats overwhelming oppose voter ID laws.

I can't speak for all Democrats, but from my perspective that's just not true. I simply don't believe that there are all these cases of voter fraud which can be solved by requiring photo ID, and I don't think the people pushing these laws believe that either. Even if all the allegations of voter fraud were true, voter ID wouldn't touch most of it. I see it as a blatant attempt to make it more difficult for the old, the poor, and the shiftless to vote. Many states already have ID requirements, some photo and some not. Requiring the PHOTO ID is just a technique to get rid of potential voters who don't have driver's licenses. How many of these people are actually voting anyway? I'm not sure.

MarkDaSpark wrote:Dude, you mean it didn't work for Gore & Kerry. The Pregnant Chad (and the other Chads) was just bogus.

Rigged electronic voting devices have noting to do with chads.

Google is your friend.

chemvictim wrote:I can't speak for all Democrats, but from my perspective that's just not true. I simply don't believe that there are all these cases of voter fraud which can be solved by requiring photo ID, and I don't think the people pushing these laws believe that either. Even if all the allegations of voter fraud were true, voter ID wouldn't touch most of it. I see it as a blatant attempt to make it more difficult for the old, the poor, and the shiftless to vote. Many states already have ID requirements, some photo and some not. Requiring the PHOTO ID is just a technique to get rid of potential voters who don't have driver's licenses. How many of these people are actually voting anyway? I'm not sure.

Nonsense. You're drinking the Kool-Aid and repeating the talking points for which there are no proofs. Most states provide these IDs free for those who don't drive. You have to show photo IDs for many purposes, why not to vote? Requiring photo ID (with an address) will drastically reduce illegal alien voting (a big problem where there are lots of illegals), and reduce double voting and graveyard voting. What it won't stop is pure ballot box stuffing, though when there are more votes cast than voters who showed up, showed IDs and voted, it's pretty clear there has been fraud. It's very clear that without vote fraud in Illinois (Chicago specifically), Nixon would have won in 1960, and very clear Al Franken would have lost.

rpm wrote:Nonsense. You're drinking the Kool-Aid and repeating the talking points for which there are no proofs. Most states provide these IDs free for those who don't drive. You have to show photo IDs for many purposes, why not to vote? Requiring photo ID (with an address) will drastically reduce illegal alien voting (a big problem where there are lots of illegals), and reduce double voting and graveyard voting. What it won't stop is pure ballot box stuffing, though when there are more votes cast than voters who showed up, showed IDs and voted, it's pretty clear there has been fraud. It's very clear that without vote fraud in Illinois (Chicago specifically), Nixon would have won in 1960, and very clear Al Franken would have lost.

Honestly, I've always thought it a little odd that I don't have to show my ID to vote. At least leave a fingerprint or something. Dip your finger in ink and wear that as a badge of pride. Better than the stupid sticker I get.

I don't think voter fraud is a big issue. I'm more concerned that the 90 year old lady who marks my name off is actually marking my name and not someone else's by mistake. At least I have to sign I guess.

bhodilee wrote:Honestly, I've always thought it a little odd that I don't have to show my ID to vote. At least leave a fingerprint or something. Dip your finger in ink and wear that as a badge of pride. Better than the stupid sticker I get.

I don't think voter fraud is a big issue. I'm more concerned that the 90 year old lady who marks my name off is actually marking my name and not someone else's by mistake. At least I have to sign I guess.

If fraud has - as it demonstrably has - changed the outcome of races at the presidential, senatorial and house level within living memory, and if we have more votes cast than voters in recent elections, then it's a big problem. Not, perhaps, if you like the outcomes, but for democracy it is truly disastrous.

rpm wrote:If fraud has - as it demonstrably has - changed the outcome of races at the presidential, senatorial and house level within living memory, and if we have more votes cast than voters in recent elections, then it's a big problem. Not, perhaps, if you like the outcomes, but for democracy it is truly disastrous.

How is an ID going to stop the problem of more votes cast than voters? That has to happen behind the booth.

Also, it's ridiculous easy to get a fake I.D. Do you really think your typical elderly poll person is going to be able to spot a fake?

rpm wrote:Nonsense. You're drinking the Kool-Aid and repeating the talking points for which there are no proofs. Most states provide these IDs free for those who don't drive. You have to show photo IDs for many purposes, why not to vote? Requiring photo ID (with an address) will drastically reduce illegal alien voting (a big problem where there are lots of illegals), and reduce double voting and graveyard voting. What it won't stop is pure ballot box stuffing, though when there are more votes cast than voters who showed up, showed IDs and voted, it's pretty clear there has been fraud. It's very clear that without vote fraud in Illinois (Chicago specifically), Nixon would have won in 1960, and very clear Al Franken would have lost.

I don't have a problem with ID requirements per se, but I simply don't agree with you about the motivations behind these laws. Fox News has its own brand of kool-aid, you know. The photo ID will help stop in-person voter fraud, but I see no evidence that in-person voter fraud is a problem. I googled "in-person voter fraud" and the first few pages of results were all about how it is non-existent, or very rare, etc.

If your ID is old, or just a bad picture, or you look different due to weight change or hair color/style, or whatever, you could run into problems with the ID. If you change your name or move and ID is not current, you'll have problems. If you lose your wallet you'll be SOL. I know it took about a month to get my NV driver's license in the mail. It just seems like this will CAUSE problems in order to solve a NON problem.

rpm wrote:Be careful what you wish for, as they say. Whichever side loses will not take it well, especially if it is close and smacks of vote fraud. If Obama loses, his partisans may well cause trouble, and it will takes years to dig them out of the bureaucracy. If Obama wins, there are a lot of people who will react very badly as well. If the GOP holds the house, you'll see guerrilla warfare, similarly if Romney wins and the Dims hold the senate.

At some point, not so very far away, you will see more and more people going Galt and refusing to be beasts of burden for the government. QE3 is going usher in significant inflation. It will not be pretty.

I think the strategy of standing in the way legislatively (whether due to policy or gamesmanship) has placed them in a position to win the senate.

joelsisk wrote:a.k.a. the 20% of the population that holds 93% of the wealth, the happy few who run the corporations and the banks, own and operate the news and entertainment media, compose the laws and govern the universities, control the philanthropic foundations, the policy institutes, the casinos, and the sports arenas.

With exception of those here who are students/freshly out of school and singles, aren't most here in this top 20%? That is somewhere around $80-90k/yr in household income.

I dunno, maybe one of the MD's or Sparky have gone limited liability, but I don't think we're the demographic he thinks we are...

mother wrote:With exception of those here who are students/freshly out of school and singles, aren't most here in this top 20%? That is somewhere around $80-90k/yr in household income.

I dunno, maybe one of the MD's or Sparky have gone limited liability, but I don't think we're the demographic he thinks we are...

Yes, according to the census bureau, the top 20th %ile earn more than ~90-95k per year on a household basis. I thought it was a typo and meant to be 2%, myself, which is roughly $250k per household.

Information potentially pertinent to the recent voter fraud discussion

cmaldoon wrote: Information potentially pertinent to the recent voter fraud discussion

Except wait until 2016, when Election Day Registration takes effect in California!

MarkDaSpark wrote:Except wait until 2016, when Election Day Registration takes effect in California!

So, now we should be afraid of a problem that may, although for many reasons likely won't, happen, since the original problem we were supposed to be afraid of never actually did? Fear mongering FTW!

mother wrote:

Really don't see the problem here - how is this any different from the Republican or Democrat booth at a County Fair registering voters? I am assuming that the woman isn't actually working for the El Paso County Clerk (and, after checking, she indeed is not: http://www.coloradoconnection.com/news/politics/story.aspx?id=804779 ).

The lady with the camera seems to be a piece of work and overly indignant, to say the least.

kylemittskus wrote:So, now we should be afraid of a problem that may, although for many reasons likely won't, happen, since the original problem we were supposed to be afraid of never actually did? Fear mongering FTW!

Um, look at the link again. They didn't say they didn't find any, they said it was minimal (imagine if they were in Chicago!).

And again, if you have to show a photo ID to use a credit card, cash a check, fly on a plane, rent a hotel room / car, as well as any other number of reasons .... why is it such a problem to show an ID to vote?


Edit: And I've seen many local elections decided by less than 100 votes (even less than that on some!). And notice that those states listed in the link aren't those that border Mexico. It would be interesting to see those "stats".

cmaldoon wrote: Information potentially pertinent to the recent voter fraud discussion

I simply don't believe this: I read over a year ago that several thousands of felons were illegally registered to vote in Florida. Even if the provable numbers of fraudulent registrants is small in relation to the total electorate, it may still be significant in any close election.

Requiring picture ID is such a simple step, I find it impossible to believe anyone could oppose it unless they were indifferent to election fraud.

rpm wrote:I simply don't believe this: I read over a year ago that several thousands of felons were illegally registered to vote in Florida. Even if the provable numbers of fraudulent registrants is small in relation to the total electorate, it may still be significant in any close election.

Requiring picture ID is such a simple step, I find it impossible to believe anyone could oppose it unless they were indifferent to election fraud.

How do "they" know this number of FL felons who are illegally registered to vote? And why are they able to register if it is known? How would the picture ID requirement help? Are felons denied picture ID?

I don't have a problem with picture ID, but the way it's being pushed right now to solve a problem which doesn't exist, it really smells. I'm not indifferent to election fraud, but I'm also not indifferent to voter suppression.

rpm wrote:I simply don't believe this: I read over a year ago that several thousands of felons were illegally registered to vote in Florida. Even if the provable numbers of fraudulent registrants is small in relation to the total electorate, it may still be significant in any close election.

Requiring picture ID is such a simple step, I find it impossible to believe anyone could oppose it unless they were indifferent to election fraud.

I'm fine with requiring an ID. I see that as a separate issue from the discussion here that democrats win by fraud and republicans don't and we should all keep being scared of an issue that while it exists, is about # 9,000 on my list of things to be afraid of.

I also find it odd that you are simply rejecting an entire news story because it doesn't jive with what you've been led to believe (without saying that you've been led true or astray). Without any opposing evidence, it seems that you're saying, "That story disagrees with my beliefs that elections are fraudulent, especially with democrats, so I reject it." Does the story have a slant? Sure. But I can't see completely stripping it of any truth.

And the FL election you're talking about was Bush Jr. round 1, but you've got the sides wrong. (sarcastic tone, truthful statement)

chemvictim wrote:How do "they" know this number of FL felons who are illegally registered to vote? And why are they able to register if it is known? How would the picture ID requirement help? Are felons denied picture ID?

I don't have a problem with picture ID, but the way it's being pushed right now to solve a problem which doesn't exist, it really smells. I'm not indifferent to election fraud, but I'm also not indifferent to voter suppression.

How did Kyle put it .... "Fear mongering FTW!"

I thought this Commentary by a "bi-racial female" (as she put it) was interesting in pointing out the myths about "Voter Suppression".


Most Voter ID laws provide for free state ID's for those who qualify.

MarkDaSpark wrote:How did Kyle put it .... "Fear mongering FTW!"

I thought this Commentary by a "bi-racial female" (as she put it) was interesting in pointing out the myths about "Voter Suppression".


Most Voter ID laws provide for free state ID's for those who qualify.

Dems: "in-person voter fraud doesn't exist!"

Pubs: "people without photo ID don't exist!"

Conclusion: this is stupid. I give up.

MarkDaSpark wrote:How did Kyle put it .... "Fear mongering FTW!"

I thought this Commentary by a "bi-racial female" (as she put it) was interesting in pointing out the myths about "Voter Suppression".


Most Voter ID laws provide for free state ID's for those who qualify.

To me it sounds more like the photo ID issue is a straw man for both sides. If you're working, buying alcohol, driving, traveling, etc, then you need to have a photo ID. Doesn't seem the least bit onerous to require it to vote. I'm pretty sure they do in Canada too.

Seems the problem is more about inappropriate voter registration practices. By both sides. More troubling, though, are the (seemingly) highly inaccurate voter "purges" being undertaken by some Republican administrations in swing states. If the concern over photo ID is to increase confidence in the election system then it seems to me that many are going about it the wrong way.

At the end of that commentary, she cites people who "saw rampant voter fraud". What on Earth does that mean? Too many non-wasp people voting at their polling station? Did they go and check every person's citizenship records? Did these supposed fraudsters walk out of the polling place and announce they voted illegally?