In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
My licence is good until I'm 70 (so '52), but the photocard has to be renewed every decade.
Your OP article is titled, "The Myth of Voter Fraud". Using fraud as a reason for voter ID is fixing a problem that doesn't exist. Getting gov't issued photo ID can be difficult for the elderly and poor, as you said yourself. The DMV is inefficient, and you can blame unions all you want, but it's not the left-wingers calling for voter photo ID.
Is the system wide open to abuse? Information tracking may be poor but proxies for information do exist, and they universally suggest that the incidence of fraud is pretty low. Now that's not proof and even worse it's an aggregate claim addressing all kinds of fraud *like box-stuffing, pre-marking ballots, etc* but it boggles the mind to think that all other types of fraud are pretty rare and this one type is actually comparatively widespread and undetected. Since it is not actually difficult to detect. All it takes to detect it is for the fraudster and the genuine voter both try and cast a vote. Given that this is a very inefficient way to try and change the outcome of an election, since it is both time and manpower intensive, and the fact that manpower-based voter fraud is itself almost impossible to hide and almost guarantees some conspiracy-organizers are going to go to jail, I would actually expect that this is a comparatively rare type of voter fraud, engaged in as a crime of opportunity, and incredibly unlikely to have a significant effect. Which rather suggests to me that this is NOT the "biggest part of the problem," whatever you think that problem is.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Why on earth would you want to get old people off the streets?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Which is just mean, old people are generally safer drivers than young people, until they become significantly hampered by eg. stroke, dementia, blindness etc. But that's not a question of age, that's a question of health, which can be assessed.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
No, they're actually not generally better drivers than young people. That's the point.
We sometimes have newspaper articles about the crazy accidents some older people cause - just recently there was an old lady doing a test drive with a car from a car shop. She got confused, turned around and plowed through the car shop at high speeds, causing over 50,000€ in damage.
And, yes, the laws which are proposed from time to time don't call for a general ban but rather a mandatory assessment on a yearly basis to see whether you are still fit to drive. There are also programs which allow you to trade your driver's license for a reduced-price ticket for public transport.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Except that they are. They drive much more cautiously, they're not particularly likely to drink and drive, they are, tbh, not as likely to drive in the first place. Society and old people would benefit from retaining the independence that driving affords old people.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Yes, they drive much more cautiously. That's another problem right there - when they drive too slow they become a problem. We call them "sunday drivers" over here and they're generally much cursed upon due to the long queues of cars behind them.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Yes but that's a problem with the impatient Germans. As we've established in this thread, speed is an extremely important aspect of safety and, as we've also established, safety necessarily comes first. Other aspects of cautious driving that elderly people excel in are things like not being as eager to drive when you're tired.
Look, there are reasons why it may be more difficult for an old person to drive, but restricting their driving should be based on an individual assessment just like you do when someone wants to get a driver's license. If it turns out that your old person is having some difficulties with driving because his vision is deteriorating, maybe you can correct it. If it's because his hearing is impaired, maybe you can fix that. If it's because he's developed dementia or had a stroke and fails tests designed to examine capacity for driving, well then you have every reason and every right to restrict his driving. It shouldn't be done based on chronological age, it should be done based on capacity.
Don't gear up for an angry rant now, old people are lovely and we both know we want them to have good lives
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Also, according to German research, driving like old people is better for the environment
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Back on topic:
It looks to me as if voter suppression is a far greater problem in the US than voter fraud. What say the Americans?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
MAGIC!
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Florida highways have a maximum and minimum speed. One I use the most is 65/40.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
@Aimless:
You Wikifisted something with a very clear anti-Republican slant.
Both parties have been accused of shenanigans at the local level. And even local parties get in on the craziness. I remember the Republicans trying something similar in 2004 with college students by claiming, by telling college students they couldn't be registered in both their home states and their university locations.
I don't think these are actually big, widespread problems. But one thing that makes it easier is when voter identification at the polls is so weak. And everyone knows it's weak, which makes it easy for local political operatives to have a field day challenging voter rolls.
Once again, pointing out the ease in which one can commit voter fraud doesn't mean I think it's a major scourge impacting elections at a grand scale. It means that it's easy to commit voter fraud, which is a problem. Fixing it shouldn't be controversial, and neither should be making it easy for people to get the photo ID that they need to do so many other things anyway.
Plus, an example of this happening at the national level in India. I actually don't support this in the US, but an example of a country trying to change a bad/nonexistent ID system: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...fa_fact_parker
But 100Km/h shouldn't be allowed and, moreover, how you react to people driving at 70 Km/h isn't mandated by law, it's entirely up to you. Patience isn't regulated by any laws that I know of. Kinda like how you're legally allowed to get shitfaced every day even though it wouldn't be very prudent
Out of curiosity, is it illegal to drive at 70 on a road where the speed limit is 100?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Wow Dread, talk about a kneejerk reaction. It's a problem even if the article has an anti-Republican bias and in reality both sides do it.
You'll note that the biased article--that surely ignores instances of Democratic voter suppression (except the thing about Kerry's employees slashing tires)--manages to make a more convincing case for the problem of voter suppression than this thread makes for the problem of voter fraud in the US.
If you can ensure that every single eligible voter gets a free photo ID then sure, I wouldn't have a problem with that. I live in Sweden, I clearly don't have a problem with the government knowing where everyone lives.But one thing that makes it easier is when voter identification at the polls is so weak. And everyone knows it's weak, which makes it easy for local political operatives to have a field day challenging voter rolls.
Once again, pointing out the ease in which one can commit voter fraud doesn't mean I think it's a major scourge impacting elections at a grand scale. It means that it's easy to commit voter fraud, which is a problem. Fixing it shouldn't be controversial, and neither should be making it easy for people to get the photo ID that they need to do so many other things anyway.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
I would have to disagree. "Voter suppression" efforts are comparatively easy to track. Our voting processes at the state level can be so rinky-dink that it's comparatively harder to track voter fraud.
Are you suggesting that the magnitude of voter fraud in the US is similar to that of voter suppression? That's all I was wondering in my first post about voter suppression. The available evidence seems to suggest that voter suppression is a bigger obstacle to democracy in the US than voter fraud. Sure, absence of evidence isn't proof of absence, but we have to act on the basis of knowledge rather than on the basis of mind-ghosts, right?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
You say photo ID isn't "voter suppression", even when aiminx linked studies showing it was. Somewhere around 25% of minorities, poor, and elderly don't have driver's licenses or gov't-issued photo ID. So, if it's not to prevent voter fraud, and you don't think it's a form of voter suppression, your only reason for a new ID program is to fix the rinky-dink state processes. Each state decides their own requirements. In Texas, state university students would not be able to use their school photo ID, but a non-photo gun permit is acceptable.