College Republicans say the poor should not be allowed to vote

Why don't we require all voters to have a college degree and see how that works out for the GOP or Wall Street..

 

Worthy idea but I'm not sure exactly how this will change Wall Street. Also be careful - I could also oversimplify and say we should have everyone drop out of high school since those people are more likely to vote Dem.

However stop the trivial conversation, we have a martyr on our hands!

 

So you believe it is fair to compare the cost of adding 16 million people to medicaid and the cost of supplying ID's for voting?

 

You drive a hard bargain. It seems I will have to get over it then.

 

I think everything should be looked at from a cost/benefit perspective. Adding 16 people to Medicaid is very expensive, but has immense benefits to society and reduces costs to society in numerous other ways since those people were already using health services anyway.

The cost of IDs to government is fairly low, but there is a significant burden to the estimated 12% of Americans who don't have an ID - mostly rural, mostly poor, mostly uneducated. Basically, the people who suffer the cost in both time and money are the ones who can least afford it. And the benefit of such a change is zero.

So I think it's fair to compare the costs and benefits of each when determining value. In fact, I think ALL government services and taxes should be analyzed this way. As should virtually all business decisions and most personal decisions as well.

What I don't think should be done is oversimplifying problems into statements like "compare the cost of adding 16 million people to medicaid and the cost of supplying ID's for voting" as a way to justify one policy change or the other. I think that does a disservice to the actual practical implications of each move and results in terrible decision making and inefficient government.

 

Why not simply require the registered voter to bring along their social security card or birth certificate as a form of ID?

 

SS #'s have all sorts of privacy issues - I'm not sure you want $7.25/hr election staffers having a full list of everyone's names, addresses, and social security numbers out there.

Birth certificates would make sense - for people who have them. I suspect there are a lot of people (me included) that have no idea where their birth certificate would be. I imagine that's especially true for people who had a non-traditional childhood and aren't connected to their birth parents/etc.

Again, this ignores the fact these are all solutions to a problem that doesn't exist.

 

Because I could grab my brother's and go make his vote for him. A picture ID would clearly show that I am not him.

 

Unless, of course, you use a fake ID - which is pretty easy to get. So then if we're serious about stopping the still non-existent issue of voter fraud, then we need to both train our minimum-wage election workers and provide them with equipment to determine validity of IDs.

 

Whoa whoa, I'm not sending my kids to some fancy indoctrination institute for them to become elites! What's your problem huh?!?