Is Ensuring Election Integrity Anti-Democratic?

[Paladin]

We are used to seeing John R. Lott, Jr. write about firearms, but this topic is just as important:

Is Ensuring Election Integrity Anti-Democratic?

But the fact is that the U.S. is an outlier among the world’s democracies in not requiring voter ID. Of the 47 countries in Europe today, 46 of them currently require government-issued photo IDs to vote. The odd man out is the United Kingdom, in which Northern Ireland and many localities require voter IDs, but the requirement is not nationwide. The British Parliament, however, is considering a nationwide requirement, so very soon all 47 European countries will likely have adopted this common-sense policy.

When it comes to absentee voting, we Americans, accustomed as we are to very loose rules, are often shocked to learn that 35 of the 47 European countries—including France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden—don’t allow absentee voting for citizens living in country. Another ten European countries—including England, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, and Spain—allow absentee voting, but require voters to show up in person and present a photo ID to pick up their ballots. It isn’t like in the U.S., where a person can say he’s going to be out of town and have a ballot mailed to him...

The article goes on to list specific examples of why Europe has better rules for elections (Yes, voter fraud caused them to require voter ID and only legitimate absentee/vote mailing)

[Soccerdad1995]

According to the left it is a given that a significant percentage of minorities are incapable of obtaining a photo ID, either because they are too ignorant, or just too lazy to actually get one. Based on this (obviously racist) premise, they then conclude that it is the height of racism to deny these poor, ignorant people the right to vote.

But they completely ignore the fact that these very same people are being denied entry to restaurants and other public accommodations because they obviously can't prove their vax cards are legit, since they have no picture ID. By the left's logic this situation only impacts minorities, so it is essentially a return to the days before MLK, except this time it's happening in NYC and San Francisco.

All this begs the question, "when the other side stops even trying to make sense, is there any benefit at all to us taking them seriously on anything?"

[Paladin]

The companion article:

“Zuckerbucks” and the 2020 Election

These disbursements were billed publicly as “COVID-19 response grants,” ostensibly to help municipalities acquire protective gear for poll workers or otherwise help protect election officials and volunteers against the virus. In practice, relatively little money was spent for this. Here, as in other cases, COVID simply provided cover.

...The three Georgia counties that received the most money spent only 1.3 percent of it on personal protective equipment. The rest was spent on salaries, laptops, vehicle rentals, attorney fees for public records requests, mail-in balloting, and other measures that allowed elections offices to hire activists to work the election. Not all Georgia counties received CTCL funding. And of those that did, Trump-voting counties received an average of $1.91 per registered voter, compared to $7.13 per registered voter in Biden-voting counties.

...Counties that didn’t receive Zuckerbucks showed hardly any movement, but counties that did moved an average of 2.3 percentage points Democratic. In counties that did not receive Zuckerbucks, “roughly half saw an increase in Democrat votes that offset the increase in Republican votes, while roughly half saw the opposite trend.” In counties that did receive Zuckerbucks, by contrast, three quarters “saw a significant uptick in Democrat votes that offset any upward change in Republican votes,” including highly populated Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, and DeKalb counties.

[Paladin]

According to the left it is a given that a significant percentage of minorities are incapable of obtaining a photo ID, either because they are too ignorant, or just too lazy to actually get one. Based on this (obviously racist) premise, they then conclude that it is the height of racism to deny these poor, ignorant people the right to vote.

But they completely ignore the fact that these very same people are being denied entry to restaurants and other public accommodations because they obviously can't prove their vax cards are legit, since they have no picture ID. By the left's logic this situation only impacts minorities, so it is essentially a return to the days before MLK, except this time it's happening in NYC and San Francisco.

All this begs the question, "when the other side stops even trying to make sense, is there any benefit at all to us taking them seriously on anything?"

I'd say pretty much no. If they want to gaslight America, steal an election, and go full on authoritarian we need to give them their walking papers.

[striker55]

Just to go into a restaurant in some cities you need COVID ID. Yet voting in some cities no ID, what gives?