Correction
Posted by
tgirsch
Oh, did I say buy a gun? I’m sorry, I meant vote.
Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.
(Kudos to Stormy Dragon and LarryE, who figured out what I was up to.)
UPDATE: Just to be clear, my argument was not intended to be in favor of a gun registry, but rather against laws like Indiana’s voter ID law. No, the analogy isn’t perfect, but many of the same objections apply (e.g., it disproportionately harms the law-abiding; it won’t substantially reduce crime; there’s no evidence that the crime in question is actually widespread; etc.).
Are you at all disturbed by the replies in the previous thread that pointed out that there are already these restrictions of gun ownership?
Yes, yes, such laws would be a gutting of effective voting rights, but the second amendment is about being able to shoot people when voting stops working.
Comment 1/27/2008
The problem with your analogy is that the gun owners’ objection isn’t to the photo-id part of the requirement, it’s the centralized registry part. Are you suggesting we should eiliminate voter rolls entirely and just let anybody who shows up at a particular polling station vote?
Comment 1/27/2008
[…] Tom was just kidding. […]
Pingback 1/28/2008
So, you’d be OK with newspapers obtaining not only voter registration lists, but also everyone’s voting record and making it public information.
I see where you’re going with the analogy, but it doesn’t quite work. A gun registry is a permanent record of individual gun purchases. I doubt you’d advocate requiring people to register their individual votes with the government.
Want to buy a gun? Show a piece of identification proving eligibility to do so and pass the NCIS background check.
Want to vote? Currently, many places don’t even require an ID. Just pick a name from the phone book and show up claiming to be that person.
So, yeah, I say make a person show an ID to vote.
If you’re trying to formulate some kind of connection between voter ID laws and gun registration, you’re a little off kilter. No gun owners I know would like to see people’s ballot selections registered by the government.
Comment 1/28/2008
[…] UPDATE: I’ve issued a correction. […]
Pingback 1/28/2008
Very cute. I should have seen that coming what with the twisted logic you’ve displayed before.
It’s not just an imperfect analogy…it’s not even close.
Even if voting is a right, which I would debate, it is a right reserved only to citizens (not even legal resident aliens…let alone illegals) and only to be exercised once per election cycle. Voter registration is not only used to determine if people are authorized to vote, but to ensure that they are not participating in fraud. Your contention that it is not widespread is purely conjecture since, short of ID checks and intensive record keeping…which have never been utilized, it is impossible to determine how many
democratscitizens have voted “early and often” or as spectres rising from the grave or unauthorized persons have cast votes in past elections…even though it has often been suspected.Finally, voter registration could never be used to come door to door to confiscate one’s vote.
The analogy simply doesn’t work on any level.
Comment 1/28/2008
Umm, if voting isn’t a right, someone better let the people who wrote and confirmed Amendment XIX know…
And if you want to prevent people from voting multiple times, that’s a lot easier than registration and ID checks; all you need is the purple finger trick they used in Iraq…
Comment 1/28/2008
Bruce -
Currently, many places don’t even require an ID. Just pick a name from the phone book and show up claiming to be that person.
Name five.
Comment 1/28/2008
“Currently, many places don’t even require an ID. Just pick a name from the phone book and show up claiming to be that person.”
“Name five.”
Ummm… Riverside County, CA? Not only will they not ask for an ID, they’re told to decline seeing it if one is offered. Do you want me to name FIVE illegal aliens, Larry, so you’ll believe we have a problem there, too? Maybe I should name FIVE members of al-Qa’ida.
Comment 1/29/2008
I don’t recall whether or not ID is required where I vote, but you have to be registered, and they verify your name, address, and signature against a book containing all the registrations for your precinct. So it’s not enough just to “pick a name from the phone book and show up.”
Comment 1/29/2008
In WI you are required to be registered in order to vote. However, you can register right at the poll on voting day. Also, you don’t necessarily need to prove you are legally allowed to vote at that precinct, someone else who is registered for that precinct can vouch for you without you having to prove anything. Also, as far as I know, there is no record kept of what registrations were vouched for and by whom…
That seems like a system ripe for defrauding to me.
Comment 1/31/2008
Matt:
Possibly so, but as far as I’m aware, there’s no evidence that such fraud actually takes place frequently. In fact, the evidence seems to show that it’s vanishingly rare — fewer than one fraudulent vote per 100,000. By way of example, at that rate of voter fraud, in the highly disputed Florida presidential election in 2000, there would have been 596 fraudulent votes — not enough to change the outcome of the election even if every single one of them went to the second-place candidate.
Comment 1/31/2008
[…] Last weekend, I pulled a little stunt to make a point about voter ID laws. I chose to use the gun rights movement as an example here, because many of their legitimate complaints about various gun control laws (e.g., that they harm the law abiding more than the potential criminals, that they’re ineffective, etc.) apply to voter ID laws. But in the case of voter ID laws, these arguments are even stronger. […]
Pingback 1/31/2008
How do they know whether or not a vote (or a voter registration) is fraudulent? Did they contact every registered voter to ask them if they actually did vote? I never got contacted.
Comment 2/4/2008
Matt:
See here. There’s plenty of supporting documentation in the links there. I’m not sure what the methodology is, but no one to my knowledge has disputed it, and when asked for evidence of voter fraud in Indiana, the governor couldn’t provide any.
A big part of it is common sense: there’s simply no incentive to vote fraudulently, given the scale of most elections.
Comment 2/4/2008
can we just stop with all the gun laws? is another law really going to stop sumone who wants to kill somebody? NO! there will always be a way to get a gun legal or illegal.better yet lets ban ALL guns how bout that? no more murders right? i think not..there will be a rash of stabbings and baseball bat bashings..or how bout homemade bombings. i cant believe how people think gun control laws are gonna do anything to stop people who wanna commit crimes. just point me to the line where the government is implanting microchips so i can get mine already cuz thats where we’re heading… (sarcasm people)..
Comment 2/29/2008