My attempt to change the mind of at least one election conspiracist

Troy MI

Description

Here's a snip from the Wiki article on the Public Interest Legal Foundation - PILF (which can be verified from other sources as well): In 2016 and 2017, the organization published the information of eligible voters online, including Social Security numbers, falsely accusing them of being fraudulent voters. One such voter was a U.S. missionary in Guatemala whom, based on PILF's report, was inaccurately highlighted as a fraudulent voter in a Washington Times article.[7] In 2018, the Richmond Council for the League of United Latin American Citizens and four individual voters filed a federal lawsuit, LULAC of Richmond v. Public Interest Legal Foundation, in the Eastern District of Virginia against the PILF for these false reports. The lawsuit claimed violations of the Ku Klux Klan Act and the Voting Rights Act, as well as state defamation laws.[9] PILF settled the lawsuit by removing the personal information from its website and adding a statement to its reports saying "PILF recognizes that individuals in [the removed exhibits] were in fact citizens and that these citizens did not commit felonies. PILF profoundly regrets any characterization of those registrants as felons or instances of registration or voting as felonies."[10] My point being that conservatives interest groups have a storied history of falsely claiming fraud (committing their own fraud and harassing/doxxing legal voters - in fact!) - a storied history of trying to undermine faith in our elections. Democrats oppose voter ID laws, for the same reason repubs promote them - it's a numbers game. If you have 7% of rural voters without photo ID and 17% of urban voters without photo ID (surprise surprise - people who live in areas that don't require owning a car), you can see can see who will benefit and who will suffer photo ID laws. It's grade school math we're talking about. In the closely divided country we've found ourselves in, these policies only need to affect fractions of one percent of eligible voters to swing an election - so 7 vs 17% is HUGE. My thought, personally, is if you're going to require photo ID to vote, you have to require it, period, and it should be free as well. Otherwise, you've got a poll tax on your hands, and a poll tax is blatantly unconstitutional. As for the bickering about this issue between dems and repubs, there are smart people somewhere that understand grade school math, who can see both sides are trying to give themselves an edge when margins are quite thin, and then there's general public commentary of people (on both sides) who apparently don't know grade school math, who are flinging poo at each other without a semblance of self awareness. I think what the right is doing is somewhat more harmful because they are trying to start the flame of "our elections don't mean anything" a really, really dangerous sentiment. That's how you get coups and crap. I can tell you, however, that I will never be fooled by voter fraud claims in their current incarnation. The fiasco with PILF - the boys who cried wolf - sealed my opinion on those.