<p>Oh, please, spideygirl, you are just…wrong.</p>
<p>Hmmm. Getting rid of the Elections and Politics forum just moved the discussions elsewhere.</p>
<p>True that, Cardinal Fang.</p>
<p>Sorry sopranomom92. I am wrong only in the context of a very subjective belief system. </p>
<p>Frenchcoldplay, no matter how outnumbered people may be with my viewpoint in these parts, that will not change the black and white reality of what I laid out in post 79. Ageism and racism are never OK, no matter how much heartfelt sentiment is behind them. </p>
<p>By your very own overly dramatic definitions of spitting in people’s faces and slander, it is you, Frenchcoldplay, who committed those mistakes in your initial, original post. You came in big with your own sweeping generalizations about what other people think, represented yourself with a very biased article, and included an accusation of a “a nationwide strategy to curb the voting power of the college student voting bloc”. Don’t expect special treatment when you start a controversial topic. If you want to engage in a debate, then do so without whining or attacking someone who disagrees with you, or using ageist or racist language. Stick to the issues. On that note…</p>
<p>You still have not answered a simple question: Who, specifically, is behind this “nationwide strategy to curb the voting power of the college student voting bloc”?</p>
<p>So far, Cardinal Fang and SamuraiLandshark, I think that, so far anyway, there has been somewhat more of an emphasis on ideas and issues rather than specific politics. That is a good thing. Of course, there is that familiar veering off track, but maybe (just maybe)…Things can get back on track.</p>
<p>^^^^yes. That’s why no one has answered your question:
Who, specifically, is behind this “nationwide strategy to curb the voting power of the college student voting bloc”? </p>
<p>The answer is obvious, and it will turn this discussion directly into the dreaded political debate.</p>
<p>Yes, the same group who is trying to disenfranchise those who are less likely to have IDs is trying to disenfranchise the student bloc. The same group, BTW, doesn’t like early voting either because it makes it easier for the working class folks to vote. Who could that be? Education cuts also work in their favor.</p>
<p>Yes, and this same group will accept gun carry permits as legal ID. But not student ID. Hmmnn, who could this be…</p>
<p>They accept gun carry ID over a birth certificate.</p>
<p>spideygirl, it’s not like I posted some article from The New Republic or some blogger’s article at the American Prospect (I mean I could have posted that too – one of the writers was my Senior Resident!) – it’s the bloody Washington Post.</p>
<p>if ageism is never okay, I don’t get why you can issue such broad injunctions against my peers on the basis of their age and favour their disenfranchisement, while I cannot even point out the lack of informedness of certain people in older age groups.</p>
<p>Wrong again, Frenchcoldplay. </p>
<p>The Washington Post is not capable of producing a biased piece??</p>
<p>Frenchcoldplay, the point is that you shouldn’t have waxed dramatic when you lived, post-wise, in a very glass house. </p>
<p>I would respect it if you copped to your own ageist and racist words instead of creating more fiction regarding mine. Posts 35 and 42 were the posts you wigged out over that were in my words. In each I referenced problems associated with this issue that are not unique to any age group, but instead are a function of circumstances. I would not expect a forty-year-old business person, for example, to be on top of local issues if he were on an eight month long temporary assignment in another city (especially a small town). I would expect him to vote using his permanent residence. If while on this business trip he was corralled into a bus by a “community organizer” whose goal it was to deliver live, mostly live, mostly dead, and truly dead human bodies to a polling place, I would consider it just as much of an abomination with respect to to the democratic process. In no way would it disrupt his voting rights if he used an absentee ballot.</p>
<p>Nick Mignanelli is a peer of yours at the University of New Hamshire, and I believe he is a freshman at that. Post 32 was perhaps the greatest catalyst for your dramatic response, but it is in his words. Since it is a quote from one of your contemporaries, I am not sure how that could qualify as ageist even if he did use that type of language, which unike you he certainly did not. Once again, every insight in the piece could be attributed to any person at any age in a similar situation.</p>
<p>Kudos to other posters who cautiously but honestly answered it for you, but I am still waiting for you to answer the question, Frenchcoldplay (since it is you who made the accusation).</p>
<p>sopranomom92
</p>
<p>True, but really the original post started it and used the more specific language we are all avoiding in order to respond to it.</p>
<p>I of course believe that the democratic process is being trampled over more by folks who are at the other end of the spectrum that you are referencing. The kind of folks who might vote multiple times, or allow dead relatives to vote. People who think it is OK to disregard election results and disrupt a legislative process which was fairly put into motion by voters (instead waiting until the next election cycle to enact change according to the rules).</p>
<p>Whoever the folks are who will not accept a student ID for voting are wise, since a person does not need much in the way of identification or background check to get one of those. </p>
<p>I am not moved by the notion of disenfranchising anyone who lacks an ID, cartera45 (it’s temporary; get one, vote next time). No proper identification, no vote. I don’t think this is unreasonable. I worry about the motives of people who think otherwise (not you specifically, since I don’t know you, but on a wider scale).</p>
<p>Once we decided to give 18-year-olds the right to vote, we have to let them vote. As for where they should vote, it’s just silly to suggest that college students know more about local issues in their home towns than in their college towns. My radical suggestion is let them vote where they want to vote, since this is a free country. Isn’t it?</p>
<p>As long as everyone has the chance to vote, it should be okay to vote wherever you want. If you want to vote local elections to your hometown, vote absentee if you are away at school. If you want to vote for issues relevant to your college town, change your voter registration.</p>
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<p>This is, of course, mostly paranoid nonsense. Any of the above-referenced acts is a felony. Only a total idiot would do such a thing and risk a felony conviction, given the extremely remote chance that such an act could possibly influence the outcome of a close election. I’m not saying it never happens, but pretty much every responsible, politically neutral person who has ever studied the question has concluded that instances of this sort of voter fraud are extremely rare. Yet in the name of stamping out an “evil” that exists mainly in their imaginations, there are those who have no qualms about disenfranchising tens of thousands—or on a national scale, probably tens of millions—of people who are legally eligible to vote, most of them old, or poor, or disabled, or young, the groups least likely to have a driver’s license. What’s more, anyone bold enough and determined enough to commit a felony in order to impersonate a voter or to vote a dead relative is also surely bold and determined enough to produce a fake ID, so requiring an official government ID in order to vote pretty much ensures that only the honest eligible voters without ID are disenfanchised. Fake ID works all the time for college students trying to buy a drink, why not for the determined felon seeking to vote fraudulently?</p>
<p>To be candid, I don’t believe for a minute that they are sincere in their motives. It’s a nakedly partisan political move, that’s all. And an anti-democratic one (small “d”) at that.</p>
<p>I think there are a lot of people who are confused about fraudulent voter registrations and fraudulent votes. There may be quite a few bad registrations, because some people get paid to persuade people to register. But “Mickey Mouse” doesn’t show up to vote, so there is no fraudulent vote as a result.</p>
<p>Legally anyone can cast a ballot, anywhere anytime according to [Help</a> America Vote Act](<a href=“http://www.fec.gov/hava/law_ext.txt]Help”>Help America Vote Act | U.S. Election Assistance Commission), whether the vote will count or not depends.</p>