2017 Predictions and News (casual thread)

Voter ID isn’t really the problem. The problem is pretty much everything else about how the US runs elections.

The UK doesn’t do voter ID at the moment either (although it’s being talked about, for some reason). There’s no evidence that there’s significant vote fraud in the UK. In fact, the real problem with voting in the UK (and the US, and most countries with disillusioned electorates and non-mandatory voting) is that not enough people turn up to the ballots

From the looks of things so far, I simply predict 2017 will be a dream for journalists.

Also comedians.

And people like me who are amused by such things as long as it doesn’t affect my dinner.
(For context, from the perspective of living in the UK, it entertains me how many countries including my own seem to be in a race to prove which one is most stupid! Jury’s still out. Verdict due 2018.)

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Sometimes people not voting is valuable. Sure, often it can be apathy or laziness, but if someone legitimately doesn’t have time to do the research showing up to the ballot and putting in whichever name they remember hearing once isn’t exactly helpful either.

Not having a strong opinion on something you don’t know about is a vital part of sanity, for individuals and for a society in general.

Weren’t voter id laws also a topic in the previous us elections? I think I remember so…
There are also studies on this in favor and also against the claim that illegals vote:

In my opinion its simple: Peope can abuse it, so they will.
Its also quite clear that democrats are in favor of letting non-us-citizen vote because they vote democrat. A large chunk of them also openly admit that:

Lets not forget democrat affilitated organisation leaders were also caught bragging on camera that they plan to organize voter fraud…
http://www.npr.org/2016/10/19/498587397/sting-video-purports-to-show-democrats-describing-how-to-commit-voter-fraud

I think it not the question If there is voter fraud (there is (like in any country, see austria recently)) its how much fraud there is.

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Yes you have to be registered, but that requires no verification of citizenship and states are only allowed to verify citizenship theoretically since 2016, but they don’t have to. Which is my whole arguement.
The twitter posters were cited because your linked wapo article claims no significant voter fraud is happening based on anecdotal evidence of lazily searched news articles of voter fraud, it is only fitting to bring up annecdotal evidence of twitter users showing that voter fraud by illegal immigrants is indeed happening.
The only reason democrats are supposedly against voter id laws is that they believe minorities are too stupid to register to vote (seriously, google what Debbie Wassermann Schulz says about it), this reasoning is completely and utterly racist and frankly disgusting on a lot of levels.
Sorry democrats, other countries with voter id laws have minorities too and they can and do in fact vote. Again, I am not claiming that Trumps numbers are accurate, but you can’t even remotely prove or disprove them because you don’t have voter id laws because supposedly american minorities are too stupid to fill out government forms if democrats are to be believed (cough, racist, cough).

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And that line of reasoning is what precedes all illiberal legislation that ends up being so restrictive or punitive or intrusive it affects innocent people by “accident”

Of course, Trump wants to be careful how deep he digs too:

Legislation is not supposed to regulate every aspect of our lives. You can come to that conclusion and still implement sensible laws that respect the pros and cons of everyday laws and how they affect the population. One doesn’t exclude the other.
The question is: are you okay with possibly having illegal immigrants deciding the outcome of your election and if not: what are you willing to do about it.

Voter id laws IMO are not the mark of a dictatorial or illiberal goverment.

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Or you can just do the citizenship checks at point of registration which is what the UK (and I assume the US) does

EDIT: But it’s worth pointing out that there aren’t enough “illegal immigrants” in either the US or the UK to realistically throw an election anyway

We find that some non-citizens participate in U.S. elections, and that this participation has been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes, and Congressional elections. Non-citizen votes likely gave Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress.

This is from scientists.

That would be one way to do it, but I doubt democrats wouldn’t cry racism.

This is an abstract from a single paper in a pay-per-view journal, but sure.

@Playbenni Here’s an article from the very same guy who wrote the paper you’re citing saying voter fraud couldn’t have meaningfully made up for Trump’s vote deficit: https://fs.wp.odu.edu/jrichman/2016/11/28/is-it-plausible-that-non-citizen-votes-account-for-the-entire-margin-of-trumps-popular-vote-loss-to-clinton/

And here’s an article from the guy who generated the dataset used in the aforementioned article saying they didn’t use it correctly and their entire paper is BS: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/donald-trump-illegal-votes-evidence-debunked-214487

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And this is why we’re careful not to base opinions too heavily on the abstract of a paper without actually having read it or at least fact-checked it against other sources first.

I rather base my opinion on a research paper than a opinion piece from a newspaper with a ongoing feud against Trump though.

Here is another report highlighting the need for voter id laws.

http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2012/02/14/inaccurate-costly-and-inefficient-evidence-that-americas-voter-registration-system-needs-an-upgrade

Approximately 24 million—one of every eight—voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.
More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters.
Approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.

We also have actual video evidence of democrat leaders planning large scale voter fraud.

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Oh great. I go to Triscalion for a few days and people are talking politics :rage: . I can’t even go to my ciber-mom’s house now. :cry:

This is a game.

Made a mistake, went into the future and saw the Svilfonode (I don’t spell it with a ^ ) migration. It is going through this region of space and your all going to be eaten, raped to death or sown into there clothing anyway. (I don’t know how else to describe spawned at to death)

So get facts. go some were else and show them. BEING NOT HERE!!!

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Surprise surprise, Elon Musk is still coming up with radical suggestions to improve the future!

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“The Boring Company” - You win Elon.

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So our (UK) Prime Minister failed to appear on a TV election debate, and she started this campaign thinking she’d get a landslide victory and consolidate her power. While I’m not brave enough to call the result of the election (and I won’t get into personal politics here), I don’t think it’ll be as clean-cut as she’d like!

I was impressed by the French actually not voting in the slightly extreme nationalist though.

Also, SPAAACE!

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That’s kind of you, but many observers grossly overestimated her capability to even come close to a fifty/fifty. Marine LePen shot herslef in a disastrous way during her oral duel with Macron. Should she have been more intelligent in her speech and less “Trump-like” (which most french person I know consider him with contempt), she might have gained more votes.

About space: merging black holes is kind a scary. As long as they stay where they are, I guess we’re OK :smiley:

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My sci-fi addicted brain is thinking “Harness those gravitational waves for space travelzzzz!!” But that might be a little beyond our current capabilities… At least we know such things exist, even if it takes scary space science to make them!