jonoh81

Brutus may be under the impression that I only care about this because I don't want Democratic voters purged, but I am consistent in that even though I largely despise the modern day conservative movement, I think everyone should still have a voice and a vote.

I think I get the source of our disagreement. You seem to believe that something being legal or agreed with legally makes it correct or justifiable, whereas my positions are in no way dependent on the current law agreeing or disagreeing with me. Lots of things that legally occur or that have legally occurred could very much be described as morally wrong or anti-democratic in nature, as in this case. You attempt to skirt around talking about whether the action is truly supportive of voting rights by referring to it as being acceptable under the law. I just don't buy into that position because I understand- even in my apparent massive levels of stupidity and ignorance- that history is full of horrors that were, at the time, perfectly legal and acceptable. I also just consider it a contradiction and completely inconsistent to on one hand claim to support democratic rights while on the other supporting throwing up burdens to those rights, even if they are legally supported in the current era. I make no distinction as to the level of burden because that doesn't really change my position or disdain for those burdens. I'll let the resident legal geniuses such as yourself haggle over the minor definitions of words to defend what objectively, temporarily or permanently and not just in mere feeling, harms a right. You do you, though.

I'm worried they phrased that as "fewer parking requirements" instead of "no parking requirements".

I don't really care how much or little experience or knowledge you have on past case law. Case law and legal precedence have been used to justify all sorts of terrible things in the past in the US, including limited or exclusionary constitutional rights, so your argument that purges are fine because case law says so holds no weight with me whatsoever. It does not matter. Your appeal to authority here is merely meant to shut down and avoid discussion on why purging voters are necessary for any living citizens. You couldn't defend these actions with believable reasoning, so you're resorting to a similar law argument to that which was also used to defend things like segregation, Native American genocide, no suffrage for women and minorities and no rights for LGBTQ, all of which had established case law at one time. So did Roe, for that matter, and we saw how little regard conservatives had for that one. I'm not rejecting case law because I am ignorant of it, I am rejecting it because it's a poor argument for undermining voting rights. Ah yes, who could forget that progressive golden age of the 1940s. lol, I've never once called a court "illegal", conservative or otherwise. Your love of making things up- with fake quotations no less- and throwing out dozens of condescending insults when the debate isn't going well for you doesn't change the problem you have here, which is that purgest are not defensible if you truly believe in a fair democratic system. So legal semantics, essentially. It's okay to disenfranchise in some cases, but not all so long as we apply arbitrary definitions of "burdensome". Your position is that states can't effectively run a fair and equitable election without purges, is that it? I just don't follow that logic whatsoever. Again, I have no problem with removing people who have died, are no longer citizens, etc. but we should be doing everything possible to remove *any* unnecessary burdens from voting, and leaving this up to the state alone- which can and has occasionally abused the process for partisan gain- is a problem regardless of any case law. Because tens of thousands of legitimate voters are mistakenly removed from the rolls every time these happen. Even if we are to believe that purges are simply getting "rid of outdated records" because states are adhering to the 1993 act, they are prone to mistakes and removing voters that should in no way be removed. Beyond that, though, I still completely reject the idea that anyone should lose their registration from a lack of voting "enough". People should be able to register once and stay registered until they die or the other disqualification standards are met. It makes no logical sense- again, regardless of the laws in support- that American citizens should lose their registration for something as simple as moving or not liking the candidates enough to vote for a few cycles. You can defend it if you want, but I don't think your motivations for doing so have anything to do with election integrity or laws.

I get it just fine and you haven't explained why any of those reasons are necessary. Because ultimately, you cannot. And the makeup of the courts heavily determines how they define such terms. Also, AFAIK, you're also not a legal expert on the court. You're willing to throw your weight behind other disenfranchisement efforts, and are trying to create a distinction where one really doesn't exist. Poll taxes and education requirements also didn't technically remove the right to vote, just as having to re-register after being purged doesn't. But all of these actions were done with the specific intent of limiting the voting of demographics of people considered hostile to the party implementing them. You can claim that poll taxes and such were much more nefarious than purges, but the intent and outcome serve the same purpose in both cases. You are merely uncomfortable with the association. Yes, I will continue to disagree and argue against the infringement of voting rights, even those occasionally supported by conservative courts and anonymous internet posters. And I will be on the right side of history every time doing so. You are not.

Which means there shouldn't be any conflict with a national registry. It does not affect a state's ability to conduct elections. Also, I haven't really talked about felons voting in this discussion outside of my original comment. No. My problem is not with registration. My problem is that people can lose their registration, and therefore their right to vote, for abritrary and partisan reasons. There shouldn't be a case where someone has to re-register to vote in the first place. If they are alive, US citizens and aren't convicted traitors, they should maintain the right to vote. Period. A "minimal burden" is still a burden, and I disagree on that characterization. These voter purges almost always target specific demographics of voters. They are not done simply to "clean" the records. They happen because the party in power wants to disenfranchise voters who don't typically support them. None of the other reasoning given for them is believable. Yes, I have no doubt that members of the party typically doing the purges would vehemently disagree as to the negative characterization of the purges and their purpose. They also disagree that Trump incited an insurrection and tried to overthrow a democratic election, so I'm not so sure we should be taking their word for it. Why should we expect Republicans to follow guidelines when they don't even listen to their own constituents? An end to gerrymandering? No. Sensible gun laws? No. Abortion rights? Nah. Also, it's not like there haven't been studies done as to how purges are usually heavily partisan in nature. Good lord, did you really just try to defend poll taxes and literacy requirements as minimal burdens? History very much tells us otherwise as to their negative effects on minority voting rights, so now you've really undermined your use of that term with voter purges. If blatantly racist policies were "minimally intrusive", I don't think we can trust you definitions or reasoning here. Yes, they absolutely do. You should really stop supporting anti-democratic tactics, because no matter how many words you use to describe it, no matter how many times you call it a minimal burden, it still flies directly in the face of a constitutional right and our democratic systems specifically for partisan benefit. No, they wouldn't because a national database would be accessible to all local precincts. I don't think you can speak for any of these people or the reasoning why they don't arbitrarily vote enough. And in any case, their reasons don't matter. There is no compulsory voting in the United States, so voters don't have to provide any explanation or excuse for not voting, even for an extended period. State partisans should not get to decide whether someone's registration is valid over completely fabricated reasons. No, because voting security in the US is already some of the best in the world, and there is no voter fraud issue and never has been. The very few times it happens, it hasn't changed any results and it's often Republicans doing it, not the voters who aren't voting several elections. It's not false and it's not semantics, just as the voting restrictions of the Reconstruction South were. It's not functionally different.

Great, but what does that have to do with what I'm talking about? States would still run the elections, just not control whether someone specifically can exercise the constitutional right. States don't grant the right and should have no say in whether voters maintain it. They can otherwise control the rest, but the fundamental right should not be controlled by partisan politics. It's not functionally a right if it can be arbitrarily taken away like that. Isn't purging voters for political reasons essentially the exact same thing as poll taxes and literacy requirements? They're all abitrarily applied to stop or limit voting from certain demographics. Republican legislatures aren't purging a lot of their own voters, after all. I fail to see any distintion, which is also why I think a national registry could be implemented without any constitutional conflicts. And I've never suggested a federal takeover of elections. So I just don't know why you continue to use this argument. It's not getting rid of residency requirements, though. You would still have to be a resident of the district you vote in to actually vote there. It's simply to prevent anyone from losing their voting registration between moves or when they don't vote "often enough".

Wait, they originally proposed the mixed-use project... in 2019? And we didn't even hear about it until 2022? Even with some leeway given because of the pandemic, approaching 5 years later with still no solid dates of construction is exactly why everyone is doubting them.

Okay, but how much input do they really need at this point? They've been getting input for what seems like years now. There are also pretty clear best practices that can be viewed elsewhere in terms of urban planning and zoning. I also hope that the feedback they're getting is not all from the loud, but very vocal NIMBY group that could cause the zoning changes to not go far enough.

Can you point to the specific part of the Constitution that would prevent a national registration that otherwise completely maintains the state's ability to run elections? Because things like this shouldn't be happening: https://www.vpm.org/news/2023-10-03/voter-removal-virginia-process-change-vsp-elect

I feel like I'm talking to walls here. A federally-maintained registration would not impact the ability of individual states to carry out elections. They would still control the local election process, but voters would not lose their registration because of an arbitrary period of not voting or because of a change of address to a new state. I'm not speaking in tongues here, right? Everyone else gets the general idea of what I'm saying?

I explicitly addressed the issue of what would happen if someone moved to a new state. A change-of-address form could function to update the voter's new residence within the national system. States could still technically remove voters who no longer live there, but the voter would not completely lose their voting registration because of that move in the meantime. You guys are really struggling with pretty basic concepts in this thread. I have to wonder if you are intentionally trying to make it far more complex than it is.

Why would it take an amendment? It wouldn't change anyone's rights, it would just establish a registry of existing voters which could be built from state-level databases. And I would imagine that the main opposition would come from the very people gleefully purging voters- Republicans. Because ultimately, this isn't about protecting democracy for the Right, it's about making it harder for the people they don't like to participate in it. Or, you know, Republicans could just stop purging voters. But nah.

You're trying so hard to misrepresent my position and project your ridiculous fears onto me. Nowhere have I said that I'm against voters providing some kind of proof of residence or ID. What I meant there was that there are ways that we can get homeless people proper IDs in the unlikely scenario that they would actually vote. Your "what ifs" are nonsense.

This just shows your lack of imagination, then, because I can think of several ways that would allow a homeless person to vote. Why should people have to continuously register for a constitutional right? It should be one and done, and none of you have been able to logically explain why that shouldn't be the case. This "easier than ever!" right-wing propaganda that flies in the face of conservatives/Republicans intentionally trying to make it ever harder to vote doesn't work with people with reasoning skills above that of a 10-year-old. My "ilk" wants a democratic system that works for all and where voting rights are respected and upheld, something the Right is clearly increasingly hostile to.

There's no reason to believe all those people went away, and polling has consistently supported that voters support abortion rights in the state. Furthermore, the marijuana initiative should work in favor of passage.

I said this elsewhere the other day, but if we go by polling, let's assume that 41% of Ohioans are against abortion rights. In a state with 11.7 million, you would still have huge numbers of no signs even if they were still going to lose by the same margins as they did in August. Yes voters, I imagine, are less likely to put up signs for a lot of reasons, not least of which that there are so many nuts on the pro-birth side.

Yes, and none of that would even have to change under a federal- and automatic- registration system.

They always play this game, just keep proposing things with a year or more between each new announcent, only for nothing to ultimately happen. As I said last year, I would not be surprised if nothing is built 5 (now 4) years from now.

Leave it to a conservative to completely miss the reasons people have objections, but use that lack of understanding of the problem to jump to a ridiculous extreme.

Yeah, Honda brought in some Japanese population back in the day, and they're concentrated in the NW burbs of Columbus/Franklin County. I think the Korean population is more recent. Edit- I added Lucas, Mahoning, Montgomery and Summit counties to the numbers above, and expanded to groups of 500 or more.

This is pure semantics. If you can't vote, you don't really have the right. This is like when Black people had things like poll taxes and other hardships imposed against them in the Reconstruction South. They still technically had the right on paper, but these things still caused massive, intentional disenfranchisement. I am of the mind that the voter purges are intended for the exact same result. The default should never be to make it harder to vote, especially when the justification for it- election fraud- largly only happens in the fevered imaginations of conservatives and not reality. It's absolutely arbitrary when it doesn't have to happen. Again, we're not talking about purges of people who have died or something, we're talking about registered voters who have been deemed to have not voted enough to maintain their registration. But there is no rational reason given as to why being inactive as a voter in a nation that has no obligatory voting should cause someone to lose their registration in the first place. It's intentionally creating hoops for people to exercise their right to vote based on completely arbitrary standards that serve no legitimate purpose. When people move to another state or address, they fill out change-of-address forms via the USPS to forward their new address to all relevant parties. You're telling me that we couldn't have a similar process for a federal voter registration system? In fact, the change-of-address form could include a forward to the federal registration system. This is not rocket science. Literally nothing would change via elections except that voter registration itself would not be maintained exclusively through the state, which would limit ridiculous voter purges of people who don't vote for the party currently in power there. The solution is pretty straightforward. I really don't know why you're finding this so hard. If there was a federal registration, all the states would have access to that database, and every voter could still be verified with it in their respective and proper districts in the same way that voters are currently via individual state systems. You still couldn't just "vote wherever". None of the rest of the reasons you're arguing make any sense in relation to what I'm talking about.

What?? Why in the world would we need to chip anyone? You do realize that with modern computer technology, all the states could have easy access to a federal registration database, right? You wouldn't literally have to track the movements of citizens for them to be identified when they go to their voting precinct.

Cincinnati didn't seem to benefit from either era of immigration, as both Cuyahoga and Franklin counties have much more varied ancestry across all demographics, not to mention just significantly more people within those groups.

Both of those things would provide a few jobs, but they wouldn't really change the direction of the area. Westland needs something truly transformative to really push the areas towards serious revitalization. It's just kind of a mess of decaying suburbia, stroads, a bunch of car lots and a casino.