A slap in the face to young voters.

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Ahead of the 2012 campaign, states debate voting rights.-Yahoo! News

PPR heads, read it, get mad, and debate in that order

Apperently, GOP lawmakers want to take a crack at young voters. It pissed me off when I read it. I thought it would be an interesting conversation piece.

Keep it civil.

Edit: URL fixed.

Last edited by PM on 09 Mar 2011, 3:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

America!! f**k YEAH!! !!

Yet another move by Republicans further discrediting any support of their own country's democracy. Unsurprisingly not many young people like the GOP for a lot of reasons that don't necessarily involve liberalism. Instead of condescending them by trying to take away their rights perhaps they could attempt to show why young people should vote Republican. I can think of no reasons, personally, but at least then they'd be doing the democratic thing.

btw you should edit the link, you don't need to title it the same as the url, its breaking the page for me

You know, I was a more than a little shocked the other day when I heard about 21 year old Americans with curfews. Has "legal adult" lost all meaning down there?

Apparently. I lament that we have to be so close to America. They have no qualms about intervening in our country, if just to spite us, and Harper is keen to please them

Furthermore, any Young Republicans should feel threatened by this. I hope that this is more of a Tea Party-aligned agenda rather then GOP. If so then it provides further evidence for why the GOP needs to stay the f**k away from the Tea Party for the sake of both their future viability and their credibility standing for core American values

I'm not really feeling the outrage; all it looks like to me is tightening up ID and residence requirements for voting, not disenfranchising young people. When I was going to school in Colorado I didn't change my Washington state residency, and voted via absentee ballot in my home state's elections since I had no legitimate reason to vote on Colorado issues. That seems to be the purpose of the residence requirement changes, to keep non-local voters from swaying regional elections and initiative ballots which isn't exactly sinister.

It doesn't sound that sinister when you put it that way, but what about

It's a non-story.

Most anyone old enough to vote probably already has photo ID, and while I'm not sure I like the requirement, a big part for why it's being proposed is that lots of voter fraud is done by someone going around and voting multiple times...sometimes in their own name with fake addresses on file in different precincts or voting in another person's name (the infamous dead voters of Chicago). Compelling someone to show valid ID can help cut this down...certainly make people caught in the act easier to prosecute.

I don't see this as targeting the youth. Certainly not in a sinister way.

In college, voting was a matter of absentee ballot. You vote where you live. Letting college students vote in local elections is S-T-U-P-I-D. It's like letting workers vote in local elections because they work there. Your voting precinct is based on where you claim your PERMANENT residence. It's always been that way everywhere I've gone.

And the bit about young voters being foolish....sorry, but it's generally true. The whole "Rock the Vote" movement (and later, organization) is a giant liberal PAC. From the first day I saw it put into place, all I ever saw it do was mobilize young people to vote in favor of liberal, Marxist/Socialist issues and candidates.

If saying young people are foolish seems mean, well, get over it. Young people lack life experience. We only let them vote at 18 because they can be compelled into military service at that age. Maybe 50-60 years ago your typical 18-year-old had more sense about the real world around him/her, but most 18 to 21-year-old people are the product of a failed education system and soundly indoctrinated by a liberal, consumer-focused mass media culture. A whole lot of them are undergoing rebellion against the values they were raised with purely because they want to be different from their parents.

Simply put, they lack maturity to make responsible choices for both themselves and their community. They are easy to manipulate.

Now, before you think I'm needlessly evil, consider that I think there are a lot of adults who should not be allowed to vote. I think there should be mandatory testing on issues of civics, government, etc. and if you can't pass, you don't vote. Too many brain-dead lemmings being allowed to cast ballots who "didn't know the president was not elected by direct popular vote."

Voting may be a right, but all rights come with associated responsibilities. The uneducated/uninformed voter is a menace to a free society.

Translation: "It's not fair! These kids and their 'voting with their conscience' keep screwing up our plans to turn the US into a neoconservative corporate-owned plutocracy, even if it tramples on the rights of the lower and middle classes and wrecks the environment! Why should these college kids get a say in deciding the direction of the future of the country? I mean, after all, it's not like it matters to them at all! All they're really good for at that age is getting shipped off to some desert country and getting shot or blown up over oil and military contracts!"

Pfft don't make this into something its not, they don't want strange kids voting in their precincts just because they go to a local college, they can still vote where they claim residence. Requiring the photo id's is something that should have been done long ago. And you should be registered before voting day, otherwise what evidence is there that you have had the time to form your own opinion. I'm a bit puzzled as to why photo id and proof of citizenship are not already required to vote.

Also the young are foolish it shouldn't be any other way, I don't want to be a boring hard ass until I'm well into my 30's.

I don't really have a problem with any of this. Voter fraud is a serious issue that needs to be addressed and I don't think this unfairly restricts anybody's ability to vote.

Why not require a test on logical fallacies and critical thinking? That will eliminate 90% of teabaggers and randroids.

The Republicans are obsessed with vote-suppression. That's one of the main reasons they went to war with ACORN. Republicans have openly spoken of poll taxes and other means to keep poor people from voting, they also say that Obama has less legitimacy because poor people voted for him. They do not consider all votes to be equal. Many among them speak of weighted votes based on income taxes paid. One dollar, one vote. They're also big believers in having big business buy politicians as this is Freedom of Speech. Just read what they say.

Yes, Mr. Teabagger, your evil is in moderation, that's what you say. As for these civics lessons tests, that means that those who do not give the right answer to a political quiz cannot vote. You know, like is the USA a Christian country and founded as such, is taxation theft and other such things... weed out those who would vote against you.

It does seem like voter suppression somewhat but more in the sense of making the kids work a lot harder for it and maybe hoping they'll be ignorant about what needs to be done in the new laws.

Being 26, I'm not especially the target anymore but I know if I was younger, I'd be livid and I'd be making sure to watch state laws about voting to make sure I was still able to vote (registering is one of the first things I always did when I moved so the timing was never a problem for me).

I find it notable how the supposedly- anti-regulation right are so trigger happy towards pushing new unnecessary regulations in this case...