(no subject)

[interdictor.livejournal.com]

Comments

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

Nelson Mandela eats Cheese.
David Duke Also Eats Cheese.
Therefor, David Duke is not Racist.

All voter ID campaigns are not alike. For instance, South Africa, unlike the U.S. might actually have a REAL problem with voting fraud.

Furthermore, its easy to tell a voter ID campaign that's put in place to prevent fraud from one that's put in place to suppress turnout.

In the former, time, effort, and tax dollars are spent to insure penetration of knowledge about the requirements among those most likely not to have it. ID infrastructures are tailored to insure against disenfranchisement.

In the later, the requirement is simply announced, choosing ID infrastructures already in place and well used by the privileged demographic. The focus is rather on enforcement, i.e. turning people away form the polls on election day. Little effort is made to insure or measure the degree of adoption of the ID, and if mentioned, such efforts will be dismissed as a waste.

And indeed they would be... in that the goal of the process is to suppress turnout.

[oslo.livejournal.com]

Just tracking this down, I learned that the South African example may have some interesting differences from the American experiment. For example, it appears that South Africa does not require re-registering for each election; it also appears that there was a widespread effort to help people get the voter identification that they needed to vote when these voter ID laws were first put into place. Contrast this with the American experiment, where re-registration is taken for granted and barriers to registration are also being raised, with no serious attention being paid to getting voter IDs out – the dominant attitude being that, if you can't get yourself to a DMV, then it's your fault your vote doesn't count.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

I admit that, being lazy, I didn't look too deeply into it to see what the details of the South African situation were, and so I couched my reservations in hypotheticals.

But the mere fact of Mandela wearing an actual T-shirt to Get an ID (and register, and vote) seemed to me at the time to imply an actual voter ID CAMPAIGN, where raising awareness about the ID is used to synergistically leverage a get out the vote campaign. Such a situation, if indeed the case, speaks volumes about the gulf that exists between such a legitimate voter ID campaign, and voter ID initiatives as they exist in the U.S. state legislatures controlled by Republicans.

[usekh.livejournal.com]

This here is an apple, this here is an orange. Notice how they are not the same?

[oslo.livejournal.com]

Trying to determine whether this image was legitimate, I encountered an awful lot of fever-swamp sites citing this image and Mandela in precisely this fashion. So, thanks for that – I don't get enough idiocy in my regular media consumption.

As for the image, it ought to be trivially obvious that Mandela’s support for a voter registration regime in his country (putative support – I couldn't find independent evidence of his actual "support" that didn't derive from a fever-swamp site pointing to this image as its sole source, and I'm not going to spend all night sifting through those sites trying to find something more reliable and intellectually defensible) doesn't necessarily preclude the possibility that a superficially similar system in another country (i.e., the US) could be designed to "suppress the vote," especially when that is precisely the design’s intended effect. Indeed, there's something depressing about citing this image in that way, since it demonstrates a failure to appreciate that even admirable politicians in other nations may have less-admirable political purposes or ends that don't mesh well with American hagiography. In other words, supposing Mandela supported voter ID in South Africa, this may have just reflected broader ANC political strategy, rather than a genuine belief that strict voter ID requirements are consistent with just democracies in all instances.

In the end, an idiotic macro doesn't negate the ample evidence that we have that Republican-led efforts to reform the voting process are intended and designed to ensure the election of more Republicans, rather than bolstering the legitimacy of the electoral process. By politicizing the way we vote, they are actually undermining both the apparent and real legitimacy of that process.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Oh so you think Nelson Mandela is a personality to emulate now?

[interdictor.livejournal.com]

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Are you just a troll we need to get rid of?

[moonshaz.livejournal.com]

*right clicks image*
*clicks "Addblock Plus: Block image..."*
*chooses the url to block and clicks "add filter"*

Ah, that's better!

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

and they would go: "What's that have to do with elections in America?"

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

I thought black people could be racist too? Did this change again?

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

I haven't been following the newsletter they send us on what's allowed...I'm not sure

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's so confusing! First we're told that black (or whoever) people CAN be racist, but apparently those same people saying that think black (or whoever) people CAN'T be racist? I just don't understand anything anymore. :(

[interdictor.livejournal.com]

There's no such thing as race, which is an artificial, fictional construct, so there is no such thing as racism.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

There are no such things as ghosts or gods, but people believe and act accordingly.

[interdictor.livejournal.com]

It doesn't matter - objectively, neither racism nor blasphemy exist, nor should intelligent people be concerned with such concepts.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

That may be sound if you are a philosopher or an artist, but policy makers and leaders must deal with such social realities.

[interdictor.livejournal.com]

Well, that's the kind of bullshit you open yourself up to when you delegate your personal morality and responsibility to policy makers and leaders.

[moonshaz.livejournal.com]

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

...nor should intelligent people be concerned with such concepts.

And therefore until that situation comes to pass for all people we should never attempt to do any kind of damage control at all.

[interdictor.livejournal.com]

Nah, feel free to do whatever you like.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Use that line on the Inquisition. Let us know what happens.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Race is entirely a social construct. You cannot justify the delimiter scientifically.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

As long as there are people who get the non-rational creeps and angers imagining their grandchildren not looking like them, there is racism.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

shoooped.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

1. Herp.
2. Derp.
3. ????
4. Profit.