Forkbassman wrote:
Trump lost but there was election fraud. Anyone who doesn’t recognize that has his head in the sand. We as a dem republic need HONEST ELECTIONS, the basis of our republic. EVERYONE MUST SHOW A PHOTO ID, NO REASON NOT TO. You can’t rent a car, fly in a plane, rent a motel room, on & on .
But not just any photo ID. A government issued, government approved photo ID. And not just any government issued, government approved photo ID. It has to be the kind that was designated by a new rule two weeks before the election. (This paragraph is written as satire but it reflects what really happened in Wisconsin in 2016. My source is the book _How Trump Stole 2020_ by Greg Palast, especially pages 149 through 151, from which I quote below.)
"Nationwide, only two states recorded a drop in student voting. Wisconsin's drop was breathtaking. In-precinct voting by students declined ... from 67% to 49%.
"... the missing students and Black voters ... were disappeared in plain sight by the Republican legislature under laws crafted by Wisconsin's radical-right Governor, Scott Walker.
"One new law required a govenment photo ID to vote. But the photo ID issued by the state to its 182,000 University of Wisconsin students ~did not qualify them~ for voting nor for registration.
"... Gun permits could be used to vote; but not student ID. ...
"A Wisconsin driver's license would do. But not everyone has a license. Who doesn't drive? Students in Madison and low-income urban voters, i.e., the Black population of Milwaukee.
"What was particularly devastating was that the law was ordered into effect by a court only two weeks before the 2016 election. Even those who knew of the change had little time to correct their lack of paper-work, even if they could.
"Elections Commissioner Ann Jacobs suggests the University can simply issue ID that allows students to vote ... but, she noted, just before he lost re-election, Republican Gov. Walker appointed the University Regents -- who would not correct the IDs to mint another 100,000 Democrats.
"In 2016, a student, if they found out about the last-minute ID requirement, could hunt down a university center that would issue a special voting ID. However, that would not have been good enough to vote. The Walker law requires that the special student ID must be presented with proof of current enrollment like a tuition fee receipt or letter verifying enrollment.
"Got that?
"In 2016, most students voted by mail, thinking this was a way around the ID law. But ballots not mailed with an ID and proof of school enrollment would be cancelled and dumped -- and the voter wouldn't know it.
"... Some folks did in fact have the ID required, but the law is so complex and little-explained that thousands ~thought~ they did not have acceptable ID. One in 11 Black voters did not have the right ID, but more than twice that many ~thought~ they didn't, so did not show up at the polls.
"... (page 153) According to The Survey of the Performance of American Elections (SPAE), poll workers nationwide demand that first-time voters who are Black produce ID 64% of the time, more than twice as often as for first-time white voters ..."
(Back to page 149) Bill Clinton "had won Wisconsin twice. In fact, Democrats had crushed it seven elections in a row, helped by the massive vote from the famously progressive, activist University of Wisconsin student population.
"But then, on Election Day 2016, a giant hunk of the student vote simply ... vanished." (And that led to Palast and others investigating to find out why, and the above quotes tell some of what they found out.)