talkpolitics | Why is this Information Not Offered?

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Why is this Information Not Offered?

Back in July, I posted a video a woman took while trying to get her son a voting ID in Wisconsin. At the time what I emphasized was the fact that the DMV apparently considered “bank activity” a requirement for voting. But there was more to the conversation. Given information that’s recently linked about about DMV employees being instructed NOT to offer certain information, it’s worth seeing again. The pertinent part of the conversation begins at about the 4.30 mark:

Woman: If someone were to just say thet needed a state ID card, would they know it was free, if it was for voting?

Man at DMV: Uhhh, unless they tell us it was for voting, we charge ‘em. Cause it’s….

Woman: Why is that, because with the new law, the Voter ID bill…

Man at DMV: It’s going to discourage them.

Woman: They’re…It’s supposed to be free.

Man at DMV: If it’s for…

Woman: So why wouldn’t you tell them that, right from the start, “Voter ID is free.”

Man at DMV: They’re the same card, so, unless you come in and specifically request it, we charge you for it. Like, let’s say you’re 20 and you’re going on a trip. You may not vote, so we’re still going to charge them for that card.

Woman: But would you ask them? Would you say “is this for voting, or…

Man at DMV: If they check the box, so…um, it’s, you know, one of them where… They shouldn’t even be doing any of it, but it’s one of them where they wanted to make this law, and now it’s going to affect a lot of people, so if it’s for voting, we do it for free, but we don’t know that they’re going to use it for voting.

Woman: Why don’t you have that as a, you know, I would like to ask your supervisor, why don’t you ask people, “Is this for voting? Is this ID for voting or is it for something else?”

Man at DMV: They put it on here and that satisifies the state statute so, um you know I can’t really answer that question.

Woman: I would like to ask your supervisor that question.

Man at DMV: Okay, I’ll go get him...

Supervisor: They need to ask for it. It’s something that is available but they should ask for it.

Woman: But why not ask them, “Is this a voter ID card or a regular ID card?”

Supervisor: Because… the, the, pol… (seems at a loss)

Woman: I mean, have you been given instructions?

Supervisor: Yeah, the problem, the instruction is that if someone comes in and says “I need an ID card to go and vote,” that it’s free. If it is an original issuance or a renewal. But if someone comes in and they’ve lost their ID, it’s not within its renewal period and they need a replacement, then we have to charge for it. So a replacement, a duplicate...

Woman: But couldn’t you ask them, “Is this a renewal or a replacement or is this for a Voter ID?"

Supervisor: Our instruction is to let them ask.

Woman: And so who gave you that direction?

Supervisor: Well, it’s from the powers-that-be.

Woman: Who would that be?

Supervisor: Well, that would be, the next step in my chain of command would be Tracy Howard…

In fact, it was recently revealed that the instructions came from a top Department of Transportation official Steve Kreaiser:

While you should certainly help customers who come in asking for a free ID to check the appropriate box, you should refrain from offering the free version to customers who do not ask for it.

If the DMV officials in the video seem a wee bit ambivalent to you, it’s probably not your imagination. Recently a Wisconsin state employee was fired for sending out an email calling people so spread the word about the free IDs.

An interview with the employee can be heard here.

Whether or not the employee was wise to do what he did, this raises questions about the motives behind this voter ID law. Why would specific instructions go out for DMV officials not to offer information that would prevent applicants from essentially paying for the right to vote?

Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes

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Hmm, and what is wrong with a tax, especially if it is only a small one? People in representative democracies accept all sorts of taxation on all sorts of activities.

Taxes are patriotic indeed.

George Washington thought so to the point of personally supervising giving 18th Century Tea Partiers a facefull of musket.

Seriously, you're advocating a Jim Crow-era tool to keep people from voting?

People have died for the supposed priviledge of voting. Are you suggesting that covering the price of a plastic ID card would keep a citizen from voting? I'm wondering where you're going with the invocation of the concept of "tool"? Surely the fee for an ID card is nothing more than a tool for recovering the cost of the labor, materials, and management costs of producing the card and providing the ID service, is it not?

If the person's entire income goes primarily to food and paying bills, yes, it very arguably would. I'm sure that to libertarians and anarchocapitalists whose interactions with other humans is primarily not face-to-face such concepts as people who can barely pay for food to eat and a place to live in are foreign ones.

I'm a libertarian, and I'm absolutely, 100% opposed to poll taxes, literacy tests, or any other infringement on the exercise of a right. In particular, those two were specifically designed, at the time, to be abused.

I have exactly the same opionion of things that are designed to gratuitously harass women seeking abortions, people buying guns, or folks wanting to speak in public.

Ah, but you see you're not one of *those* libertarians. ;P

underlankers is jumping to conclusions about what I am advocating and what he does not know about libertarianism fills books.

I've never seen you advocate anything so I have no idea what such a comment would look like.

You're jumping to conclusions about what it is I advocate again. I have said nothing about what I am advocating here; I'm merely asking questions. Anyway, in a world where there were absolutely no welfare, and to boot, absolutely no private charity of any kind whatsoever, then yes, I can see where one might choose to spend ten dollars on food instead of spending it on a voter ID card. But of course, we do not live in that world and both of us know it. In fact, those on foodstamps can only use them for buying food, at least in the U.S., so there is no tradeoff.

No, I'm actually curious about what's going on here with people. There are those, perhaps yourself among them who see no problem telling me I ought to be happy to pay "my" taxes because I use "our" roads, schools, police services, etc. etc. ad nauseam. We must be pragmatists, they claim. There are things the government absolutely must do that the private sector cannot (an article of dogmatic religious faith) and these things must be paid for. On the other hand, when it comes to getting a voter ID these people magically turn into doctrinaire ideologues who cannot stand to see even a token fee charged to people who could easilly aford it. Perhaps an exception could be made for those on welfare. Allow those on welfare to use their welfare ID at the voting booth. Now what is the objection? Do you even understand your own objection or is it just a subconscious fear whose origin you cannot or do not wish to identify?

You've yet to advocate anything you come up with yourself as it is so that's neither here nor there. The difference between paying taxes, which is part of civilization, and national IDs which have as a core the spirit of totalitarianism would be obvious to people who have contact with human beings and societies inhabited by them. Those to whom this does not apply and who think that taxation is theft have no such comprehension of humanity and should to fulfill the spirit properly be imitating the rugged individualism of Cro-Magnon man. Giving up all weapons more complex than flint reshaped into spearheads and arrowheads.

Blah blah blah...you're a doo-doo head. Get an new record

underlankers, seriously. One would have thought that the name-calling would have exhausted the juvenile attention span. The only nugget of semi-substance in your comment is a false dichotomy: taxation = civilization, and you don't even go to the trouble of supporting it.

I'm sorry, that entire comment was a Herp a Derp up to the last sentence.

The idea that taxation = civilization goes back to the first Law Codes of Ur-Nammu and Hammurabi. The civilizations have the power to tax to raise and support armies and to raise and support bureaucracies. Tribes, chiefdoms, and gatherer-hunter societies do not. You can be civilized and pay taxes or not pay taxes and be a barbarian, choice is yours. But don't be a parasite on civilization by refusing to acknowledge that taxes are required in any sense.

The quarter of the US population that pays no taxes has nothing to pay. Taxing them is how ancient empires turned into violent revolutionary centers divided on themselves.

Re: The political sphere is a funhouse.

montecristo.livejournal.com - 2011-09-11 19:56 (UTC) - Expand

Re: The political sphere is a funhouse.

underlankers.livejournal.com - 2011-09-12 20:18 (UTC) - Expand

I'm not going to answer that.

Well, that, in itself, raises a question. Why not?

Because in the past such taxes have been used as a way of disenfranchising the poor.

LIke the idea?

Yes, and machetes can be used to chop people up and cars used to run people over and these things have been historically used that way as well. That's no reason to outlaw cars or ban machetes. The charge for the ID card is practically nominal. If you're worried about the poor on welfare then the problem there could be solved by merely allowing those on welfare to use their welfare ID cards at the voting polls.

Paft: Because in the past such taxes have been used as a way of disenfranchising the poor. LIke the idea?
mc: Yes,

Which is why you see no problem with it. You would disenfranchise large chunks of the American populace.

mc: and machetes can be used to chop people up and cars used to run people over and these things have been historically used that way as well. That's no reason to outlaw cars or ban machetes. The charge for the ID card is practically nominal. If you're worried about the poor on welfare then the problem there could be solved by merely allowing those on welfare to use their welfare ID cards at the voting polls.

Except that you just admitted that you LIKE the idea of disenfranchising the poor.

No, I didn't just admit that I LIKE the idea of disenfranchising the poor" despite the fact that this is the fantasy argument you are dying to have with someone. The "yes" in my prior comment was acknowledging the fact that poll taxes have been used in the past to disenfranchise. My comment asks, so what of it? I agree that such taxes have been used in that way. That doesn't mean that a practically nominal ten dollar fee for an ID card NOW constitutes disenfranchisment, as you seem to by hysterically implying. In any event the question does not imply that I endorse disenfranchisement or even a poll tax. I merely asked the question why you suddenly have apparently become a distruster of government taxing power? Why are you so interested in erecting a straw man to demonize here? What is it that you are afraid of identifying at the root of this discussion?

Let's boil this thing down for everyone, shall we? YOU raised the fear of disenfranchisement, especially of the poor. I was the one who offered you a "pragmatical" escape hatch; "the poor" could be allowed to use their welfare ID's, given free to them when they get on welfare, at the polls and thereby escape the fee...yet you are still invested in the disenfranchisement angle. From the hysterical note over a modest ID card fee I infer that the fear that you and others have nebulously expressed here, without identifying its source, is real and serious, and that it seems to encompass a belief that people given government authority are not to be trusted in the area of the sacrament of voting. You obviously fear that the dreaded slippery slope is a mortal danger in this one tiny area of authority. The point I have been driving at is why the damned exception? Elsewhere, you and these same people are caught out arguing for all sorts of unaccoutable power to tax and regulate? Why? Religious delusion is the inference I am forced to draw. Why is some arbitrary authority implicity to be trusted while other arbitrary authority is not? After all, to cite the Good Ol' Collectivist Book of Proverbs, isn't it "our" government? Surely, a cheap ID card fee wouldn't be turned into a tool of disenfranchisement in these days. After all, this is the way "our" government "works" isn't it? "We" just wouldn't stand for it, right? After all, "we are the government", aren't we, and we have perfect control over what the government does, don't we?

My goodness, but the people objecting to a modest ID card fee are begining to sound like crack-pot slippery slope libertarians and anarchists, aren't they. Interesting, isn't it. I think so. I truly wonder do why this phenomenon arises. I can honestly make no sense of the contradictions people tolerate in their own thinking.

No, disenfranchising the poor is not a "fantasy argument." It's an idea that's been steadily gaining momentum of the right for the past few years. Or did you miss that Matthew Vadum piece about how the poor really shouldn't be encouraged to vote?

Not all of the ppor are on welfare.

First off, if government power to tax is not to be trusted in this one small area, where do you, and people like you, get off telling me that I should appreciate paying "my" taxes for other things, and that if I don't like it I should avoid using "our" roads, schools, and bridges?

If voting is such a privilege, why shouldn't everyone pay for it?

If government power cannot be trusted not to turn a nominal fee for an ID card into an odious tool for the disenfranchisement for a significant number of people, why is it that it IS to be implicitly trusted to administer any other taxation and regulation scheme? Are you seriously suggesting that the name of the department on the brass plate on the bureaucrats' office doors dictate the character of those within, that there are occupational exceptions to human nature?

Why should anyone be "encouraged to vote"?

mc: First off, if government power to tax is not to be trusted in this one small area, where do you, and people like you, get off telling me that I should appreciate paying "my" taxes for other things, and that if I don't like it I should avoid using "our" roads, schools, and bridges?

Now you're going off on a self-justifying, jargon-laden tangent.

mc: If voting is such a privilege, why shouldn't everyone pay for it?

Because it's not a privilege. It's a right, and a damned important one.

MC:If government power cannot be trusted not to turn a nominal fee for an ID card into an odious tool for the disenfranchisement for a significant number of people, why is it that it IS to be implicitly trusted to administer any other taxation and regulation scheme?

You seem to be claiming here that the fact a system is imperfect (as all systems are) and capable of being abused (as all systems are) means that the system should be eliminated completely. You could just as easily point to an innocent man being convicted as an argument for eliminating law enforcement entirely. Are you on board with the idea of disbanding police departments and DA offices?

mc: Are you seriously suggesting that the name of the department on the brass plate on the bureaucrats' office doors dictate the character of those within, that there are occupational exceptions to human nature?

I really have no idea what you're ascribing to me here. Once more, in English?

mc: Why should anyone be "encouraged to vote"?

Because voting the foundation of our political system. It's a right for which people have fought and died.

Re: The political sphere is a funhouse.

montecristo.livejournal.com - 2011-09-10 19:12 (UTC) - Expand

Re: The political sphere is a funhouse.

paft.livejournal.com - 2011-09-12 19:03 (UTC) - Expand

1) Put this argument into English.

2) No, one of those is not like the other.

3) Because people are stupid in 99% of cases and need a healthy kick in the ass in 100% of cases.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

The 24th Amendment prohibits it.

Does the name Jim Crow mean anything to you? You might to read about U.S. history sometime... it didn't just start today!

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