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Your poll is incomplete and inherently flawed. You forgot an entry in the poll, that they'd both perfectly acceptable under certain conditions. For example, it's perfectly acceptable to block citizens who are convicted felons from voting.
Using a program like CrossCheck and disenrolling people just because someone in another state has the same name, like Jose Rodriguez, but somehow, people like Thomas Wilson aren't flagged.
Requiring a state issued ID but then closing the agency that issues those IDs in counties with large minority populations, while leaving them open in counties where most people are not minority.
Refusing to accept photo college IDs yet accepting gun permits.
How many more examples would you like? Those are just the top of my head but I could google more for you if you need.
A few more: Old people who do not have a birth certificate because they were not issued in some places that long ago or because their parents were too poor to pay for a birth certificate to begin with, then the old person has surrendered his/her drivers license because of age. Natural born citizens without "proper" ID.
People who do not have transportation to take them to a place where they can get the ID, especially if they have a disability.
People who have an identical name to someone who is dead being purged from the system.
People who have an identical name to someone who is a felon being purged from the system.
I have read (a decade ago) that the last two were particularly popular in Florida.
After the institution of RealID, my elderly mother had to engage an attorney to ensure her right to vote after some confusion ensued regarding her date of birth. She had been registered to vote for nearly six decades when she learned that her voting rights were being revoked. (It had to do with the way her birth was registered in the state where she was born.) She was amazingly persistent. A lesser person would have given up, and we celebrated when her attorney called and told her that everything was finally settled just a couple of weeks before last year's election.
Let’s assume, for a second, that there are an equal number of noncitizens who vote as there are citizens who have their ability to vote infringed upon (this clearly isn’t true, but whatever). What’s worse letting a noncitizen vote or depriving a citizen of their constitutional right?
As you've already stated, your scenario "clearly isn't true."
A few more: Old people who do not have a birth certificate because they were not issued in some places that long ago or because their parents were too poor to pay for a birth certificate to begin with, then the old person has surrendered his/her drivers license because of age. Natural born citizens without "proper" ID.
People who do not have transportation to take them to a place where they can get the ID, especially if they have a disability.
People who have an identical name to someone who is dead being purged from the system.
People who have an identical name to someone who is a felon being purged from the system.
I have read (a decade ago) that the last two were particularly popular in Florida.
Strangely enough I have the birth certificates/birth notices of both sets of grandparents dating back to 1879. All born in an area of Pennsylvania that didn't get electricity until 1948.
As you've already stated, your scenario "clearly isn't true."
FACT: Citizens can vote
FACT: Non-citizens cannot vote.
'Nuff said.
FACT: some citizens are deprived of their right to vote by laws enacted with the unspoken but intended purpose of denying poor and people of color the right to exercise their constitutional right to vote. That's why the Voting Rights Act was enacted in the first place, and some states immediately sought to reinstate those barriers as soon as part of the act expired.
FACT: some citizens are deprived of their right to vote by laws enacted with the unspoken but intended purpose of denying poor and people of color the right to exercise their constitutional right to vote. That's why the Voting Rights Act was enacted in the first place, and some states immediately sought to reinstate those barriers as soon as part of the act expired.
My mom is neither poor nor a person of color and she still had to pay an attorney a small fortune to ensure she could continue voting due to a mix-up regarding her birth certificate made nearly eighty years ago. I don't know what a person of lesser resources would have done in the same situation. I can't imagine that they would have persisted as she did.
Technically, both are bad ideas, but if I had to pick one (and I missed the "both are equally unacceptable option"), I'd say restricting access to voting.
Why? Because that leads down a darker path faster than allowing non-citizens to vote. Additionally, one can still catch non-citizens and send them home, thus reducing their ability to vote. On the flip side, once one starts down the path of restricting the rights of citizens to vote, it gets very ugly very quickly.
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