Guns Make Voting Even Harder

[Scuba]

Note to admins: I'm posting this in GD as it is a VOTING issue, nut just a gun issue


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-22/guns-make-voting-even-harder-.html

If you want to feel truly dispirited about the health of U.S. democracy, skip the stories about Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell and go straight to today's report on the American voting experience. The report, by a presidentially appointed commission that included the campaign attorneys for both President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, looked at the problems that plague U.S. elections -- everything from needlessly long lines at the polls, inaccurate voter lists and aging voting machines to a failure to make polling places accessible for the disabled or those with limited English.

One of the report's more distressing findings centered on the effect mass shootings have on Americans' ability to cast a ballot. The commission noted that schools are the best venue for polling places: "They have the needed and desirable space, are inexpensive, widespread, conveniently located, and accessible for people with disabilities."

But the December 2012 Newtown shooting has led some states to look at limiting access to schools for voting. "It is this concern -- security -- that has presented the largest obstacle to widespread use of schools," the commission reports, in what appears to be a reference to the risks of letting voters, some of whom may be armed, get too close to school kids. It goes on: "Even in states where schools are authorized to serve as polling places, the Commission heard that many school districts resist using schools as polling places for this reason. This resis­tance can even extend to cases where the schools appear obligated to make themselves available by statute, but have adopted strategies to avoid being pressed into service."

In other words, to the many ugly consequences of America's increasing embrace of gun rights, we can now add making it more difficult to cast a ballot. The commission proposes dealing with those concerns by sending children home on election day to keep them out of harm's way; meanwhile, "teachers could use the day to perform administrative functions and conduct professional training." (Some school districts, including New York City, already do so, while not necessarily citing safety as the reason.) It's worth dwelling on the absurdity of it all: The profusion of gun violence means more U.S. communities feel compelled to weigh making voting easier against educating, and protecting, their children.

[onehandle]

1. Guns are part of the anchor pulling America to the bottom.

Gun nuts are selfish, useless human beings.

[Hoyt]

2. Gun fanciers could not care less about such impacts of their habit.

[Taitertots]

3. Sounds like paranoid parents are the problem....

Not the firearms technology that has been around for almost 75 years. We live in the most peaceful era in all human history.

AND the last 100 years have been a period of continually increasing gun control. Your grandparents could legally buy machine guns at the hardware store.

[otohara]

8. We've Had A School Shooting Every Other Day

since the new year started.

Happy gun talk won't bring back the kids.

[Taitertots]

9. We live in the most peaceful era in human history... Including before guns were invented

AND we live in a period of decreasing availability and decreasing available firepower.

Paranoid rants won't bring them back either.

[otohara]

10. Kids Killing Kids Is New

so be sure to lock up your guns - inform your neighbors who have children so they can make an informed decision about your home and children. It's pretty hard to sit around planning to kill your peers at school without easy access to guns in the home.

[Taitertots]

12. Do you actually think "kids killing kids" is new? If so, you live in a paranoid fantasy

"It's pretty hard to sit around planning to kill your peers at school without easy access to guns in the home."
Only when you start with the assumption that only firearms can kill people.

The problem is that there are children who are in the mental state to plan and execute mass murder. Our grandparents had far fewer firearms restrictions. It is fundamentally specious to try to claim that a condition that existed for 100+ years is responsible for problems that (you claim) have just recently manifested.

[otohara]

13. You're Big On Name Calling

so bye, bye.

[Taitertots]

14. Name Calling? Try coming up with a better excuse next time you create fake outrage to avoid hearing

people who are critical of your views.

[godevil10]

5. Aren't shools gun free zones already? How is

this any more dangerous than any day when there is relativly open access, sporting events, parent s day, field day etc, etc

[Jenoch]

6. Shools are still commonly used as polling places

Last edited Thu Jan 23, 2014, 07:02 PM - Edit history (1)

in Minnesota where I live. The odds of a person with a CCW going to a school on election day to shoot school children are so tiny that it should not stop someone from sending their kid to schooll on election day. The grade school where I vote doesn't allow access by voters to any part of the wchool where there are children.

Edit to add: It is already illegal to carry a concealed weapon on school grounds in Minnesota.

[MO_Moderate]

7. Another sad attempt to gain support through fear

[Bandit]

11. Democrats REALLY need to get behind "Vote By Mail"

It would really solve a lot of our problems and would probably end Republican majorities everywhere. Many many many people just don't want the bother of standing in line or trying to find a parking place, or the time, or just the worry of running into that certain person you have been avoiding for some time.. It would increase our "turn-out" dramatically. But we remain the dumb Party and enjoy standing in those long lines......

[Skip Intro]

15. Still using Newtown to push the agenda.

It is sad.

I mean, full on, stage prop theater tour, dragging these poor grieving folks around from staged rally to staged rally, all in some orchestrated PR effort to ply people emotionally to support urgent yet vague restrictions on gun ownership that, if actually as advertised, would have had no effect on what happened at Newtown.

The issue isn't mass murders, if you're talking about gun crime. That's a fraction of one percent of the gun crime in the US. Was that huge effort to push these new and unknown restrictions all to find a solution to a fraction of one percent of a problem? Come on. Please. It was deceptive as hell, who knows how far they would have gone if it had worked like they thought it would?

Do they think we're all mindless sheep?

And wouldn't gas prices have a bigger effect on people's ability to vote? Yes, of course they would. But let's solve the make-believe problem that guns make it harder to vote, rather than actually focusing on what could at least be realistically argued to be a barrier to voting. A bloomberg rag doing it's part.

Why do we dance on the heads of such tiny pins when a river of reality runs so close by?

[Scuba]

16. Yeah, those selfish parents should be over it by now. Some nerve, still caring about their kids!

[CreekDog]

18. so you're saying we shouldn't legislate based on the Newtown Shooting because it's rare

it's not significant enough to make us consider any kind of gun restrictions.

you're saying that when we actually look at the percentage, all those kids killed just isn't significant enough for you.

ok, just trying to understand here...

[Skip Intro]

19. This is what I'm saying:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4380830

If it is too much for you to "understand" then I suggest you move on...

[NCTraveler]

17. Nothing in the article backs up the claim in the title. nt.