Am I the only person who believes that the polling place is the wrong place to enforce voting restrictions? The districts I have voted in have all required registration well in advance. Isn't fraud most likely to occur at this stage?

Poll workers are not gatekeepers. Everyone who enters a polling location should be given the opportunity to enter a voting booth or complete a provisional ballot.

Through registration, poll workers already have my name and a copy of my signature in front of them. Providing them with the same information should be proof enough.

I must've missed something - is there ANY proof that Diebold machines have been hacked during an election? is there ANY proof that an election has been thrown due to Diebold malfeasance?

Please post a link or two (from a news source)

Birth certificates are not very hard to get. A few years back I helped the proverbial "crack whore" (your term, not mine) obtain a copy of her birth certificate from a state on the opposite side of the country for a similar purpose. All you need to know is where you were born. Then you contact the county in which that city sits, and ask about the requirements. Generally they are, (i) send a letter requesting a copy, (ii) sign an affidavit saying you are who you say you are, and (iii) send a small fee (for example, the county where I was born currently charges $10.00).

Yes, it's a burden. But it's not the quest for the Holy Grail. This snit is harmful to people who want to stop this administration run amok because it makes us look foolish without any gain. The burden is NOT disproportionate and the other side has a legitimate argument. Given all the other awful things going on in this country, please use your hysteria for something of more consequence.

Look, I appreciate the urge to feel like Republicans at all levels are out to rig elections (especially with the recent revelations about Diebold machines). But let's get real for a minute: the purpose of this legislation isn't some insidious ploy to disfranchise people. It seems pretty clear that it is a measure designed to stop illegal immigrants and other non-citizens from voting in state and federal elections. I might add that non-citizens of all stripes DO NOT have a right to vote in state and federal elections.

That said, the damnable hell of it is that the author is correct, any measure that makes it harder to vote will depress voter turnout. Accuse the legislature of shortsightedness. Accuse the lawmakers of not thinking through the logical implications of their hyperbole (having worked in local government, I can tell you that this happens all the time). But lets have some hard proof before you accuse them of stealing elections.

"You know fraudulent voting is a federal crime, don't you?" she purred, smiling sweetly.

So can I extrapolate from this that Diebold's offices ought to have been seized by the FBI some time ago and its executives spirited off to Gitmo for summary waterboarding..?

Like assessing a fine if you don't. People have no right to complain about the minutiae of the process when half of all voters never drag their fat asses off the couch to do it. Imagine if all the liberals and radicals spent 10% of the energy they spend online blogging rabid paranoid theories on actually going outside and voting, we wouldn't 95% of these problems. Other countries assess a fine if you don't vote, we should too. And before someone goes all It's Da White Man Keepin Us All Down, it's your damn country to. Do something about it or STFU.

it depends who you ask: the left is scared of vote tampering and the right is scared of vote fraud - but not because either is actually scared - it's demographics: the left feels the right cheats via vote tampering and the right thinks the left cheats via voter fraud - neither actually cares about the process, they just want to get their guy into office.

Purr, uh my name is uh, uh yeah...John Smith. I live down the street. I want to vote here.

The premise here is that producing an ID is an onerous burden to vote. So, may I ask what is the suggested alternative (I did not seem to find that suggested in the article). Show up to vote the day of the election, pencil in hand? Have a voter ID tattooed on your forehead at birth?

No one supports suppression of any voter's right to cast their ballots. But at the same time, we also have a responsibility to insure that the votes that are cast are legally valid - that means some form of regulation of the elections. That means that states require voters to register (free), and then regulate their casting ballots to a specific precinct on selected days. (absentee ballots of course expanding the geographic and time opportunities).

If producing an ID is a burden - how on earth can the items above not be construed as an equal burden. Registering must be done at specific offices; ID must be presented there. Voting at a precinct where you live may not be near your work location - so how do you handle that? The list goes on ... any system requires that some effort be made by the voter before he walks in the voting booth.

I frankly tire of the arguments on this subject, and how so many people can become concerned over fraud in voting machines while not being concerned over the other parts of the process - such as being a qualified voter (because there are many things that can remove you from eligibility - citizenship, felonious behavior or just apathy in not registering in the process)

We come back to the point - rights imply responsibilities. No one can support making the process so difficult that people cannot vote - but there is an equal responsibility to insure that voting is done with some rules. I don't want dead or nonexistent people voting - so what is the system to make sure that does not happen.

Or is the suggestion here just that you need to show up and...Purr?