Americans are struck by lightning with greater frequency than they commit voter impersonation fraud, and that's the only kind of fraud that photo ID requirements could have any hope of preventing.
Interpretation
Voter impersonation fraud is extremely rare compared to other risks, such as being struck by lightning.
In this quote, Jason Kander highlights the absurdity of the emphasis on voter impersonation fraud, particularly as it relates to the implementation of photo ID laws. By comparing the rarity of such fraud to lightning strikes, he argues that the focus on this issue is misguided and disproportionate to the actual threat it represents, suggesting that there are more pressing concerns in the electoral system that deserve attention.
In practice
During a panel discussion on election integrity, this quote can emphasize the need to focus on more significant issues.
We live in very volatile times. And it is super necessary that all of us resist this move toward the militarization and establishment of a more and more authoritarian regime, not just in the United States but in Europe and elsewhere.
They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.
We can't get to the $4 trillion in savings that we need by just cutting the 12 percent of the budget that pays for things like medical research and education funding and food inspectors and the weather service. And we can't just do it by making seniors pay more for Medicare.
War expands government powers. The trouble is that, when the war goes away, the government powers do not.
Putin's Russia is our adversary and moral opposite. It is committed to the destruction of the post-war, rule-based world order built on American leadership and the primacy of our political and economic values.
Political institutions, no matter how well or badly designed, depend for continued existence upon acting men; their conservation is achieved by the same means that brought them into being. Independent existence marks the work of art as a product of making; utter dependence upon further acts to keep it in existence marks the state as a product of action.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.