This will be true provided that states make an effort to assure that all can obtain the required ID, for free (any fee to vote would violate the 24th Amendment) and don't play games to try to make it harder for some groups than others.
Examples of ways to put your thumb on the scale:
* refuse to accept college IDs as valid for voting, even those issued by the state government because it's a state school (college students are more likely to vote for the "wrong" party). Hunting licenses? Cool (people with hunting licenses are more likely to vote for the "right" party).
* prevent college students who live most of the year in-state, and can prove it, but have an out-of-state driver's license, from voting.
* place extra hoops on people whose name doesn't match their birth certificate, make them produce every document with every change and toss their registration if there's a typo (this mainly affects married women, who are more likely to vote for the "wrong" party). This is an effective way to disenfranchise a lot of older women who don't have a current driver's license.
* close as many DMV offices as you can in counties where people don't vote your way, restrict the hours on the remaining offices.
College ID isn't proof of residence. Driver's licenses are. If you formally have residence in the state you are schooling in, you are required to have that state's driver's license.
Allowing college students with an out of state drivers license to vote with their college ID guarantees them TWO votes- because they can legally file a mail in vote to the state they have that driver's license in.
Some hunting licenses require residence in the state that issues them. For those that do, provided they have a photo or something similar, there is no reason to not accept them. Odds are though, if you have a hunting license, you also have a driver's license.
Voter ID generally isn't supposed to be proof of residence, its proof of identity; it exists to prove that the voter is the person registered, not that the registered person is authorized to vote.
Most IDs acceptable for voting do not prove authorization (or even “authorization but for the potential of disqualification by felony”), so not accepting college ID because it doesn't prove authorization to vote is...not well justified, even in the public logic of voter ID.
Of course, voter ID proponents have let out the private partisan internal logic lots of times when they thought only people aligned with their faction were listening, so we don't need to speculate why the rules are inconsistent with the public logic.
That's not true, at least in Michigan. A driver's license or state ID card is acceptable ID, and it does not provide proof of citizenship. A passport is also acceptable, and it does not provide proof of residency. Voter ID simply establishes identity. Eligibility is established at the time of voter registration.
> to establish a residency for tax purposes. Otherwise, you can get dinged for taxes from multiple states.
These are all significant factors in a tax residency analysis but not the only ones.
If you find yourself facing a question over tax residency, factors like where you spent your time, where you have residences, where your job is located, where your service providers (doctors, lawyers, etc.) are all
For example, if you rent an apartment, have a driver's license and are registered to vote in Nevada, but you own a large house in California, spend most of the year there, and your most substantial professional and personal dealings are in California, good luck defending your Nevada tax residency claim if the FTB comes knocking.
> Voter ID generally isn't supposed to be proof of residence, its proof of identity
Super convenient if you would like to vote a few dozen times in different places, I'm sure, but that's not what it's "supposed to be" at all. I want people voting exactly once, and _only_ where they are residents, and _only_ if they are US citizens. That's the law.
I'd be less concerned about people double voting and very concerned about large institutions pulling strings to have polling places locally enough
It's not hard to imagine how a rural university or large manufacturing facility could sway things in state level elections if a ton of people went across the street to vote on lunch break rather then went home and voted at home after work/school thereby changing what district they vote in.
What keeps these hypothetical people from just fraudulently getting a second state's driving license while they're already fraudulently registering to vote?
There are shared databases of drivers licenses across states, so you're going to have a hard time getting a new license without handing in your old one from your previous state.
You have to prove residency (electric bill or something) and they invalidate your former driver’s license so you can’t do something like just hop across the border and get a new license because you lost your last one for whatever reason.
Who is they? Because drivers licenses are issues by the State, not by a federal entity. Also, I didn't prove my address with an electric bill or anything when I got my license. They asked me where I lived, I told them. I could have easily lied, and still gotten my license.
How would you? You register separately and during that process they check your residency. If you aren't registered to vote in another district then when you show up to vote you won't be on the rolls.
When you show up to vote in a non-voter-id state, you only have to give your name. Any one could have shown up in my place and voted in my name, because no ID was allowed to be show. This was made more apparent when I reached for my wallet instinctively as I gave my name, and they gestured with hands out that "we don't check for ID".
Sure. But this is completely independent of the discussion above, which is about voting in multiple locations despite showing proof of identity. What the poster wants is to provide both proof of identity and proof of residency at the polling place.
People sign when they vote and signatures can be matched against registrations. When we examine this, we don't find a large number of people performing voter impersonation.
I don't know why a ID requirement would change that, as you don't update IDs every year. If I managed to get registered in multiple locations then voting with a freaking passport wouldn't stop me from voting at both locations.
But since voting records are public, this would be trivially detectable.
A driver's license isn't proof of residence, as you might have moved since you got it. When you register to vote you need to prove you have the right to. When you show up at the polls, you need to prove you're the person who registered. ID is one way. Another is by signature, does your signature match the one you used when you registered. A third is that the poll workers know you by sight, which used to be common in small towns.
People voting multiple times isn't really a risk, because it's incredibly stupid. It's a felony, so if you get caught, you go to jail. But if you get away with it, you've flipped one vote, and even a very close election isn't going to be settled by a couple of votes.
There were a very small handful of people who got caught voting twice in the 2020 election, or casting someone else's ballot: two or three in Georgia and in Pennsylvania. Most voted twice for Trump.
> A driver's license isn't proof of residence, as you might have moved since you got it.
Slightly tangential, but you are required by law to get a new license when you move to a new state. And the DMV will take your old license when they give you the new one. You can move around within a state and have a stale address on your license pretty easily, though.
You can retain an old, out of state drivers license just as easily under an old in-state one in oractice, and legally you are usually required to change your address on your in-state license at least as soon after a change in in-state residential address as you are required to get an in-state license when establishing residency.
Of course, voter ID opponents have let out the private partisan internal logic lots of times when they thought only people aligned with their faction were listening, so we don't need to speculate why the rules are inconsistent with the public logic.
> Of course, voter ID proponents have let out the private partisan internal logic lots of times when they thought only people aligned with their faction were listening
etc etc, this is just what immediately came up in the last year. Among "the right sorts" they'll occasionally get complacent admit it's all about partisan advantage and not actually about fraud at all.
Without looking at the transcript, I would assume that the context of the discussion at the Supreme Court was standing. At best his point only lays bare the intrinsic unseemliness of quasi-institutionalized party politics. I could easily see Democrats make the same point in other cases, and I'm sure they have.
The Chairman of the Arizona's Gov't and Elections Committee is simply expressing what has been a common conservative sentiment for ages--that voting is a responsibility, not just a privilege, and one that shouldn't be exercised lightly. Rand Paul, at least if we're being charitable, is making the same argument.
None of those sentiments are inherently discriminatory, neither conceptually nor in practice, which is fundamentally what matters. The belief that the government should actively "Get Out the Vote" is a policy preference, not a constitutional imperative--at least not in the U.S., which lacks mandatory voting laws. "Get Out the Vote" is just a pithy statement of one's preferred policy.
Though, without rigorous oversight it's quite easy--almost trivial, even--to apply those sentiments in a discriminatory manner. AFAIU, Thomas Hofeller, the infamous Republican strategist and redistricting consultant whose personal papers were revealed by his daughter after his death, approached voter ID laws this way--drafting them in ways that were inherently, knowingly, deliberately discriminatory, supported by reams of empirical data, though I'm not sure if racially or otherwise illegally discriminatory on their face. Some of his gerrymandering proposals, by contrast, were explicitly racially discriminatory. ("Hofeller's hard drive also retained a map of North Carolina’s 2017 state judicial gerrymander, with an overlay of the black voting-age population by district, suggesting that these maps—which are currently at the center of a protracted legal battle—might also be a racial gerrymander.", https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-secret-files-of...)
If you do not currently have residence, your registration to vote is no longer valid. That is why an ID which proves residence at the time of voting is considered important by proponents.
You're talking past the parent. They are literally saying the purpose of the ID is not to prove residence, it's to prove identity. Residence would be proven during registration, not at the time of voting. If you want same day voter registration, that's a completely different story, but people shouldn't have to prove residence twice to vote.
How does an ID help with that? People can move without updating their ID right away. And, heck, I don't remember there being much, if any, that I had to do to prove my address when I got my (non-RealID) license.
Really all the address proves is that I was able to get mail at this address when I got my license.
That probably does make things tricky. Personally I think that we should accept all IDs but vary their impact based on what they provide. For instance, a voter ID verifies residence, so you can vote in elections. If you have no residence, maybe that's a broader state or federal ID but you can't vote in local elections.
A bit of an aside, when I moved to California I wasn't able to vote in the primaries because I refused to pledge loyalty to the Democratic party, though registering to vote was rather easy. In Texas registering was rather easy and I could vote in primaries.
> If you have no residence, maybe that's a broader state or federal ID but you can't vote in local elections.
That would be sad, because local governments are the ones that pass ordinances criminalizing homelessness (e.g. sleeping and urinating outside). I think it would be unconscionable to prevent people from having a voice in their governance based on their landownership status, but I guess we can hardly call such an idea out of line with America’s founding values.
If you could guarantee that a homeless person were to stay in that city then it'd make sense. I doubt that's feasible though. The benefit a state ID allowing you to vote in state elections could potentially allow someone to do is vote for candidates that would have a state-wide policy on homelessness, rather than just local.
When I came to California it was kind of funny that I was able to vote in local elections immediately. I hardly knew anything about the area, what could I possibly vote for?
But other citizens don't have to prove they will be in a city in the future to prove residency; it's sufficient to prove they've been in a city in the past to fulfill residency requirements. I can move to a town, register to vote after the residency requirement is fulfilled, move away the very same day, and still vote in that city until I have residency elsewhere. Why should it work any differently for a homeless person?
> A bit of an aside, when I moved to California I wasn't able to vote in the primaries because I refused to pledge loyalty to the Democratic party, though registering to vote was rather easy.
I still don't get why people think they are entitled to participate in party-internal candidate selection elections without even claiming membership (with absolutely zero commitment ot pledge of loyalty of any kind) in the party.
(There are primary elections that serve different functions than selecting party nominees, often simultaneously with party primaries, and you've always been able to vote in them in California without identifying with a party; California has extended the scope of them and gotten rid of most party primaries, though the Presidential primary is still a closed party primary.)
Personally speaking, I despise both of our parties, and their worst constituents. That said, as an independent I have to deal with both of the parties. If I know I'm going to vote a certain way in an election then I'd like to have a voice in who the devil-that-I-choose is without affirming that I'm okay with the party. Maybe that makes better sense.
Primaries for state and national offices except president were non partisan the whole time.[1] The Democratic Party allowed unaffiliated voters to vote in their presidential primary. Unlike the Republican Party.[2] And stating a preference isn't a loyalty oath.
I do remember not being able to vote in the primary, but I chalked it up to another weird California thing. I'm not sure how I don't count as unaffiliated but, regardless, the practice of not running an open primary is very strange to me coming from Texas.
Denying the right to vote, a fundamental aspect of democracy, because someone has found themselves homeless (which in some ways represents a greater failure of our own society to provide a safety net for all citizens) is unbelievable.
But it's okay, because they just need to "fix their own problems first" as you put it in such a blasé fashion.
We’re not denying them the right to vote. We’re saying that preserving the privilege of citizenship and ensuring election integrity are more important. If you can prove residency then you should be allowed to vote.
What exactly is the privilege of citizenship? You are talking about stripping a fellow citizen of their rights just because you have decided they are not wealthy enough to deserve them. What if some people got together and decided they didn’t appreciate something about your living situation, and that if you didn’t correct it then you would be stripped of the your rights? Do you feel like you are immune from becoming homeless? What gives you that security? I just seriously doubt you would hold such opinions if you’ve ever been homeless or knew anyone who has been homeless.
Not all people without an address are "incapable of functioning minimally in society", even ignoring the profoundly undemocratic implications of what you're saying.
When I was working as an archaeologist, I often lacked a residential address. I had a stable job, supported local communities, and generally met residency requirements, but establishing that in the normal ways was impossible. I've also had at least one ballot rejected as a result of similar clerical issues.
It's often helpful to be a bit more open-minded about how different other people's lives can be to your own.
> If you are not capable of functioning minimally in society
Homelessness is a state, not a capability. The majority of homeless people exist in this state only temporarily (eg, victims of domestic violence who flee their abusers)
> If you formally have residence in the state you are schooling in, you are required to have that state's driver's license.
I’m aware of no state in the country that mandates a driver’s license for all residents. It would really defeat the purpose of a driver’s license! Only residents _who drive on public roads_ are required to obtain a license. That’s absolutely not the entire population.
> guarantees them two votes
This is an absolutely inaccurate claim. They are not _guaranteed_ two votes, because no one is offering such a guarantee. And no one offers such a guarantee, because voting in the same election in two different states is illegal, and is fairly trivial to catch, since who voted in which elections are public records in most (all?) states.
> Allowing college students with an out of state drivers license to vote with their college ID guarantees them TWO votes- because they can legally file a mail in vote to the state they have that driver's license in.
Registering to vote in two states is a really easy way to end up in jail.
> Allowing college students with an out of state drivers license to vote with their college ID guarantees them TWO votes- because they can legally file a mail in vote to the state they have that driver's license in.
It is only detectable if anyone is looking, and getting audits done that cross state lines (each state effectively runs its own election) is not something we are currently equipped to handle.
There are plenty of people looking though. There was a federal commission set up in 2017 to investigate this idea and they disbanded because they couldn’t make any progress in the direction the administration wanted (the finding of fraud). People forget Trump claimed there was fraud in the 2016 election that he won. He said there were people bussed to New England to which caused him to lose there. How did no one witness this massive fraud? How is there no record? Where did the busses come from? Where did the money come from? It should be a cursory issue to verify some of these claims, and yet every effort to do so is scuttled when the evidence doesn’t show.
We just went through a 6 months long audit of the results in Arizona’s Maricopa county. The auditors there claimed massive fraud that would have flipped the election occurred. After much fanfare for months, they quietly packed up shop and did everything they could to avoid mentioning their conclusions were that the results of the previous audit were upheld.
I’ve been hearing about the voter id debate since I was in high school decades ago, and still no evidence this behavior is occurring. It’s well enough to conjecture this thing might be occurring, but eventually after decades you need to put up the evidence.
People are absolutely looking. It's routinely detected when republicans who believe this nonsense decide to give it a try.
Often they are even lawmakers! Pro tip never get high on your own supply, there, chief. But I get that state legislatures are cowtown nobodies and yeah they often actually are dumb enough to believe the prolefeed.
Whether you voted is public record, and literally anyone can pull death records as well, and compare the two. Mostly not a match, but every now and then it turns up a few republicans who thought they'd "even the score" since "it's so easy to get away with".
States track each other's voter registrations and postal change of address forms to detect duplicate registrations. You seem equipped to handle strengthening that. You don't seem equipped to require specific ID documents without disenfranchising people.
> If you formally have residence in the state you are schooling in, you are required to have that state's driver's license.
If you want to drive in that state. Seems odd to require a drivers license to vote if you live on a college campus where everything is in walking distance.
If the issue wasn't fundamentally about putting a thumb on one side of the scale or the other, this would be a relatively easy to solve problem. Make it part of the FEC charter to issue voting ID at no cost, tracking people down like the census does. Fund them appropriately, of course. And make sure that there is adequate opportunity to vote in person (multiple days, lots of locations, etc). In theory, this should make both sides happy.
Make it so that government ID is federalized and free, with things like state drivers licenses endorsements on top of your provided ID. I don't even see a compelling reason for state-specific driver licensing. Make driver qualification federal like in every other country in the world.
Things become a whole lot simpler when stuff can just get tacked on to your ID, and appropriate institutions can check the status of such endorsements in a central database.
> In theory, this should make both sides happy.
One side will never be happy, because their entire strategy (according to leaked internal documents) is voter suppression.
A reminder: there is very, very little voter fraud in the US. Most of cases of fraud that have been discovered turned out to be members of that side that is so very concerned with voter fraud.
We have a _national_ freeway system in the US, states get money from the government for the interstate freeway projects.
I am all for a national ID (please, PLEASE end using Social Security for this), and migrating to a national standard for driving that generalizes most of the 'how to drive' and 'how signs must look'; ideally also some minimum of how roads should be designed (less enforced, more of a guide).
This is really key here. Practice shows 2 things: (1) a national ID is needed to operate the United States and (2) in lieu of a proper system, a much worse system is being used with ongoing catastrophic impacts to people's lives from fraud and identity theft as well as the commensurate cost to the state at every level.
many of those signs are even standardized globally, as are driving rules. if a drivers license allows me to drive in an area, why should i have to update it, just because i changed my place of living?
I’m not convinced it has to be that complicated. (However, I’m still a fan of nationalized ID in general.) For example, Oregon has had mail voting since 1981 with bipartisan trust in the system. I’m not aware of any cases of voter fraud worse than any other voting systems we have.
Why does it get bipartisan support in Oregon, a state known for intense partisan demonstrations and showdowns? Because it’s so much easier that you’ll never want to do it another way.
Mail-in voting has a lot of benefits:
- It’s automatic. You’ll get a ballot every election at your home, so you don’t need to remember about elections.
- You get a pamphlet with statements from each candidate and supporting organizations. This helps you get informed about everyone.
- You have time to send it back. This allows you to make a more deliberate choice.
- You don’t have to take time off or go anywhere.
- You can verify via a web portal that your ballot was received and counted.
Is voter ID actually solving any real problems with the system? To my knowledge, fraud is normally sniffed out and prosecuted. I think a well-oiled mail voting system provides so many clear benefits to voters that we should be encouraging it in more places.
From what I understand, signature-based validation is secure enough to prevent most fraud problems. At least to the extent that it’s not much different from any other voting system.
Again, I support federal ID, but to me that’s separate from voting. Maybe I put my federal ID number on the ballot, and then states can ensure it was only used once.
I'm totally with you, I've lived in Oregon most of my life and I'm quite happy with the vote-by-mail system we have. But looking at the public opinion on the 2020 election, I get the impression that it would be a tough-sell nationwide.
Adding things to the FEC responsibility is not a solution, because the FEC is by structural design nonfunctional in normal conditions, and has sometimes been (e.g., most of 2020) completely nonfunctional due to lack of a quorum.
The democratic party famously screwed over VP Wallace in a highly rigged convention (so power leaders could get relative neophyte Truman in)
Rumors are the mob delivered the election for Kennedy; even those historians who argue otherwise essentially characterize it as the democratic party stealing the election "An order from the mob to work for Kennedy only insured a total Chicago effort of the kind that historically had been known to work miracles in the early-morning hours of vote counting"
Lyndon Johnson famously stole his 1948 senate election
Democrats were plenty happy to use vote harvesting to take Orange County, Ca while arguing against it in Georgia (2018).
We now require proof of vaccination to eat in a restaurant, but requiring an ID to vote is unreasonable and can only be because you want to stop people from voting. Which may be true (anything is possible), but the sheer irony here is almost too much.
Vaccines are free and we do everything we can to make them easy to get, whereas getting ID that's acceptable for voting has many hurdles that can be insurmountable for many people. Born in another state and lost birth certificate in a move? Well, time to take a trip to your birth county and get a certified copy of your birth certificate. Work 9-5 Monday-Friday? Better hope you have a vacation day you can use to go down to the DPS/DMV/RMV/etc.
the group that is doing it today is actually the opposite group of who was doing it in the past. as it turns out it isn't a single side that tries to restrict the voting of people they disagree with. everyone given the opportunity will do this.
and in case this isn't obvious. it's always bad no matter who is doing it. i just think its ridiculously stupid to suggest that only 1 group would do it and the other wouldn't given the opportunity.
Ideologies in political parties have shifted enough that calling modern-day republicans and democrats the same as 40s republicans and democrats feels fraudulent. Whether someone was in the wrong yesterday is less important than correcting the folks in the wrong today and doesn't excuse their current behavior in any manner.
If things shift the other way and democrats start suppressing the vote I'll be just as outraged at them - regardless of whether "my guy is winning" or not.
It's infuriating when people use the "democrats were the conservative party disenfranchising minorities" XX years ago like some sort of "ha - gotcha. Your argument is now invalid. I am very smart." revelation.
to be absolutely clear i am not making excuses for anyone or anything. no matter who does it, trying to prevent your opponents from having access to voting is despicable. my point is to say that this isn't a party problem, a side problem or a group problem, it's a humans and power problem. people will just do stuff like this. the suggestion of the person i was responding to was that it's only a single group of people that are doing this specifically saying historically. my point is that it is a specific group right now, it was a different specific group in the past and it will be a different specfic group in the future and it's always bad.
Its the same group of people though, they just changed which party they aligned with in the LBJ-Goldwater election in 1964. Take a look at the map of 1960 and a map of the election in 1968. They look the same, its just the colors got inverted.
I don't know if I totally agree with that though - while most parties in power around the world do take steps to cement that power though shady means it goes to a real extreme in the US - Canada certainly hasn't been free from election scandals[1]. Additionally, all sorts of authoritarians definitely do a lot worse than the US by wholly suspending elections or otherwise entirely rigging the system. That all said, for a democracy, America seems to be taking it to an extreme.
And, in America at least, these voter restrictions have always historically minimized the black vote. So I do think there is one group that has been consistently quite happy with voting limitations - they aren't the republican party, but they currently find refuge under its wings.
1. This last election has been (IMO fairly) decried as a waste of taxpayer money and a move that endangered the public simply to strengthen Liberal dominance (even if it failed hilariously).
"When he signed the act he was euphoric, but late that very night I found him in a melancholy mood as he lay in bed reading the bulldog edition of the Washington Post with headlines celebrating the day. I asked him what was
troubling him. 'I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come,' he said."
-- Bill Moyers in his book Moyers on America on LBJ following the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill...
So long as we're posting second-hand quotes attributed to LBJ, here's one from Ronald Kessler:
"These Ne**es, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference... I'll have them ni**rs voting Democratic for the next two hundred years."
casual slurs aside, bettering the lives of your constituents is what politicians are supposed to do, why is that supposed to be some giant gotcha? Not just you, but in general, that is an underlying frame that many people routinely adopt - that making their constituents lives better is a dirty act designed to swing elections. God forbid people have an option to vote for someone who makes their lives better.
Like: literally yes, please, actually do something that will make me want to vote for you for a generation. Unironically. I'm 100% serious. That's what you're supposed to be doing.
And yeah, sure, politicians dole it out slowly so they don't have to do too much, that's not really a revelation either.
> the group that is doing it today is actually the opposite group of who was doing it in the past.
That depends on what you mean by “group”; its the same ideological faction, attached to the same historical narrative and much of the same factional symbology.
They are largely associated with a different political party than in, say, the late 19th and early 20th century, due to a long period (or two overlapping periods) of partisan realignment between the 1930s and 1990s, in which they were marginalized within one party and then courted by the other.
My former state (I emigrated) of Vermont has a Republican governor. Folks can label him as a RINO or Vermont Republican - but he's conservative in a manner that aligns with a lot of Vermont sensibilities.
Vermont is a really interesting state that crosses the "normal" lines in a lot of ways. AFAIK democrats there are, generally, pretty pro-gun for example (bernie aside). And generally the republicans there seem to have generally avoided going off the deep end like the rest of the country.
Probably comes with being one of the most rural states in the country, but also with major population centers nearby.
Vermont is interesting because it has the absence of the authoritarian left that traditionally dominates politics in urban areas (Vermont's few urban areas aren't very urban) and the absence of the christian right and "not quite christian right but similarly conservative on all social issues" right like you find in a lot of the rest of the country. Basically the factions of both parties that care strongly about putting everyone else under their thumb when it comes to the social issues are under-represented in Vermont.
It's clearly a non-starter to suggest that only 1 party would do such a thing, but that's distinct from saying only one "group" would do it if by group we're talking about social philosophy built around, say, the idea that there must be an in-group that the law protects but does not bind and the idea that there must be an out-group that the law binds but does not protect.
> the group that is doing it today is actually the opposite group of who was doing it in the past. as it turns out it isn't a single side that tries to restrict the voting of people they disagree with.
You'll find that the right opposes this idea. National IDs spook the "don't tread on me" crowd and cutting DMV availability is a common "money saving" approach taken by the same people demanding additional documentation for voting.
> close as many DMV offices as you can in counties where people don't vote your way, restrict the hours on the remaining offices.
And make sure those remaining offices are nowhere near any bus lines, so if someone does not have a car they either have to take an expensive cab ride or spend a lot of time walking when they go to get their ID. And make sure that IDs are only issued during work hours in midweek so you can't get your ID on a weekend--which means many minimum wage workers will have to lose a day's pay to get their ID.
And once people do have whatever ID you require, there are still ways to make it harder for the "wrong" group to vote.
• Restrict absentee/mail-in voting so people have to show up in person, but also greatly reduce the number of polling places in areas with too many of the "wrong" group.
• Make it illegal to provide food or water to people waiting in line to vote.
The first can result in polling places where people have to stand in line for several hours to get their turn to vote, and can only drink whatever water they happened to bring with them. Of course they could leave the line to go get water, but then might lose their place and have to start all over.
Even if on its implementation free and open ID is available and quick to get it might not stay that way into the future. It is a common strategy to under fund institutions to undermine their ability to function. Opening up to ID where there isn't sufficient fraud to warrant it simply opens up another mechanism for abuse by those in power. This sorts of changes should be rejected by default by the populace especially if they aren't shown to be genuinely necessary as political opponents may very well misuse them in the future with little awareness from the public.
What point are you getting at, here? The generalization in your comment isn’t true, for starters [1, 2], and it doesn’t address the premise of the parent comment that there may not be sufficient fraud to warrant stronger ID requirements. From what I can tell (correct me if I’m wrong), that assumption of insecure elections is what underlies the laughability of the situation.
Reading that quite short list, it seems like Australia, Canada, UK and the US are the only ones which do not require IDs. I wonder if it has something to do with old British legal system, that they kind off share.
This distinction isn't quite so clear-cut. At least in Ontario, any form of documentation listing the voter's name is sufficient [1], which they explicitly state can include a credit/debit card. The more stringent voter ID laws in some parts of the US (e.g. Texas) tend to concern government-issued photo IDs [2].
EDIT: Note, in particular, that a utility bill (e.g. a gas bill as mentioned in an ancestor comment) is sufficient in Ontario. For the purposes of this comment thread, this would fall into the (allegedly) laughable situation of lacking voter ID.
I didn't go through the entire list, but it does seem like a lot of those countries either use a standard national ID, or have a nationally issued voter ID.
Unfortunately, federally assigned IDs are a weirdly hot-button issue in America. Whether it's the libertarian insistence that national ID leads to authoritarianism[1], or the evangelical strain that sees it as a potential Mark of the Beast[2].
National ID is certainly not a requirement for voter ID, and there’s no reason I can find so far that state/local ID couldn’t be mandated instead. While you’re correct that most countries that require voter ID have a national ID card, I would guess that’s more of a correlation due to a latent variable that underlies both of these: possibly some sort of trust in a national authority (relative to local authorities), ease and necessity of international travel within Europe requiring convenient proof of citizenship, etc.
State IDs being used for voting means that who gets to vote is controlled by individual States ID laws, and we don't generally trust other States to get it right.
In U.K. there is no need of any whatsoever id to vote.
I would agree that requiring a gas bill to vote is laughable but probably for reasons at the complete antipodes than yours.
Careful about drawing generalizations about voting in the developed world.
In Canada, my grandmother didn't need any "ID" to vote, period. All she needed was for me, who had acceptable ID to vouch that she was an eligible voter, voting in a riding that she was eligible to vote in.
Somehow, the country has not yet devolved into an orgy of lawlessness.
Thats not what they have in the US. I can literally come up with a common name, say Ben Levi, and vote on Ben’s behalf. If Ben decides to show up, he’s in trouble, not me.
In Canada you are typically required ID. If you lied about your grandma and the real Ms. vkou shows up to vote, she’ll have ID proving who she is, and Elections Canada has your name written down to throw you in jail for lying under oath.
I’m joking of course, a hunting license isn’t a form of ID. Curiously, my CHL isn’t a form of ID, even though it is state issued, has my pic, and I had to be finger printed to get it.
And no difference in the level of verification to get the ID. You need a state issued ID, and federal background check, and full fingerprints to get a Student ID, right?
In terms of rigor of identity authentication: CHL > Driver's license.
There is a lot of verification that goes into a student ID. Even at the community college level they are going to at least verify your residency to make sure you are paying the correct tuition rate. My local CC even differentiates this on their IDs.
But at the state level you will need much more. We are talking 12 years of transcripts and a high school diploma. Vaccination records going back to birth. Income information (paystubs, bank accounts) on you and your family so they can verify your ability to pay tuition or qualify for aid. In order to qualify you’ll need to undergo background checks (felons are not eligible for aid). Then you need letter of reference from at least 3 individuals and your HS guidance counselor. Finally, you will need official SAT test scores, and the college board does their own process of identity verification.
Is the process perfect? No. But if you were looking for a vector for fraud, student IDs are probably one of the most onerous.
There is, of course, no bias in the types of people who are comfortable with and can easily pass a background check, and those who are not or cannot.
In a free and fair election, the right to vote is not be based on your detailed personal history, or whether you have done something that looks off and might cause you trouble with authorities.
Even if it's just fear of imagined trouble that puts people off feeling safe to obtain the necessary approvals to vote, that's enough to prevent a free and fair election.
I am not suggesting you should need a background check to vote.
All I am saying is we have a good idea that the person with a CCL is that person and they are not a felon (in some states felons cannot vote).
Anybody can go to a community college including a noncitizen. There is no background check and no real verification the person is who they say they are. You just show up and have your picture taken.
If you are going to trust one of these forms of IDs it is clear that it should be the CCL.
I did not mean to imply a noncitizen could not get a CCL.
What I meant is we know the person is who they say they are when they have a CCL. This means if a noncitizen has a CCL they would be unable to use this as proof they are a citizen.
If a noncitizen goes to a university they could claim they are somebody other than who they are and could use the fake ID as proof to vote. Since there are no background checks to get a university ID it isn't really proof of anything.
Even if you feel the verification that goes into a student ID is not strict enough, that could have been remedied in the very bill that was just signed into law. Why didn’t they, I wonder?
But I think student IDs do undergo a pretty significant verification. They are going to at least need transcripts and some other ID card like a driver’s license to prove your id. They do background checks as a matter of course for funding. Community colleges do verify residency to determine which tuition rate you pay. 99% of the students most community colleges are state residents anyway. They could have just made a requirement that state funded schools must display residency information and an expiration date in the card, and there would be no problem.
My university did no checks on address or anything like that. I went to a private university so that could be why. It is possible that public colleges do more verification.
Honestly I think the best solution is to just give a free ID to everyone. As far as I know every state that requires an ID for voting has free IDs. We should make it easier and more convenient instead of allowing a bunch of alternative forms of ID. Driver's license, voter ID license, generic state ID or federal ID (passport) should be sufficient.
Indeed, public institutions of learning have different tuition rates depending on a student's residency status. Rates for out of county/state individuals can be 50% more (or even higher) than local residents, so there aren't too many instances of non-residents attending community college; there aren't really any benefits to graduating from one CC versus another, so why pay more to get a degree that is indistinguishable from a cheaper one? They're all the same as far as any employers or society are concerned, there's no prestige or social status associated with graduating from CC, so there isn't much of an incentive for fraud. You maybe could argue that it is a viable vector for election fraud if they could be used as IDs, but I think the rise in non-resident enrollment around elections would be evidence of this, yet this phenomenon isn't observed. And even if that were an issue, Republican-controlled legislatures that just passed sweeping election reforms could have corrected it, but they chose not to.
Private institutions have a flat tuition rate (although if you are an international student they will verify that you have the financial capability to pay full tuition, since as a non-resident you wouldn't qualify for federal aid, and their tuition rates are set anticipating that you will qualify for federal aid). When there is actual money involved, you can be damn sure that processes are in place to verify you are paying the correct rate. As always when real dollars are at stake, the process is vetted, inspected, and verified at multiple levels. The proof of residence for my local community college was not dissimilar from the DMV. People want to get paid what they're owed.
But again, if there are any concerns about the stringency of this process, they could have been resolved via recently enacted legislation. But they weren't, and that may have been an intentional omission.
Look, I'll agree that student IDs are not up to par with other forms of IDs in terms of the information printed on the actual card, and that maybe some of the processes should be standardized across the state. Just because my local CC is good with these things and has sensible protocols doesn't mean all CCs strive to achieve that standard. There are a lot of CC and state schools out there. But the fact that an entire party has made securing the vote their raison d'être, yet steadfastly refuses to consider students valid voting constituents is strikingly indicative of a bad faith effort.
>There is, of course, no bias in the types of people who are comfortable with and can easily pass a background check, and those who are not or cannot.
You're correct, there's no bias on the system for background checks. Anyone of any race, color, or creed can get a background check to verify their eligibility to exercise their right to own/carry firearms and vote.
>There is, of course, no bias in the types of people that have one but not the other.
I agree, and it's in Texas' state law: any legal resident regardless of race, color, or creed can apply for a concealed carry license. It's truly bias free.
> refuse to accept college IDs [...] more likely to vote for the "wrong" party
How is that different from accepting college IDs because students are more likely to vote for the "right" party? Seems like both options are biased one way or another.
But how is that less biased? That will still be biased one way or another (eg. more college students than gun licensees, or whatever) so regardless of whether they allow all of them or none of them or an arbitrary subset of them, it will still be biased and I don't think there's any objective set of acceptable IDs that isn't biased.
Are you asserting that it is biased for the successfully-IDed voters to reflect the demographics of the underlying voter population? I don't think that makes sense.
If a sufficient range of state IDs are accepted that everyone who is eligible to vote can freely and easily get one, then it is not biased by definition.
Sure, but there is no such range of IDs in America, is there? It seems like a choice from a set of various not-easily-and freely-obtainable-to-everyone IDs.
> refuse to accept college IDs as valid for voting, even those issued by the state government
What state governments issue a college ID? It’s been a while for me but I don’t recall much evidence required for me to get a college ID and even though I went to a public state university, it definitely was not government issued. Nobody would have accepted it as proof of identity besides the college, certainly not for voting
Public universities are state agencies. What they require to issue ID and if anyone accepts it are different questions. But state issued photo ID isn't an unusual standard.
So only public universities count, but not private ones? School ID's are not considered valid identification for any other government form, (I-9, W2, etc), so I don't think it makes sense to say they count here as well.
If a state school issues an ID, are they not a government entity issuing identification? Whether it’s acceptable by a third party is another question, of course.
This was a huge problem in Texas last year, but it really points at another problem with these laws. The difficulty largely wasn't even intentional. The requirements for address verification and citizenship verification were far more onerous than they used to be, to the point I saw no less then three people get sent home with nothing when I was at the DMV, but that wasn't even the state's decision. It was a consequence of the Real ID ACT happening at the same time. And office closures made it take months to get an appointment. I was barely able to get in ahead of the election, in mid October, and I made my appointment in April! But that wasn't malicious, either. The office closures were due to Covid, which wasn't planned by the state of Texas.
But it points at the ways in which any additional legal hurdle at all can become far more burdensome than lawmakers expect it to even if no one is intentionally trying to make it hard. It's all levels of government plus nature itself all adding new hurdles at the same time.
* refuse to accept college IDs as valid for voting, even those issued by the state government because it's a state school (college students are more likely to vote for the "wrong" party). Hunting licenses? Cool (people with hunting licenses are more likely to vote for the "right" party).
* prevent college students who live most of the year in-state, and can prove it, but have an out-of-state driver's license, from voting.
* place extra hoops on people whose name doesn't match their birth certificate, make them produce every document with every change and toss their registration if there's a typo (this mainly affects married women, who are more likely to vote for the "wrong" party). This is an effective way to disenfranchise a lot of older women who don't have a current driver's license.
---
Do you have studies/papers/numbers for any of these groups?
> This will be true provided that states make an effort to assure that all can obtain the required ID
I really don't understand why that was not the focus whenever this came up. Not having ID is a huge impediment to constructive participation in society. Need to open a bank account, take out a loan, rent a house, drive a car, fly somewhere, get a job, etc., etc., then you'll almost certainly need ID.
Voting once every now and again of course is important, but to people who genuinely don't have the means to get ID for themselves, I'm sure it's a vanishingly small problem compared to their immediate concerns of surviving day to day.
It's crazy that the outrage is about the ID requirement for voting and so much effort has gone into that, rather than being outraged about people not being able to get ID and the effort going in to making that easier for them.
People who care about policies are concerned with this. People who care only about politics or skewing power might, but only if fixing this disproportionately helps their base.
Generally fixing this issue is done with very time intensive, high-touch non-profit work. States rarely put in the effort to assist the most complicated ID cases.
There are lots of old people in the Mississippi Delta who never got birth certificates and who can’t use the most common documents to prove citizenship/ eligibility to vote. IIRC they can try to petition a judge / court, but it is a big hurdle, especially for people who are not highly motivated to vote and are people who don’t drive. Some people are left behind, but I can’t find good stats/estimates of how many are affected.
> People who care about policies are concerned with this.
Certainly not the loudest, party leaders, media, etc who have been telling us the problems they will have if voting required ID for years and years. Pretty terrible that they have been aware of this and have done really nothing to help those poor people except when it may affect them getting votes. Really makes you cynical about their motives and selfishness.
I'm sure it's easier said than done, but they're passing trillion dollar budgets, going to war and bombing the brown people in Syria and Libya, bailing out banks that caused housing collapses, etc. They absolutely could solve this problem with a tiny modicum of effort in comparison.
The really sad thing now with results like this is that they're likely to just stop caring about the problem entirely and forget these people if it doesn't actually affect their vote.
You think people haven’t been trying to solve this problem? It’s hard and expensive. In the states where this is the biggest problem, they have some of the lowest spending on social services in the nation (and they are the same states very eager to push voter id laws). Go ask the state legislators there to increase social services spending in their annual budget to help fix this issue, and see how quickly you are laughed out of their offices.
I think compared to the people who make a lot of noise and outrage claiming to care deeply about the plight of these people who can't vote due to lack of ID, no. I don't know if I've ever heard about the issue when it hasn't been prompted or in the context of voter ID.
> It’s hard and expensive.
Again, I don't think it is relative to what else gets spent and what else gets done. Social services spending on a state and federal level is just gargantuan and increasing so I don't see quite where your last sentence connects to reality.
That people make a lot of noise about an issue doesn't change or negate the fact that it is an issue, and that people and organizations are indeed working on fixing it. If you haven't heard about an issue outside of a particular context, perhaps that is just related to the channels you are monitoring rather than the reality of the work being done on the ground.
Your link shows that a lot of money is being spent, but not nearly enough, or perhaps in the wrong places. The ~$3000 per capita spending numbers are laughably small. People on average are going to use more than that per year. So the question is: how is that money actually distributed? Who is getting more than they need, because plenty are going without enough. Social programs are famously not very well funded, so your argument that social welfare programs are swimming in "gargantuan" levels of cash doesn't ring true to me, and the numbers you show bear that out. Like I said, expect people (like yourself) to balk at requests to increase funding in social programs. Usually the number one response I will get from legislators is that the already spend enough as is, why do they need to spend more?
My wife was a social worker for a number of years, so I got to see how "social welfare" is actually spent. From what I witnessed inside the social work industrial complex, a number of corporations have sprung up that work to milk this government money without ever actually helping anyone in the process. They will hire social workers to visit people in need of crisis management or some other social service, but essentially their job is to just fill out reams and reams of paperwork leaving no time to actually help anyone. The corporation gets a huge stack of state dollars, the social worker gets a mere $14.00 for their hour, and the person in need is left wanting and in need. It's a difficult system to change because there are entrenched interests now dependent on the revenue stream. If you want in on that money, you're going to need the same lobbying power as these corporations.
> That people make a lot of noise about an issue doesn't change or negate the fact that it is an issue, and that people and organizations are indeed working on fixing it.
I wasn't saying nobody does, I'm sure some under appreciated and under resourced groups who actually want to make things better for these poor people are doing great, difficult work and care deeply about the issue.
That does not include any federal or state politician of note though, nor any media corporation or their journalists, or any other "activists" or twitter trolls who only pretend to care about it when voter ID comes up.
I'm not sure if my rhetoric wasn't quite clear -- I did not mean to imply that literally nobody cares about getting people ID for reasons other than voting, or has ever once raised the issue until that post I just made.
Are both major parties the wrong party? Because college students skew Democrat but married women are more likely to vote Republican.
Honestly if there are people without ID and an inability to acquire one that's a bigger issue because of the many things you can't do without an ID voting is pretty low on the list.
> The choice is legally yours. You have dual residency, so you can register back home or on campus as long as you don't register to vote in both states. You can use our Voter Registration Tool to register to vote in less than 2 minutes.
> You don't have to be a citizen to have a driver's license, either, but they're accepted.
This is the exact reason that issuing indistinguishable driver's licenses to non-citizens was controversial.
> Doesn't matter if you're a resident of the state.
The point is that maybe it should. It's reasonable to say that people should vote in the place where they're a permanent resident and not somewhere they're likely not going to reside by the end of the term of office for the election in question.
It's not as if they can't vote, they can vote where they're actually from. Or demonstrate the intent to move to the state where they want to vote by getting a state ID there.
> The point is that maybe it should. It's reasonable to say that people should vote in the place where they're a permanent resident and not somewhere they're likely not going to reside by the end of the term of office for the election in question.
That doesn't really have anything to do with voter ID at the polls, because the point of voter ID at the polls is not to prove that you are eligible to vote. Proof of eligibility should be taken care of when you register to vote.
The point of ID at the polls is to show that you are the person who you claim to be, so that the poll workers can check to see if you are on the registered voter list.
> This is the exact reason that issuing indistinguishable driver's licenses to non-citizens was controversial.
No, it wasn't.
Because nondistinguishable licenses for immigrants had been issued for generations when the controversy, which was about licenses issued to people without valid immigration status, erupted.
Don't be pedantic, you can see what I'm getting at here.
A lot more US citizens have a driver's license than a passport. It's the most common form of identification and if it doesn't specify citizenship then there will be millions of people who don't have any picture ID that can prove their citizenship status.
That problem could easily be solved by specifying whether you're a citizen on your driver's license. It's a poor excuse to extend the problem to other forms of ID that don't prove citizenship status.
> Don't be pedantic, you can see what I'm getting at here
No, I don't. Because there is no reasonable on topic argument you could be getting at.
> A lot more US citizens have a driver's license than a passport. It's the most common form of identification and if it doesn't specify citizenship then there will be millions of people who don't have any picture ID that can prove their citizenship status.
Which is fine in the context of voter ID, because presenting ID to vote is notionally to confirm that the person presenting to vote is the person registered (authentication), not that the person registered is allowed to vote (authorization).
Authorization of registered voters and removal/disqualification of unauthorized voters is, even in Voter ID systems and proposals, handled separately from voter ID, typically by the same kind of processes used without voter ID.
It was literally not clear until THIS comment that you were just discussing how you think things should have been designed, and not talking about how things actually work.
>I cited a source indicating college students have the right to register to vote where their school is located.
That's not what that says. Students can proclaim residency in the state they are attending school, yes. That also means in Texas you have 30 days to register your car, 90 days to change over to a Texas driver's license, etc.
>Neither a school ID nor a drivers’ license says anything about citizenship. They’re the same in that regard.
We're not talking about citizenship, we're talking about residency. A student ID does not prove state residency, so it does not past muster whatsoever. Texas has legal explanation covering this specific scenario: https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/elo/gsc1.pdf
I'll state it again: a student ID does not prove residency.
The comment upthread I initially replied to stated student IDs aren't appropriate because they don't demonstrate citizenship; I pointed out neither does a drivers' license.
The appropriate time to look at residency/citizenship is at the voter registration step. This is already done!
Except student IDs don't even do that. They prove your student status, not state resident identity. That's why you can't use student IDs to buy alcohol, board a plane, or purchase a firearm. Voting and buying guns are both constitutionally guaranteed rights. Are you OK with people buying guns with student IDs? If you are, at least you're being consistent.
Many student IDs are not even issued by the states (private schools). Also, there are hundreds of schools per state, being a student at Piney Woods Community College isn't easily verifiable if it's even in the state.
>The comment upthread I initially replied to stated student IDs aren't appropriate because they don't demonstrate citizenship
Nor do they demonstrate residency, nor are they valid for a number of other rights and privileges so it holds that they're not accepted.
>I pointed out neither does a drivers' license.
Which is true, but not what I stated above.
>The appropriate time to look at residency/citizenship is at the voter registration step. This is already done!
Some states have same day registration so it is not already done. Nonetheless, a student ID is a poor ID for exercising a person's right to vote.
All of the objections you raise could have been remedied in the recently-enacted legislation across the country. All they had to do was require state-funded schools to put the same info found on a DL or CCL on their student ids. The school in most cases already knows this information because they need it to verify the tuition rate for which a student qualifies. But GOP-run state legislatures didn’t do this and the reason why seems obvious given the public intonations coming from these individuals.
>All of the objections you raise could have been remedied in the recently-enacted legislation across the country. All they had to do was require state-funded schools to put the same info found on a DL or CCL on their student ids.
I can hear leftists screeching from here over this proposal. That's exactly what Republicans want... Now student IDs can't be issued to illegal immigrants, need the same verifications required for DLs, which is White supremacy or something.
> school in most cases already knows this information because they need it to verify the tuition rate for which a student qualifies.
Which is hilariously inaccurate. I knew many students who feigned residency to save themselves tens of thousands.
>But GOP-run state legislatures didn’t do this and the reason why seems obvious given the public intonations coming from these individuals.
Because it was shot down by Democrats. Republicans just want to bring the US to the 21st century and match what the rest of the first-world countries are doing. Anything else is regressive.
Nonetheless, as far as Texas is concerned, students can get a free voter ID that qualifies, so the student ID point is moot.
> I can hear leftists screeching from here over this proposal.
I am a leftist. I see nothing wrong with this proposal (I mean, I proposed it, right?). Illegal immigrants going to CC wishing to pay resident rates will have to prove their residency just like everyone else, as is the current situation. I don't see an issue with that. Do you? It seems to me maybe you have a caricature of leftists in your mind if you think this proposal would have leftists screeching.
> I knew many students who feigned residency to save themselves tens of thousands.
Which is fraud and can be detected and caught easily. If legislatures wanted to fortify the requirements to make them more uniform across counties they could have. They didn't. And it's telling.
> Because it was shot down by Democrats.
Shot down? The bills that were passed were written and supported by Republican legislatures and signed into law by Republican governors. Democrats didn't have a say over anything. Republicans could have passed anything they wanted and Democrats were and are powerless to "shoot" anything down. Not sure how it's cogent to bring up minority opposition here.
> Nonetheless, as far as Texas is concerned, students can get a free voter ID that qualifies, so the student ID point is moot.
You mean free as long as their time is worthless, right? Because they already have an ID that should qualify, but doesn't because of "reasons". Where those reasons are vague and unsupported by fact and evidence. After all, we have no evidence so far to support the idea that students are committing widespread voter fraud. Republicans can't seem prove such a thing is happening despite decades of searching for it (gee, maybe because it's not happening).
>I see nothing wrong with this proposal (I mean, I proposed it, right?).
No problem with denying illegal immigrants student IDs because they have to be at the same standards required for other voting IDs? Awesome, glad we agree.
>Illegal immigrants going to CC wishing to pay resident rates will have to prove their residency just like everyone else, as is the current situation.
Correct, except now they'll have to prove lawful presence, and residency if they are to be the same standard as other voter IDs. They can't prove lawful presence because they immigrated illegally, so my point stands.
>I don't see an issue with that. Do you?
Not at all! Tax money for citizens and legal immigrants should absolutely not go to illegal immigrants. No issues here, glad we agree.
>Which is fraud and can be detected and caught easily.
Apparently not. There are hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants defrauding the government by using other's social security numbers, etc. and it's been tough to stop it.
>If legislatures wanted to fortify the requirements to make them more uniform across counties they could have. They didn't. And it's telling.
They did... What are you talking about? This is a state standard that is the same across all counties. It's telling that you have absolutely no clue here.
>Shot down?
Yes, national IDs, voter ID laws are continuously shot down by Democrats, or are tampered in committees etc.
>You mean free as long as their time is worthless, right?
Just like voting, buying a gun, etc. It's not 100% free in time to exercise your rights.
>Because they already have an ID that should qualify,
Except they don't, as I have laid out above. Student IDs are not valid practically anywhere for identification such as airplanes, bars, buying alcohol, purchasing firearms, etc.
>but doesn't because of "reasons"
Yes, "reasons", also known as "uncomfortable facts that go against the narrative."
>Where those reasons are vague and unsupported by fact and evidence.
Those reasons are well defined and support by facts, logic, and evidence.
>After all, we have no evidence so far to support the idea that students are committing widespread voter fraud.
Thankfully because they're not allowed to use their student IDs, glad we're treating them like normal citizens.
>Republicans can't seem prove such a thing is happening despite decades of searching for it (gee, maybe because it's not happening).
Cool, same how there haven't been illegal weapons purchases with student IDs because they're not allowed for that either. Glad the Republicans are being consistent.
> The state already knows John Jones, born 1st January 1970, is eligible to vote
It actually does not know this. This is a very hard problem to solve in the US. There can be positive evidence of this (John Jones has been a resident of California since birth, has a birth certificate (state document) and a Social Security (federal) number reflecting that), but John Jones may have been born in PA with no Social Security number or birth certificate at all and be a current resident of California, having moved there last year, and a perfectly legitimate US citizen eligible to vote in California for local, state, and federal offices.
There is no national US citizen registry, mostly for historical reasons, and making one is a total political nonstarter. Further, states are individually responsible for determining if someone is probably an eligible voter, and so there’s different processes and checks in place depending on the state.
> Further, states are individually responsible for determining if someone is probably an eligible voter, and so there’s different processes and checks in place depending on the state.
It's more fundamental than that: states are individually responsible for determining who the eligible voters are. There are variations from state to state as to the terms of residency in the state, whether felons or people who have been declared mentally incapacitated [0].
That, among other things, causes a substantial difficulty in attempts to (say) conform presidential elections to the national popular vote outcome; one of the functions of the electoral college is to (mostly in a very nonlinear binary fashion) normalize the results by state to the total population rather than simply the enfranchised population (hence the 3/5ths rule being a compromise between "count the slaves" and "don't count the slaves" in the weighting process).
The IRS doesn’t actually know - it trusts you to report your status accurately. Of course, they could demand proof during an audit, I suppose, but “proof” can get fuzzy. But on top of that, not everyone, not even every adult, is required to file taxes. People can and do live their whole lives never filing taxes. So, “this person has never filed a return” is not proof of anything. It also doesn’t share this information anyway - US agencies are not big on sharing and in the case of the IRS, there’s privacy reasons. But of course, if you tell the IRS you’re a citizen and you file taxes ten years in a row, they might have questions if you suddenly stop. :)
You can literal simply pinky swear and sign a document in front of an election official at your voting place and time that you are an eligible voter to register, and then go vote. They have no practical way of truly verifying what you say in most cases. There are legitimate edge cases that need this, so that’s why things work this way.
I believe (though I'm not totally certain) that the tax payer ID is actually always distinct - most domestic tax filing is done with SSN though and then translated to the tax payer ID. The context here is that my spouse is non-American and had to acquire a tax payer ID when we were married.
"A Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) is an identification number used by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the administration of tax laws. It is issued either by the Social Security Administration (SSA) or by the IRS. A Social Security number (SSN) is issued by the SSA whereas all other TINs are issued by the IRS."[1]
It's authentication vs. authorization just like with computer software.
You go to vote. They check ID to determine whether the person standing there is who they claim to be. Then they check the voter registration rolls to see if that person is eligible to vote.
> refuse to accept college IDs as valid for voting, even those issued by the state government because it's a state school (college students are more likely to vote for the "wrong" party). Hunting licenses? Cool (people with hunting licenses are more likely to vote for the "right" party).
Have you ever tried to buy beer with a school ID? There is a reason they aren't accepted as a government issue legal ID.
It's been a while, but I don't remember my undergrad student ID having my birthdate on it? That would in fact put schools in the position of needing to keep better records...
I'm torn about the college voting thing. I voted for some stupid shit in college and then left the state to deal with the fallout. I think we should just make it trivially easy for college students to vote absentee in their home states. If they satisfy the residency requirements of wherever they go to school then fine, but many don't.
I am curious what state takes hunting licenses and does not take college ID as an ID for voting? This seems ridiculous as the hunting licenses are just receipts on paying a fee and usually don't even have a picture. Please let me know which state does this, if this is an actual example.
If you don’t have ID you can’t drive, get a job, or open a bank account. Requiring ID to vote is a no brainer. Anything else is violating the integrity of our elections and is just utterly absurd IMO.
Or can’t go to a place that requires an ID as part of a proof on vaccination. Funny how suddenly requiring an ID stopped being a problem when it is imposed by an authority controlled by the democrats.
Are you aware that these vote restriction laws are passed on the state, not federal level, that the party that currently controls the presidency is trying to ban ID-based voting restrictions, which the other party is trying to pass in the state legislations it controls?
The title should have been "Strong mobilization efforts needed to neutralize voter turnout reduction of ID laws", because that's what the data in their abstract actually says.
Even then, there was a 0.1% reduction in voter turnout, but the reduction was primarily among white voters. Although this isn’t the negative outcome that myself and other opponents of voter ID laws were worried about, any policy that reduces voter engagement is bad - even if it doesn’t lead to racial inequality.
I agree, but there needs to be some compromise between integrity and ease. As programmers, we all know how easily systems can be compromised. Having effectively zero barrier to getting proper ID seems like a simple, inexpensive solution, especially given you already need ID for so many other essentials
As a programmer, you should know to not touch things that aren't broken. There's no evidence of meaningful abuse, why are you making everything more complicated with ratelimits? Speaking as someone who actually supports state identification requirements for voting.
I didn't claim there was, but at the same time I'm convinced there easily could be [1] if people play down security and don't take any precautions. Election fraud isn't uncommon around the world, and there is plenty of incentive. [[I do think Americans in general have been pretty good so far, but I'm no expert, and I'm not sure anyone could convince me 100% there is no fraud ever here]]
More importantly, I think it is necessary for everyone to /feel/ satisfied that the elections are fair to maintain faith in the system. Requiring IDs seems like an easy nod to that effect
> More importantly, I think it is necessary for everyone to /feel/ satisfied that the elections are fair. Requiring IDs seems like an easy nod to that effect
Its obviously not, because lots of people think that it it is unfair in and of itself, and this feeling is buttressed by the fact that politicians pushing for specific versions of it keep getting caught admitting that their motives are more about stopping people that don't vote their way from voting than election security in the usual sense when they think they have a friendly audience.
What do they think is unfair? The ID requirement? I get that, but the point was, let's make that not unfair.
There isn't anything unfair about making elections more secure in itself. Both security and fairness are valid issues. If a politician is against either of these, it's a bad sign.
.1% of the US population is 300,000+ people. That's not "insignificant" by any stretch and could easily sway an election given many of them come down to a handful of votes.
Those people are distributed across the nation. If they were all in Columbus or Detroit you'd have an argument but in reality they're probably distributed roughly the same way the general population is.
There are ~150k voting precincts in the US. 300k people across the nation is probably on the order of a dozen at the most effected precincts. Opening half an hour earlier and closing half an hour later would have a larger effect on ensuring people get to vote.
Could this be an issue of that sentence you quoted being really difficult to comprehend? So they attempted to rewrite it and got it wrong?
I’ve read it 10x and am still baffled. It’s the “voter turnout reduction of ID laws” part that I don’t understand. I guess I should go read the paper itself.
The quotes were my attempt at summarizing their abstract, what they actually wrote was:
> The lack of negative impact on voter turnout cannot be attributed to voters’ reaction against the laws, measured by campaign contributions and self-reported political engagement. However, the likelihood that nonwhite voters were contacted by a campaign increases by 4.7 percentage points, suggesting that parties’ mobilization might have offset modest effects of the laws on the participation of ethnic minorities. Finally, strict ID requirements have no effect on fraud, actual or perceived. Overall, our findings suggest that efforts to improve elections may be better directed at other reforms.
That should be interpreted as "voter turnout reduction due to ID laws," or perhaps "voter turnout reduction as a result of the implementation of ID laws."
I am amazed about low level od voter authentication in the USA. Living in Europe, we get national ID card when we turn 18. Everyone gets it. It is not hard to get it, it does not cost anything, even mentally challenged people get it. When there is an election, you need to show up with your ID card on voting place close to your residence - you cannot show in any voting place but one assigned to you. There they have a printed list with names of all eligible voters in the area, they check your ID card and you vote. When the votes are counted, any ordinary citizen can be present and verify the counts, providing he has registered in advance to be present at vote counting. Empty ballots are counted and verified against number od people that did not show up. American elections seem like a joke.
Your country is likely a unitary state where you vote in national elections with your national ID.
The dynamic is different in the US. The US doesn't have national elections. All elections are run by each individually federated state. The national government of the US does not have the authority to override this.
Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela (when you could actually vote) are also federations (and not the only ones). Brazil's population is 210M and Mexico 126M. They all have national identity cards which can be used for voting like the parent comment says.
If there was will in the US for a national ID, Congress and the powers that be could achieve this within a few years if they wanted.
I am not saying that the US being a federation is the underlying reason for our lack of a national ID card used for voting. It's just part of the context that makes changing the situation difficult.
The reason is the combination of:
1. The power to run elections was delegated to the states
2. States don't want to give up that power
3. The only way to change that would be for the states to vote to give up those powers
Yes, as you point out, not all federations are this way. Many others are missing #1 or #3 above. I pointed out that the US was a federation simply for legal context. As of course, local governments don't really have much power against the central government in a unitary state.
that's great, republicans should hop on issuing a national identity card that can be used to vote in elections, instead of using state-level restrictions as a way to suppress voting.
Democrats would be onboard with a free federally administered voting ID. Republicans wouldn't, though, because it's not about fraud, it's about making it more difficult to vote, because they lose when more people vote, and they literally said as much to the supreme court as a justification for their voter restrictions laws.
(they see it as "political party is not a protected class, so there is no legal prohibition from creating voter laws which are designed to disadvantage their political opponents")
>you cannot show in any voting place but one assigned to you
There have been examples of this being gamed in the US. Gerrymander the county then force your political opponents into the least convenient polling place in the county.
This is the problem. In the US, there is no equivalent universal ID. Voter ID laws keep people out by requiring forms of ID that certain people tend not to have, e.g. requiring a driver's license, which immigrants and inner city residents might not have.
In general the US is much more incompetently and inefficiently administered than many European countries. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the authorities are incapable of setting up a system like the one you describe.
This, of course, depends on where you are. Not every country in Europe has a national ID. Countries which do have one often charge for issuing them. In some cases it is sufficient just to bring your ballot paper to the polling station.
Americans do everything possible to prevent universal, forced identification. I think this is a good thing. It sucks that the GOP are tricking their base into supporting it.
Here in Australia, there are so many checks and balances when it comes to counting votes that it actually disgusted me when I heard some of the games various entities were playing in your last presidential election. The fact that the number of votes cast wasn't released until results were tallied and they kept "finding" more to count was perplexing. That partisan orgs like unions were given the contract to do the counting was also a really strange thing to do. And that scrutineers were kicked out in places was a disgusting act, here they by law must be allowed to watch everything regardless of political affiliation.
We also do not let counters out of the room until everything has been counted and accounted for and have multiple checks along the way to make sure nothing has been lost or added. Seems statistically unlikely to me that individual fraud would make any difference in US elections given how decentralised it is, if anything was happening it'd be powerful players controlling who is counting and how they are deciding which votes count and which don't.
As someone who has worked multiple elections for the Australian Electoral Commission, this is an incredibly rosy view of Australian elections.
You’re thinking of the preliminary count in a polling place. On election night, basically the only thing that’s being counted (estimated) is which of the two (expected) main parties in a seat has the lead. It’s the only thing scrutineers pay attention to - no one watches the preliminary Senate count. Declaration votes (out of area) and below the line Senate votes (complex preferences) aren’t counted /at all/ on election night. No one has ever stopped me from leaving the polling place during a count.
Once the preliminary count is done, the ballots are driven off by the Officer in Charge into the night in his or her personal car for the real count. It’s not hard to be an OIC - it was offered to me while I was still at uni. There’s no particular ethical or vetting requirements to be one, and they’re often older folk who don’t bother reading the rules and requirements, and I’ve seen them do things that are brazenly illegal. Entire boxes of votes have gone missing in the past. We have had to re-run an entire election recently because of it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Australian_Senate_speci...
It’s one thing to be critical of shoddy election practises and I support your indignation, but let’s not fall into tired “America bad” tropes. Elections are hard. We muck ‘em up too.
> And that scrutineers were kicked out in places was a disgusting act
I'm not aware of that actually happening. Here are some details on some allegations that were made, but the gist is that nothing improper actually did happen:
The way I read it, they (unfavorably) compared American elections to Australian ones. Hence "here in Australia" followed by "in your last presidential election".
Anyway, I believe Australia has a prime minister rather than a president, so I don't think they can be talking about Australian elections.
I lived in a state that made it insanely difficult to register to vote, but easy to vote. Registration required two forms of ID, one with your picture, both with address.
A while ago, the state changed the rules so that one form of ID was required to register (photo required) and one form of ID required to vote (photo required).
This made registering much, much easier, which made voting much much easier, especially for young people.
There was national freak out over this. HOLY FUCKING SHIT THE REPUBLICANS ARE REQUIRING IDS TO VOTE! YOUNG PEOPLE AND MINORITIES WONT BE ABLE TO VOTE!
Voting rates went up, especially among the young. The only people who had problems were very elderly people who had lived at the same address for long time (no need to register) and we’re had stopped driving. Most were Republican.
Partisan organizations released non-peer reviewed studies showing the vote was superseded. Partisan publications (for example, Mother Jones) treated these press releases as fact, but mainstream fact checkers pointed out they were bullshit. They have since been largely scrubbed from the Internet.
I can’t imagine why it’s OK to require two forms of ID to register (a consensus position as of 2007 or so), but requiring a single ID to register and vote is a human rights violation.
I'm not sure what to believe myself, but... One explanation which is just barely plausible, but by default is unfortunately the most plausible explanation, is that there is widespread fraud and powerful parties want it to remain in place.
What other reason could there be given the overwhelming evidence that no legitimate voter is stopped by these laws?
I'd love to read the actual paper, not just the abstract.
The statement near the end of the abstract - "Finally, strict ID requirements have no effect on fraud, actual or perceived." - seems surprising to me, and I'd like to see how they arrived at that conclusion.
Yeah individual voter fraud, per all the vote security experts, basically isn't a thing, IE the rare instances never change election outcomes. Voting ID laws are at best security theater for non existent threats.
At worst it's a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise minority voters, for example the NC voting law, where the legislature requested info on racial differences in how people vote before creating their bill.
Of course this suggests that efforts to GOTV helped mitigate the voter ID requirements, which is part of why GOTV efforts and other support for people voting is being targeted now in many states.
It also puts an extra barrier for re-enfranchising already disenfranchised voters.
A way around such shenanigans could be some legislation where the government is required to give everyone an id card for free - and to put the onus on govt for achieving that.
From my perspective, it's genuinely weird that requiring voter id would be disenfranchising... but I know that is how things are in the States. So either stop voter ID laws, or defang them by making IDs trivially available.
But then we need to be careful to make sure the requirements for getting an ID aren't too onerous.
Trying to get a "RealID" for a family member was a nightmare because apparently her ORIGINAL birth certificate from 70 years ago was not acceptable to the asshole behind the desk at the DMV. So we had to get a certified copy from the county this person was born in that bore some seal or stamp the clerk wanted.
Guess who had lost decades worth of birth records, thus requiring us to pay for a special search process that took weeks?
An expensive, time-consuming nightmare start to finish.
There are people out there who have no idea where they were born because their parents didn't tell them, people whose parents held their birth certificates hostage for whatever reason, etc. Lots of people who rent and share an apartment might not have a single utility bill in their name. "Just give us a bank bill" someone says. Welllll in getting all frothy about terrorism we now demand banks verify the identity of their customers using...a government issued ID. The whole thing gets cyclical very quickly.
> Yeah individual voter fraud, per all the vote security experts, basically isn't a thing
While I would allow the possibility of it being a real issue, that’s not really what I meant. I’m most surprised that TFA claims that strict voter ID requirements have no impact on perceived fraud.
> The statement near the end of the abstract - "Finally, strict ID requirements have no effect on fraud, actual or perceived." - seems surprising to me, and I'd like to see how they arrived at that conclusion.
If I had to take a guess, I'd say that voter fraud was already very low to begin with, and the rare occurrences that do happen wouldn't be helped with ID laws.
It's the "perceived" part that I am suspicious of (and I assume the GP too). It makes sense to me that strict ID laws don't do much to fight actual fraud because the systems in place are pretty effective (moreso than ID laws, I'd think, since I've personally rarely had an up-to-date state ID).
But how does it not have an effect on perceived fraud, when all of the people perceiving fraud are arguing for strict ID requirements? I think I know the answer (these people perceive fraud in response to their "team's" loss, regardless). But it would be interesting to read what the authors say.
The perception of fraud is entirely due to loser politicians telling their supporters that they only lost due to fraud, and no amount of voter ID laws will change that.
Most western European countries also have significant voter security measures, although comparisons are often hard to make because they piggy-back voter registration on the mandatory residence registration process. In Germany for example you get a voting card in the mail, but you have to shlep to your local citizens office with proof of residency (lease, etc.) within 30 days of moving. In Georgia you can register to vote entirely on line, but they check your ID at voting time.
No. Your parent is correct in the main, and you're a bit off-topic with your comparisons to other countries. Election security is a function of multiple processes and protocols that work together. The fact that one country does X does not mean that X must be done elsewhere.
In the U.S., it is true that the push for voter ID laws as a supposed fraud prevention measure has been the formulation of one modern political party, as are claims of widespread fraud in general. These claims have been refuted ad nauseum by election experts for years, yet they are still used by that party as justification for voter ID and a raft of other measures that consistently have uneven impacts on specific groups.
What's most recently changed is that, while these false claims were used to preemptively disenfranchise select voters pre-election, they are now being used by the loser in efforts to delegitimize the actual election results.
The effect of this has been for that same political party to now introduce yet more measures in the state legislatures they control. And, in some cases, they have wrested control away from state secretaries, allocating it to themselves.
Your reply does not address the OP's point at all. There is a perception of voter fraud in this country, but no actual fraud. For all the talk about dead people voting, barely any such votes have showed up.
A refutation of OP's statement would involve you actually demonstrating statistics of fraud across the country, not references to foreign countries and their protocols that might differ.
The success of any voter registration protocol should be evaluated through the lens of Type 1 and Type 2 errors in a statistical model. There are almost zero Type 1 errors in the current US protocol. The Republican agitation is trying to increase Type 2 errors, on the faux premise that Type 1 errors are high - which is completely baseless.
It is fashionable in "intellectual " forums to pretend that conservative actions have a legitimate basis, but they are mostly about undermining democracy.
You think the appearance of secure elections functions any differently in the US?
Whether or not election security is an actual problem, one side saying “just trust the process” is not going to be credible. That’s true in America, and that’s true in Taiwan. Hence the elaborate process in Taiwan.
> Although a majority of both Republicans and Democrats express some degree of confidence in the nation's voting system, Democrats are far less confident than Republicans. The current poll shows that 59% of Democrats say they are least somewhat confident that their votes will be cast and counted (including just 13% who are very confident), compared with nearly 9 in 10 Republicans (87%, including 44% who are very confident).
> It's the "perceived" part that I am suspicious of (and I assume the GP too).
Poll citizens and ask how much voter fraud they think happened in the last election, in their state, before a voter ID law is passed. Wait for a voter ID requirement to be passed, and another election to happen. Ask again. Compare. Repeat a few different places if you want to be thorough.
That's one method, anyway.
("Polled citizens' perception of a thing about the world is wildly wrong, and changes in that perception don't follow changes in reality the way you'd hope they would" is a so-common-it's-boring result in political science)
One hypothesis is that the motivation behind voter fraud never had anything to do with evidence suggesting that voter fraud occurs. Voter fraud is an excuse to enact legislation that makes it harder for certain demographics to vote.
If that hypothesis is true, then people will never stop believing in voter fraud until said demographics no longer have any significant representation in politics.
This has been discussed to death, but I'll summarize what I've learned. Anonymous individuals don't get to vote. People who vote without an ID claim a name. At the polling station, they (the poll workers) look for that name on the voter roll. In many states, the voter is required to know an additional piece of information, like their mailing address on the voter roll. If you're not on the roll, then you don't get to vote -- or in some places, you get a provisional registration.
It's possible to exploit this: you can claim somebody else's name, and apparently get away with casting their vote. If that person also votes, then that's easily detected. If the jurisdiction doesn't have a way to separate provisionally-authentic ballots from ID-verified ballots, then the election only needs to be re-done if the number of fraudulent votes is large enough to impact the outcome of the election. Elsewhere, both provisional ballots would be spoiled.
> It's possible to exploit this: you can claim somebody else's name, and apparently get away with casting their vote.
This is made more likely by voter rolls being public. In NC, you can even see if a given person voted in a given election. Not their vote, but whether they voted or not. Which is information you could use to identify identities up for impersonating.
I've voted in a number of elections where my ID didn't match my address. In those situations, they didn't take my word for it, I had to provide an alternative means of proof I am the person I claim to be and that I live where I'm registered.
Also, what states have the individual find themselves on the voter roll? I've always had to provide the proof of my ID/address to a person at the polling station and they would find my ballot.
> Also, what states have the individual find themselves on the voter roll? I've always had to provide the proof of my ID/address to a person at the polling station and they would find my ballot.
In my state you show up and give a poll worker your name, and they look it up in a binder with the list of registered voters for the polling station and cross it off. The binder's open on a card table, so if you have good eyes and can read upside down you could get a name. I'm pretty sure there was a Murphy Brown episode where the title character actually committed vote fraud in this way (to vote before she was old enough).
States do provide voter databases of registered voters (at least to the major parties for electioneering), so if you had access to one you could find a name to use. My state definitely does, because I once got election mail with my voting history for the last 5 or 6 federal elections.
I've never presented an ID to vote. As a registered voter I show up to the polling place, give them my name, and sign a book with my address at the time of registration. That's it. This includes needing a provisional ballot one time because I moved.
Each state is tasked with voter registration/validation. Why provide an ID at all when every single voter and vote is going to be verified against the established voter rolls anyways? Every state has a register/recorder office that validates eligibility to vote at the state and federal level that is far more thorough than asking volunteer poll workers to becoming poll police.
I don't know where you live, but it sounds like people are trying to stifle your voice with what amounts to BS.
Its a felony to vote illegally. Your one vote isn't going to sway the election. The risk to reward ratio is so skewed there is not a problem of people claiming to be other people to cast a ballot.
Yes, it is a felony, but how likely is someone to get caught? How likely is it there will be an audit or investigation?
All it takes is a motivated group of people to pull off election fraud. Someone wouldn't be doing this solo. You don't think mobsters, corrupt politicians, or even foreign intelligence couldn't manage to sway close elections using this method?
> You don't think mobsters, corrupt politicians, or even foreign intelligence couldn't manage to sway close elections using this method?
No, because it's batshit stupid to involve large numbers of people in a conspiracy because the probability of a leak rapidly approaches 100% and your ability to track down the leak rapidly vanishes. Much safer to get a single operator inside the election administration -- "finding" and "losing" ballots, printing bad ballots that "accidentally" leave a candidate off, etc.
Motivated group? You mean 10's of thousands of Americans acting in a concerted effort as they travel from polling place to place to commit felonies? It's fantasy to think this can or will occur without people getting caught.
I don't. I am happy to hear how it could be done if you want offer up any plausible scenario.
To sway any election its needs to be done a couple thousand times at least. How exactly would that work? How many people could you recruit to do it and nobody says anything? How much would be paid per ballot cast?
I posted this elsewhere in the replies but it seems like an open secret. It seems like once the corruption reaches a critical mass, "the system" is no longer interested in thoroughly following up with fraud allegations. It stands to reason that once the politicians who are willing to commit fraud get elected, they appoint people to key positions that are in-debt to the political machine. Prosecutors have to decide whether or not to pursue an investigation. Judges can dismiss a fraud lawsuit for lack of merit or standing. I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to dismiss efforts to actually cut down on corruption, but I just wanted to name a few.
Insecure enough to attract a significant number of people willing to risk a felony? Sounds like it would need a massive conspiracy (busloads of people faking signatures at multiple polling stations) to impact an election. Especially compared to the impact/effort of burning or "misplacing" a box of ballots.
Although possible how would you pull it off at scale? It's hard enough to mobilize voters to begin with. So, would you risk going to jail on an individual basis? probably but let's assume the minimum amount of time it happens probably equals itself out.
At scale you would need to pay people. Now you risk getting caught trying to pay the wrong person. And for what?
I would bet your money is better spent running propaganda web farms or dark money advertising.
There are basically three kinds of voter fraud: in-person voter fraud, mail-in voter fraud, and outright ballot stuffing. Actual fraud mostly occurs with mail-in ballots. Perceived fraud, judging from my recollection of outrage over supposedly fraudulent election results in the past 20 years, focuses mainly on ballot stuffing. Strict voter ID mostly tackles in-person voter fraud, which doesn't feature prominently in actual or perceived fraud.
> There are basically three kinds of voter fraud: in-person voter fraud, mail-in voter fraud, and outright ballot stuffing.
Yea, that's not exactly a complete list. One example is undercounting. Another is changing people's party affiliation, so they cannot vote in primaries.
You tried to simplify the far more extensive and comprehensive list of types of voter fraud into a list of categories. In doing so you removed all actionable information from the threat types. What you did is similar to saying that all computer hacks are remote or local. They are, but so what? That isn't actionable, because it removes all the actual descriptive information.
> Yea, that's not exactly a complete list. One example is undercounting. Another is changing people's party affiliation, so they cannot vote in primaries.
The first example I'd call "ballot stuffing"--it's really a catchall term for shenanigans around turning the actual returned ballots into an official count. This even would cover things like poor ballot design (e.g., butterfly ballots in Florida's elections) that aren't strictly speaking fraud.
The latter example is a fourth category of electoral shenanigans that I'd loosely term voter intimidation; essentially any mechanism by which people are dissuaded from casting a ballot in the first place, which I omitted because most of this category is unfortunately legal.
> In doing so you removed all actionable information from the threat types. What you did is similar to saying that all computer hacks are remote or local. They are, but so what? That isn't actionable, because it removes all the actual descriptive information.
No it's not. While it's true that the ballot stuffing category does contain a rather disparate list of potential frauds, they're all almost entirely solvable by auditing and oversight of the physical process of counting ballots. And more stringent checks on who can cast ballots (which strict id laws purport to be) don't affect it one whit. A more specific look at how to fix an election might dive into the details more, but grouping them in one category doesn't really affect the analysis here.
> The first example I'd call "ballot stuffing"--it's really a catchall term for shenanigans around turning the actual returned ballots into an official count. This even would cover things like poor ballot design (e.g., butterfly ballots in Florida's elections) that aren't strictly speaking fraud
You can call it ballot stuffing, but you are inventing your own definition when you do that.
"Ballot stuffing or ballot box stuffing is a form of electoral fraud in which a greater number of ballots are cast than the number of people who legitimately voted. The term refers generally to the act of casting illegal votes or submitting more than one ballot per voter when only one ballot per voter is permitted." [1]
> The latter example is a fourth category of electoral shenanigans that I'd loosely term voter intimidation; essentially any mechanism by which people are dissuaded from casting a ballot in the first place, which I omitted because most of this category is unfortunately legal.
That is absolutely not voter intimidation. I had my registration changed by someone who did this, so I am well aware of what happens here. I was not intimidated. [2] Voter intimidation is a federal crime and defined in the Civil Rigts Act and the Hatch Act.
> A more specific look at how to fix an election might dive into the details more, but grouping them in one category doesn't really affect the analysis here.
It absolutely does affect the analysis. You should be able to see that, since I pointed out two specific threats that your categories didn't cover. There are more, too. You cannot properly model threats unless you identify the actors, the vulnerability, how the vulnerability can get exploited, and some sort of analysis. You need to create a model of risks, not just pronounce "There are basically three kinds of voter fraud" using an incorrect, incomplete list. If you don't model risks, how do you know your categories are correct? THat's like when Oracle called itself, "Unbreakable". [3] [4]
The analysis is why strict voter ID laws didn't have an effect on actual or perceived voter fraud. So tell me why distinguishing undercounting matters for that analysis.
> Another is changing people's party affiliation, so they cannot vote in primaries.
Aren't the primary elections the business of the parties conducting them and not really part of the democratic process at all, but rather a way for parties to find their favorite candidate to put up for the real election? In that case, it doesn't matter for voting rights if a party excludes someone from their own election, does it?
> Aren't the primary elections the business of the parties conducting them and not really part of the democratic process at all
That's the ideal but not the real-world truth, where the parties are entangled with the legal process. If a person leaves one of the major parties, it is almost impossible for them to be recognized legally as a candidate for a presidential election. That's one of the reasons why you get Communists and Centrists in the same political party. The can't possibly ascribe to the same party platform, yet they are members of the same party.
To me the much bigger problem is this idea of putting inside people on the certification boards, saying the results are laced with fraud and flipping the election to the state legislators. How do you fix that?
Not just putting insider people on the boards. A whole lot of state legislatures this year tried to hand themselves authority to override election results
What this doesn't take into account is the degree to which introducing such requirements can more easily be exploited in future to introduce barriers to voting. We've already seen how far some people are willing to go to undermine the integrity of elections.
This means the real question is, to what extent does the current system contribute to integrity issues? So far, there doesn't seem to be much evidence that it does. So, what is the rationale for introducing additional ID requirements, beyond what already exists via voter registration, matching at the polls, etc.?
Most countries have id requirements, and it's not viewed as a slippery slope towards voter suppression.
As an outsider, I find it really weird how instead of agreeing to id requirements, Sunday-voting, and automatic registration like most countries, Americans prefer to fight the other side's requirements with silly arguments like "We can't vote on a Sunday, that would offend The Lord!", and "We can't use ids to vote because black people don't know how to get them."
> Most countries have id requirements, and it's not viewed as a slippery slope towards voter suppression.
Other countries have actual ID cards. They are issued for free to and required of every single citizen. The US does not: it has a long history of suspicion of national government IDs.
Because of this, a "voter ID" in US states can mean whatever the state legislature wants it to mean, and republican legislatures are often accused of restricting valid forms of identification to specifically those which republican voters have more often than democrat voters.
> it has a long history of suspicion of national government IDs.
I think it's more that the people in power and their supporters have had reason to make government IDs hard to come by for the transient, poor, and other undesirables. Or they simply don't want to 'muh tax dollars' going to the 'lazy bum' on the street getting a government ID card. I think there's also been a fair amount of pushing by the auto industry to make drivers licenses the default ID, too - starting in the fifties you really saw the "you have a car if you're important/Made It" attitude creep into US society.
By the way: did you notice that the politicians shouting loudest about illegal immigration tend to be associated with industries and states that use lots of illegal immigration (like, saaaaay, farming?)
It's not about stopping illegal immigration. It's about them having power over their workers. "Illegals" don't talk to police, public health officials, DAs, OSHA, etc about pesky things like missing/deducted paychecks, workplace safety, violence/theft, etc.
"They're stealing your jobs" is just how they sell it to Joe Q. Public, because one way to win someone over is to tell them that there's someone further down the ladder than them.
It's more an issue that there is no unified, universal ID system in the US. Different states do things differently and have different requirements. I'd be more in favor of an ID requirement if there was a universal, free, accessible ID system in place, but there isn't, and implementing one is a similarly fraught political question.
You could, except currently a SSN is used more like a shared secret or password than a unique identifier. I would think that a green-field approach would be better than stapling yet more functionality onto an overloaded number that was never designed to be used the way we're using it.
The Department of Defense uses EDIPI, which is basically a second SSN-like number used to identify you for less-secure/serious stuff short of healthcare, etc...
Most countries have IDs though… you can’t do anything in most European countries without your ID. If we had to have a specific document to vote that we never need for anything else, we would be having the same arguments as you guys
The difference is that in the US there's no standard ID that's suitable for voting, that everyone has.
Not everyone has a driver's license. It's possible to get a non-driver ID from the motor vehicle department in most states, but not everyone without a driver's license has this either.
There's also no federal ID, other than a passport, which a large number (majority?) of people don't have.
This is a big part of the reason why separating voter registration from voting makes sense in the US. Voter registration allows identity to be confirmed using a variety of documents, which would be less practical to check at polling time.
The "solution" to this (assuming a solution is needed, which no-one seems to be able to justify well) is to have a federal ID or a federal ID standard (like Real ID), coupled with a requirement that every citizen has such an ID.
It's amusing that conservatives are the ones pushing for this "papers please" approach. Apparently their fear of imaginary voter fraud by imaginary immigrants outweighs their fear of a new federal government-imposed requirement that impacts their precious "freedoms".
I'm in favor of a Federal ID. I've never understood the opposition to it, especially considering each of us already has a few ID numbers issued to us by different federal agencies.
>"It's amusing that conservatives are the ones pushing for this "papers please" approach. Apparently their fear of imaginary voter fraud by imaginary immigrants outweighs their fear of a new federal government-imposed requirement that impacts their precious "freedoms".
What I was getting at is, you need an ID card to do many things in America, mostly related to private business and civil services. You need one to open a bank account, doctors offices scan your ID card, you need one to pick up certain prescriptions, etc.. The idea that getting an ID to vote is some onerous burden doesn't hold up when you realize people pretty much need an ID during the other 729 days between election days in a two year cycle.
I think a Federal ID would be better for record-keeping, but even without one, people really should have to provide a robust identity verification document to vote. If someone just needs to show up and say "I am so-and-so" and doesn't need to provide anything but a signature, that doesn't seem secure at all.
Voting on Saturday would work just fine in the US. There's little difference between the two weekend days in the US when it comes to some people working or not on those days (if you work Saturdays, you often also work Sundays; you're typically on a weekend shift in that case). Culturally it's an exceptionally obvious and easy compromise.
A significant number of people, especially those lower on the socioeconomic ladder, are working on weekends.
"Vote on saturday" would skew elections toward those who work M-F jobs.
We need mail-in voting. It would solve so many problems. But the reason one party has fought against it so hard is because stripping certain communities of their precincts and poll workers and such to create massive waits for voting is a key part of their disenfranchisement strategy...and keeping voting as an in-person activity because it does such a wonderful job of keeping The Poors out of polls, thus starving progressive candidates of votes.
> We need mail-in voting. It would solve so many problems. But the reason one party has fought against it so hard
...for other people (their own voters, because of age demographics of the parties, being disproportionately more likely to qualify for mail-in [absentee] ballots under the restrictive rules they prefer to general mail-in availability)...
If the only day to vote was on Sunday, sure. But nobody is being oppressed by having the polls open on an additional day. And what about communities that observe Sabbath on Saturdays?
Personally, I agree, but I can easily see how not being able to vote in person on election day due to religious obligations would run afoul of the Supreme Court.
Most democratic countries don't seem to have a right wing that's been doing its best to undermine the integrity of elections in a way that works in their favor.
The countries where you see that kind of behavior tend to be the ones that have ended up with dictators or quasi-dictators. There's been plenty of serious discussion recently about the risk the US faces of ending up on that road.
Whatever the arguments might have been for this 5 or 10 years ago, now seems like a really bad time to make a change like this. And again, what is the positive case for making the change? What problem is being solved? There already is a voter identification requirement at registration time, and a mechanism for detecting fraudulent votes.
That party has, in internal presentations leaked to the public, stated to their own leadership (paraphrasing) "we are not popular, our platform is not popular. We cannot win elections unless we stop as many people from voting as possible, because our people ALWAYS vote."
They also provide ID for free. A lot of these countries have some form of government-sponsored health care, for which people already have ID by default.
Not American, but from what I understand you would need an ID for e.g. foods stamps and unemployment benefits (searched via Google). I think the same is true when you are hired for a new job as well(?). These are just examples. Can you really live a normal life in the US without a passport, driver's license or State ID?
I have read many times that requiring an ID card to vote in the US is seen by many as undemocratic as certain demographics are hindered from voting. To me this is absurd. To create trust that elections are held without fraud, IDs are an essential building block.
Requiring an ID card without taking steps to ensure those IDs are available easily and for cheap. There are almost no "election security by voter ID" bills that provide the latter. On the other hand, making voter ID mandatory has been accompanied by closure of offices or reduction of hours, increasing wait times and so on. It's clearly a dirty trick.
The ACLU cites a 2006 study which says that 25% of African-American eligible voters lack government-issued photo ID, and 8% of white eligible voters. Those are pretty huge numbers, not to mention the conspicuous ethnic disparity.
In Germany the ID card costs 37 EUR and is valid for 10 years, reduced to 22.80 EUR and 6 years of validity if you're under 24. A passport is even more expensive. No other forms of identification are accepted, but it's also not really necessary since you're required to get an ID card anyways.
The US doesn't require citizens to have ID to exist. That's part of "freedom" in America (I mean this genuinely).
So it is an additional step if you want to vote. Cynical state governments have tried to shape who can vote for them by making IDs mandatory and strategically closing ID offices in certain areas, reducing office hours (among other barriers). It's not a hypothetical situation.
Is DNI the only acceptable form of ID for voting? Are there no free IDs that are also accepted? How long does it take to get a DNI? How convenient is it?
Voter ID laws in the US are weaponized to reduce turnout. Make ID compulsory, then make getting ID really cumbersome (reduce office hours, increase wait times, increase costs).
The US doesn't require citizens to have an ID just to exist. That's part of the "freedom" Americans like to talk about. It sounds like every citizen in Spain already has a DNI so they should be able to vote without additional hassle.
It's the additional hassle to vote that opponents of voter ID laws cite as the crux of the issue. If you pair mandatory voter ID laws with strategic ID office closures (among other barriers), you can influence who can vote. This has already happened; it isn't hypothetical.
Unlike many countries, US doesn't have a national required ID card, so voter ID schemes must resort to other kinds of identification. Republican-controlled states have often restricted forms of identification to those sorts that many democrats may not have in an attempt to discourage them from voting.
>So far, there doesn't seem to be much evidence that it does. So, what is the rationale for introducing additional ID requirements, beyond what already exists via voter registration, matching at the polls, etc.?
Right, as any good security engineer will tell you, the best time to fix a hole is after its already been exploited.
Oh, I've just read on axios about the new "voting rights" bill. As expected, the bill is a book-worth of boilerplate that obscures the important details, but if you search for "identification", you'll see what they're trying to do there.
Again, if this is how software was developed, this bill would be a pull request with 5000 changed files and a million changed lines, mostly refactoring, but there will be a few tiny changes that break the security model. Of course, when you try to point this out, they try to shout you down.
You need an ID to drive, buy alcohol/tobacco, get on an airplane, get state/federal benefits, apply for a bank account or loan, but somehow you aren’t required to prove your identity when voting everywhere in this country.
In New Zealand you have to register months in advanced, you receive a voting ID in the mail and you use this to vote in person along with (from memory one form of ID)
You can register on the spot but you need both ID and proof of address.
Also telling anyone who you voted for on the day is illegal. You can not post about it, because all party voting advertising is banned on the day.
I find this funny when Americans argue about things we figured out in the 90s.
We also have MMP which means you have more than one party so for example Bernie would have his own party.
Not everyone has a mailing address. Some sensible states don't bother with ID at the time of voting. You provide proof of identity when registering and your signature goes into a book. You sign in on voting day and any challenger can compare against the registered copy.
>...and +1.4 percentage points for the effect on the turnout of nonwhite voters relative to whites
>the likelihood that nonwhite voters were contacted by a campaign increases by 4.7 percentage points, suggesting that parties’ mobilization might have offset modest effects of the laws on the participation of ethnic minorities.
So, what they're saying here is that increased efforts to contact minority voters (ostensibly endeavored because the laws were interpreted as punitive towards that group) may have resulted in a slight increase in turnout sufficient to overcome suppressed numbers.
There is also anecdotal evidence that these laws make some in groups who feel targeted by them more determined to vote as a matter of principle (irrespective of campaign outreach efforts).
At the end of the day, however, the requirement that some voters wield outsized determination is not exculpatory for those who seek to disenfranchise them, and these efforts don't stop with voter ID laws. Poll location closures leading to massive overcrowding and long waits in select areas; outlawing efforts to make those who wait more comfortable by, for example, providing water; attenuated hours at select locations; weekend closings; outlawing Sunday/church-sponsored efforts to vote; curtailing of mail-in ballots, etc are just some of the surgically targeted tactics employed.
Doesn't pass the smell test. There is a group spending a lot of time doing this. Do you think it's because it makes no difference, and they're just having fun?
It's a good question but I doubt any good analysis has been done on this. The two different districts / jurisdictions would have to share voter roll data. And, most importantly, there would actually have to be a reason to go looking / do an investigation.
Do you think a state like Indiana (for example) asks New Hampshire for voter roll data to make sure citizens who moved between the two states aren't double voting?
As a person not from States: It is insane to see elections without ID verification. If having a document to verify your identity is "too big of a hassle" to vote - not sure that qualifies voter too choose future for their country
there is an obvious compromise here - require voter ID but only in counties where enough registered voters (say over 95%) have one. Regardless of voting, people not having an ID is a serious problem local governments must solve.
This would be somewhat sensible: start a program to provide the free ID, wait a few years, measure what % of people have it, take it from there.
That won't happen of course (here in the UK). The free ID will be bundled with the legislation to require voter ID, with some pathetic head-start of maybe a few months to a year or so.
This seems like a bit of a departure from one of the authors’ papers from 2017(1). I wonder what the big differences are that somehow the US is immune to disenfranchisement but France isn’t.
I recall in the 2016 election here in NJ I went to vote (we are in a deep red town).
Despite the fact that I voted in multiple cycles in the same town and polling place and the ladies working at the polling station remain unchanged over the years, because my signature was slightly off from the ones in their records they started saying out loud "hey wait a minute this does not seem legit".
They started getting visibly angry and I started getting terrified because I am not white and there were a bunch of semi angry looking Trump people in the room with us.
They asked me for another form of ID so I showed them my drivers license and then they were like "OK all is well" and calmed down.
But still that experience of fear is what I imagine is going to prevent people from coming out to vote, especially in districts where Democrats haven't provided any meaningful reform when they have been in office(see rural areas getting killed under Clinton/Obama). If you combine an electorate that is already discouraged + the fear of altercation it spells doom in the long term.
This culture of fear is what the Republicans want and its what they need to hold on to power amid changing demographics. They will strip the government of every last thing they possibly can on their way out of relevance.
I won't ever give up my right to vote but would I have fought back if they continued pressing the issue? Would I accepted a provisional ballot that may result in my vote being thrown into the trash or becoming ineffective on election day? I don't really know.
>>>This culture of fear is what the Republicans want and its what they need to hold on to power amid changing demographics. They will strip the government of every last thing they possibly can on their way out of relevance.
You do know that there are Republicans who aren't white, and that some of them are very much in favor of improving voter registration?
Eh yeah but their actions have been hostile to minorities since I started paying attention near the end of middle school. The fact that you have a small handful of public figures that try to put on a happy face for the party don't really jive with their actions. Furthermore are you really going to make this argument that the party apparatus operates in good faith after Trump? You could barely make this argument after Bush.
I don't think ANY party apparatus operates in good faith.
Maybe it comes from being in the military, which is harshly meritocratic, reasonably color-blind, and expects people to overcome obstacles. I'd rather work to reform the demographic outreach/culture of an adversarial party with a sound policy platform, than work to overcome the patronizing, low-expectations deconstructionist culture of a party that pays lip-service to my demographic to advance its terrible policy platform.
Sure the Democratic party has well documented corruption. Both parties serve the owner/investment class and not the working(upper/middle/lower) class. No matter what you are not getting any progress in either party. Bernie tried and while he was a historic candidate just due to the size of his movement and the unbelievable amount of grassroots funding, they managed to crush him.
But if I had my pick as a non white person I'd definitely pick Democrats every time. There was a lot of depressing moments during the bush years after 9/11 but when Obama went into office(I was in college) it felt like a weight had been removed from not only me but everyone around me. It felt like the future could be anything I wanted it to be and that good times were ahead. People around me became more optimistic and positive. Yes he did not improve material conditions for many of the states. Even if he was a farce this alone was a very nice thing.
Then Trump brought back those terrible feelings that I couldn't quite explain when I was in Middle/High School. All I know is that whatever the Republicans are selling, i'm not buying ever. In my time on this planet all I have ever seen is them turn the sentiment in the country from optimistic to pessimistic.
The military is pretty objective but I have my doubts. The whole Air Force Academy having a large chapel and the notion that many enlisted and top brass are evangelicals that favor other Christians gets me thinking that it is not so cut and dry. I have considered joining just due to wanting to get that discipline and help to improve my country in some way but I have been advised against it for two reasons. My current salary is many multiples over whatever benefits I could get from the Air Force + multiple stories of racism and intolerance. It makes sense since many recruits are there because they have no other options so you're not getting the cream of the crop but i'm sure there are a lot of serious people in there as well and so in reality it is probably a mixed bag.
Re: Bush-> Obama -> Trump....Your position comes off as very emotive, focused on feelings and sentiment. I looked at Obama's election the way Padme looked at Chancellor Palpatine declaring the First Galactic Empire in Star Wars. [1] Obama ordered an American citizen killed without due process [2] while bombing more countries than Bush OR Trump but hey it's ok, he made people feel nice. Thankfully more black veterans are waking up from the fever dream, and running for office.[3] We have 330 million people, facing a country of 1.3 billion people that are aiming to eat our lunch in this century. The most capable adversary we've faced since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Of course the future is pessimistic.[4][5]
Chapels in the military are non-denominational, and while Christians are prevalent in the senior ranks, leveraging their religion inappropriately is a quick way to be subjected to an Equal Opportunity complaint. The military is ~2 million people strong. Racism and intolerance incidents will be non-zero in any population that size. Compared to the general population in 2021 and America's disintegrating social cohesion, I'd place a bet that the military has fewer per-capita incidents than the general US population. The military is also better-educated than the genpop.[6][7]
Look into becoming an Air Force National Guard or Reserve officer. Part-time military service is the most flexible way to contribute without completely destroying your civilian income stream. Being a Reserve officer is the closest I've found to having my cake and eating it too.
When push comes to shove, this whole ID argument is just shenanigans of blue vs. red, and everyone knows it. Nobody trusts their vote, and nobody even cares about their vote--it's the party they least dislike.
Two completely different concepts. You can vote at home at your leisure. You have to find a block of time and physically appear somewhere to vote in person. Voter ID laws are immaterial to that point.
ID laws aren't really a debate at this point. The overwhelming majority of Americans are in favor of showing some sort of ID to vote as long as said ID is free (i.e. being poor isn't a possible impediment to voting). By 'free', that means free or reasonably free of time as well. People working multiple jobs with children simply don't have time to wait down at the DMV for three hours (if you're lucky) to be able to vote.
But they are up for debate for all the caveats you’ve listed. I have yet to see any plan that resolves the issue of free as in beer and free as in: people can easily obtain said ID with little to no inconvenience.
All of the politicians pushing for ID laws brush away the whole obtaining an ID thing as an already solved problem… except it very much isn’t. Anyone that had to try to visit the DMV in a large city has likely discovered you’re lucky if it’s only a day-long affair.
What matters is that we're all on the same page. Everyone is generally okay with voting ID requirements as long as they're free and everyone is okay with lower costs/lower time investments to get IDs. The fact of the matter is that state budgets are finite and very few politicians are ever going to choose to fund DMVs over schools or public works. As such, we collectively choose to remain in stalemate until such a time when our DMVs function smoother so that we can make IDs free and then require them to vote.
Exactly. It should be provided by the US Government to anyone with citizenship, free of charge and at max convenience.
It's well beyond time for a universal federal ID card, which could serve numerous purposes such as voting, general identification, more easily getting a passport, travel, government benefits & programs, and so on. You get one at birth and then update the photo every N years or if you need to change pertinent information. When I was born I got a Social Security card, there's no reason that shouldn't have been a multi-purpose national ID card instead.
Yes, and getting identification is anything but free in most of the US. Often time you may have to pay to get some other documents (birth certificate, SSN card, etc) first to prove your identity. The threshold of proof for getting an ID in some states is pretty high, and only getting higher with the pointless REAL ID initiative.
Many people in the rural US (which is a ton of people) are hours away from a place that will issue identification.
> People working multiple jobs with children simply don't have time to wait down at the DMV for three hours (if you're lucky) to be able to vote.
Malarkey. I just got my first RealID in California last month, and I was in the DMV for around 20 minutes. And this wasn't in some bougie city with a special DMV.
How nice of you to live in a state that wants people to get an ID and vote, it's not like that everywhere...
Older article but wouldn't be surprised if more states are doing similar things today.
"Many ID-issuing offices maintain limited business hours. For example, the office in Sauk City, Wisconsin is open only on the fifth Wednesday of any month. But only four months in 2012 — February, May, August, and October — have five Wednesdays. In other states — Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas — many part-time ID-issuing offices are in the rural regions with the highest concentrations of people of color and people in poverty"
>I just got my first RealID in California last month
>Make a reservation, show up, done.
California has already done the work in making voting accessible and it isn't califronia politicans arguing for voter ID laws. California isn't a battleground state and is run by people who have pushed to make voting as seamless as possible. Alabama, after passing voter ID laws, then turned around and made it more difficult for people to obtain IDs. [1]
I got mine in April and it involved standing in line for an hour before being let into the DMV to sit in line inside. It cost something like $50, too. I wouldn't call it convenient.
Yet, it makes completely sense for the Democrats to highlight that the Republicans are the ones who are trying to prevent absolutely legitimate citizens from voting because they are an anti Democratic Party.
Because between 2 groups, one which prefers more citizens voting and one which tries to win by preventing citizens from voting, it’s good that the group that encourages citizens to vote wins.
It truly boggles my mind that the US has such a backwards stance on government issued IDs.
Whatever argument you have about why this is a good thing is utterly lacking in substance, because the US has a defacto ID and it's horrendously bad (talking about that SSN).
Just issue a proper ID system for goodness sake, what a stupid set of problems to have in the modern era :/
Voter ID laws don't deter voters and vote suppression schemes can hurt the constituency of whoever is doing the suppressing. That makes me wonder what endgame current proponents of tightening laws and auditing results have in mind.
The goal is to poke holes in the 15th and 24th amendments, which they can wallow out over time.
The SC is more than happy to put limits and exceptions on Constitutional protections. The hardest part is getting that first exception in place. Once it's there, you can slowly bring forth more cases that expand that exception ever more.
Not really. People think the Constitution says things about voiting that is does not say. For example, states could pass laws that people between the ages of 25 and 35 could not vote for President. That is constitutional. I'm not saying it would be accepted, but don't say things are unconstitutional just because you disagree.
"The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age."[1]
Is there evidence that there isn’t ? How would you tell?
(Anecdotally, from talking to my friends and acquaintances from Arizona, I think at least one type of voter fraud is extremely widespread: remaining registered there even after you’ve moved away, because you want your vote to be in a purple state and therefore count more. Most people don’t even think of this as fraud.)
Didn’t Arizona just undergo a very thorough audit from people very determined to find alleged fraud? Why didn’t they find the fraud you describe? I mean, they very loudly claimed they were going to prove fraud occurred and then went through a very public humiliation when they couldn’t after 6 months. I would think if there were a mountain of easily provable voter fraud just waiting to be found for anyone willing to look, they would have found it. Or is it your contention that even they didn’t think to investigate this?
It’s just very frustrating to me that these kinds of claims have been made for decades, and actual laws are being passed predicated on these claims being true. Yet every time evidence is requested, it never turns up. Either this widespread, endemic fraud is so nefarious and perfectly executed that it can’t be detected, or it doesn’t exist at this point.
Why isn’t it incumbent upon the people making these claims to prove them in court? Why can’t they do that? Massive fraud has been alleged at the highest levels of government and they can’t go in front of a federal judge and say that plainly. A lot of people are quick to make claims of fraud in front of cameras, but in front of a judge the word ‘fraud’ doesn’t leave their lips? Why? Until they argue a full-throated systematic voter fraud case on the scale they claim openly in a court of law, I don’t see why anyone should entertain these ideas anymore.
It’s time to put up or shut up with the evidence. Millions of dollars spent, an entire party singularly devoted to finding and preventing fraud above any other legislative agenda, private corporations have been paid millions in taxpayer money to investigate this fraud. Privacy and voting rights are being trampled on in there name of finding and preventing this fraud. It’s not enough anymore to sit back and humor the people making these claims. Millions of people believe it exists and that has been perpetrated on a grand, international scale. There should be mountains of evidence that this kind of activity occurred but hardly a scintilla can be found. Why? because no one is looking hard enough? No. It’s not found because it is not there.
We can only see the abstract, sadly, so it's hard to say what it's actually found. But, I disagree with the headline, for several reasons.
1. Requiring ID to vote requires definition. The various laws hastily passed in the wake of the 2020 election are not all the same. For example, Texas allows you to use a gun club membership as ID but not a student ID [1]. Other states have different requirements for allowed IDs;
2. There's absolutely no evidence this is even necessary. Example: less than two dozen cases of voter fraud from 2020 [2]. Different states have different numbers but over the years we're talking about possibly hundreds of cases;
3. Strict ID requirements are merely one aspect of an overall and coordinated effort of voter suppression by GOP-led state governments aimed at people who tend to vote Democrat.
4. Voter suppression is endemic within the GOP. Example: the Ballot Security Task Force [3] that resulted in a consent decree with the Federal government to try and curb voter suppression. There is a long history, particularly in the southern states in the post-slavery era of denying the right to vote to African Americans through requirements such as owning property or literacy tests not required by white voters;
5. The GOP is by far the biggest source of voter suppression but it doesn't have a monopoly. Example: efforts by the Gore campaign in Florida in 2000 to invalidate military ballots [4]. Note that such efforts are generally wildly unpopular even in the Demoratic voter base.
6. Margins of error in the effects of voter suppression being well less than 1% doesn't mean they aren't significant. That can swing elections.
7. The rush by GOP-led state houses to pass voter suppression bills under the guise of election integrity should be taken as evidence of the effectiveness of the measures;
8. The intangible part of these voter suppression efforts is to deter minority voters from going to the polls and also as virtue signaling to the Republican base;
9. Even though state IDs themselves can be free the supporting documentation might not be. There are a significant number of Americans who don't, say, have a valid birth certificate. Getting such documents if you were born, say, on a Native American reservation can be extremely difficult. Even if you can get all that, it's often painful to even get various forms of IDs. You might have to travel far out of your way and spend half a day or more to get such ID. Some people have the flexibility with work. Some do not; and
9. Poll access isn't universal. Certain areas may have limited polling places that mean queueing for hours whereas others might allow you to vote within minutes.
All of this is why mandatory voting is so important. It fundamentally undermines democracies if the election process itself is politicized. You see this as some states have given the authority to overturn election results by a political figure (eg the Secretary of State).
Denying the right to vote to convicted felons is an example of something that sounds noble but is nothing more than a form of legal voter suppression.
In Australia, elections are organized by a quasi-government body, the Australian Electoral Commission ("AEC"). You vote on a Saturday so polling places are easy to find (ie schools). In your registered district your name will be in a book and when you show up they just cross off your name. Voting out of district doesn't require any special procedure. You simply fill out your details and these are consolidated later to ensure you didn't vote twice.
It's worth repeating that Democrats aren't necessarily against any form of voter ID as this straw man argument is used a lot. There are degrees of voter ID and allowing a gun club membership card while disallowing a university student ID is clearly intended to target Democratic-leaning voters so it should be exposed for what it is.
Point of order, but a Texas concealed handgun license (CHL) is a state-issued photo ID card. It is very much not a "gun club membership." I'm pretty much on board with many of your points, but not that one: a CHL is a state-issued ID, while a student ID is not. Texas's law is internally consistent, if not particularly helpful.
Yes, but student IDs don't even prove state residency (you can be a Florida resident but attend University of Texas in Austin), which is a basic requirement for voting.
>For example, Texas allows you to use a gun club membership as ID but not a student ID [1]
You fell for fake news. A Texas concealed handgun license is not a "gun club membership", it's an official state photo ID that requires a background check, fingerprinting, and an 8 hour course to obtain.
Examples of ways to put your thumb on the scale:
* refuse to accept college IDs as valid for voting, even those issued by the state government because it's a state school (college students are more likely to vote for the "wrong" party). Hunting licenses? Cool (people with hunting licenses are more likely to vote for the "right" party).
* prevent college students who live most of the year in-state, and can prove it, but have an out-of-state driver's license, from voting.
* place extra hoops on people whose name doesn't match their birth certificate, make them produce every document with every change and toss their registration if there's a typo (this mainly affects married women, who are more likely to vote for the "wrong" party). This is an effective way to disenfranchise a lot of older women who don't have a current driver's license.
* close as many DMV offices as you can in counties where people don't vote your way, restrict the hours on the remaining offices.