It is strange that showing ID to vote is controversial in the US and that providing basic ID to citizens for free to allow them to vote is a problem that seems difficult to solve (or want to solve).
My anecdote: I am an EU citizen living in another EU country. As such, I am permitted to vote in local and European elections. When I moved to my current village I registered with the local town hall online. I sent a scan of my national ID card (for my home country) and they registered me to vote for the elections I’m eligible to vote for. Ahead of the elections, they post me a physical election card telling me where to vote (always the same place in the village), and on the day I take my card and ID and vote.
It’s basically frictionless. It’s no problem to register online with a foreign ID document, and it’s no problem to present a foreign ID card alongside my election card on the day when I vote.
If I turned up to vote without my election card or my ID, I would be refused the chance to vote. That makes sense to me and showing ID to vote is not questioned by anyone.
Showing ID to vote wouldn't be controversial in the US if states made it easy to obtain a valid ID for the purpose. But states routinely use it as a backdoor mechanism to prevent people from voting.
There's an excellent documentary by Channel 5 (formerly All Gas No Brakes) where he tries to work with a group of homeless people in Las Vegas to get them papers and the process is extremely difficult. Like bordering on impossible.
>where he tries to work with a group of homeless people in Las Vegas to get them papers and the process is extremely difficult. Like bordering on impossible.
That seems like the worst case scenario though? I don't think homeless people should be disenfranchised, but at the same time it's unfair to pretend the typical experience of getting a voter id resembles whatever the TV show is depicting either.
"But these marginalized group of people isn't something we need to worry about right?"
But even setting aside homeless, US states have a very documented, very public history of disenfranchising African American voters.
* 1890-1960 you've got "literacy tests" that would routinely fail black voters but allow white voters through
* 1800-1960 you've got poll taxes which was used strategically in places to harm black & sometimes even poor white voters, mostly to suppress black voters. This by the way is where a lot of the sensitivity comes up around driver's licenses and ID cards - it's frequently referred to as a modern day poll tax.
* "Grandfather" clauses where if you grandfather could vote before the Civil War then you could bypass literacy tests & poll taxes.
Let's fast forward lest you think this is an "old" problem.
* In the 1960s you've got racial gerrymandering which starts to become popular as previous mechanisms are disallowed (this by the way still happens today & the GOP will frequently try to whitewash it as a political move and it just so happens that the Democratic party is predominantly black & the current SCOTUS has allowed that kind of fig leaf).
* Voter roll purges frequently seem to target black communities.
* Felon disenfranchisement laws seem "equal access" until you realize that African Americans are jailed in a 2:1 ratio to white people.
* North Carolina in 2013 cut early voting and same-day registration specifically targeting Black voters (as ruled on by the 4th circuit). Alabama in 2015 closed DMVs and polling places making it hard to get an ID AND to vote (closures centered in majority-Black counties). Wisconsin in 2016 had DMV clerks caught on tape intentionally giving incorrect information to deter voters from getting ID. Georgia in 2018 closed a huge amount of polling places centered in black majority districts. Texas as well (these counties had been protected by the VRA).
Sure, the most impacted tend to be poor people, but regardless of income, it's almost always got a racial bent by most of these power centers. Pretending like racism is a solved problem in America is being willfully blind.
> but at the same time it's unfair to pretend the typical experience of getting a voter id resembles whatever the TV show is depicting either.
"Typical" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Is it typical in your socioeconomic class? No probably not. Is it typical in terms of many millions of people experience this problem every election cycle? Yes.
> when I specifically acknowledged that homeless not being able to get id is a real issue.
In one breadth you acknowledge it and then say "but is it really that big a deal?" in the next. That's minimization.
>"Typical" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Is it typical in your socioeconomic class? No probably not. Is it typical in terms of many millions of people experience this problem every election cycle? Yes.
Do you honestly think the median person who can't vote because of voter ID laws is experiencing the same level of difficulty as a homeless person trying to get an ID? If not, then maybe you shouldn't accuse other people of ""Typical" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here".
You're somehow creating this weird dichotomy where if someone is struggling more then another person can't be experiencing difficulty either. It's possible for both problems to exist and you're playing some weird competition of "well if someone has it worse then your issue isn't as bad". No, both problems are bad and trying to stack rank between them is weird - is disenfranchising black people because of racism worse than disenfranchising the homeless? It's still disenfranchisement at the end of the day.
Pretending like voter ID laws are about the median voter is being willfully blind. If it was, they'd be pared with "free ID" legislation and making sure there's polling places commensurate with the size of population centers. But it's not - it's always purely about disenfranchising people. I'm all for voter ID laws if and only if they're pared with making voting easier. As standalone measures intended to harm specific groups I'm not in favor of them.
It can be incredibly difficult and time consuming to get a birth certificate if you have lost yours. If you work full time, you'd have to take off for an unknown time period (typically multiple hours) to stand in line at a court or other facility that provides them. In some cases, people just don't have the option to take that time off and/or lack vehicle access to get there. Then there's a fee to get a copy, lots of forms you and your relatives have to sign & get notarized. Finally, if you're successful, then you get the opportunity to make an appointment to wait at line at a DMV location. In Texas, they have severely limited hours since COVID.
I think it's become significantly worse since COVID & REAL ID requirements, but it's always been a Kafkaesque nightmare to try & get the proof of who you legally are. And, not to mention, it's a paper form that you can't just pull up digitally, so if you don't take precautions, it's easy to misplace.
Oh man the birth certificate thing is ridiculous. I had to get a new Id from scratch recently and it was the most painful process
The state I was born in decided to outsource the handling of birth certificates to some shit tier consulting firm.
In order to get my birth certificate shipped to me, I would have to wait over six months simply to process my request (ostensibly due to Covid, but this was 2023). It would have been quicker for me to walk hundreds of miles and get it in person. Thankfully I lucked out and found an old one.
Just a reminder that this is the shit politicians mean when they talk about privatizing government services.
For non-US contrast, when I needed a birth certificate recently, I filled an online form and the next day I received a digitally signed pdf by email. It was free.
Not just a slow turn-around time, but as I recall, it also cost me $90 to get my copy. That's not much for most of us, but to someone living paycheck to paycheck, it may be insurmountable or nearly so.
Having each section of our government and it's services privatized it's a whole other issue as well. We're watching the same thing that happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union (and all the Warsaw pact states) happen here in the U.S. right now: the organs of the state being shut down & sold to the highest bidder to create a loyal oligarch class.
Slowly but sure, the USPS, the NWS, and public broadcasting is being destroyed so private entities can scoop up the leftovers or take over in their stead.
To add to this, there’s friction from the citizen side of things with a relatively high level of distrust in government that’s been present for decades. If you go out deep enough into the boonies for instance you can probably find people who still don’t have government ID of any type despite being native born and prefer to keep it that way.
In my state I bring two forms of ID and a couple of bills to the DMV and I’m issued a same-day license?
How does that compare to a notoriously unfriendly nation like Germany?
In any case, my understanding is virtually any nation in Central and South America requires identification to vote. If the third-world poverty stricken nations make it work there is no reason the rich United States cannot.
You can't use your driving license under the proposed SAVE act, as it's not proof of citizenship. Only a few states offer "extended" driving licenses, which do, but also need to be requested separately in most (or all?) states that offer them IIRC. For every other state: you will have to use a passport, birth certificate, or a separate state ID card.
> Only a few states offer "extended" driving licenses, which do [prove your citizenship]
If anyone is wondering, an enhanced drivers license is not the same as a "REAL ID". A "REAL ID" does not indicate citizenship status, which the SAVE act requires.
OK now we just need to find out how well it works for thousands of other people from different states, social classes, and skin colors and then we'll have some real data.
assuming that you're talking about a driver's license, you're leaving out the important steps of passing driving tests and, more importantly, having a car.
In GA, to pick on the state I was living in when they started instituting these rules, they cut DMV locations at the same time as they started adding the ID requirements (or trying to, I moved and don't know the current status of their rules). Yes, the state ID was free, but their actions at the same time, intended or not, made it harder for people to get the free ID.
Which, to reinforce the point, is the actual situation here in America.
All the support systems that help ID cards be fairly distributed to citizens are under-documented for the populace and under-supported by the administration.
It's ripe for the authoritarian takeover that is currently underway here.
The kind of actual voter fraud that ID requirements would prevent is extremely rare. There are better ways to rig elections than hiring thousands of people to physically show up at different polling centers and vote several times under different names. Even disregarding the fact that voter ID laws are (and historically have been) widely abused to disenfranchise specific groups in the USA, what do you actually gain by requiring ID?
Preventing non-citizens from voting. Some counties in the US have almost half of the population who are non-citizens. It's great that we have so many people wanting to come to the states, but they can't vote until they become citizens. This is not a controversial issue anywhere except in the US.
> There is no evidence that unauthorized immigrants, green-card holders, or immigrants on temporary visas are voting in significant numbers, despite some claims that “millions” of noncitizens are voting in U.S. elections. In fact, audits by election officials and numerous studies reflect that voter fraud by noncitizens is extremely rare.
It’s great that those organizations say it’s uncommon. But this shouldn’t even be an issue. It doesn’t take many votes to tip a close election. Requiring ID like every other country is the common sense thing to do. And it helps build confidence in the election process without the need for organizations to try and demonstrate that the election was legitimate after the fact.
As an analogy, let's say I'm triaging a broken neck, a burn, a gunshot wound, a compound fracture, a stab wound, a broken toe, and a hangnail.
If Voter ID were to be placed somewhere on here, it would be below hangnail.
This is smoke and mirrors nonsense that is using minorities and trans people as a scapegoat and distraction.
How much fucking richer are people getting? Poor people have been convinced by rich people that their problems are the other poor people. It's insane. You can pull this pattern out of every modern fascist government and yet people are lacking on to it like a bunch of suckers. It's embarrassing. We should be fucking ashamed of ourselves.
That's a specious argument because the voter ID problem requires basically zero resources. Just mandate voter ID, problem solved. Practically every other first-world country does, including progressive European countries.
Back to the triage analogy, there is a person with a compound fracture that is losing blood. The gsw needs care. We need pressure on that artery.
We're arguing over the color of the bandaid for the hangnail.
That's why I don't give a fuck about voter ID, because the people that give a fuck about voter ID have been fucking duped, and I don't know how to reason with that human, so I just have given up trying and scream into the void.
If somebody will streamline the process and actually fund some DMVs to get this done I'd be all for it - but they won't, because it's not the point, they'll just mandate it as a form of voter suppression without doing anything to fix the infrastructure problem.
Common sense isn't saying "oh there's no ID required at the polls? Illegals must be tipping elections", it's recognizing that there are armies of people auditing these elections each cycle. Irregularities are caught and people challenge results in court all the time. In practice, if you tried to commit voter fraud, I think you'd find it very hard to accomplish (especially if you're trying to change the outcome)
Even in your ideal scenario where ID is a hard requirement and nothing should slip through the cracks, you could still introduce doubt somewhere in the chain (e.g. did the poll worker actually check your ID?)
If ID is required, then your whole “Illegals must be tipping elections" argument just goes away. People keep making this debate in the US of “we need ID to prevent election fraud” vs “we can’t have ID required because ID can be hard to obtain”. It’s just silly. If you take a step back and make it easier to get an ID than the whole things resolves itself. The pro-ID people are happy Because only registered voters can vote and the non-ID people are happy because voting is accessible. The real question is, why are they not doing that? Every other country can do it, why not the US? Why do we have to be stuck in this silly debate forever?
And I don’t believe the whole “the mean republicans won’t let us!” narrative. Democrats controlled the executive branch 12 of the last 16 years and control half the states. If they care about voters rights, why haven’t we tried to fix this?
I'm not sure if you've ever voted, but States without ID requirements (about 15 of them total) don't just let you walk in and cast a ballot anonymously. If you were trying to commit fraud, you'd need to know a combination of things about the person you're pretending to be and sign the poll book or an affidavit[0]. Now try scaling that process up enough to change the outcome... you can't.
Your assumptions about lack of ID = easy fraud is misguided.
> Every other country can do it, why not the US?
Elections are handled by the States themselves and so trying to tackle this on a federal level through the executive or Congress probably wouldn't go over very well considering it'd go against the constitution[1] (although that doesn't seem to be that big of a problem these days)
You basically just disregarded the comment you replied to and doubled down on your original idea.
You are saying that the problem would be a non-problem if only we had voter ID was. However the evidence before you (and that includes evidence collected by conservative organizations that generally align with politically motivated voter suppression) is that the problem is effectively already a non-problem, due in part to the many other controls in place around voter registration and vote counting. Meanwhile there is quite a bit of evidence showing that your favorite solution to the non-problem is itself problematic, measurably so in the historical record.
You are of course welcome to continue believing whatever you want to believe. But it's hopefully obvious by now to anyone reading this thread that your beliefs are not aligned with facts.
It's like arguing that Python is bad because it has dynamic types, and if we all just adopted static types in Python then all type errors in Python would go away. Even if that is true, it's a ridiculous position to hold.
If you want voter ID to be a thing, then you need to first establish a nationwide ID system that is equitable in terms of access. Until that exists, voter ID is a bad idea in the USA.
I think I have been convinced by this thread that risks of no-ID voting is fairly low. Certainly not nearly as big of an issue as I thought when I first posted.
I still maintain that this should be a non-issue. ID’s are issued by the state, and they are the entities responsible for voting and voter registration. You don’t need a national database to fix this.
The lawmakers that demand ID for voting also work to reduce access to ID. The most obvious way is just closing facilities that issue IDs, but also through fees and documentation requirements.
American exceptionalism is a real thing, unfortunately. And what I've found is that when confronted with a flaw or aspect of their society that could be improved, Americans tend to work backwards from the problem and try to explain away the problem, while inventing ridiculous hypotheticals for why other countries implementations won't work.
See: this thread and voter ID, any kind of firearm laws, gerrymandering, lack of public transport, etc.
Apart from the fact that you are basically disregarding all of the detail explanations on why the US is in fact different when it comes to voter ID, all of the things you mentioned are primarily decided by states, with relatively federal authority beyond the ability to withhold funding conditional on states adopting certain policies, which is a very crude instrument that is only used in a handful of circumstances like establishing a nationwide minimum drinking age. And what you will find is that there is a tremendous amount of heterogeneity across states in all of those categories.
I don't disagree. My comment has little to do with that.
Let's take the fact that sales tax isn't baked into the price in the US, a common criticism of the US. I understand the sales tax is different per state. Not having the sales tax baked in is an annoyance, and I believe almost everybody would agree having it baked in would be an improvement.
I don't understand why Americans work backwards to try and explain it away. I've genuinely seen comments such as:
"What if the sales tax changes often? Then they have to reprint all the labels" (does this actually happen that often?)
"They have to print different labels for each state" (Many stores already print different labels for regional pricing, or use e-ink)
"It's not that hard to just compute +X%, just get better at math" (It's not hard but what's wrong with transparency and clarity with the price?)
It's that kind of discussion that my comment is referring to.
> It is strange that showing ID to vote is controversial in the US and that providing basic ID to citizens for free to allow them to vote is a problem that seems difficult to solve (or want to solve).
One of the blockers to a national ID system in the US, that would result in voter ID no longer posing any substantive obstacle to voting, has been anti-government paranoia; but another, if you're not aware, has been fundamentalist Christianity and its eschatology -- fundamentalist Christians may associate the idea of a national ID with the "mark of the beast".
The amusing thing here of course is that while Trump's attempt to unilaterally impose ID rules is illegal, if it were successful, it would likely be an own goal. Formerly, the sort of person who is likely to not have any sort of ID -- someone disconnected from any systems that would require it -- was more likely to vote Democratic than Republican, but in recent years, this has reversed. While I can't cheer for breaking election laws (or for a court ruling that this is in fact legal, because it shouldn't be considered so), it would at least be amusing if this backfired.
> associate the idea of a national ID with the "mark of the beast"
This was absolutely true during the 2000s.
The huge irony is that having a national ID (central authenticator issuing globally unique identifiers) is the only way to protect PII, at the field level, at rest.
Per the Translucent Database strategy. Which I won't repeat here. Unless the peanut gallery develops a genuine interest.
In other words, not having Real ID (or equiv) enables our panoptic surveillance capitalistic dystopia.
There was plenty of it in the lead-up to 2000, too. I had a family member who in the late 90s got swept up in some of the religious internet mania surrounding the mark that was tying it to the Y2K bug and all sorts of other things. It remains some of the most bonkers stuff I’ve ever seen, even in the modern era of heightened internet craziness.
My anecdote: I am an EU citizen living in another EU country. As such, I am permitted to vote in local and European elections. When I moved to my current village I registered with the local town hall online. I sent a scan of my national ID card (for my home country) and they registered me to vote for the elections I’m eligible to vote for. Ahead of the elections, they post me a physical election card telling me where to vote (always the same place in the village), and on the day I take my card and ID and vote.
It’s basically frictionless. It’s no problem to register online with a foreign ID document, and it’s no problem to present a foreign ID card alongside my election card on the day when I vote.
If I turned up to vote without my election card or my ID, I would be refused the chance to vote. That makes sense to me and showing ID to vote is not questioned by anyone.