Why this stuff is even an issue is mind-boggling to me.
In Canada we vote completely anonymously on a piece of paper. ID is verified at the entrance to the voting area, but your identity is _in no way_ associated with the piece of paper you mark your vote on. The ballots are counted by hand with numerous bystanders/observers of whatever affiliation. It just works. We have no need for digital (aka hackable/tamperable/buggy) voting system.
It's complicated in the US because it's the states that administer elections and IDs. Everyone does it differently, with different equipment, ID requirements, and allocation of election resources.
Voter ID, for example, is contentious because a state can influence election turnout through decisions on where ID offices are located and when they're open.
Edit: I always find it ironic that the Republican party--the party of limited government--wants people to have to go to the bastion of efficiency known as the DMV (!!!) in order to vote.
Also some states have restricted early voting times and reduced the number of polling places open in some (typically poor non-white communities that vote more democrat) as a way of making it harder for certain minorities to vote. [0]
> The U.S. Supreme Court rebuffed a Republican bid to revive a strict North Carolina voter-identification law that a lower court found deliberately discriminated against black voters, handing a victory to Democrats and civil rights groups.
> The appeals court found that the law’s provisions “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision” and “impose cures for problems that did not exist,” concluding that the Republican-led legislature enacted it “with discriminatory intent.”
I always find it ironic that the Republican party--the party of limited government--wants people to have to go to the bastion of efficiency known as the DMV (!!!) in order to vote.
Is it ironic? Republicans aren't calling for the abolishment of the DMV for driver's licenses. Requiring ID to vote is inline with requiring ID to drive.
I find it interesting the Democrats seem to idolize European governance, except for the part where requiring ID to vote is the norm.
edit: fixed typo - requiring id to vote is inline with requiring id to drive
Dems problem with requiring ID is that it just so happens that those proposals are always alongside attempts to make it more difficult for poor people to get IDs in the first place. Dems would have no issue requiring ID if republicans would agree to give every US citizen an ID for free.
Voter ID laws are simply an attempt to keep poor people and minorities from voting and honestly it's sickening.
Well, this exactly should be the Democrats proposal - but for some resaon it isn't. It would be an easy way to pull wind out of the sails of republicans.
They are also an attempt to keep ineligible people from voting. There are positives to the argument that you can only ignore if you want to vilify the person making it.
Preventing ineligible voting is red herring for suppressing legitimate voters, by creating extra hoops to jump through for certain classes of citizens.
I vilify the argument that voter fraud of the kind which would be addressed by voter ID exists at any meaningful scale in the US. It is putrid. Used as an justification for mass disenfranchisement, it is repugnant.
And what are the consequences if you don't get this now mandatory (federal?) ID? Presumably some sort of passport card like thing that doesn't actually let you travel across borders. What if you don't have the documentation you need? What if you don't have the time to go to the offices that provide these IDs?
For a lot of people, the cost of getting the Equivalent ID to a driver's license isn't the big issue. All the other things are.
But it is an easy fix. I agree that there should be universal voter registration, and see no reason why we can't issue voter registration cards with a photo on them, which then serve as a valid form of identification for whatever information we choose to make publicly available on them.
There's a scaling difference between the US and Europe. In the US, you might live a 4 hour drive from the nearest city large enough for a DMV. If you don't own a car, getting there and back can be a major obstacle.
The democrats are never going to call it a poll tax though because once you start calling statutory requirements to jump through non-free hoops to exercise rights "poll taxes" you've just paved the way to overturning a whole lot of gun control stuff.
Poll taxes are expressly forbidden by the 24th Amendment. I'm sure people will try and make arguments based on the 2nd Amendment, but they're really not comparable.
A photo ID is not a poll tax though. Just like requiring people to go to a polling place is not a poll tax. Just like people having to take time off of work is not a poll tax.
> Requiring ID to vote is inline with requiring ID to drive.
One of those things is an inherent right of citizenship. The other is a privilege that requires proving one has allegedly mastered the skills and knowledge required to safely practice it.
The reason should be obvious, people without ID are likely poor, and likely to vote for Democrats. Voter fraud is just misdirection on the part of Republicans.
Voter ID is required to register. At which time it is verified and eligibility is adjudicated.
Identity is confirmed when a ballot is issued. For postal balloting, which is not opposed by Republicans, your address is proxy for identity. One exception is North Dakota; no ID is required, because presumably poll workers know their neighbors.
The issue is what forms of ID are required to be issued a ballot.
Pro democracy persons who support enfranchising their fellow citizens are content to accept many forms of official ID to confirm identity.
Anti democratic persons who openly advocate wide spread disenfranchisement demand restoring unconstitutional poll taxes.
That is not necessarily true in the US. If I vote in person on election day in my town (I usually vote by mail or earlier at town hall) I give my address but do not have to present an ID.
You replied: "That is not necessarily true in the US."
Yes, yes, yes. There are always exceptions in the USA. No one person can know them all.
Because every jurisdiction is a snowflake. And everything keeps changing. Causing us all to talk past each other. No small part of the challenge talking about this stuff rationally.
For your jurisdiction, the powers that be determined that your signature was sufficient verification, which can be compared against the signature on file (your registration), just like with postal ballots.
I live in what is almost certainly a perfectly typical town in the Northeast US. And it's fully compliant with Massachusetts law.
Which is just one state as you say. But, if you follow the news, requiring ID is a very contentious topic that's often associated with disenfranchising voters so I assume it's not the norm.
Left unsaid in the kabuki over voter ID is The Correct Answer:
Universal automatic voter registration. Like every other mature democracy.
We now have a handful of complete rosters. Of everyone living and dead. Updated in near real-time.
We know with complete certainty if someone is eligible to vote.
We could just use any of our existing national demographic databases (NSA, Planitir, Facebook, LexisNexus, ChoicePoint, etc) for good governance. Instead of 50+ mutually incompatible chaotic mutant voter registration databases.
(Related: Just do a query, instead of walking around with clipboards every 10 years and doing a partial head count.)
Why don't we use the resources we already have to moot this issue?
> Universal automatic voter registration. Like every other mature democracy.
Exactly this. Every citizen should be automatically able to vote without any effort on their 18th birthday. I personally think it shouldn’t even require being 18, but should be permitted if elections are happening during your 18th year, but you haven’t hit your birthday yet—nobody turning 18 in 2020 should be unable to vote for the next president just because their birthday is after Election Day. We should be doing all we can, on the public dime, to the point of begging and dragging people to the nearest booth to participate in their government.
I think post offices are the perfect first place to look to for handling this. Far more citizens live in close proximity to a post office than a dmv. And as needs require and areas permit, we can look to libraries, state universities, and community colleges as additional points where one can handle voting needs—even casting ballots.
If the federal government was serious about these voter ID cards and the goal truly was more reliable elections then we would be seeing real conversations about cost and a deployment strategy. The very fact that they are trying to do this nearly for free is, to my mind, proof positive that they have the same goals as the politicians who are agressively gerrymandering: fewer people voting.
What is the overlap between people who drive and people who can vote? How were the location of DMV and RMV offices chosen, were they selected to be accessible to every citizen? Who trains people at the voting locations to validate ID cards? Is there a physical device that scans and helps validate these ID cards? What does that cost?
Post offices make much more sense, they tend to be accessible by nearly everyone. But there has been no talk of providing these cards through post offices. Partly because of cost, training and the increased workload on the post office. Partly because the goal is to prevent voters from lawfully voting.
Even if you feel that the DMV or RMV is a reasonable place to issue these cards, where is the pushback from states who have to staff up in order to provide these cards? How long will these cards last before expiration? In MA, a driver's license only lasts two years, ID cards last five.
The whole thing, in my opinion, is an obvious sham.
> In MA, a driver's license only lasts two years, ID cards last five.
"Your Massachusetts driver’s license is valid for five years, unless it is your first license
which expires on your fifth birthday after the date of issue, or until the end of your
authorized stay in the U.S. (whichever comes first)."
>I always find it ironic that the Republican party--the party of limited government--wants people to have to go to the bastion of efficiency known as the DMV (!!!) in order to vote.
Even worse is that there is wide bi-partisan support to require people to go through the DMV for the ability to drive on public roads, something that impacts a person's day to day life far more than voting. This is especially true of the poor who cannot afford to uber and those located in areas without public transport.
I'm pretty libertarian. And, admittedly, the "licensing" requirements associated with driver's licenses in the US are fairly minimal. But are you suggesting that literally anyone ought to be able to hop in a car and drive it around public streets?
I had my license suspended once and at the time I lived in a city with mild public transit. To go get it renewed was a 6 hour ordeal that I can't imagine having to do if I were living paycheck to paycheck. Spend an entire day not making money so you can spend another days earnings so that you can go vote, all because of a political agenda, not any real issue.
Right, I was making the assumption in this case that a driver's license would be sufficient for voter identification and that if someone didn't have a driver's license, then obtaining one or an equivalent is a burden that many poor people cannot afford.
My point is that any argument about the DMV being a bad place to get a voter id applies even stronger to the (arguably) more important action of getting a driver's license.
If one accepts the argument with regards to a voter id, then why would they reject it with regard to a license?
The opposing party (in the US) will make the offices where identification is offered difficult to get to. Times when the DMV or RMV is open will shrink, some states will require an extreme amount of paperwork in order to get identification. We might see some states close some DMV or RMV offices.
Keep in mind that DMV and RMV office _assume_ that people have vehicles. In the case of voters this is not the case.
It's like gerrymandering but in this case what's being manipulated is the ability of voters to get these cards. In many cases it is racist.
This seems like something that could be mitigated by legislating where voter registration offices are located (based on census data perhaps) and their hours of operation and documentation requirements, including an appeals process.
I agree. I think the fact that these aren't discussion points is important. Steps could be taken to ensure that everyone entitled to a card gets one but I suspect there is a significant cost associated with that. So far cost hasn't really been a big part of the discussion.
As an aside, in the US, there's a history of not needing papers to get around or prove who you are. My grandfather fought in World War II and this was an important issue for him. There likely are people in the US opposed to a national ID card for similar reasons, fear that police will start demanding you carry your card at all times. I have no idea if they might be numerous or not.
The welfare state was much smaller in the 40s. Things have changed, and people need to be "means tested" in order to implement these government programs.
>The opposing party (in the US) will make the offices where identification is offered difficult to get to. Times when the DMV or RMV is open will shrink, some states will require an extreme amount of paperwork in order to get identification. We might see some states close some DMV or RMV offices.
Getting a photo ID is a infrequent event. That makes gaming the ID acquisition process a means of disenfranchising voters ineffective.
That is incorrect. In Massachusetts, for instance, you have to renew your license every two years. I believe you need a new photo (requiring a trip to the DMV) every four years.
Your next thought might be along the lines of accepting expired ID for voting purposes. That's an interesting idea but unlikely to be accepted. In Massachusetts, for instance, you can't buy even a six pack of beer if you cannot produce a valid driver's license. Expired licenses are as good as no license at all in that case.
It pains me to admit it, but you are correct. I was on my phone and misread the page.
Still, the life span of these cards could be managed for political gain. Perhaps if the majority part in the state house changes, the valid lifetime for only the ID cards could be shortened.
We have ID cards in Massachusetts, you can get one of those without needing to take the driving exam. There is a "LiquorID" card that lasts five years, I can't find any information on the "MassID" card but it's probably good for five years as well.
Thank you for asking the question, I had assumed these cards lasted as long as a driver's license and that is not the case. :-)
You make a good point in that these voter ID cards might have a longer expiration then a driver's license. To my knowledge the expiration period of the ID isn't a part of the legislation. In that case we can probably expect to see the length of time vary from state to state. In that case I would suspect that state's with a shorter valid period might be trying to manipulate the number of legal voters.
> Times when the DMV or RMV is open will shrink, some states will require an extreme amount of paperwork in order to get identification.
The U.S. sounds more and more like a dystopia to me. In Germany having an ID is a matter of fact, you get a new one every few years and they glue an updated adress on its backside when you change your main adress. The times when you can get it updated might be inconvenient but you are required to have a valid one, so you just have to spend a vacation day every few years on it - the horror.
> In many cases it is racist.
How about trying to improve on the current state of afairs instead of complaining while keeping the barndoor wide open so the racists can continue doing as they currently do?
In my opinion there is no real issue with requiring ID in the US, they are inexpensive and not hard to get. If someone doesn't want to spend $20-$30 and take the time to get an ID, they don't want to vote very much. Although I strongly believe in progressive taxation, this is such a small sum for such an important part of civic life it is a strange hill to die on.
I very much think the right does attempt to exclude certain voters, and does use Voter ID regulations as part of a larger strategy regarding voter disenfranchisement. But it is a relatively easy fix that could be calmly resolved with common sense regulations, like other commenters in this thread have mentioned regarding requirements for physical location and hours of operation for voter registration/id centers. So it sometimes appears people (in this case the left) would rather have something to cry about than just calmly fix the loophole the opposition is trying to exploit.
In brief, the real issue is that actual attempts to cooperate and govern have died, to be replaced by grandstanding (when not in power) and scorched earth practices (when in power). I blame first past the post systems, and think this is an inevitable result. I would welcome the existential requirement for political parties to cooperate which comes with a larger spectrum of parties in power, as a natural effect of more effective proportional representation.
The few government related times I had to use it since I have the current one: once to have the adress updated after changing my main residence, once to get a passport, three times when voting.
The last time I had to deal with the police they just asked for my drivers license. Evil dystopian government keeping track of people who drive past red lights. Even in the U.S. you can't escape that.
I was taking issue with the characterization that the US is dystopian based on voter id arguments. You don't need an id to live in the us, you don't need one to vote in many states, and the contexts in which you would need one make sense.
If you contrast that to a country that has government mandated ids just because, then that's clearly the more dystopic example.
In the US there is no such a thing as a universal ID. The closest thing is the state drivers license, and statistically poor communities tend to drive less for various reasons, so for them it is an extra hassle to go get a driver license OR EQUIVALENT ID just for the purpose of voting. The policy is not racist on his face, but a minimal context awareness is enough to understand the ultimate purpose.
In addition, trying to source IDs tends to surface some historical issues that we usually don't think about. One big one is that everyone has a birth certificate -- yet, if you weren't born in a hospital, you may not have such a certificate.
This is an internal passport (not for travelling abroad) and everyone has it because without it you cannot buy a train ticket, open a bank account, enter the college etc. Also there is a fine if you don't get it when you are 16 (or 18, I don't remember the exact age).
Also, young people cannot buy alcohol and cigarettes without it (to prove that they are adult) so some of them are motivated to get it as soon as possible.
Also I wanted to add that internal passport is valid for a long time and you have to change it only twice in a lifetime: you get it first time at 14, then get a new one at 20 and at 45 years and that last one is valid forever (of course if you don't happen to die). So although there is a fee to pay, it is not really expensive.
Passport for a regular person in my country costs 30$, for children, people under 20 or over 65 and disabled persons it is 15$, and it is valid for 10 years. You literally have 10 years to put down 0.25$ per month.
P.S. You must have a valid passport when you reach a certain age.
The US does not have a law requiring you to have an id. Requiring people to have one is making the assumption that every person in the US can afford the time and money to obtain one, as well as the physical ability to do so.
If you cannot make this assumption, then you are actively disenfranchising people.
Passport cards are $65. But the cost is somewhat a red herring. There's nothing to keep the US from issuing a free voter identification card but issues of appropriate identification and the effort involved exist outside of out-of-pocket cost. [ADDED: And, of course, concerns about slippery slopes to national IDs which Europeans in particular may consider silly but nonetheless we're all allowed our hangups.]
And god forbid if you need a passport in two months or less--then you're looking at spending $200 to expedite the process (and add to that USPS 1-2 day document delivery).
As long as the process and cost is not punitive and targeted it's fine if something costs time and money. We have multiple constitutional rights that are burdened in that fashion. The right to petition the government, to have courts decide arguments, to own a gun, all cost time and money. (Not to mention that I have to have a photo ID and pass a criminal background check every time I buy a gun.)
As long as you acknowledge that you're implementing this explicitly to suppress American votes, sure, go ahead and try. I'm tired of the misdirection with election safety when anyone in the game knows what it's actually about.
On the contrary, you've just put words in my mouth because you've done some logical leaps in your head that just took you away from reality.
In reality, if you want to make an assertion and have other people convinced of your argument, then your obligation is to provide all the facts. Given that, you cannot simply take the inverse hypothetical situation where election fraud is just assumed and use that to form your argument. We still have yet to establish that fraud is happening. So why would we want to suppress votes to prevent something that doesn't happen?
I've already been banned from reddit, please don't ban me from this site. How will I debate the merits of plastic making trans people gay, men's rights, programming languages that were created before 1990, startups that have clear business value but discussing how they don't have value to a small subset of society, overvalued IPOs, etc, etc etc.
It is not factual that fraud happens on a scale the warrants disenfranchising voters. If you advocate for disenfranchising voters without providing any sort of argument that legitimizes doing so, then yes, I absolutely am accusing you of wanting to disenfranchise voters for no reason other than to fear monger. You're the TSA of airport security. The WMDs of war. The daily weather of climate change. The fucking pizza of sex trafficking.
You should be banned from this site for spreading this fucking nonsense.
If there was already a universal ID everyone has, it wouldn't be racist to require it in connection with voting, but there isn't a universal ID everyone already has.
It's easy to forget that about one in seven or eight adult americans don't have a driver's license.
Even the libertarian wing of the Republican party doesn't really believe that anyone can live without an ID nowadays.
I'm not an American and while I rarely have to produce an ID, going without one entirely would be impossible. Also illegal here in Poland but this law is not enforced because it's hugely impractical long before you run into any legal issues.
that's how it had worked in LA county for as long as i've lived here, but i've heard that they're changing the voting machines for the upcoming election cycle, so we'll see how it goes.
it's angering to realize that some people will accept election fraud if it benefits them (while simultaneously decrying other unsubstantiated election fraud), regardless of moral or ethical concerns.
cheating to win is losing in my book. hopefully the long arc of the moral universe corrects the harms eventually, if not soon.
In the Ontario provincial elections we used a hybrid system. They ballots are paper following the same process you described, but they're first inserted into a machine that tallies the counts electronically and the paper record stored in case of discrepancies that might call for a hand count.
Such scanning machines save the time of people counting votes (it takes at least several hours), but you cannot know if the machine hasn't been tampered with. To require re-couting the paper ballots you will need some kind of proof that the results are invalid.
Anyone saying that ID verification is a big issue is using it as a red herring, to create more hoops to jump through for citizens who have a right to vote.
You don't have to make it explicit that you're targeting a specific group. If there is a correlation between groups that tend to drive less, and the groups that you don't want to vote, all you have to do is to require a driver license and that imposes an extra burden on the people that you don't want to vote, whereas populations that tend to drive, they already have a driver license and need no farther work to exercise their right to vote. It's so happens that poor people, communities of color, and the elderly tend to drive less.
In Spain everybody has a mandatory ID, and it is very easy and cheap or even free to get it. In that context it makes sense to require an ID. In the US, for cultural reasons, there is a lot of reluctance toward a national ID.
This is a systemic thing, not the work of a single villain with a face. Getting an ID is inherently more difficult for lower-income individuals for a variety of reasons. It doesn't have to be a specific GOP politician stopping people for it to be discriminatory.
Assuming that people can't get IDs based on their demographic is also a form of discrimination. Weak ID requirements disenfranchise voters of all backgrounds by enabling the possibility of diluting their votes with fraudulent registrations and ballots. Los Angeles County had more registered voters than they have age 18+ citizens and recently were forced by lawsuit to purge 5 million invalid registrations from their rolls.
> Assuming that people can't get IDs based on their demographic is also a form of discrimination.
Assuming it based on no evidence would be a form of prejudice.
Concluding that such a disadvantage exists bases on ample empirical evidence plus occasional statements of policy makers cheering themselves for preserving or advancing that disadvantage is not.
While a driver’s license is the most common form of ID in the state, Bentley said anyone without a driver’s license can go to any county register’s office and have a photo ID made and the closing of the DMV offices will not change that fact.
Bentley also pointed out that every probate judge in the state has the authority to renew driver’s licenses and the closing of the DMV offices will not change that fact.
Bentley said not only is the state not engaged in any effort to curtail voting, it is doing all it can to make sure anyone who wants to vote will be able to register to vote.
“We will go to people’s houses to have their picture made if they don’t have a photo ID in the state of Alabama,” said Bentley. “We’re not ever going to do anything to keep people in the state of Alabama from voting. And for them to jump to a conclusion like that, that is politics at its worst.”
For damn good reasons too. They're intentionally used to target minority voters that vote democratic in most cases under the guise of preventing a problem that doesn't actually exist. It's bad enough the courts decided that representatives can choose their voters through gerrymandering but allowing them to lock some voters out by requiring IDs without making it significantly easier to get IDs reeks of Jim Crow style poll taxes and literacy tests.
For a very long time, I'd show up to vote, say my full name, and they'd ask for a street name or house number, and I'd tell them, and they'd strike out my name and hand me a ballot to go vote. That was the identification process.
Now, same state, I get the ballot mailed to me, it has my name on it, it's bar coded, I vote, put it in an envelope, mail it back or drop it at a collection box for this purpose, and I get an email telling me I've voted. That kind of tracking gives me a frowny face. I don't know that they have a way to associated my vote with me, but they know whether or not I've voted, same as before.
Anyway, other states are different, where they have onerous ID requirements, including government issued photo ID, because the like that sort of thing. There's not much to be done about it.
The point of the policy isn’t to ID voter fraud (extremely rare) it’s to restrict voter access so the republicans pushing voter ID laws aren’t going to implement things to fix the ID availability problem.
They're opposed to ID verification laws that act as a poll tax. Not all voter ID laws carry the same burden. 11% of Americans do not have any form of government ID, yet they have a right to vote.
1.3 Billion votes on electronic machine that's proven multiple times it's hackable. Yet the Parties use that to showcase that they are advanced despite many people asking for Paper Ballot votes. It's quite ironic that a country that usually copies / adopts Western world isn't concerned about the fact how democracy is better handled in the west. Hope Canada stays strong with its democracy
A big difference between Canada and the US is that in the US the "vote" is practically never for a single question, but for a much larger set of questions. You could still count by hand, but it takes longer.
There are also more people in the US (around ten times more). You could still count votes by hand in US, but it would take more people or time to do it.
In Canada we vote completely anonymously on a piece of paper. ID is verified at the entrance to the voting area, but your identity is _in no way_ associated with the piece of paper you mark your vote on. The ballots are counted by hand with numerous bystanders/observers of whatever affiliation. It just works. We have no need for digital (aka hackable/tamperable/buggy) voting system.
Global News has a decent article outlining why the system is so impervious to abuse: https://globalnews.ca/news/4049932/canada-2019-election-hack...