US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level

Re:US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at... by int_19h on Sunday October 28, 2018 @06:51PM (#18323707)

Americans have a historical paranoia about the government tracking its citizens. I don't think it's entirely unjustifiable, but clearly, that ship has sailed a long time ago. At this point, the federal government already has so much information on the citizens, it could effectively implement a national ID scheme (and pretty much everyone will admit to that if you phrase the question right).

So the remaining opposition is more symbolical than anything - accepting a national ID would be acquiescing to this state of affairs, while rejecting it allows to maintain the pretense that all the massive data-gathering operations (from IRS and Social Security, to DHS and NSA) are somehow fundamentally different.

In practice, this just means extreme inefficiency whenever you have to deal with the government. I would dare say that citizens actually suffer a lot more from it than the government does (the government can always hire more bureaucrats to maintain and synchronize more databases).

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Re:US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at... by burfog on Sunday October 28, 2018 @11:45PM (#18324910)

Providing a secure national ID would do much more than just stop most kinds of voter fraud. It would stop identity theft.

Stopping identity theft would reduce the cost of banking, including all kinds of credit, bringing consumer interest rates closer to non-consumer ones. Stopping identity theft would quickly cause the arrest of most fugitives, both immigration-related and otherwise. Stopping identity theft would reduce medical errors; today your treatment can be affected by an identity thief. (the doctors think you have drug-seeking behavior, a genetic condition, a disease, or issues with violence toward hospital staff... and this changes how they treat you)

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