My thoughts on this are old school. Like 1700's old school.
A person's right to vote exists with or without documentation. A piece of paper, an entry in a ledger, or a row in a database has no bearing on whether that right exists, or should be exercised.
In many of the states where I've lived (13 so far), all that was needed to vote in the absence of identification was to sign an affidavit stating that I am who I say I am. The people at the polling station could ask for ID, but they couldn't require it. It's up to the people who handle the vote (often the county clerk or county board of elections) to decide later if my vote was valid or not.
A lot of that is changing these days as the concept of being constantly tracked, monitored, and tabulated becomes normalized in America.
Just a generation ago we made fun of the Soviet Union and various totalitarian regimes for having police stop people for no reason and demanding, "papers, please." Now there are people who think it's perfectly OK to require domestic passports ("Real ID" and similar) just to walk down the street.
I wonder if two generations from now people will think we're old and crazy because we don't think it's OK for the government to require a chip be implanted in our brains so our thoughts can be monitored by bureaucratic minders.
It's sounds like tinfoil hat sci-fi slippery slopism, but so would today's facial recognition in airports to people just 50 years ago.
Identification and Soviet papers are two completely different things. In the Soviet Union and in China until very recently even your travel was restricted by your papers. They weren't just identification, they literally defined where you could go. There is no comparison with a simple, national ID system like the one used in India.
Our voting system was largely based on community to enforce voting rights. Meaning you live a small town, everyone knows who you are, and if you aren't supposed to vote you won't get away with it because everyone knows everyone. Today even in small towns many people have no idea who their neighbors are.
Your notion on voting rights runs contrary to the concept of citizenship in general, is quite recent, and radical. There is nothing old school about it.
I believe the minimum criteria to vote is citizenship. To ensure that only citizens are voting, some paper, ledger, or row in a database must exist somewhere and a means to check that criteria must exist.
Oh and letting politicians decide after the fact whose votes count is recipe for disaster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_St...
As an aside: once documentation is required, we enter a position where we do not have our rights until proven otherwise.
According to whom exactly?
As others have pointed out in this discussion, that's not how the US system was designed. There is no inalienable right to vote.
As a society, we decided that tenants, people of non-white races, women, and 18-20 year olds should be allowed to vote. We also eliminated odious standards like counting then-slaves as 60% human.
- The 15th amendment prohibits denying the right to vote on certain grounds (race, color) but doesn't go beyond that. - The 19th prohibits denying the right to vote based on sex. - The 24th prohibits denying the right to vote (in certain federal elections) based on outstanding tax bills. - The 26th prohibits denying citizens over 18 the right to vote based on age.
But this seems like a weirdly specific list. If the reason isn't on the list, is it still fair game? For instance, AFAIK some states don't let convicted felons vote.
We have a second amendment that talks about well-regulated militia broadly interpreted to mean all sorts of things, some I agree with, some I do not.
Likewise, we have multiple, progressive amendments to the constitution with a clear goal of enabling voting to the broadest possible scope.
I live in a state that requires that you be a citizen, age 18, and not be in prison or on parole. I think that’s a fair compromise over disqualification of felons, as you create 2nd tier of citizen by denying that right.
The 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution.
In fact, that's the whole purpose of the now-awkward electoral college: state legislatures choosing knowledgeable electors to vote for president/VP.
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This an unpopular opinion, but I honestly think there's something to that.
My state political party operates on a caucus system, where I don't directly vote for local, state, or federal candidates in the primary (ironically, president is the exception to this); rather I elect a district representative to attend the convention, speak with the candidates, and vote the best one. I don't have time/choose not to have time to do this same level of diligence, and like in many other areas, I am happy to delegate it to one of my known, trusted neighbors. I believe it produces a better, more intelligent, less hysterical media outcome.
This is also why I'm not necessarily against non-pathological obstacles in voting. In 2018, my county did a (inexpensive) mail-only election. I wouldn't be surprised is the deadlines, etc. proved to be an obstacle. But....is it really that bad to have that small hoop for people to participate? I don't think so.
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P.S. You know poll taxes aren't taxes at polling stations, right? It just means "flat (non-proportional) tax".
India, Mexico, Argentina, Germany, Taiwan, Brazil, Iceland, Costa Rica, etc, require it. Among Americans all major demographics show majority support for voter ID reqs.
Instances of voter fraud in the US are vanishingly rare. It's a really dumb crime; stiff penalties, lots of legwork, and an infinitesimal likelihood of influencing outcomes.
I was a Cook County election judge in the last cycle and will be one during the next cycle as well. We don't require identification, though judges can challenge a check-in and ask for identification, and the vote will get cast provisionally if none is provided.
Buses with "voters", who have "out of home voting permit" papers on them, are coming to the "problematic" voting stations, to tip elections for the "proper candidate". Usually it's organized by managers of political indifferent or loyalist workers of government institution.
Actual vote fraud is about political machinery. Now in the US the real election shenanigans are much cheaper and more effective... the big pools of black money and gerrymandering are the tools of modern political machines.
"Actual vote fraud is about political machinery".
That's not 'vote[r] fraud'. The meaning of the term is independent of whether this type of fraud is common or not, how the threat of it is misused politically, etc.
Hence, the voter fraud boogieman in the US remains just that - a convenient boogieman.
None the less, we're down the list at no. 26 when it comes to voter integrity[1]. This is from 2014, so it's not encumbered by today's politics.
Ahead of us: Norway, Germany, Netherlands, Iceland, Czech Republic, Austria, South Korea, Slovenia, Israel, Cyprus, Lithuania, Australia, Rwanda, Japan, Chile, Italy, Grenada, Malta, Argentina, Georgia and Mongolia.
All except Australia req. Voter ID.
I (and everyone else) needs to present ID for cold medicine. I don't see this being burdensome.
[1]https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2014/11/study-ranks-...
I've never heard anybody suggest that an election outcome has been affected by any part of this. And we vote on paper too, no computer fuckups.
To which I can only think, "So what?"
Why does the United States need to be like other countries? The whole reason people settled this land was because they didn't want to be like other countries.
It's OK for countries to have different systems. In fact, it's better because the diversity allows for experimentation. France is awesome because they do things the French way there. Germany is awesome for all its Germanity. If all the countries are the same, then there's no point in having more than one country or ever going anywhere.
I wouldn't ask Americans to give up their system any sooner than I'd ask the French to give up wine.
Among Americans all major demographics show majority support for voter ID reqs.
Again, "So what?" There's a vast difference between doing what is popular and doing what is right. Keeping it in the political realm, you imagine the mess the nation would be if we just went with the popular vote and let people vote directly for the president? It would disenfranchise 273 million people who don't live in New York, California, Texas, or Florida.
Also disagree on the comments on the popular vote being a mess - why should the population of someone's state factor in to how much their vote matters? Disenfranchisement is someone who lives in California's vote mattering less than a voter in Wyoming. Especially problematic is the winner-take-all way of determining electoral votes. Having a state pledge all of its electors to one candidate when 49% of its citizens voted for the other is an absolute failure of representation.
I'd say that the 2000 election coming down to 540 votes in Florida is a much bigger mess than the idea of a popular vote.
Neither is a bad idea.
tl;dr mind your own business.
You'd really rather have your vote nullified behind your back rather than just be told you can't vote? That sounds like a recipe for a lot of abuse doesn't it?
You don’t want to verify eligibility before voting because it slows the process down. The longer it takes to vote, the fewer people vote. You just collect the voter’s information and then the responsibility for the rest of the verification is on the government. It occupies the government’s time to verify the vote and not the voter’s time.
How do we ensure non-citizens aren’t voting? We accept many visitors - refugees, H1B, tourists, F1/I-20, etc. None are granted voting rights.
"“She can own property; she can serve in the military; she can get a job; she can pay taxes. But she can’t vote, and she didn’t know that.”"
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/us/illegal-voting-gets-te...
It is a tragedy that this was not made abundantly clear to this woman, assuming she truly believed that she was permitted to vote.
Consider that there are towns in rural California with majority noncitizen residents. In cases upwards. of 90%.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_foreigners_to_vote_in...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/noncitizens-are-gain...
You make it sound as if they just happened to wind up there at random, and have nothing else in common.
Geographic proximity is incidental to belonging to a group. The land they live on is merely one of their possessions. Allowing visitors does not mean they must share their sovereignty with them.
To answer your question, in democracies, each person can vote to influence their own nation - their demos, even while abroad. You think demos should be decided purely on current location, but most countries disagree - they use mostly jus sanguinis, with the exception of jus soli in the Americas.
Requiring ID has the obvious tradeoff that it prevents some people who should be allowed to vote from voting. Furthermore, it can potentially lead to a system where people's votes are unfairly discounted because of administrative "errors" (e.g. interstate cross-check). From the evidence I've seen those problems are more significant than double voters or non-citizen voting.
What’s wrong with just dipping someone’s finger in ink?
Oddly, I’m not aware of any state that requires you to prove citizenship to register to vote.
All rights exist independent on the government, because the government doea not grant rights.
The government infringes on rights for the purpose of governing, and the limits to what it is allowed are the US constitution.
None of that means that there isn't a legitimate interest, of the government and public at large, in ensuring that elections are conducted fairly.
ID's are common, the vast majority already have a passport or driver license. You need this much to even be employed so bringing it with you for an election is not an onerous requirement, it's actually completely reasonable.
EDIT: It seems HN has rate-limiting for comments now.
> " need to make sure people can easily get an id"
I agree. I don't think it's as simple or generic as a single political party preventing it though. Is there a clear example of what is stopping people from obtaining these IDs?
While the Republicans take heat for it on the national level, when you examine the issue at state and local levels there's plenty of it on both sides.
What disappoints me is that the Democrats rarely push back on these proposals, and when they do it's half-hearted.
Republicans used to be the party of freedom as in pioneer guy with a cabin and a mule. Democrats used to be the party of freedom as in ACLU. These days neither is willing to stick their necks out in any tangible way for freedom.
Having an ID doesn't show someone is part of a community. All it does is provide a way for systems to exclude people.
I'm sorry but how would I get into a self-driving car? I'd probably not own one. I'd ride in a Waymo, Uber, or some other provider's self-driving car which would mean they'd need to be authenticate who I am and check to see if I am authorized to get in the car...
I don't know what you mean. In the U.S. you don't need a drivers license to ride in a car. Uber does not currently require any state issued ID for riders and I'm not sure why they would in the future.
You might need the Uber app but that isn't tied to any government ID.
You need to have it for those things. You don't need to "carry" it for those things. Nobody does all of those things all the time every day. Going to buy some beer? Bring your ID. Going to walk the dog? Feck off, cop. I'm a citizen minding my own business.
And this is precisely the problem I have with people who jump up and down screaming that it’s “impossible” for non-citizens to vote because “they have to register.” Clearly there is potential to exploit the system — it’s just the plain old honor system, after all. Maybe it’s just the software developer in me, but I would never ship software that I knew had a critical vulnerability but then rationalize away that it’s so unlikely that anyone would ever exploit it.
And yeah, states could follow up on invalid voter registrations, but will they really? One state in particular prides itself on being a “sanctuary state”, yeah I’m sure they’re right on top of making sure illegal aliens aren’t slipping through the cracks and voting after the DMV automatically registered them to vote upon issuing them a license.
I also find it funny how the same people that rationalize things the US “should” do because “every other country does it” conveniently ignore that “everyone else” requires ID to vote, but for some reason we’re a special case that can’t possibly accomodate that.
It certainly seems the case that more damage has been done to society via corporations to which no human person can be associated than by voter fraud.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/0-...
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/02/1...
If there is voter fraud, it might go away if we got reliable detection. Fraud is less likely when being caught is certain, and it is far more likely when being caught is about as likely as getting hit by lightening.
Even if there isn't voter fraud, the mere fact that people are worried about it is undermining trust in our elections. That needs to be fixed, and the only way to fix it is to have a means to prove that there is no voter fraud.
The reason people in the U.S. are worried about voter fraud is that one side of the political spectrum is pushing the narrative — without any real evidence — that voter fraud is rampant. We shouldn't make it more difficult to vote in order to fix a made-up problem.
Let me ask, why do we have identification for joining a company? Checking employment status? Boarding a flight? Starting a business? Opening a bank account? Getting government assistance? Why would that be necessary but not for voting?
Requiring ID allows us to measure when fraud is occuring by individuals attempting to submit votes and data that is not theirs. Otherwise, there is no "truth" to compare to. I guess we can always call every single person and verify their vote, but then is that not the same thing as an ID check?
No, it doesn't; it is neither necessary (as such fraud can be detected by other means) nor sufficient (as even with an ID requirement fraud can be performed without detection) for that purpose.
Why are other situations not an issue for requiring ID but voting is? How can we detect fraud by other means, and why can't these other services also do that? Does the fact that nothing is infallible mean it shouldn't be used? If you didn't vote but someone used your information, how do you catch that without some form of verification?
(1) There is no evidence of an actual existing problem to be addressed by voter ID requirements.
(2) Because voter ID requirements in the US, past and present, have a history of being introduced as part of efforts, often by the admission of their own sponsors (though usually in venues they didn't expect to become public) to suppress voting by legal voters of particular demographic groups disfavored by those pushing the measures, particularly African-Americans.
Why is voting less important than other services? If someone uses your information, how can we tell without verification of the vote? And if we can't tell, how do we know it didn't happen? And if we don't know, how do we know it's not a problem? If every vote is important then every fraudulent vote is equally important.
I'm only talking about ID verification for voting here, not other programs. If those programs are stopping voters then I agree that's bad, but that's a separate topic. And if IDs are required for so many other private and government services outside of voting, then aren't those services discriminating too? Right to bear arms still requires a background check so does that impede on people's rights? How does that reconcile?
Well, maybe. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. In 2016, we were able to identify four cases of voter fraud in retrospect [1]. How does voter ID make this process more accurate?
Not having faith in our measurements for 2016 is also problematic. Let's say we uncover 100 cases of voter fraud after the fact with voter ID in 2020. Is this because we're able to better detect voter fraud now, or is there actually more? How do we know we haven't accidentally introduced a loophole that makes the problem worse?
I'm not really interested in a general discussion about "why does ID make sense for X but not voting". We can be specific: in what ways does voter ID improve our ability to measure — not deter — fraud? Because as far as we can tell now, it's already exceedingly rare.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/0-...
Also if we did enact ID checks, and zero fraud happened (perhaps because it preemptively prevented it all), how is that not a good outcome? Considering it went from non-zero to zero, yes that would be an improvement. What would be the loophole that introduces more voter fraud because of IDs? Can you please give me an example of this?
The comparison to other services and rights is critical to show bias and present a rational framework to tackle the problem. If the right to bear arms is not infringed by background checks, then it follows that the right to vote is not infringed by ID checks. Do you disagree with this statement?
ID doesn't provide verification that it didn't happen, it provides a difficulty bar for doing it.
Verification that it didn't happen, insofar as that is possible, is provided statistically through the absence of signficant patterns of attempted double votes, which you'd expect to see if there was any substantial pattern of voter fraud (especially by more than one party; barely plausibly, a single party with a sufficiently good likely voter model could be problematic to detect.)
It's still unclear how voter ID would improve this. Yes, the people at the polling place can check your face against the ID. But if the results are already in and you suspect fraud, what extra information does the ID give you?
This is not a circular discussion to me, because it's clear where to start. The claim is that voter fraud is a problem, so that's where the burden of proof lies. We don't start with an assumption and then ask people to disprove it.
> Also if we did enact ID checks, and zero fraud happened (perhaps because it preemptively prevented it all), how is that not a good outcome? Considering it went from non-zero to zero, yes that would be an improvement.
A reduction from 0.000002% to 0% is basically meaningless. In order for it to be a good outcome, you need to measure it accurately and show a causal relationship, and also not damage the election in some other way such as significantly depressing turnout.
> If the right to bear arms is not infringed by background checks, then it follows that the right to vote is not infringed by ID checks. Do you disagree with this statement?
We curtail people's Constitutional rights all the time when we think the benefits to society outweigh the consequences. Child pornography and obscenity laws infringe our right to free speech, gun control laws infringe our right to keep and bear arms, felony disenfranchisement infringes our right to vote, exigent circumstances infringe our right to be secure against unreasonable searches. I simply disagree that it's in our collective best interest to infringe on voting rights in this way, given the rarity of voter fraud.
As for the claim, I believe the issue is that without the above checks, there's no possible way to know if that fraud is being committed in the first place, especially with at least 40% of the population abstaining. You're saying the measurement shows that it's rare while I'm asking how the measurement is even possible for this type of fraud. Is that the fundamental disagreement we have? If so then I guess this thread has run its course, but I do wish there was a way to agree.
I never said it was less important.
> If someone uses your information, how can we tell without verification of the vote?
Ant significant effort at voter fraud (and, even more certainly, more than one such effort in the same jurisdiction) will show up in a pattern of attempted multiple votes.
The absence of significant pattern as of this is itself evidence that no significant (even in aggregate) voter fraud is occurring.
In fact, even with Voter ID, that's how you'd identify fraud that gets past the ID checks.
What do you mean by multiple attempted votes? Using the same name? That's a different situation though because I'm asking about a name which didn't otherwise vote. 40% didn't show up in 2016 and that was with record turnout, which makes a large supply of names that can be used, and that's assuming that everyone who did vote was completely legitimate.
Considering that, how can you possibly reconcile that everyone who voted is who they claimed to be without verification? How can this be tested post-election?
Denying the vote to someone who has the right to vote is mathematically just as problematic as granting it to someone who does not have the right.
Why is voting, which is critical to a democracy, considered onerous for requiring identification when driving, employment, banking, business and govt. programs all require it? Isn't that a strange balance?
Depress voter turnout, run third-party, identity-appealing, or confusingly-similarly named candidates. Print confusing ballots. Run complex initiatives or propositions with little or no discussion. Leverage majorities in one domain (Senate, statehouses, governor's mansions) to achieve, retain, or negate majorities or minorities elsewhere (vacancies are often filled by gubernatorial or state legislature votes, redistricting is often controlled by statehouse majority, a GoP Senate nullifies much of the power of a Dem House). Have a highly partisan secretary of state certifying statewide elections, including for national office. Have a Supreme Court structure based on few judges, narrow and long-lived partisan majorities, full-bank hearings, and obstructed nominations. Non-trasnsparent, un-auditablre, readily-hacked, and highly partisan technical voting systems. Grossly manipulated media.
Individual voter fraud simply isn't where it's at.
One side is deliberately leveraging it for that purpose, and it's the same side that has consistently blocked legislation to increase election security, set standards for voting machines, and more, so as far as I am concerned they're forfeited the right to have their arguments taken seriously after years of bad faith politicking.
Seems like we should focus on making sure poor/minorities have easy/free access to IDs, rather than keeping the voting process lax.
I had to sign up with my address, and I have to prove my identity when I vote. That all seems perfectly reasonable to me. Even a low-tech ink mark used by some places seems perfectly fine. The law is full of tradeoffs, and I think proving you have voted only once and where you are allowed to vote is perfectly legitimate.
If you are not going to pay them, and not going to view it -- then they lost the income -- you might as well bypass the pay wall..
An example: it’s legal to “keep” a pre-1986 machine gun but it’s not legal to obtain a new one for most people in the US.
lutorm's comment: "Voting is a constitutional right" (implying that is isn't OK to require an ID)
sneak's comment: "purchasing a firearm" (clearly a constitutional right, so it isn't OK to require ID to purchase one???)
That is perfectly relevant. What sneak's comment does is point out that lutorm's argument implies that we can't have an ID requirement to purchase a firearm. Since this conclusion seems a little crazy, it suggests that lutorm's argument is no good.
I'll add that at least for presidents, the constitution only makes voting a right for 538 specific people. States are not required to let the rest of us participate. Voting is clearly not more of a constitutional right than firearms.
If asking for ID to buy a gun is reasonable, then the argument of whether it’s reasonable to ask for ID to vote can’t be one of principle, but has to be one of degree.
I think of it this way: If you think that you're being unconstitutionally prevented from buying a gun because you don't have an ID you can at least vote for people who would change that. If you can't vote because you don't have an ID, though, you're SOL.
Edit: The second amendment even refers to "well regulated", which to me seems to imply that the intent was to, well, have some regulation of the matter.
My guess is that he or she is saying that it's reasonable in both cases to require ID.
It’s only when you sell guns as a dealer that you are required to get ID and whatnot from the purchaser. (Even then, there is no penalty for BUYING the gun without ID; the penalty attaches to the SELLER.)
If it is not reasonable to demand an ID to blog or to vote, it is not reasonable to demand an ID to obtain arms.
You have a right to vote. Rights come without condition. Many municipal elections only require residency, and the state cannot compel you to have an identification, be literate, or participate in society beyond voting. A hermit living in a cave, a software engineer, or a person who just moved to a place are all humans and all subject to the same rights.
https://www.sos.state.mn.us/elections-voting/register-to-vot...