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.