Re:The Library Card Project: The Ease of Forming Anonymous C...
by mef79 on Saturday July 27, 2019 @12:22AM
(#20540361)
This is getting tangential, but opinion polls on voter ID aren't comparable to opinions on a national popular vote. Replacing the electoral college with a popular vote is the entire policy. Voter ID is complicated - we don't have a required ID nationally, lots of people don't have drivers licenses, state IDs cost money, how are we going to get gov't-issued IDs to people that don't already have one - do we make it any easier/cheaper or do we just tell them "you've got 4 years, figure it out"?
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.
Re:The Library Card Project: The Ease of Forming Anonymous C...
by mc32 on Friday July 26, 2019 @10:15PM
(#20539975)
I dunno. 30 years ago there was hardly any ID theft. It was very rare. Today, it's widespread and a daily occurrence. Things change. We need to lock doors. It's not the world it used to be.
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.