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.

> 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.”

[0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/north-carolina-voter-id/

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

Voter ID laws are simply an attempt to keep poor people and minorities from voting and honestly it's sickening.

Which is not a problem. There were less than 100 cases of voter fraud in the last twenty years: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/10/13/th...

Preventing ineligible voting is red herring for suppressing legitimate voters, by creating extra hoops to jump through for certain classes of citizens.

Until then, IDs are a poll tax — and to put it mildly, that's a problem.

Sure.

>and mandatory for all citizens

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.

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.

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.

Satisfied?

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.

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?

Discuss.

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.

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.

"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)."

https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2019/04/02/chapter_1.pd...

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 actually agree that requiring an ID that may require significant effort to obtain for voting is not reasonable.

If one accepts the argument with regards to a voter id, then why would they reject it with regard to a license?

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.

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.

Getting a photo ID is a infrequent event. That makes gaming the ID acquisition process a means of disenfranchising voters ineffective.

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.

https://blog.massdrive.com/2012/03/26/renewing-your-license-...

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.

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.

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?

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.

> Germany having an ID is a matter of fact

Having an id as a matter of fact sounds more dystopian than a country where you aren't required to identify yourself at any given time.

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.

If you contrast that to a country that has government mandated ids just because, then that's clearly the more dystopic example.

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.

Here is a Wikipedia link in case if someone didn't hear about "internal passports": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_passport

P.S. You must have a valid passport when you reach a certain age.

If you cannot make this assumption, then you are actively disenfranchising people.

You can achieve the same result by not requiring an id to vote.

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.)

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?

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.

It's easy to forget that about one in seven or eight adult americans don't have a driver's license.

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.

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.

are discrepancies between exit polls and election result valid reason?

A better option is human-readable paper ballots, as you can manually compile results from batches of ballots and run stop-loss audits on them.

https://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/elections/about-us/security...

No it is not.

There have been less than a hundred voter impersonation cases in the last two decades: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/10/13/th...

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.

Also the verification process itself can be often biased or outright discriminatory (ie, registration polls being inaccurate).

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW2LpFkVfYk

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/06/20/calif_...

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.”

In Canada, you don't actually even need an ID to vote. [0]

Two pieces of paper like your voting information card (that is mailed directly to you) and a utility bill with your name and address will suffice.

https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&do...

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.

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.

[0] https://electionsbcca.blob.core.windows.net/electionsbcca/re...