Homelessness and generally transient residency statuses come to mind. Still workable w/ ID cards though
[0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/north-carolina-voter-id/
[1] Again generally opposed by Republicans because it would mean more voters which demographically isn't good for them.
You could make the literal exact argument in reverse with at least as much credibility.
It doesn't really have the same ring, does it.
I notice that you say you could but you actually didn't...
Republicans shouldn't be locking out people who are eligible to vote, but at the same time Democrats shouldn't be enabling the submission of fraudulent ballots (ineligible, dead persons, etc), which common sense says is easier if you don't require ID verification at polls or if you allow mail-in ballots for all.
Both are anti-democratic.
That's just false. In what universe does fraud not have an impact on anything it touches, much less voting?
I can point to many occasions when voter fraud had an impact on outcomes (but was caught so it did not in the end). But the problem with this is that voter fraud is only heard about when it fails. You obviously have no idea how much actually successful fraud has occurred. This is generally true for all crimes, except voter fraud is an actual victimless crime (at least in terms of the victim being able to know that a crime was perpetrated against them), so you can't even estimate scale by victim reports like you could with something like assault or robbery.
my understanding is that fraud on elections is close to nil. So while OP is slightly hyperbolic, it isn't far off
Not a lot.
Followed the link on an oregon one.
“At the time of the election, (Robbins) was suffering from kidney infections which impacted his cognition,” said Oregon Department of Justice spokeswoman Kristina Edmunson. “He does not remember voting two ballots, but acknowledges that he did and is extremely remorseful.”
Regardless, the main point still applies. That's only the fraud we know about. The amount of fraud we don't know about that people are getting away with is an unbounded number that we literally can't even estimate given the nature of the crime. Again, this isn't identity theft or robbery where there is a clear victim to tell you "hey a crime has been committed against me" even if you never catch the perp. In the case of voter fraud, there will never be a smoking gun if you don't catch them first.
Regardless, it's fairly obvious that less ID verification / policies that result in less of an audit trail make fraud easier to execute without getting caught.
There's no evidence of even minor amounts of voting fraud, the current administration spent months on a commission to find the claimed millions of fraudulent votes and came up with nothing to my recollection. In fact the biggest cases I saw that came out recently was a Republican operative in North Carolina packing mail-in ballots... and he was caught without voter ID.
One is actively anti-democratic, the other is hypothetically anti-democratic. You're trying to both sides a possibility against actually anti-democratic actions and policies.
If any of the voter ID attempts came with real attempts to increase voter turn out and make sure everyone had an ID I might give them the benefit of the doubt but it never does and the only side that wants it fights tooth and nail to make it harder for voters to vote.
It's the Republicans that want voter ID and the Democrats that want to get rid of it.
And yet you're telling me that it's all just Republicans looking out for their own interests / voter suppression? Ok...
Points I have made:
1. Voter fraud exists (true)
2. Republicans support policies that based on common-sense (and actual examples) reduce fraud
Thank you for helping me make my argument.
And again, it takes two to tango. Why can't the Democrats run with voter ID and encourage people to vote / make it easy for everyone eligible to get an ID? Instead they say "no voter ID ever, it's always voter suppression!"
The problem with voter fraud is that it's obviously hard to detect at scale if it actually works. Unlike other crimes, there is no victim that you can use to count cases.
What you suggest is actually illegal in the US since the 1980s by federal law and before that it was customary for us states not to track that information. On the public side it is illegal because requiring identification for almost any kind of state service must hinge on there being a specific reason inherent in the public service why the state government needs that information to provide a service. Only the federal government can require the kind of information that would commonly fall under what is required in an EU country.
Private businesses are actually indirectly forbidden by federal law from asking for any kind of information like this. If in the course of asking for such information the private business discovers or deduces the 'immigration status' of the person that business now has to explain the reason why it discovered that fact and the burden mostly falls on the business almost every conceivable case. Therefore, most businesses are certain never to ask about such information. The only information transmitted to the federal government (by federal law) is essentially a self-certified form filled out by an employee only in the course of seeking employment. The business is directly forbidden by law from asking anything about the immigration status of the person. The state can't do anything about this or indirectly require a private entity to act based on such information.
One can quickly see that there is no workable way under current federal law to make any kind of system you would see in the EU or most of the western world workable. You couldn't directly collect useful information about a person in almost any way and any information you could collect wouldn't be useful.
Here is the politically incorrect fact: It makes immigration enforcement almost impossible if you can't restrict access to private employment or public services. It stands to reason that lacking such enforcement would induce large amounts of illegal immigration.
This isn't really a side effect either. The political economy of federal immigration law has something to benefit both parties. Conservative Republicans disproportionately benefit from cheap(er) labor and democrats/libertarians get to reduce the power of the federal government in ways that they see as politically desirable. There is a reason most immigration laws until the 2000s were overwhelmingly bipartisan.
This doesn't have anything to do with voter suppression at all. Any plan to require or give out ids for voting runs into the issue of how to handle these legal issues. One solution is for the government to only require the id for voting and nothing else at all. In other words, the government will get to have access to personal information but: 1) can not make using the id service convenient(as covered above) and 2) cannot use that information for any other public reason(unless federal law is changed) finally, 3) only the federal government can make such information useful which means you rapidly start approaching a centralized database which most european /western countries do not need to have.
Take Germany for example, or France as much as I can tell: You move, you register a new primary residency, where you vote. Your residency is also you voter registration (not sure why separating the two makes any sense). You leave the country permanently, you declare it, when your French, you can register at the consulate in the new country of residency. Guess what, you get your ballot by mail to that address.
Carrying passports or ID cards, check. No unidentified residents.
Dead voters, no problem. Registered residencies are constantly updated with birth and death certificates.
Voting by is, as is voting in general, a solved problem. Including paper trails and enough voting places for everyone. Voting happens on Sundays.