This almost starts to sound like an Onion article: "No way this can possibly work," Americans saying about yet another system implemented by virtually every nation in the Western World(TM).
The whole point of a national photo ID system is that it's the government's responsibility to provide its every citizen a functional ID. Which has its shortcomings, but it's miles better than everyone implementing their own ID system anyway in incompatible ways and then all citizens trying to figure out which one to use where.
There's a strong parallel with a national healthcare system, which is also objected by a lot of Americans on the ground that the mythical government will never get it right.
In my opinion the poster is correct: uploading one of the many state issued identification cards, all which vary quite a lot, is not going to solve this problem.
You could deepfake someone in realtime using publicly available photos. I don't know what the answer is, but photo biometrics sounds like a, "this can't possibly be hacked because I wouldn't know how to hack it scenario". Like when a naive person takes a jumble of shift, xor, and, to create a random number generator and then it turns out it has a cycle of 1024.
This is just verification though, all the communication goes directly to government after it...
Might require issuing some type of new ID number for each citizen, but once that is in place it would massively simplify all the processes.
Clearly you haven't used system like this - it's pretty sophisticated sequence of light flashes to manages to somehow fingerprint that you'r not faking it.
Used it in few systems for years and it works great. One of them scanned my passport via NFC, another one just asked my details (name, DOB).
These physical tokens can be as simple as a randomly-generated QR-code, or a full and proper PKI physical token / smartcard system (or anything in between).
Furthermore, USPS needs more traffic / package deliveries (especially since its lost Amazon as a customer). Increasing the amount of goods flowing around physically in the USPS system is definitely a benefit, especially if its for ensuring the physical security of these hypothetical security tokens.
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IE: The USPS is uniquely situated to become a premier ID of the US government. Certainly more situated than the current standard, the Social Security Administration. Or the loose confederation of ~48 "RealID" state drivers license.
I remember common discussion of this in the early 90s, so way more than 10 years.
It does make a lot of sense. For the vast majority of people the local post office is the nearest federal government office. And the post office already handles passport applications.
Not accurate. I live very close to San Francisco, but I have to get my mail at a Post Office because the USPS doesn't deliver to my door.
It doesnt work here. As a progressive we keep chasing these goals and somehow they simply get perverted to be even worse for the taxpayer in the end. i.e. you must have RealID however you must also pay for RealID. You can get paid time off from work to vote or benefits if you have a job, but only if you're a full time employee. Womp! a ton of people are no longer full time employees
How do we find our way out?
America, it feels like, is egalitarian in the fact that we all have the ability to sell our souls to be rich. Some folks have a headstart certainly, but there are less blocks to our success than there are in places where family pedigree and class play an even bigger role from England and France to India and S. Korea.
Let’s say we have a system where 40 hours worked = 1 day PTO:
- the business may choose to split the 40 hours among 4 employees working 10 hours each.
- however, needing to hire more employees to cover the same 40 hours (which one person alone could have handled in the legacy system) increases training and recruiting costs 4x (worst case hopefully) for each role.
- instead of circumventing the PTO “cost” altogether, the businesses would be forced to budget for it no matter how creative they get with staffing.
- budget-wise, the increased cost of PTO would effectively also be increasing the hourly wage. Further forcing businesses to scrutinize the roles they offer and question if it is really necessary to have a human being perform that function.
It almost looks like you've seen some familiar words and decided to dump your objections to imagined American backwardness compared to Europe, even though the matter in question has absolutely nothing to do with it.
The former is about the government fixing its own mess, the latter foists responsibility for dysfunctional government systems onto individuals who may or may not do the correct song and dance to please whichever agency they’re dealing with. If we’re going to demand photo ID everywhere, the government should fix its own crap first before demanding more of the citizens.
I’d be fine with getting a federal ID and using it for my taxes. I’m deeply opposed to having to provide my own photo to fill out my taxes, especially since if they’re unhappy with my photo for whatever inscrutable reason, they can throw me in jail for not doing my taxes right.
Definitely. I know someone in NJ who has not received unemployed benefits for 14 months. They call every month, and are told to keep waiting. No one returns their calls, snail mail, or emails.
There is zero justification the government cannot respond via email, or give you a call back, other than they would like you to waste so much of your time and effort on hold that you give up.
Fast forward to COVID when we were requested to close for a few months and unemployment benefits were supposedly extended to freelancers, I filed for that time we were closed and it was stuck in pending status since April 2020.
I am of the opinion that unemployment insurance as it is in my state is an outright scam and should be abolished (and replaced if need be). New York and Pennsylvania had some delays, but nothing like the shit NJ has been.
I also requested that he co-sponsor one of the bills that greatly increases penalties for defrauding the system (it's currently pretty much a slap on the wrist).
The vast majority of Americans are entirely unaware that most of the day-to-day laws and systems are implemented at state level (aside from griping about governor's office executive orders). There's one news network that reports on our state's government affairs and hardly anyone watches it. But everyone knows the second a federal politician does something.
The staff was caught on video using the cards to buy goods.
If there is a state with a more dysfunctional Unemployment benefits office, I'd like to hear stories
That way you get a response (thank you for completing the form) and then zero way to track the communication. In my case, I have never received anything after that from any of my representatives.
You can't call to check on it, because, again, they're no longer taking phone calls. And even if they did, you have no reference number.
They took advantage of the pandemic to just completely cut ties with their constituents outside of THEIR approved avenues.
Super cool. Very representative.
Right?
If you otherwise like your current reps, I'm sorry.
That is far sufficient time to get a response, even if they were initially overwhelmed.
Families and businesses get overwhelmed too, but they are expected to file NJ tax returns on time. Try not responding to NJ for 14 months after NJ is owed money and see what happens. Rules for thee but not for me is the motto of many governments.
I've found luck in starting with emailing the office of my lowest (closest) representative at the smallest unit of government, telling them my problem, and asking them who I can talk to about it. "Who's responsible for pothole repairs on (street that might be state or county controlled instead of the city)?" This puts the ambitions of the office to work. Oftentimes they will rather get credit for solving your problem and do work for you than just give you a phone number or email address, and in the event of a roadblock you can go back to them for more help. "Hey, I tried X but Y happened, got any other ideas?" Your state rep's communications intern doesn't just sit back alphabetizing checks from Walmart executives and police unions.
Not all congresscritters will have the same effectiveness, but that is the first place to start if the trail to getting results turns to a dead-end.
You can follow up with injunction from court to order them to cease whatever it is. Then contempt of court if they violate injunction.
I submitted the information to the DOJ, who are supposed to sue if there's a pattern, policy, or practice that violates one's rights. Frankly, I don't think they'll do anything. Same as the other things I've done - contacting reps (ignored me), filing IAD complaints ("counseled" the trooper but nothing more), filing a bar complaint against the prosecutor (the bar says they won't even investigate prosecutors unless a court declares misconduct and of course that costs money to sue), and a judicial complaint against a magistrate (apparently a recording of the trial does not present sufficient evidence of misconduct even though there was clear bias, he's a retired police chief, refused to even hear a defense motion which is a 4th amendment violation, and yelled at the defense which is an example of misconduct that given when filing out complaint form).
Nobody in the system wants to hold others in the system accountable. The system itself is more important than any individual's rights - that's the justification they give for keeping judicial conduct records secret, even if they contain exculpatory evidence.
The attorney's bar club just protects the club members. But malpractice insurance companies know the game and rate the policies based on number of complaints against each attorney. Several complaints significantly increases malpractice insurance cost.
I might look into it, but I highly doubt anything will happen.
I don't think the complaints matter unless they are pursued. In this case the bar says they won't even investigate it without a court finding misconduct occurred (at that point is there even any investigation needed? Wtf does the bar complaint actually investigate?).
He wasn't very helpful, but he at least responded... And not in a canned letter.
In every place I've lived, elected officials are good at constituent services, and that's how they get re-elected. I'm surprised to hear of elected reps just ignoring constituent services requests.
I also sometimes contact my reps with lobbying/policy stuff -- what is your position on X? I urge you to vote No on Bill Whatever and would like to know if you will. Can you commit to supporting legislation to reform Y? Etc. And it can indeed often take months to get a form letter response that may not really respond to my query at all, or not get a response at all. It's true.
If you want to go on to say that they shouldn't be different, or that the policy issues really do effect you personally so should be considered or treated the same... that's fine, you may be right, but it's not how the offices of elected officials usually operate.
Also, while I'm surprised to hear of reps totally ignoring constituent services requests with no response... if your constituent services request was about police misconduct, and they aren't known as a far-left politician, I'm less surprised, because that's such a hot button "political" issue. (I'm not saying it's "ok" or I like it, just based on my understanding of how politicians operate i'm less surprised).
It's not on their website?
For example, magistrates are not required to be lawyers nor pass the bar. I had a magistrate think that I was calling him prejudice when asking to dismiss with prejudice. What a mess. How can they be allowed to be this incompetent? They should need to demonstrate basic legal knowledge and pass the bar. They have a lot of power with very little oversight and training. Nobody is addressing this.
No, it's the equivalent of escalating it to a member of the Board of Directors.
Well, maybe. Legislators are really variable on constitutent service, but many will (or rather, will allow their office staff to; direct, even by something going out under their name rather than a staff contact, is less common) at least gently probe on behalf of constituents on state service issues, and if a high enough volume is involved are more likely to get personally involved.
But any response that does happen is likely to involve butt covering and blame redirection from virtually every step of the management chain, just like when an issue hits the news media, so on issues where you haven't exhausted other avenues short of lawsuits, it's probably not the step to reach for the way escalating to a manager would be. I’ve definitely been involved in issues where premature escalation to a legislator delayed and/or made the resolution less favorable than it probably otherwise would have been because of the degree of attention from management, legal, public and legislative affairs, etc., that the escalation triggered.
It makes sense in the particular circumstances described, though, it's just the analogy that was flawed in a way which might be misleading as to how that generalizes to other situations.
... that we collectively refuse to pay enough taxes to staff government agencies at sufficient levels to allow them to provide the service we believe we deserve.
But if the NJ government’s budget does not allow them to respond to a single email after multiple months, that is a sign of intentional negligence, or a failed state.
Again, I am giving quite a bit of leeway. At 14 months with no response, that is not understaffing. That is deliberate sabotage by leaders to prevent people from getting benefits.
Still, I'm inclined to agree with you that some of what you describe in your 2nd para is likely happening too.
That seems to contradict your assertion that the government would have given him better service had more taxes been directed at them.
Having worked in this space my cynical observation is that you don't get the budget to run a big appeals process and a quality watchdog team, etc, etc, if you don't suck bad enough to need those things in the first place.
All the leaders know what is happening. It has been in the news many times.
The problem is that systems are deliberately designed to be difficult to navigate in order to discourage use.
It isn't money. It is a belief that recipients are not deserving, and so should be made to "pay" for it or denied altogether.
I worked for a state agency that make workforce services software for several states. Not unemployment, but the other programs to help people find jobs and/or get retrained.
The management overwhelmingly wanted to find ways to help people and spend the money (that's how they get bigger grants, after all, by spending all of the last one and "coming up short"). The majority of the staff wanted to help people and spend the state's money as well.
But the rules are arcane and the agencies are perpetually understaffed and the software systems are terrible (federal programs often allow too small of a fraction of the allocated money to be spent on administration). So it's still a hell of a thing to get the money spent helping people, even if everybody's heart is in the right place.
The problems are myriad, but I'd say the biggest issue is state legislators that are unwilling to invest in modernization in "good times" when the benefits programs aren't over-taxed, and then wonder why the systems (both technical and people) can't scale when society needs the help.
Exactly, and this is by design. Here is how it was designed to not work in Florida:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/florida-unemployment...
But the general outline is the same most everywhere.
> management overwhelmingly wanted to find ways to help
They don't matter, they don't set the rules or the budget.
This is not accidental.
Our government already runs at a tremendous deficit. They can keep borrowing longer than we can remain on the run from the law.
Edit: I had actually completely misread the GP's comment. I had somehow thought they meant that we should do a tax-strike in order to force the government to reform. My cynical counterargument was that they would just borrow to make up for the missed revenue until the protestors gave-in or were arrested.
Because we pay less in taxes than we (as the people who elect our governments) choose to spend. Sure, we could spend less, but we could also tax more (a LOT more), and have done so in the past.
It reached it's lowest since 1965, 22.9%, in 2009. Highest recently was 2017 (27%), and in 2000 it reached 28.3%
The Clinton years were probably what you're looking for, where tax revenues increased linearly from 25.6% to 28.3%, but through the 70s and 80s it varied from 24 to 26%, same as now.
Not sure if an extra 1% of GDP would fall in your "LOT more" category, but it seems far less than normal countries raise.
Name one thing the state government does for normal people who actually finance the largess. Are you really surprised billions go unaccounted in a place where train robberies are a thing? But don't you worry, a photo ID won't be required in the next election though.
Pretty much every democracy in the world has this. Europeans need to show ID to vote.
I have yet to meet anyone advocating for ID to vote who actually wants to address these by both making said ID free for all Americans and paying for the programs necessary to ensure that every American has easy access to get one. This means everything from busing programs to opening new offices in areas that don't have one to putting people on the street to collect the necessary forms and make sure the homeless get them. Then also making sure you find a way to ensure that the disabled, elderly, or just people who can't kill two hours standing in line have an easy way to vote.
Most instead seem to treat that disenfranchisement as acceptable even desired. Truly address the issue of not everyone having an ID and universal access to easy voting (I'm not aware of any lawmakers proposing Voter ID laws attempting to do so) and my objections go away.
Then you'll only have to deal with the folks who are against requiring everyone have ID because they worry about turning us into a "Papers Please" kind of society.
Solution: Make the USA passport card free and compulsory.
https://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1214&con...
Great! All that's left is addressing all the challenges I brought up around making obtaining one simple for everyone (no, drive 40 minutes to your nearest post-office doesn't count), and making voting universally easily accessible to everyone and you have my support!
Given that as far as I know not a single lawmaker who has been pushing Voter ID has backed your suggestion, much less put any effort into addressing my other concerns, I don't think I'll be supporting Voter ID anytime soon.
That would be the ultimate solution, and, as it was mentioned, something that has been proven effective in a very large chunk of the developed world.
But having spent the last five years in the US, I think this will trigger the opposition of most conservative pundits, politicians, and attorneys across the country. Ironically, these are the same people who advocate for stringent voter ID laws.
Voting ID's are free in all states they are required.
> or does not have the means to get to an office.
This could be said for anything...it is funny that the liberal American solution to lack of access to ID offices is to get rid of ID's...not, you know, improve access to said offices (subsidized Ubers that link into an ID appointment, maybe only available every year/whenever you need to renew).
It's funny that the conservative American solution to lack of access to ID offices is just deny them a vote... not, you know, improve access to said offices.
Seriously, what do you think the conservative reaction to giving a tech darling like Uber taxpayer money to cart the poor around? I can hardly imagine the backlash.
Also why assume I'm a liberal? Not requiring an ID has long big a conservative principal. It's only recently that requiring one has become a republican one. Turns out the world isn't as simple as conservatives vs liberals.
I've seen the opposite, not a single person who wants voter ID is against making it freely available to those who can't afford it. In fact, voter ID is already required in a number of states, and not only are there free options available in those states (because it would be a poll tax otherwise), but voter ID's in those states have not shown to decrease minority turnout in elections.
It's a completely fake issue.
I have. I've met plenty of people who say if you aren't willing to spend $25 on your ID you don't deserve to vote. But that's really besides the point given that it only addresses one cherry picked issue out of a number I brought up. Doesn't matter if the ID is free if you have to spend 3 hours bussing to and from, waiting in line, and bussing back from getting it. Or if there is no public transit available. Doesn't matter if the ID is free if there is an hour long line because there aren't enough polling places in your area and we've banned mail-in and drop off ballots. Or if you are simply too infirm to make it to said polling place. Or aren't willing to wait in a large crowd of a hundred of your closest strangers I'm the middle of a pandemic.
How many of those pushing for voter ID are prepared to spend tax dollars on those issues? Texas certainly isn't.
> but voter ID's in those states have not shown to decrease minority turnout in elections.
Depends on what studies your looking at https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-14-634
I suspect you are referring to this one which a number of conservative outlets have been circulating recently: https://www.nber.org/papers/w25522
They conviently never mentioned that it also found that voter ID had no impact on fraud either.
> It's a completely fake issue.
Voter ID to prevent election fraud is a fake issue by the same metric. Yet I assume you are genuine. Why can't you extend the same courtesy to me?
But as serious as people take elections, it's absurd to think people wouldn't do things they shouldn't when their favorite (or least favorite) candidate is on the ballot. You think everyone just plays by the rules?
Of course not! Whoever claimed this? I don't think anyone has claimed that there are no instances of fraud, to do so would be asinine, we have caught confirmed cases of fraud.
> Well the problem with having no laws requiring voter ID is that you literally can't catch fraud
The people currently in jail for it would beg to differ. This gentleman perhaps: https://news.yahoo.com/trump-supporter-charged-voter-fraud-0... Or perhaps this instance of ballot harvesting: https://www.canyon-news.com/georgia-whistle-blower-admits-to...
The reason there is so little voter fraud is the reward is so little and the risk is so great. I cast my grandmas ballot and risk 5 years in a federal prison for what? That vote has a lower chance of swaying the election that I'd have of winning the lottery with a lottery ticket. To perform fraud on the scale required to sway an election you need to coordinate a large group of people (for a Presidential election across multiple states) and all it takes is one defector to bring it all down. Frankly, if your going to attempt this scale, your not doing to attack the system anywhere that Voter ID helps. If I send people to cast ballots that's hundreds of events where I risk getting caught, no you'd want to inject ballots after they've been collected. Or some other scheme that avoids having to cast hundreds or thousands of illegal ballots individually.
In fact the reason that this is important and that people take this seriously is exactly why one should be suspicious of any politician looking to change the rules, especially when there is zero evidence to support said rule change. Who has more incentive to sway the election than the politicians in office? And there is absolutely zero legal risk in proposing a law that just so happens to help you get re-elected, unlike the individual commit voter fraud. SO politicians have all the incentive and none of the risk.
And we know they aren't afraid to use it. While specific instances are debated, no one denies gerrymandering exists. So yes, when I look at Voter ID, I don't just look at it by itself, I look at what's included in these "election security" bills that include stricter Voter ID. It's never opening more polling placing, allowing voting on multiple days, or any other measure designed to make it easier to vote. Instead it's always closing drive up voting, mail in voting, disallowing votes not cast on election days, and limiting the number of polling places in high population areas.
Then when I oppose this bill I must be "pro voter fraud" because otherwise why would I be against Voter ID? Nevermind those other measures in the bill.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/21/democrats...
As many have mentioned the USPS could serve as the backbone with ID cards being printed in kiosks on the spot. The USPS already provides the means for obtaining your passport.
It's not clear to me why anyone falls for the rhetoric of ID's suppressing or disenfranchising voters, it's a lot of partisan nonsense. "Someone think of the homeless and disabled elderly, how will they vote" when we all know the reality is they don't.
The integrity of our vote includes ensuring every eligible voter is able to do so without obstacles. As far as I can tell this is currently the primary threat to the integrity of the vote we are facing.
> Every issue you have against a national ID can be solved easily.
Great let's solve it then! As mentioned actually solve those issues instead of hand waving them away and I'll be pro-voter ID. But as far as I can tell no one is trying to solve them, especially not the people currently pushing voter ID.
> As many have mentioned the USPS could serve as the backbone
Not everyone has a USPS nearby. Not everyone has a car to drive there. I don't accept denying these people the vote.
> "Someone think of the homeless and disabled elderly, how will they vote" when we all know the reality is they don't.
Your reality is news to me, and I don't accept that it's okay to make it hard for anyone to vote just because you don't think they want to.
Now you just have to convince everyone else pushing for voter ID to actually put in the work (and spend the money) to get that done, and we can get this thing rolling!
Good luck!
It's mostly a fake issue to cast the administration as pro-democracy and the opposition as anti-democracy. There's no doubt that poor people sometimes find it very tough to obtain ID, and that voter ID laws benefit Republicans by a few percentage points, but Republican positions on voter ID are less to get those points than to paint themselves as the guardians of democracy against an imaginary secret cabal who are secretly manipulating elections with armies of minorities and illegal immigrants.
They're both playing the same game to different voter bases.
If Democrats seriously cared, they could simply create facilities with the stroke of a pen that would reach out to every voter and help them to obtain ID. Instead they're loudly pushing bills they don't have the votes to pass as a campaign tactic.
It's astounding that under the same administration that is fighting for the right to vote without ID, facial recognition is going to be required to file your taxes. Taxes you only have to file because of Intuit lobbyists.
What else would you expect from a government that ran on being covid rationalists but has taken a year to figure out that they should be sending people masks and tests if they want people to be wearing masks and taking tests?
Perhaps this is the case, and perhaps not, but I'd like to examine this premise closer.
Has anybody provided even a single example of a US Citizen who was trying to figure out how to obtain some ID and couldn't figure out the process?
Not an US citizen, but a Texas resident.
It's not only that the process is painfully complex. For instance, homeless people who don't legally own a gun or can drive a car, are effectively excluded. Same goes for students whose bills are still attached to their families, would have a hard time proving their residence status.
If one can go pass this step, providing proof of identity is equally complicated [1]. It's amusing that some of the accepted documents are even harder and way more expensive to obtain, like a passport.
Not having a social security number makes the whole process almost impossible to complete.
Point is, this shouldn't be this complicated and time consuming. Someone with low income and working two or more jobs, would have a hard time going through the process.
[1] https://www.dps.texas.gov/section/driver-license/identificat...
Certainly with such interest in this topic, there's been a journalistic expose that went into the unfortunate story of even one US citizen who was wrongly prevented from getting some kind of ID? If I had even 1 name of somebody who was wrongly deprived of an ID, it would be a lot easier to understand that there's a real issue here.
Same could be said about "widespread voter ID fraud". Given that there are no such examples of this, why would anyone want to push for more stringent voter ID laws?
Anyhow, here's an example of why and how such laws target minorities and lower classes: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r...
I could make many comments here about the actual election system and how recounts are designed to be worthless, but my biggest argument that I think is completely unassailable is simple: credibility. Do you want to have a credible government or not?
Here's a poll from early in 2020 that says that about 59% of Americans distrust the election system. I'm sure you could find many other polls from before and after that show that a non-trivial percentage of Americans have doubts about the election system's honesty.
https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2020-02-13/ma...
Why wouldn't we want to take the concerns of a non-trivial group seriously and work to address them? The mere fact that there's such establishment resistance to enhancing the security of and ability to audit the election system only adds fuel to the fire that there's something that they want to hide.
> why would anyone want to push for more stringent voter ID laws?
As long as we're not preventing any valid voters from voting (a legitimate concern of course), what's the argument against making the election process even more credible and secure? Please help me understand that.
> Anyhow, here's an example of why and how such laws target minorities and lower classes: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r...
Let me start out by saying that this article did not meet my stated criteria of asking for a specific name of somebody who was unable to get an ID. I was very specific in asking for a name because even just one real verifiable example of a person can illustrate the issue.
Anyway, I agree that the article does highlight some theoretical issues with applying unnecessary hoops to people. I sincerely hope that all people in uncommon living situations (such as those with nonexistent addresses on an Indian Reservation or living out in the sticks somewhere) have the legal ability to vote.
To play Devil's Advocate and be a bit contrarian however, I have to point out this article was a one-sided polemic. The best anecdote from the article about the grandma showed that she was able to vote the same day once she got a little assistance. And the article made a big deal about the distances that poor folks had to travel in order to vote, but the phrase "absentee ballot" doesn't even appear in the article. The article does mention the difficulties with rural mail being slow, but doesn't give even one example where this prevented somebody from voting. I'm certainly going to keep an open mind about the struggles involved in getting ID and voting and I fully agree that any election system that exists should be easily accessible to all valid voters, but I'm not convinced from this article that there's 1 legal citizen out there who can't figure out how to ultimately acquire identification.
That's not at stake, again, unless you can prove that widespread election fraud is a thing. Which, so far, isn't.
> Here's a poll from early in 2020 that says that about 59% of Americans distrust the election system.
Out of curiosity, I went to check out the actual Gallup article and poll results [1]. What it actually says is that the drop is likely driven by allegations of foreign interference and cybersecurity issues, neither had anything to do with voter ID.
A more recent poll [2] increases confidence in the electoral process to 59%. Drop in confidence is driven by republican voters. Interestingly, the issue of eligible voters not being able to cast their vote ranks higher than non eligible people casting votes. So, voter suppression is perceived as more important than voter fraud.
Let me reiterate, there is no proof of widespread voter fraud.
The issue here is that voter IDs are, sometimes, quite difficult to obtain. If republicans were serious about this issue, they would make it universal, free, and compulsory. If every single person born in the US could have an ID card issued in a matter of minutes, which is something pretty common in most developed countries, this "problem" would automatically be solved.
But this is not what Republicans want. They don't want to make it easier or cheaper to obtain a voter ID, they want to keep the current model and make it harder to vote.
> Let me start out by saying that this article did not meet my stated criteria of asking for a specific name of somebody who was unable to get an ID.
Well, this is unfortunate.
Frankly, I find it a bit dishonest to peddle the narrative that people want harsher voter ID laws, since, as stated, they care more about suppression than they do about fraud. It's also not great that your argument revolves around that voter ID laws would make elections more "secure", when there is no proof that they weren't in the first place.
A poll is not proof of anything.
Public sentiment is just that, a sentiment.
The fact that most republican voters believe that voter fraud is widespread, does not mean that they would change their minds if what they ask for is granted. And I don't need to go back too far to prove my point, because the fraud narrative has been moving goalposts since the very beginning, as they went from illegal absentee votes, to votes arriving too late to be counted, to dead people voting, to foreign votes (?) being counted, to voting machines being hacked, and so on and so forth. None of these claims could be verified, yet here we are.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/285608/faith-elections-relative...
[2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/321665/confidence-accuracy-elec...
The Government's research shows that 2% of the UK population doesn't have any form of photo ID, and up to 9% of the population don't have a valid photo ID (i.e. one that would be recognised for voting purposes and has not expired). [0]
The idea that 9% of the population would need to go through additional processes and costs to retain the right to vote is concerning to many.
There's no ID card scheme in the UK, so people typically rely on a driving licence or passport in day to day life. These both have requirements people may not be able to meet (e.g. health conditions may prohibit a driving licence being obtained), and can be expensive.
Fortunately, the UK government has announced plans for a free voter ID card to be made available to anyone without another form of ID.
It then comes down to a cost/risk analysis. The UK government estimates it could cost something like £18 million per year to implement the photo ID requirement.
If the types of fraud that would be prevented by asking for ID are miniscule (33 allegations of voter impersonation were made in 2019 out of 50 million votes cast) and so many people don't have ID - is it worth that cost?
[0] - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
This is notably the origin of the term "grandfather clause", although its current meaning is subtly different from the original sense.
The 15th Amendment made it illegal for states to deny the right to vote directly on the basis of race, so instead they imposed new poll taxes and "literacy tests" (which were not designed as true tests, but rather as instruments to allow poll workers to arbitrarily "pass" and "fail" would-be voters), while exempting those whose grandfathers were eligible to vote before a specific date.
Voter ID laws are all over the place. Very wide deviations from one state to the next, and every state has different ideas about what counts as an acceptable form of identification (they don't always have to be government issued photo identification cards). Of the states that require ID for voting, the following also provide a method to get a free ID to use for voting (although it's possible I missed one or two):
Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.
That would be the 'logical' solution, but the party that wants voter ID is not trying to do something logical.
It wants to prevent people who don't currently have it from voting. So they demand ID, without making it possible/easier to get. (And when they do make it possible/easier to get, its only in their political strongholds - or they explicitly disqualify particular kinds of state-issued ID from being used to vote.)
Selective disenfranchisement is the whole point of the policy, not an unfortunate, unforeseen, unpredictable side effect. If you'd like to learn more about the history of this, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow are a good primer on the motivations behind it. Those motivations haven't gone anywhere, because the cultural struggle in question has never actually been resolved.
Great, have congress legislate laws to make it easier/free to obtain passports. Instead of requiring folks to travel to DMV/Post office/etc., why not have federal public servants visit them door-to-door and assist in issuing it? We do it for census, so what's preventing them from doing it for passports?
How much are we willing to spend on non-issues?
This is not my opinion however, as I think the US could do with a guaranteed, everyone has it, national ID card. Republicans however definitely don't want that, as it could be evidence that a government can actually do something right, and that's anathema to them, and also because a not-small group of evangelicals think that a government issued ID is a sign of the devil or something.
If the opposing party wanted to be logical, they would just make IDs free and easy. Especially while they are running the government.
2. Once in a blue moon, they do. But anything they build to enable this requires constant funding and maintenance. Their opponents either dismantle it when they take power, or retroactively disqualify existing IDs from being eligible for voting.
It's not, and has never been about IDs. It's about disenfranchisement.
However, voter ID itself is a completely reasonable thing. This issue will never go away. The most logical thing for Democrats to do is to enact voter ID the right way so as to remove this as a tool from the Republicans' arsenal.
"Republicans may implement voter ID improperly, so we must never ever verify that the people casting votes are doing so legally" is an insane position, honestly.
An obvious first step would be to make getting a passport easier and free, though I am not sure if the federal government can compel states to accept a passport as identification.
We already verify this, we just don't do it with the particular methods that they demand (and why they reject state-issued IDs that aren't used by their preferred demographics.)
Which is, of course, a game of goal-post shifting, that is impossible to win.
Wouldn't this be the responsibility of the government in power, and not require any participation from the opposition?
The DoD has had ID card production figured out for years. All it takes is a work station (for checking your entry in a database and confirming the data that goes onto the card), a specialized printer, and a few other peripherals (camera, fingerprint scanner, keypad). I can walk into a DoD ID card center and walk out with a new card in 15 minutes. You could easily stuff several of these workstations into the back of a van, and then drive around to neighborhoods, bringing ID services to the disadvantaged. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Access_Card
This way, you can strike down the arguments about the entire Democracy hinging on fake voting and "lost the election" BS. Give Republicans what they want. I don't see any issue with it.
Also Democrats need to calm down and realize that it is not that unreasonable to ask people for IDs to avoid duplicate voting. It is not anti-democratic and definitely not doing anything helpful by calling people that want IDs fascists. Election integrity should be so good that it shouldn't have gaping holes like not having a fricking ID.
One of the 2 parties is more incentivized to discourage voting, and that's worthy of discussion.
I am strongly anti-partisan but am compelled to vote in alignment with what I consider to be the least-worst option.
It's beyond frustrating to try to discuss these issues without it becoming a tribal war, even here on HN where one would hope for a higher level of discourse.
While this is from 2015, this does not appear to be true.
Those who do have a free ID, require a time consuming waiver process.
Free needs to mean free, "not fill out this stack of paperwork and we'll send it off to the state capitol and see if it'll get approved"
Means testing is expensive and time consuming.
Until the voter ID proposals address these issues, they aren't "securing our elections", they are putting arbitrary barriers in place of American's inalienable right to vote. Many of us will never support disenfranchising anyone.
I remember when Mitt Romney got blasted for being against Federal involvement in healthcare while having signed state level legislation for the same thing when he was Governor of Massachusetts. I saw that it was seen as controversial politician hypocrisy but I noticed that it matches my ability to compartmentalize topics. (note: I don't have an opinion on the actual issue of that event and don't care, only noticed I could just as easily look at the circumstances for one jurisdiction and like an outcome, while being against the same outcome in another jurisdiction)
That ability was tested when one time I was stopped by border police on a train into Germany or Austria. They just did a check scan of my passport. Some residents on the train thought it was embarrassing for their country that it could be "so unwelcoming" to foreigners, but myself and some other foreigners from different places were pretty enamored.
This doesn't translate to my stance on US checks based on appearance, or ID requirements in the US or political affiliation or anything.
Only reason I write it is because I wonder if there are other people like me, because I can't tell.
Whether this idea is accurate or not is up for the reader to judge, but there's a perception in America that one of the major parties (not naming names) needs to have as many mechanisms in place to be able to cheat as possible in order to win elections.
Personally, all I'd like to know at this time is if there's any legal citizens out there who who cannot find out how to procure identification.
The argument could be made that they are also intentionally making it easier to cheat during the election.
These complex issues are never black and white.
Historically some governments have had such institutions to various extents.
It’s kinda the same answer to the question “why wouldn’t each side use unrestrained organized violence to attempt to hold and increase their power?”
Because it would be a change in the system it's used as a wedge by politicians. Additionally they know that it's harder to get out of the vote among left leaning voters, so any extra requirement would be risky in swing states. Democrat strongholds (ie Delaware) already have voter ID.
I think a better question is why folks are against ID requirements but are for vaccine passports and photo ids to buy cigarettes, booze, get into rated R movies, drive, or fly.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_...
Driving requires a specific credential and is not relevant for this discussion.
Flying is another case, you do not need an ID to fly, there are provisions to fly without photo ID if you do not have one, they're just more time consuming and meant to be somewhat punitive.
Instead, conservatives focus on the ID mandate, ahead of fixing the inherent supply issues. Indeed, while I still have objections after this issue is fixed, they're largely irrelevant to the political mainstream.
Generally I'm opposed to anything that smacks of 'papers place', and the government has a higher bar to need to confirm and record identity than John Q. Public (also I'd note, the examples you cited, generally do not record anything, they just verify age of purchaser).
It all boils down to some form of absurd partisanship.
Or imagine if you saw Democrats proposing this?
The things that they do nothing on are "wedge" issues. The filibuster guarantees that those are the only things that can't get passed if Congress stays vaguely equally divided. Passing material improvements to average lives is no benefit to either side.
As a result, actually obtaining some form of ID that might be acceptable (the forms vary mostly depending on the political party that writes the rules) can present a significant challenge to some voters, and for some of us, that is an anathema (the right to vote being sacred, certainly compared with the right to drive for example).
Introduced a national ID that the government is OBLIGATED TO PROVIDE for every person, and many of the arguments against it would go away. Currently, no state in the US, nor the federal government, has such a form of ID.
I still think ID is good but it really needs to be paired with a robust improvement in making the system of getting ID work better. If we’re requiring it, the government should be required to provide it for free and meet a legal standard of proof for denial.
In nations that do in fact have a national ID, everyone gets one, with little or no effort (certainly no need to travel), and if you wanted to mark the card "non-voting" that wouldn't be a big step.
Your right to vote is established by the US Constitution. A state can't burden that right. If a state wants to add an ID requirement, that's fine, but getting the ID must present no burden to any voter.
In reality, the conundrum here is entirely of conservatives' own making. On the one hand, they (non-exclusively) are adamantly against automatically issued national or even state IDs. On the other, they want to require ID for voting (ascribe whatever reason to this you want). You can't fulfill both these desires without violating the constitutional right to vote.
If you are required to have documents and paperwork for a voter ID that you are not otherwise required to have, that is, IMO, an undue burden.
I have no problem with the state saying "you must have this document in order to vote" (it even makes a limited amount of sense, despite being a solution in search of a problem). I do have a problem with the state doing anything other than ensuring that every resident who should that document gets it with minimal effort (preferably zero).
If you live in a rural place, or are poor, getting an ID is hard, it costs money to get the underlying proof of identity, then costs time (which is money) to get the ID itself, because you often must travel vast distances to the office that issues photo ID's.
If we solved the issuance problem, so everyone could get a free copy birth certificate and made passports free (which can be obtained via an appointment at most post offices), then this problem would be easily solved, and my objections to voter ID would pretty much instantly fall away.
That said, as a former polling place worker, the amount of voter fraud is.. vastly overstated, its a basically non-existent problem, and is mostly an issue of people making good faith mistakes.
However, if it makes folks feel better, its a societal good to get everyone some form of free and easy photo ID, so for me its a two birds with one stone policy, I'll give on this issue, to get the other one solved.
The issue is conservatives seem hell bent on passing voter ID laws without doing enough (or sometimes anything) to solve the (ID) supply side of the equation.
This is how it is used to disenfranchise people. Add a small clause to the rule that says "every county has 1 location" and it is zero burden for rural voters while urban voters are locked out of the process because no single government office can handle 10 million people. Then the legislators will blame the people in the urban counties for being "lazy" and not voting. We saw in 2020 that the voting rate discrepancies are almost entirely the effect of longstanding voter restrictions that just happened to not work that year, which is why so many state governments have worked overtime to double down on voting restrictions to avoid making the same mistake of allowing people to vote.
I'm generally opposed to anything that smacks of 'papers please', thats my personal root of opposition, but its very weak, and if someone promised a policy that gave everyone a free passport but mandated voter ID requirements, I would gladly show up and vote for them.
I'm not aware of any such proposals, are you?
Why should those citizens be deprived their right to vote?
Minorities, Blacks in particular, have lower vaccination rates than whites. Ever heard of the Tuskegee experiment? Who can blame them? Given vaccine rates by demographic, it seems like many places are hell bent on introducing racist vaccine passport policies. I thought we weren't supposed to do stuff like that anymore.
The only thing that vaccine passport requirements are discriminating against are unvaccinated people. Skin color has nothing to do with it.
Source: https://dot.ca.gov/-/media/dot-media/programs/research-innov...
Even though legislators might label or apportion some source of tax to some specific expense, in reality, they can always move it elsewhere (since they are the legislators). Therefore, it is always a question of which expense has political priority.
Roads are not particularly hard or costly to build. If they are a priority, they can be built and maintained without taxing a population to death. If you think its reasonable to lose a third or more of your income to pay for roads, you are a tremendous sucker.
Flrodia's roads are mostly funded from taxes on fuel and motor vehicle fees.
Flordia has the 11th highest tax on gas in the nation - https://taxfoundation.org/state-gas-tax-rates-2021/
From https://taxfoundation.org/state-infrastructure-spending/ State breakdown is 50% from gas taxes, 20% from licensing fees, and 30% from toll roads.
Back to the first pdf - 52% of the total funding for the road is from the state, 26% is from federal and the other sources are use turnpike (15%), local (3%), and bonds (4%).
Somehow Florida still manages to have, as of writing, $1.50 cheaper gas per gallon than California, so I think they're doing fine with their taxation scheme.
From a state level tax perspective, Florida is $0.4226/g and California is $0.6698/g.
Edit: can't reply to gas formulation copy/paste below, so ... CA has highest population by far and should be #1 in energy. worldpopulationreview.com
Energy is leaving to eastern States where energy can be turned into electricity and delivered to CA via power lines.
> California has the third greatest refining capacity in the U.S. at 1,892,471 barrels per day.
> The California Reformulated Gasoline Program requires the entire state to use gasoline with minimal oxygen content that burns cleaner than conventional fuel. A number of other states are either required or opt to use reformulated gasoline in an effort to reduce smog-forming and toxic pollutants. 30 percent of U.S. gasoline is reformulated, however California’s Reformulated Gasoline Program uses a proprietary blend that differs from the federal reformulated standard. While PADD I features ample production capacity for federal reformulated gasoline, the only refineries outside of California capable of producing the blend required by state law are located in Washington and the Gulf Coast. The Gulf Coast refineries haven’t produced reformulated gasoline since 2011 leaving Washington as California’s only out-of-state gasoline source.
---
This isn't an issue of pushing out manufacturing and energy production. It's that there is a very limited set of refineries that make it and those refineries aren't near the oil fields of the gulf states.
The geography of the area (mountains) make it more challenging and less economical to get a pipeline from somewhere else (Canada?) to the refineries in California.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_oil_and_gas_industr... also has material on the subject.
The relevant reformulation info is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline#Oxygenate_blending
> Oxygenate blending adds oxygen-bearing compounds such as MTBE, ETBE, TAME, TAEE, ethanol, and biobutanol. The presence of these oxygenates reduces the amount of carbon monoxide and unburned fuel in the exhaust. In many areas throughout the U.S., oxygenate blending is mandated by EPA regulations to reduce smog and other airborne pollutants. For example, in Southern California fuel must contain 2% oxygen by weight, resulting in a mixture of 5.6% ethanol in gasoline. The resulting fuel is often known as reformulated gasoline (RFG) or oxygenated gasoline, or in the case of California, California reformulated gasoline. The federal requirement that RFG contain oxygen was dropped on 6 May 2006 because the industry had developed VOC-controlled RFG that did not need additional oxygen.
That may be so, but it's at least in part because, irrespective of what they are designed for because their internal systems were notoriously broken and overwhelmed before the pandemic, and the department is a notorious nightmare hellhole work environment that almost everyone whose been around state service avoids and almost everyone who can get out of (within state service, if they have a reason for remaining there more generally) does, leaving mainly the people that can't escape; it's the most consistent source of workload and working conditions conflicts between employee unions and management, and the issues are usually at best temporarily papered over rather than resolved.
And no, different auth system wouldn't help it. Probably would make it worse - the system would inevitably be buggy, deny entry for people who don't look like their out-of-date photo, glitch on hundreds of systems that are different from whatever the designers assumed, and would require a lot of manual adjustment - while the support workforce will be reduced, because we've got this shiny new expensive automated system, why should we keep paying for human support?
Believe none of what you hear, half of what you read, and everything that you see.
This is simply how every bureaucracy works at all levels. And Unix systems as well :/ Your system comes with cron and tar, you just have to know they exist and how can they be used. And to know that, you just have to read up relevant man pages, and to pull up man pages, you just...
... well I guess you can also hand couple grands to that dude over there mixing a peanut butter jar with fingers who apparently knows how to write a backup scripts and how to run it as a cron job.
I guess it's some sort of unsolved hard problem to make systems that are self sustaining, fair, and easy, that works reliably.
I know that's a lot of questions, but all of them are sincere. I'm legitimately unsure what I should think about this, as well as unsure what you would specifically propose.
https://www-rtlnieuws-nl.translate.goog/economie/column/4140...
I wouldn't be surprised if this same thing could happen with social services, but I don't have much experience with the system.
In other words, I'm not sure if the overall problem we're trying to solve is simply "avoid waste" - it might be more like "prevent the average person from having their identity stolen and their time/money wasted". Which seems like a problem worth trying to solve even if the incidence is relatively low?
My presumably unreasonable imaginary proposal for these sorts of problems is that we would build off of real-life social networks. I think my mail carrier, for instance, would be able to verify that I am the same person who has lived at my address for the past N years.
Which really boils down to one human being seeing another human being's face. It's pretty low-tech.
That said, I feel like using video chats to do this is arguably a reasonable next-best alternative to IRL verification for people who for one reason or another can't ever meet their mail carrier.
I guess what I'm getting at is - it _seems_ like there could be a good version of this system that is roughly the right solution in a mostly unobjectionable, non-surveillance-state way. I don't really know what boxes it would have to check to move from the bad category into the good category. But I'd love to hear more from you or others on what options we might have.
(Edit) Oh, here's another good one. EDD employee claimed to be Senator Feinstein.[2]
[1] - https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/california-employment-d...
[2] - https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-17/californ...
Our 12 year old was refused service in a local stationery shop last week because he didn't have proof of vaccination or a negative test with him. He'd been tested three times in school that same week, but had left "his papers" at home.
He was attempting to buy stuff for school. He was furious.
Oh, and in not so many years from now, he'll be old enough to vote.
How can you slip through public key cryptography?
* not american here
I would want states to have their own ID system where an average citizen can vote for policies that make a difference. I am also against cross-state data sharing (Driver's license) and such.
Who watches the watchers? The people who comprise "the system" rig the system in their favor and cover for each other.
Are you also saying: Ssn > public key cryptography? And if so, why?
See my other comment: people should be in charge of their identity, NOT the government.
And no, passport application does not require SSN.
Why?
— Unfortunately, with enough computers and enough tracking information, bad actors can often do the same thing without a number, anyway, and you can get different kinds of fraud.
— James C Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
(Thanks shoo — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29885742)
If places would just stop treating them as a secret, it wouldn't even matter.
Currently, the only way you can prevent surveillance companies from unaccountably creating permanent records on you is to avoid feeding them your personal information in the first place. There is absolutely no recourse or even legal concept that prevents "ID.me" from using the data you're basically forced to give them here, for any purpose they later desire. Until there are real data protection laws that allow for the creation of trust through accountability, auditing, and right of deletion, then opposing anything that benefits the surveillance industry is the only way we can protect ourselves.
Repost of my comment from yesterday: (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29982395)
As technically interesting as using a card to sign stuff may be, I don't want that to be the government responsibility, as it then opens the door for it to be used in ways that limit our freedoms: a system that's too perfect can uniquely identify you, in ways that prevent disassociation (ex: the place of birth on the passport is of great interest to some totalitarian places, while only citizenship should matter..) So for me, the ideal ID system is decentralized, self-declarative, and the weight of the proof depends on the length of history, not on "who" says it's true: there should be many such services where you could declare a name and an address and anything else you wish (phone, email...)
The value after a few weeks would be close to nil, so you could decide to "increase it" by having several people vouch for you (strength in numbers) instead of relying on a "who" (public notary).
Or you could totally decide that you care about your freedom/independence/whatever and NOT ask for any vouching. It may be hard, but after a few years of reliably receiving mail and orders at that address, it would acquire some serious weight - a bit like you tend to trust online accounts that have been open for some year.
Among many other things, this would also allow anyone the opportunity to "change" easily: want a new name/move to a new address/etc: create a revocation certificate for the old, sign it with the new, boom you inherit the credential history!
It's just a quick idea, but it shows how IDs could be more like URLs (multiple competing services, and you could have a few at the same time, why not!) by moving away from the current system that's a direct descendant of the census (give the lord a list of people to tax them) and the passport (limit freedom of movement during the war)
At the core, I believe people should be in control of their identity, not governments or states.
(Among other issues) I really don't want my identity to become someone else's speculation device and would strongly prefer preventing that if at all possible. Companies selling personal data back and forth as a commodity is already bad enough.
> a system that's too perfect can uniquely identify you, in ways that prevent disassociation (ex: the place of birth on the passport is of great interest to some totalitarian places, while only citizenship should matter..)
Isn't this all information they already have (and would presumably keep)? Ultimately, it's the governing body that's dealing out these keys to access data they already have about you. What data is stored is completely separate from how that data is stored.
If you don't want birthplace on the passport, that's totally separate from SSN vs public keys vs blockchain.
> the ideal ID system is decentralized, self-declarative, and the weight of the proof depends on the length of history, not on "who" says it's true
It would need to also be public, no? Otherwise, it boils back down to "who says it's true".
> moving away from the current system that's a direct descendant of the census (give the lord a list of people to tax them)
If you don't want to be taxed, that's also a separate issue.
Not really. If you don't put it there, it can't be collected. A blockchain solution should NOT have provision for fields you don't want out there, like say religion.
> Isn't this all information they already have (and would presumably keep)? Ultimately, it's the governing body that's dealing out these keys to access data they already have about you. What data is stored is completely separate from how that data is stored.
Information gets stale, so what's already out there become less relevant as time goes.
Also, if you don't put everything in a nice convenient form inside a all-in-one document that's ripe for harvesting, you're making the job harder. That's the goal.
> It would need to also be public, no? Otherwise, it boils back down to "who says it's true".
Hence, blockchain
> If you don't want to be taxed, that's also a separate issue.
I tried to explain the origin of the current systems. I'm all for taxes at the point of origin (ex: wage, capital gains) without exposing more information than what's strictly required to do the job.
Isn't this a basic requirement of any ID system?
And now you understand my core opposition to government run ID system.
Think of it like SSH keys: you want them to allow access, and therefore one-way verification. You don't want a bijective system that would allow you to be uniquely identified. So you can have 1 key per system you access.
Most uses of ID are compatible with that usecase: one ID to allow you to pay taxes, one ID to allow you to travel, one ID to prove you have a license to drive, etc.
There's absolutely no need to merge them - except for the convenience of tracking you and adding new usecases easily, without the government shouldering the burden of rolling a new ID AND having people use it.
But I have no desire to see a society in which zero-cost (or effectively zero-cost) ID systems are the legal requirement for those purposes. As a result, issuing and maintaining the records associated with physical world forms of ID have real costs associated with them, and I would question the benefits to society (even with "privacy" in mind) of replicating that per-potential-ID-category.
[ EDIT : Also, I would think that the way browser fingerprinting works would dissuade you from believing that one-ID-for-X and one-ID-for-Y is going to stop you from being uniquely identified. ]
Doesn't the government have to be able to uniquely identify you to even have a chance at providing services equally to everyone?
Overall, I'm not so sure the status-quo is worth the tradeoff, especially when accumulated at the population level (10 000 people commiting stimulus check fraud is what, 0.01% of the population?)
There's also a massive amount of fraud against the social services. Just look at the auditors' reports on the COVID relief money, and you can see the patterns.
edit: the best part is when somebody manages to fill out all of the forms, navigate the administration, get approval and help finally, then get another letter that says that they were retroactively denied benefits and have to pay them back. It's a minefield.
What are the 'certain kinds of identities that would slip through'?
> Actual people with real jobs were repeatedly refused […]
I would also refuse unemployment benefits to people with jobs, real or otherwise. Which one of us is confused, here?
"perhaps better known as the online identity verification service that many states now use to help staunch the loss of billions of dollars in unemployment insurance and pandemic assistance stolen each year by identity thieves"
In the great State of California, billions in unemployment benefits were sent to the wrong people.. because their internal systems were designed to delay, deny and deprive, I say. Actual people with real jobs were repeatedly refused, while insiders who knew how to fill out paperwork, and apparently knew where the blind spots were, filed hundreds of claims in the early pandemic days. A newly appointed Director (young, tech savvy woman) soon stopped making public statements, and the situation nearly two years later, is not resolved. This is at a time when California has record income to the State.
Now, some people may jump on this and say "well, you see how photo ID would have helped that" and, with incomplete knowledge and personal opinion, I say no, it would not solve it. You see, people with real jobs, with every real paper filed, were denied benefits, while insiders were pulling checks with both hands, using certain kinds of identities that would slip through. How would ever more restriction, requirement and verification, have helped here?
I am deeply against the collective government making ever more demands on citizens for "papers, please" enrollment to massive money social services (edit e.g. govt unemployment benefits). It is not going to have the desired effect, despite superficial evidence otherwise. Additionally this represents a slippery slope where the ability to interact as an individual will be eroded, and opportunity for insider graft will increase.