Absolutely. Any time something is centralized it becomes an irresistible target for unlimited numbers of bad actors and the bar to entry for remote anonymous access makes it a much easier target. Anonymous access to paper ballots means someone is going to be on at least a handful of cameras and has to bypass many security systems so if cheating happens it is because the people gathering the votes want it that way.

We have a long and storied history of coming up with extremely disturbing capitol punishments performed in public, and yet those punishments coexisted with much higher rates of criminality then now.

Stealing from the church in history carried some pretty gruesome deaths, and yet plenty of people still stole from the church, etc.

People are chronically bad at transferring future risk to their current decision making. Any consequence that relies on people being able to model a future problem against their current desires/needs is always going to have a lot of transmission losses. You end up trying to make ever more horrible punishments to overcome the losses in transmission.

I think the goal should be the smallest possible functioning consequence, which is possible by being close to the 'crime'. The very best way is when community can do it immediately. Like if someone does something fucked up, but then their buddies go 'that was fucked up dude', I am very confident this will prevent then from doing it again much more efficiently then a distant jail sentence. (among all the other ways too, there's never one clean action to take to solve problems on a societal level)

I agree that today there are people that fit this description. Low IQ combined with drugs both prescription and illicit can nullify impulse control but maybe that is OK in this case. It might not hurt society has a whole to remove them from the gene pool, though the benefits may not be measurable for a few generations. Today these people are caught and then released thus allowing them to harm and kill even more poeple. I am only suggesting to release them differently and let their god(s) judge them instead of our inept legal system. We just need to get better at catching them before they reproduce.

Your counterpoint about in-person paper ballots doesn't seem relevant to the thread's article or the gp you're responding to.

The article is about digital electronic voting. The voters are remote and can't walk up to a desk. Quote: >the problem with its e-voting pilot, open to about 10,300 locals living abroad and 30 people with disabilities,

The electronic voting system and database is clearly the context of the gp's quote: >I don't care how much maths and encryption you use, ...

The article also has a further link to another piece about e-vote database manipulation can't be detected: https://www.theregister.com/2019/03/12/swiss_evoting_system_...

isn't that racist? i've heard it repeated but i'm not so sure

Proponents of voter ID claim it is needed to prevent fraud, while opponents point out that there's not enough fraud for it to be worth the cost.

Note that countries such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand also didn't require voter ID. First-world countries that do require ID to vote have systems in place to ensure that getting that ID is easy even for poorer people - such as automatically sending the ID to the voter by mail if the government requires you to report your residence or filing out the necessary forms once, before turning 18.

there's no scientific link between race and the ability to go to a DMV once every 10 years

Another thing is when the id requirement is not just there, but added right before the election, so it's not "going to dmv once every 10 years", but "going to dmv this year especially so you can vote.

If I would be optimizing for the minimal dropoff, the policy would look like "passing the law that takes effect in 5 years from now, tasking the blah blah agency with increasing the id coverage and putting reminders how important it is to get an id and vote everywhere you look at, increased funding for the dmv and whatever". But no, it's has to be done with the urgency and framed as threat.

So the actual argument is not that there is link between race and going to dmv once in 10 years, but that the intent behind passing such laws is not increasing integrity, but favoring a specific party. Even if doesn't actually work, it's still one of the worst things a party in a democratic system can do.

> added right before the election

I feel like it's not hard to counter-argue that the writing has been on the wall for decades and it's not a genuine surprise at this point.

> So the actual argument is not that there is link between race and going to dmv once in 10 years

IMO, it's probably better to make the the actual argument.

> DMV

This entire discussion appears to be over a red herring. You may be interested in my comment on the sibling thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47345614

That form of ID is neither accepted per the proposed legislation [1] nor does it last 10 years (more like 4-5 years from what I've seen). Please go look at what's actually required per the SAVE Act.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safeguard_American_Voter_Eligi...

It's the same basic idea, richer people are more likely to already have an id (drivers licence, passport).

I have seen this constantly claimed, and never reasonably evidenced. It's also hard to believe the kind of American exceptionalism that supposedly causes these problems that everyone else can easily solve, despite an environment that is clearly heavily politically invested in solving it (because that also avoids the appearance of racism).

Meanwhile, American proponents of voter ID can readily find people including among the supposedly discriminated-against groups who will testify to the contrary.

In Canada a drivers license is enough to vote.

In any case, it's not on me to show that they shouldn't need ID. It's on the proponents of ID laws to do so, and they have utterly failed.

In the case where disproportionately more poor people are of a certain race then it can be seen as racist (as it affects the population of that race differently). If the reason that disproportionately more poor people are of a certain race is because of racism, then a policy that disenfranchised the poor would effectively extend economic discrimination into political discrimination.

Though I tend to think that even if we remove the economic effects of racism such that disenfranchising the poor couldn't be called racist, they would still be classist and should be avoided where possible.

The document itself says that someone had a name listed there, or at least that the authorities who issued it believed so about 20 years ago. If anything, the voters roll itself is more reliable for that matter (somebody still believed the same facts more recently).

I mean, proof of possession is some level of assurance, which is better than nothing. Knowing my mothers maiden name and birth date is also some level of assurance (this of it, you don't know those about a random me in the internet, so you can't vote for me in the elections for the next 15 minutes at least). But what is a desired level of assurance for something so many people feel strongly about? Is it more or less compared to visiting porn websites, boarding a plane, drinking alcohol, crossing international border and driving a car on a public road?

You can look up the Canadian list of accepted identification documents if you want the full thing, but it includes library cards, public transit cards, correspondence from educational institutions, student IDs, blood donor cards, letters of confirmation of residence from shelters and soup kitchens, residential leases or utility bills, and personal cheques.

You can also vote without ID in Canada by having a guarantor with ID vouch for you.

Contrast the proposed SAVE act, which accepts... passports, birth certificates, naturalization documents, and "REAL ID-compliant documents that also indicate citizenship", which is a fun one.

how about the ones accepted by the police when they ask "show me your ID"?

if it's enough to ID you to cops it should be enough to ID you to enter the voting booth, no?

>and how hard it is to get one.

you can get one at the DMV

I got this state ID using my previous state's ID. The old one is now void. So I need to get a new one. I'll need my birth certificate mailed to me from my parents, because I'm still in the habit of letting them keep all the important family documents. I move alot.

My car broke down a few months ago. Good thing I can walk the relatively (americanly) short distance to work. For after-hours or weekend travel I take the buses (the few my city has) or an uber. Even though it would take me 20 minutes to drive directly to the DMV, the bus route is an hour and ten minutes, and the Uber is going to cost me money. Even if the ID was free, I had to have money to get to the DMV to get it. If I drove, I'd still have paid for the gas.

My work is understaffed and I'm one of the more knowledgable non-managers. I'm working before business hours start and leaving after they end. I can't see a weekday in the next month where I can take time off during the day "just" to get an ID. My boss might understand a medical appointment, but the DMV is not on his list of "reasons I can lose Qaadika for half a day or more".

"you can get one at the DMV" is not an answer.

I think the day I _must_ walk go a desk to vote is the day I'll give up. Voting by mail is one of the best things occuring here (in Switzerland). You get the voting stuff by mail, make your crosses, put it back into the postal box and it's delivered for free (as in beer) to the government.

Not everywhere though; it's up to the canton or municipality to implement this. It's literally the only reason I still buy stamps. Should be made a thing at the federal level imho.

Relying on the postal service here would make it much worse, honestly.