6 ms·

>Jokes aside, I wonder if we're really seeing the long term erosion of democracy because people just don't care. Or maybe a better explanation is that the will

>Jokes aside, I wonder if we're really seeing the long term erosion of democracy because people just don't care. Or maybe a better explanation is that the will of the people is actively surpressed? Be it voter ID laws surpressing Democrats, or the democrats themselves surpressing the voices of progressives through superdelegates and closed primaries, there are serious issues with our democracy. Throw in a populace that's been the victim of a failing education system for decades due to candidates who slash taxes (and thus budgets). And now, when the problems are so acute, I find it very interesting that the narrative becomes that all these issues are the fault of the lazy voters. A convenient, and false narrative.

corndoge 9y ago
I don't think being required to prove you're an American citizen with a photo ID is suppression of the will of the people
- lukeschlather 9y ago
  How much does a photo ID cost? It's a poll tax any way you slice it.
  - tedunangst 9y ago
    In Pennsylvania, about $30. That's at the high end. In Ohio, it's $8. Generally good for four years. Is $2 per year an impediment to voting?
    - davidcbc 9y ago
      The cost of the id itself is only part of the real cost. There's transportation expenses, taking time off work to go, in some cases it is expensive to get the documents necessary to even get an ID like a birth certificate
    - baddox 9y ago
      Of course it is.
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    Many places with voter photo ID laws provide nondriver IDs for free.
    - macintux 9y ago
      With how much paperwork required and at what cost (time, money) to obtain? And, like Texas, are the places to obtain ID few and far between? https://rewire.news/ablc/2014/10/16/well-actually-pretty-hard-people-get-photo-id-just-vote/ https://rewire.news/ablc/2014/10/16/well-actually-pretty-har...
      - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
        Right, it takes paperwork to verify identity, otherwise the ID would be worthless. I've also never met an adult that _doesn't_ have some form of photo ID. I understand that it's important to protect our poor and all that, but requiring proof of citizenship to vote seems pretty important to me in our democracy, and is an incredibly low bar that nearly everyone is already capable of meeting.
        macintux 9y ago
        Well, anecdata aside, an estimated 20 million Americans don’t per one study. http://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/download_file_39242.pdf http://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/do...
        baddox 9y ago
        I’ve never met one either, but that could not be any less relevant. The ACLU says that 11% of American citizens have no ID. https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-sheet https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-...
        TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
        That statistic came from the Brennan Center for Justice, which has a history of bias-driven research[1]. They have also taken massive donations from George Soros. I question the legitimacy of their "research." [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Brennan_Center_for_Justice#Bias https://ballotpedia.org/Brennan_Center_for_Justice#Bias edit: Why am I being downvoted for doing research on citations? It's kind of important to be critical of these kind of things.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
    The cost isn't actually the main barrier to availability of ID. It's mostly the timing. They're typically only available at a DMV office, which are only open 9-5 on weekdays (or similar hours). This means taking a day off work, which for many poor people would be a major expense. Most won't have any form of paid time off, so they lose at least the days wages. Not to mention how few DMVs there are in many regions, and the resulting transportation expenses (need to take an express bus to get there in in time to wait in line and get the ID before they close).
  - johnpowell 9y ago
    About a decade ago my ID expired. This wasn't a huge deal since I don't drive and rarely travel. About a year ago I did want to hop on a plane to visit my nephew in San Diego. So I was thinking getting a new ID wouldn't be a huge problem. So I go into the DMV with my expired ID and expired passport and a stack of mail with my current address and a stack of debit and credit cards and my social security card. They will not do anything without my birth certificate. Crap.. Lost that when my basement flooded. I will head over to vital records. Then the lady at the DMV told me that they closed down the vital records office in Eugene and my only option was to go to Portland. So right here I have to spend 60 bucks on a round trip to get to Portland two hours away. So I get the bus the next day and go to vital records. Again more expense for the Max. So I get them to print out a birth certificate. I had to pay 40 bucks for them to do it. Then they want to see my ID. Wait it is expired. They will not accept it. I am told my options are to have a parent or sibling come in to vouch for me. Difficulty.. Parents are dead and my sister at the time lived on the east coast. So here I am stuck. I know, I will have my sister get on a plane to come out here. It will cost but it needs to be done. So she does. So now I need to pay for a last minute ticket for her. And shit, it will be a while so I need to get a hotel for the night. And I should probably cover my sisters lost wages for a few days. In the end I got my birth certificate. Off to the DMV where I paid 40 bucks for a state issued ID. This all was fantastically expensive. And really.. They closed the vital records office in a city that has 200,000 people. The only option for the entire state is Portland. One office for 4 million people and Oregon is a physically large state. So yes.. Getting a state issued ID can be incredibly hard and expensive. Even if everything was perfect and I was able to easily get the documents it would still be 80 bucks to just get a ID card.
    - rootusrootus 9y ago
      You must be a bit of a hermit ;-). There's a list of documents that you could have brought any three of, which includes things like utility bills, paystubs, insurance policy, personal check, etc. Sixteen different options, and I honestly don't know anybody in my circle of friends who couldn't pull off at least three of them. I otherwise agree with your point, if it is that ID is too expensive to require for voting. It amounts to a poll tax. Better to make it the job of a federal agency. Let's call it the Federal Elections Commission. ID is free, and they track you down to issue it, kinda like the census. Then I might be able to support requiring the ID for voting.
- MPetitt 9y ago
  70 Years ago: "I don't think being required to prove you're a literate citizen with a test is suppression of the will of the people" If you look at the people affected it's clear that it is racial disenfranchisement under a different name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test
  - aisofteng 9y ago
    I've never understood this sort of reasoning. Requiring an ID has nothing to do with race. It turns out that the percentage of people that have an ID varies by race - and this makes requiring an ID a form of racial disenfranchisement? Requiring IDs and then denying IDs to a particular race would be racial disenfranchisement. Simply requiring an ID isn't. And in the end, I think it makes a lot of sense for an ID to be required in order to place a vote.
    - dashundchen 9y ago
      https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a-photo-id-so-you-can-vote-is-easy-unless-youre-poor-black-latino-or-elderly/2016/05/23/8d5474ec-20f0-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a... Because there are barriers, and expensive fees for many, intentional or not. The article above gives a couple stories of the issues people face trying to get ID for voting. Until everyone can automatically and without cost obtain an ID for voting, these are new versions of poll taxes.
      - Mindless2112 9y ago
        > Until everyone can automatically and without cost obtain an ID for voting And yet, no politician campaigns for that because it would actually resolve the issue.
        eropple 9y ago
        Free, universal, automatic ID would totally be the technically-correct-is-the-best-kind-of-correct answer. Which is to say, it's wrong, because the issue is not "voter fraud", the issue is "voters who aren't conservative," because when one erects barriers to voting, conservatives (who tend to be white and more affluent, as a rule, in the areas where these shenanigans are going on) will turn out and everybody else won't. A politician who campaigns for that will be beset upon by the right wing as it heaves into a fit over they're spying on us, they're trying to track us. Because in actually solving the nonexistent problem, they threaten the true reason for the problem being posed.
- lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
  Fortunately decades of history and court decisions disagree with you.
- macintux 9y ago
  This isn’t the piece I was looking for but it makes the case that what seems obviously easy and affordable isn’t. https://rewire.news/ablc/2014/10/16/well-actually-pretty-hard-people-get-photo-id-just-vote/ https://rewire.news/ablc/2014/10/16/well-actually-pretty-har...
- kelnos 9y ago
  I agree, in general, at least in states where an ID is trivial to obtain and dirt cheap. A sibling poster suggests $8 for a 4-year ID in Ohio. I just looked at the CA DMV, and they're $29 (5-year, I believe), but they have an $8 option for people who meet certain income requirements. Now, getting to the DMV to apply for an ID card can be a hardship on people given the hours that the DMV operates and the fact that you usually need to set aside several hours to deal with waiting in line and such. If you hold 2 or 3 jobs, and missing part of a shift means getting fired, you probably don't have the time to go to get an ID. (Hell, you probably also don't have the time to actually go to the polls to vote, but that's another issue.) And what if you're homeless? Getting an ID is probably very low on the list of things you can afford, even at $8. Also how do they mail it to you if you don't have an address? At any rate, isn't this fixing a problem I don't think we don't have? Where is the evidence of rampant voter fraud that would recommend even an ID requirement?
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    I had a doctor's appointment on Friday. While checking in, I overheard the plight of a new mother who didn't have ID, and whose infant therefore could not be seen by the doctor. Fortunately, the clerk's call to a more enlightened manager prevented the potential travesty. The ID-obsessed sense some moral failings on the part of those who have difficulty obtaining IDs, and their instinctive reaction is to make difficult lives yet more difficult.
- greggarious 9y ago
  The founders didn't have photo IDs. In person voter fraud is extremely rare[1], this is why requiring photo ID to vote has been struck down as voter supression in many states[2] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/03/heres-how-rare-in-person-voter-fraud-is/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/03/he... [2]https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/15/528457693/supreme-court-declines-republican-bid-to-revive-north-carolina-voter-id-law https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/15/528457693...
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    That's irrelevant. They did have slaves, doesn't mean slavery was a good system. IDs should be required but they should also be very easy to obtain. The government should go out of its way to make it as easy a possible. Being undocumented is not useful to any citizen, it creates an underclass. People should have IDs and we should care about voter fraud, whether its 1 vote or 1 million. That the parties won't do this shows that both sides have something to gain by keeping things the way they are, they just want to win, regardless of the sanctity of the vote or the well-being of the people.
    - jstanley 9y ago
      Being undocumented only creates an underclass if you require people to be documented! There's nothing inherently wrong with existing as a living being without declaring your existence (or, realistically, asking permission for your existence) to the government. Nobody is complaining about animals roaming the world freely without documents. In fact birds routinely cross borders without being stopped or even noticed. Why do people need to be monitored?
      - aaron-lebo 9y ago
        If you have documentation requirements of any kind (dejure or defacto), without documentation you are at a disadvantage. There's a lot of processes that require single if not multiple forms of ID, today. You don't have to mandate it for anything but voting. But if you do want one, they should be easy for anyone to obtain. If the poor can't prove who they are, they can't do a lot. They'll always be poor.
- jopsen 9y ago
  The intent of those laws are to be supressive. If you started expanding something like social security numbers to be a real ID system with photo ID and digital 2FA, then maybe in 10-15 years you can make it a requirement. That's how long time adopting of such systems takes in other countries... With much smaller populations
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- jccalhoun 9y ago
  The fact is that before Republicans began pushing for voter id laws in states there were very very few proven cases of voter fraud. So if there wasn't a problem with voter fraud, what was the point of trying to pass the laws?
  - mejin 9y ago
    It's probably very hard to prove fraud when no one uses an id
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  In theory, it might not be; the actual proposals there have been advanced have been attempts at voter suppressions with partisan (and usually class and racial, as well) bias. Establish a universal ID first and eliminate any access bias then we can talk about requiring it to vote. Given that there is no evidence of any real problem that it actually solves in voting, it's more important to avoid creating new problems than to rush into it as a solution for speculative potential future problems.
- Frondo 9y ago
  Well, I do. So we're at an impasse. See, my deal is, you want to make this whole system more complicated at several steps, and for what benefit? To solve what problem? I'd rather keep the system as simple as possible--cheaper, easier, less can go wrong that way, and more people get to vote and participate in governance.
umanwizard 9y ago
The US has close to the highest spending in the world on k-12 education per student.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jessaustin 9y ago
  Don't blame GP; he was probably educated here. Part of that education is learning who may be criticized for a failure to accomplish the tasks for which they were hired. Public school administrators and teachers are certainly not among those.

corndoge 9y ago

I don't think being required to prove you're an American citizen with a photo ID is suppression of the will of the people

lukeschlather 9y ago
How much does a photo ID cost? It's a poll tax any way you slice it.
- tedunangst 9y ago
  In Pennsylvania, about $30. That's at the high end. In Ohio, it's $8. Generally good for four years. Is $2 per year an impediment to voting?
  - davidcbc 9y ago
    The cost of the id itself is only part of the real cost. There's transportation expenses, taking time off work to go, in some cases it is expensive to get the documents necessary to even get an ID like a birth certificate
  - baddox 9y ago
    Of course it is.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  Many places with voter photo ID laws provide nondriver IDs for free.
  - macintux 9y ago
    With how much paperwork required and at what cost (time, money) to obtain? And, like Texas, are the places to obtain ID few and far between? https://rewire.news/ablc/2014/10/16/well-actually-pretty-hard-people-get-photo-id-just-vote/ https://rewire.news/ablc/2014/10/16/well-actually-pretty-har...
    - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
      Right, it takes paperwork to verify identity, otherwise the ID would be worthless. I've also never met an adult that _doesn't_ have some form of photo ID. I understand that it's important to protect our poor and all that, but requiring proof of citizenship to vote seems pretty important to me in our democracy, and is an incredibly low bar that nearly everyone is already capable of meeting.
      - macintux 9y ago
        Well, anecdata aside, an estimated 20 million Americans don’t per one study. http://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/download_file_39242.pdf http://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/do...
      - baddox 9y ago
        I’ve never met one either, but that could not be any less relevant. The ACLU says that 11% of American citizens have no ID. https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-sheet https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-...
        TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
        That statistic came from the Brennan Center for Justice, which has a history of bias-driven research[1]. They have also taken massive donations from George Soros. I question the legitimacy of their "research." [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Brennan_Center_for_Justice#Bias https://ballotpedia.org/Brennan_Center_for_Justice#Bias edit: Why am I being downvoted for doing research on citations? It's kind of important to be critical of these kind of things.
- SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
  The cost isn't actually the main barrier to availability of ID. It's mostly the timing. They're typically only available at a DMV office, which are only open 9-5 on weekdays (or similar hours). This means taking a day off work, which for many poor people would be a major expense. Most won't have any form of paid time off, so they lose at least the days wages. Not to mention how few DMVs there are in many regions, and the resulting transportation expenses (need to take an express bus to get there in in time to wait in line and get the ID before they close).
- johnpowell 9y ago
  About a decade ago my ID expired. This wasn't a huge deal since I don't drive and rarely travel. About a year ago I did want to hop on a plane to visit my nephew in San Diego. So I was thinking getting a new ID wouldn't be a huge problem. So I go into the DMV with my expired ID and expired passport and a stack of mail with my current address and a stack of debit and credit cards and my social security card. They will not do anything without my birth certificate. Crap.. Lost that when my basement flooded. I will head over to vital records. Then the lady at the DMV told me that they closed down the vital records office in Eugene and my only option was to go to Portland. So right here I have to spend 60 bucks on a round trip to get to Portland two hours away. So I get the bus the next day and go to vital records. Again more expense for the Max. So I get them to print out a birth certificate. I had to pay 40 bucks for them to do it. Then they want to see my ID. Wait it is expired. They will not accept it. I am told my options are to have a parent or sibling come in to vouch for me. Difficulty.. Parents are dead and my sister at the time lived on the east coast. So here I am stuck. I know, I will have my sister get on a plane to come out here. It will cost but it needs to be done. So she does. So now I need to pay for a last minute ticket for her. And shit, it will be a while so I need to get a hotel for the night. And I should probably cover my sisters lost wages for a few days. In the end I got my birth certificate. Off to the DMV where I paid 40 bucks for a state issued ID. This all was fantastically expensive. And really.. They closed the vital records office in a city that has 200,000 people. The only option for the entire state is Portland. One office for 4 million people and Oregon is a physically large state. So yes.. Getting a state issued ID can be incredibly hard and expensive. Even if everything was perfect and I was able to easily get the documents it would still be 80 bucks to just get a ID card.
  - rootusrootus 9y ago
    You must be a bit of a hermit ;-). There's a list of documents that you could have brought any three of, which includes things like utility bills, paystubs, insurance policy, personal check, etc. Sixteen different options, and I honestly don't know anybody in my circle of friends who couldn't pull off at least three of them. I otherwise agree with your point, if it is that ID is too expensive to require for voting. It amounts to a poll tax. Better to make it the job of a federal agency. Let's call it the Federal Elections Commission. ID is free, and they track you down to issue it, kinda like the census. Then I might be able to support requiring the ID for voting.
MPetitt 9y ago
70 Years ago: "I don't think being required to prove you're a literate citizen with a test is suppression of the will of the people" If you look at the people affected it's clear that it is racial disenfranchisement under a different name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test
- aisofteng 9y ago
  I've never understood this sort of reasoning. Requiring an ID has nothing to do with race. It turns out that the percentage of people that have an ID varies by race - and this makes requiring an ID a form of racial disenfranchisement? Requiring IDs and then denying IDs to a particular race would be racial disenfranchisement. Simply requiring an ID isn't. And in the end, I think it makes a lot of sense for an ID to be required in order to place a vote.
  - dashundchen 9y ago
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a-photo-id-so-you-can-vote-is-easy-unless-youre-poor-black-latino-or-elderly/2016/05/23/8d5474ec-20f0-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a... Because there are barriers, and expensive fees for many, intentional or not. The article above gives a couple stories of the issues people face trying to get ID for voting. Until everyone can automatically and without cost obtain an ID for voting, these are new versions of poll taxes.
    - Mindless2112 9y ago
      > Until everyone can automatically and without cost obtain an ID for voting And yet, no politician campaigns for that because it would actually resolve the issue.
      - eropple 9y ago
        Free, universal, automatic ID would totally be the technically-correct-is-the-best-kind-of-correct answer. Which is to say, it's wrong, because the issue is not "voter fraud", the issue is "voters who aren't conservative," because when one erects barriers to voting, conservatives (who tend to be white and more affluent, as a rule, in the areas where these shenanigans are going on) will turn out and everybody else won't. A politician who campaigns for that will be beset upon by the right wing as it heaves into a fit over they're spying on us, they're trying to track us. Because in actually solving the nonexistent problem, they threaten the true reason for the problem being posed.
lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
Fortunately decades of history and court decisions disagree with you.
macintux 9y ago
This isn’t the piece I was looking for but it makes the case that what seems obviously easy and affordable isn’t. https://rewire.news/ablc/2014/10/16/well-actually-pretty-hard-people-get-photo-id-just-vote/ https://rewire.news/ablc/2014/10/16/well-actually-pretty-har...
kelnos 9y ago
I agree, in general, at least in states where an ID is trivial to obtain and dirt cheap. A sibling poster suggests $8 for a 4-year ID in Ohio. I just looked at the CA DMV, and they're $29 (5-year, I believe), but they have an $8 option for people who meet certain income requirements. Now, getting to the DMV to apply for an ID card can be a hardship on people given the hours that the DMV operates and the fact that you usually need to set aside several hours to deal with waiting in line and such. If you hold 2 or 3 jobs, and missing part of a shift means getting fired, you probably don't have the time to go to get an ID. (Hell, you probably also don't have the time to actually go to the polls to vote, but that's another issue.) And what if you're homeless? Getting an ID is probably very low on the list of things you can afford, even at $8. Also how do they mail it to you if you don't have an address? At any rate, isn't this fixing a problem I don't think we don't have? Where is the evidence of rampant voter fraud that would recommend even an ID requirement?
- jessaustin 9y ago
  I had a doctor's appointment on Friday. While checking in, I overheard the plight of a new mother who didn't have ID, and whose infant therefore could not be seen by the doctor. Fortunately, the clerk's call to a more enlightened manager prevented the potential travesty. The ID-obsessed sense some moral failings on the part of those who have difficulty obtaining IDs, and their instinctive reaction is to make difficult lives yet more difficult.
greggarious 9y ago
The founders didn't have photo IDs. In person voter fraud is extremely rare[1], this is why requiring photo ID to vote has been struck down as voter supression in many states[2] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/03/heres-how-rare-in-person-voter-fraud-is/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/03/he... [2]https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/15/528457693/supreme-court-declines-republican-bid-to-revive-north-carolina-voter-id-law https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/15/528457693...
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  That's irrelevant. They did have slaves, doesn't mean slavery was a good system. IDs should be required but they should also be very easy to obtain. The government should go out of its way to make it as easy a possible. Being undocumented is not useful to any citizen, it creates an underclass. People should have IDs and we should care about voter fraud, whether its 1 vote or 1 million. That the parties won't do this shows that both sides have something to gain by keeping things the way they are, they just want to win, regardless of the sanctity of the vote or the well-being of the people.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    Being undocumented only creates an underclass if you require people to be documented! There's nothing inherently wrong with existing as a living being without declaring your existence (or, realistically, asking permission for your existence) to the government. Nobody is complaining about animals roaming the world freely without documents. In fact birds routinely cross borders without being stopped or even noticed. Why do people need to be monitored?
    - aaron-lebo 9y ago
      If you have documentation requirements of any kind (dejure or defacto), without documentation you are at a disadvantage. There's a lot of processes that require single if not multiple forms of ID, today. You don't have to mandate it for anything but voting. But if you do want one, they should be easy for anyone to obtain. If the poor can't prove who they are, they can't do a lot. They'll always be poor.
jopsen 9y ago
The intent of those laws are to be supressive. If you started expanding something like social security numbers to be a real ID system with photo ID and digital 2FA, then maybe in 10-15 years you can make it a requirement. That's how long time adopting of such systems takes in other countries... With much smaller populations
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
jccalhoun 9y ago
The fact is that before Republicans began pushing for voter id laws in states there were very very few proven cases of voter fraud. So if there wasn't a problem with voter fraud, what was the point of trying to pass the laws?
- mejin 9y ago
  It's probably very hard to prove fraud when no one uses an id
dragonwriter 9y ago
In theory, it might not be; the actual proposals there have been advanced have been attempts at voter suppressions with partisan (and usually class and racial, as well) bias. Establish a universal ID first and eliminate any access bias then we can talk about requiring it to vote. Given that there is no evidence of any real problem that it actually solves in voting, it's more important to avoid creating new problems than to rush into it as a solution for speculative potential future problems.
Frondo 9y ago
Well, I do. So we're at an impasse. See, my deal is, you want to make this whole system more complicated at several steps, and for what benefit? To solve what problem? I'd rather keep the system as simple as possible--cheaper, easier, less can go wrong that way, and more people get to vote and participate in governance.

umanwizard 9y ago

The US has close to the highest spending in the world on k-12 education per student.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jessaustin 9y ago
Don't blame GP; he was probably educated here. Part of that education is learning who may be criticized for a failure to accomplish the tasks for which they were hired. Public school administrators and teachers are certainly not among those.