13 ms·

I don't have a horse in that race, I'm not even a US citizen - and I must say that whole debate on voter id laws is puzzling to me. After reading a bit on disp

by erwan 8y ago

I don't have a horse in that race, I'm not even a US citizen - and I must say that whole debate on voter id laws is puzzling to me. After reading a bit on disparate impact and what constitute the "crux" of the issue, I get why the ID requirement can be problematic if it makes people jump through a ton of hoops. However, the common suggestion that IDing people be stripped altogether just sounds bizarre to me. I would think a path to resolution would rather include making it easier to obtain an ID.

ericdykstra 8y ago
A common suggestion is to just issue the ID free of charge. Considering the state of government invasion of liberty in America, this seems like a no-brainer step in the right direction at minimal cost.
- elyobo 8y ago
  Doing things for free is something that the Republicans are also ideologically opposed to though...
- mikeash 8y ago
  ID is free at your local DMV office... which is a five minute drive away if you’re in an area that votes properly, and a three-hour bus ride with eight transfers if you’re not.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    Of course, without voter ID, the same people are just pulling that trick with polling places directly.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      Indeed. That’s at least a little more obvious and a little easier to resist.
cm2012 8y ago
That's the thing - almost all voting rules in the US are decided state by state. And states will purposefully make it harder to get an ID AND make ID required. This is not conjecture, its historical fact.
- chrisco255 8y ago
  No, it's 2018. Nobody is making it difficult to get an ID. 99.99% of adults already have ID. You need ID to rent a hotel, drive a car, buy a beer, buy certain types of chemicals, get a job, fly on a plane, buy cigs, rent a pool table, all sorts of cases.
  - cm2012 8y ago
    Actually, 91 percent of Whites have government issued ID, compared to 73 percent of Blacks and 83 percent of hispanics. It's a huge impact. Just not on the type of people in your social sphere. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.projectvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/AMERICANS-WITH-PHOTO-ID-Research-Memo-February-2015.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjVos7mnr_eAhUS0FkKHfudDlQQFjABegQIDBAE&usg=AOvVaw0y-1G55dq_gZlPGTpBSULI&cshid=1541489340118 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://...
    - isoskeles 8y ago
      The numbers you posted are specific for Driver's Licenses and Passports. The link you posted notes that general photo ids are possessed by white: 95%, black: 87%, hispanic: 90%.
      - mikeash 8y ago
        Another fun trick is to design the list of acceptable forms of ID such that the right people are more likely to have one that’s acceptable. For example, accepting a concealed carry permit but not a state-issued student ID.
        8y ago
gmueckl 8y ago
Mandatory state issues IDs are a cultural red flag for many Americans. This leads to practical absurdities like having the driver's license double as a de facto ID card. As a European, this seems byzantine and unnecessarily inconvenient to me, but such are cultural differences.
- erwan 8y ago
  Ok so as I understand it: the issue is that some socioeconomic classes are barred from voting because they lack an ID. At the same time, people do not want mandatory state-issued ID because they are reluctant to centralization. A reluctance for which I have sympathy frankly. But then, how about having optional state-issued IDs (like US passports) with low req to obtain? I'm not saying it's that easy but I want to understand what makes people think it is such an insurmountable task such that they default to the "remove the requirement" strategy. I feel like there is something interesting hiding there. Or is the thesis that these roadblocks are there on purpose to suppress votes?
  - TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago
    The thing is states that require ID also deliberately make it much more difficult to get ID. But I would question why you need ID for voting. Voter fraud is near-nonexistent and you can use the polling card if you want a little more security.
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    The implementers of voter ID laws have said explicitly that their purpose is to suppress votes[1] 1 https://imgur.com/a/LGTGcZT https://imgur.com/a/LGTGcZT
  - danaris 8y ago
    > But then, how about having optional state-issued IDs (like US passports) with low req to obtain? Not sure if you're proposing to change the requirements to make them low, but US passports do not have "low requirements to obtain." You need a bunch of different documentation, you need to be able to visit a place that can take official passport photos, and you need to pay non-trivial fees. And then you need to wait weeks to get it.
CobrastanJorji 8y ago
There is not a voter fraud problem in the US. Estimates of the rate of voter fraud in the US put the rate at about 0.0003% or lower, far less than what would ever swing an election. Regardless of whether national IDs make sense for other reasons, there is no issue with voter fraud that needs addressing. And yet, in the last decade, at least 11 states have passed laws adding new voter ID requirements. Because of the lack of a voter fraud problem, the disparate impact is clearly the main objective of the laws, which proponents of the laws are frequently quite clear about. The idea that they might be used to theoretically avoid fraud is basically a convenient justification that just might pass constitutional muster. It's not that Democrats hate national ID cards because freedom and Republicans like them because safety. It's that Republicans like requiring voter ID cards because adding barriers to voting benefits Republicans, and Democrats dislike them because adding barriers to voting hurts Democrats. If it weren't voter ID cards, it'd be something else. Previous obvious attempts included poll taxes, grandfather clauses, literacy tests. When those fail, you just make sure the lines to vote in the wrong party's districts are going to be much longer than the lines to vote in the right party's districts.
- chrisco255 8y ago
  I have never heard a single sensible argument against ID checks at the polls. It's 2018. You can't fly on a plane, drive a car, or buy a beer, lotto ticket or cigarettes without ID but asking for ID to vote is just too much. That crosses the line!
  - cm2012 8y ago
    1) There's essentially no in person voter fraud in america, so asking for id doesn't help anything. 2) Only 91% of whites, 73% of blacks and 81% of hispanic citizens have a government issued ID, so you're disenfranchising a lot of people by requiring it.
    - belorn 8y ago
      Which mean that 9% of whites, 27% of blacks and 19% of hispanics are barred from air travel, being a driver, buy beer, going to bars, participating in lottos or buying cigarettes. I would also guess it also mean barred from trains, sport and concerts (since now days those tend to use personalized tickets to avoid scalping), and visiting a political representative as those places tend to have heightened security. That is a lot of barred experience. Sounds a bit like second-class citizenship. Comment, based on the down votes, Is this wrong? Can you buy a air ticket in the US and travel by plane without an ID?
TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago
A lot of Europe is maybe more enthusiastic about ID than it should be. It is necessary for some purposes but voting isn't really one.
elyobo 8y ago
> the common suggestion that IDing people be stripped altogether just sounds bizarre to me Works for us in NZ. I can imagine that it wouldn't in the US though; I imagine both Dems and Repubs would immediately start bulk scale cheating, justifying it on the basis that the others would be doing it... So yeah, making it very easy to obtain and ID seems like a sound compromise.
- mikeash 8y ago
  A lot of the US already allows voting without ID, and it used to be that way everywhere. There is essentially no cheating that ID requirements would prevent. The numbers are literally single digits per year. (Absolute numbers of fraudulent votes, not percentages.)
skorbenko 8y ago
What you propose is perfectly decent and centrist. With the current political climate and the power echo chambers have over people’s radicalization, however, centrists are practically unelectable.
C1sc0cat 8y ago
Why do you think that issuing ID cards to all "papers bitte" is a good idea - mandatory presence on an electoral role uk style is better.
mikeash 8y ago
Making it easier to obtain an ID is a much harder fight. It’s not just a matter of tweaking the law. You also have to make sure the opposition doesn’t pull dirty tricks to throw a wrench in the works. For example, it’s common for a state ID to be freely available at any DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) office. Great, it’s easy to obtain ID! Except the opposition won control of the state government and closed half of the DMV offices in areas that vote against them, and the other half are so understaffed that you have to take a full day off work to get your ID. This is not a hypothetical, by the way. It has played out repeatedly across the US.
XorNot 8y ago
Or implement mandatory voting (with a nominal fine - i.e. $30 as it is in Australia) and get turn out to reliable +99% margins. At which point, other reasons in-person voter fraud doesn't happen aside, it would be impossible to actually commit - since the only possible outcome would be a double-entry on election day voter rolls, which can be reconciled and investigated (and the election rerun if the rate of occurrence would potentially alter the outcome).
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nathan_long 8y ago
I agree in principle, and making an ID easier to get makes sense. However, in my state (Georgia), they're being strict about photo ID and name matching, yet have ignored for years serious security problems with the electronic voting machines which leave no paper trail. This makes it easy to believe that the ID requirement is about something other than securing the election from tampering.

by erwan 8y ago

ericdykstra 8y ago

A common suggestion is to just issue the ID free of charge. Considering the state of government invasion of liberty in America, this seems like a no-brainer step in the right direction at minimal cost.

elyobo 8y ago
Doing things for free is something that the Republicans are also ideologically opposed to though...
mikeash 8y ago
ID is free at your local DMV office... which is a five minute drive away if you’re in an area that votes properly, and a three-hour bus ride with eight transfers if you’re not.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  Of course, without voter ID, the same people are just pulling that trick with polling places directly.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    Indeed. That’s at least a little more obvious and a little easier to resist.

cm2012 8y ago

That's the thing - almost all voting rules in the US are decided state by state. And states will purposefully make it harder to get an ID AND make ID required. This is not conjecture, its historical fact.

chrisco255 8y ago
No, it's 2018. Nobody is making it difficult to get an ID. 99.99% of adults already have ID. You need ID to rent a hotel, drive a car, buy a beer, buy certain types of chemicals, get a job, fly on a plane, buy cigs, rent a pool table, all sorts of cases.
- cm2012 8y ago
  Actually, 91 percent of Whites have government issued ID, compared to 73 percent of Blacks and 83 percent of hispanics. It's a huge impact. Just not on the type of people in your social sphere. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.projectvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/AMERICANS-WITH-PHOTO-ID-Research-Memo-February-2015.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjVos7mnr_eAhUS0FkKHfudDlQQFjABegQIDBAE&usg=AOvVaw0y-1G55dq_gZlPGTpBSULI&cshid=1541489340118 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://...
  - isoskeles 8y ago
    The numbers you posted are specific for Driver's Licenses and Passports. The link you posted notes that general photo ids are possessed by white: 95%, black: 87%, hispanic: 90%.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      Another fun trick is to design the list of acceptable forms of ID such that the right people are more likely to have one that’s acceptable. For example, accepting a concealed carry permit but not a state-issued student ID.
      - 8y ago

gmueckl 8y ago

Mandatory state issues IDs are a cultural red flag for many Americans. This leads to practical absurdities like having the driver's license double as a de facto ID card. As a European, this seems byzantine and unnecessarily inconvenient to me, but such are cultural differences.

erwan 8y ago
Ok so as I understand it: the issue is that some socioeconomic classes are barred from voting because they lack an ID. At the same time, people do not want mandatory state-issued ID because they are reluctant to centralization. A reluctance for which I have sympathy frankly. But then, how about having optional state-issued IDs (like US passports) with low req to obtain? I'm not saying it's that easy but I want to understand what makes people think it is such an insurmountable task such that they default to the "remove the requirement" strategy. I feel like there is something interesting hiding there. Or is the thesis that these roadblocks are there on purpose to suppress votes?
- TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago
  The thing is states that require ID also deliberately make it much more difficult to get ID. But I would question why you need ID for voting. Voter fraud is near-nonexistent and you can use the polling card if you want a little more security.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  The implementers of voter ID laws have said explicitly that their purpose is to suppress votes[1] 1 https://imgur.com/a/LGTGcZT https://imgur.com/a/LGTGcZT
- danaris 8y ago
  > But then, how about having optional state-issued IDs (like US passports) with low req to obtain? Not sure if you're proposing to change the requirements to make them low, but US passports do not have "low requirements to obtain." You need a bunch of different documentation, you need to be able to visit a place that can take official passport photos, and you need to pay non-trivial fees. And then you need to wait weeks to get it.

CobrastanJorji 8y ago

There is not a voter fraud problem in the US. Estimates of the rate of voter fraud in the US put the rate at about 0.0003% or lower, far less than what would ever swing an election. Regardless of whether national IDs make sense for other reasons, there is no issue with voter fraud that needs addressing. And yet, in the last decade, at least 11 states have passed laws adding new voter ID requirements. Because of the lack of a voter fraud problem, the disparate impact is clearly the main objective of the laws, which proponents of the laws are frequently quite clear about. The idea that they might be used to theoretically avoid fraud is basically a convenient justification that just might pass constitutional muster. It's not that Democrats hate national ID cards because freedom and Republicans like them because safety. It's that Republicans like requiring voter ID cards because adding barriers to voting benefits Republicans, and Democrats dislike them because adding barriers to voting hurts Democrats. If it weren't voter ID cards, it'd be something else. Previous obvious attempts included poll taxes, grandfather clauses, literacy tests. When those fail, you just make sure the lines to vote in the wrong party's districts are going to be much longer than the lines to vote in the right party's districts.

chrisco255 8y ago
I have never heard a single sensible argument against ID checks at the polls. It's 2018. You can't fly on a plane, drive a car, or buy a beer, lotto ticket or cigarettes without ID but asking for ID to vote is just too much. That crosses the line!
- cm2012 8y ago
  1) There's essentially no in person voter fraud in america, so asking for id doesn't help anything. 2) Only 91% of whites, 73% of blacks and 81% of hispanic citizens have a government issued ID, so you're disenfranchising a lot of people by requiring it.
  - belorn 8y ago
    Which mean that 9% of whites, 27% of blacks and 19% of hispanics are barred from air travel, being a driver, buy beer, going to bars, participating in lottos or buying cigarettes. I would also guess it also mean barred from trains, sport and concerts (since now days those tend to use personalized tickets to avoid scalping), and visiting a political representative as those places tend to have heightened security. That is a lot of barred experience. Sounds a bit like second-class citizenship. Comment, based on the down votes, Is this wrong? Can you buy a air ticket in the US and travel by plane without an ID?

TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago

A lot of Europe is maybe more enthusiastic about ID than it should be. It is necessary for some purposes but voting isn't really one.

elyobo 8y ago

> the common suggestion that IDing people be stripped altogether just sounds bizarre to me Works for us in NZ. I can imagine that it wouldn't in the US though; I imagine both Dems and Repubs would immediately start bulk scale cheating, justifying it on the basis that the others would be doing it... So yeah, making it very easy to obtain and ID seems like a sound compromise.

mikeash 8y ago
A lot of the US already allows voting without ID, and it used to be that way everywhere. There is essentially no cheating that ID requirements would prevent. The numbers are literally single digits per year. (Absolute numbers of fraudulent votes, not percentages.)

skorbenko 8y ago

What you propose is perfectly decent and centrist. With the current political climate and the power echo chambers have over people’s radicalization, however, centrists are practically unelectable.

C1sc0cat 8y ago

Why do you think that issuing ID cards to all "papers bitte" is a good idea - mandatory presence on an electoral role uk style is better.

mikeash 8y ago

Making it easier to obtain an ID is a much harder fight. It’s not just a matter of tweaking the law. You also have to make sure the opposition doesn’t pull dirty tricks to throw a wrench in the works. For example, it’s common for a state ID to be freely available at any DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) office. Great, it’s easy to obtain ID! Except the opposition won control of the state government and closed half of the DMV offices in areas that vote against them, and the other half are so understaffed that you have to take a full day off work to get your ID. This is not a hypothetical, by the way. It has played out repeatedly across the US.

XorNot 8y ago

Or implement mandatory voting (with a nominal fine - i.e. $30 as it is in Australia) and get turn out to reliable +99% margins. At which point, other reasons in-person voter fraud doesn't happen aside, it would be impossible to actually commit - since the only possible outcome would be a double-entry on election day voter rolls, which can be reconciled and investigated (and the election rerun if the rate of occurrence would potentially alter the outcome).

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

nathan_long 8y ago

I agree in principle, and making an ID easier to get makes sense. However, in my state (Georgia), they're being strict about photo ID and name matching, yet have ignored for years serious security problems with the electronic voting machines which leave no paper trail. This makes it easy to believe that the ID requirement is about something other than securing the election from tampering.