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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 ev

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?
    - hannasanarion 8y ago
      Are you a teenager? I haven't been carded for alcohol purchases in years. I take a bus to work, so I don't need a driver's license. I live every day just fine without ID.
      - chrisco255 8y ago
        No, I'm in my 30s but I have a young face. By the way, I can't rent a hotel room without ID. Can't rent an apartment without ID...can't take out a loan without ID. I think ID is required even to open a bank account these days. Are you telling me you don't have an ID? Or if you didn't have one, that it would be difficult to get one? It's probably more work to register to vote than to get an actual ID and the latter will probably statistically have a bigger impact on your life.
    - techsupporter 8y ago
      Yes, you can fly without ID. The TSA’s website says as much: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/identification https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/identification At least in my state, you can also travel on a train, go to a baseball game, attend a concert, and buy lottery tickets and cigarettes and beer (provided you look old enough) without ID. If you want to make a voter ID compulsory, let’s have that discussion but included within it must be that the card is free, available the same day, easy to get on a weekend, accepted by every state and territory and voting location, and has minimal paperwork requirements for all circumstances of birth including home, midwife, unknown parent or parents, overseas, and domestic to two non-citizen parents. Until you do that, the ID requirement is effectively disenfranchisement and that cannot stand for voting.
  - specialist 8y ago
    The noise machine also conflates voter registration errors with election fraud. For example, radical right wing pundit Ann Coulter was registered to vote in two places at the same time. (I don't recall if she also cast both ballots. Unlikely.) That is an error, not a fraud. Such errors are inevitable in our state-based voter registration database administration. Worsened because only registered people are tracked. Versus listing all people and having flags for their eligibility. The fix is nation wide universal automatic voter registration. Just like every other mature democracy.
    - chrisco255 8y ago
      I disagree on the nation-wide voter registration. Besides being probably unconstitutional, it has an effect of centralizing the power of the vote into the Federal government. It would be very difficult to pull off fraud in all 50 states, but it would be at least 50 times less difficult to do it in one centralized bureaucracy.
  - godshatter 8y ago
    How can people be so sure there is no fraud when they are not asking for an ID? Wouldn't it be better to work to fix the problem of a lack of ID than to just throw up our hands and claim we don't need it?
    - TheCoelacanth 8y ago
      Fix the problem of lack of ID first, then we can require ID to vote. Doing it in the other order is an unacceptable infringement on the right to vote.
- boomboomsubban 8y ago
  The simple argument is that it can be considered a poll tax, and those are unconstitutional.
  - justtopost 8y ago
    Finally, a sensible argument. I do think an ID that you need to have and is gvt issued should be baid by taxes. But noone likes those.
  - LyndsySimon 8y ago
    I've always wondered about this, but haven't dug into it - why is a poll tax unconstitutional, but the federal excise tax on firearms and ammunition not?
    - boomboomsubban 8y ago
      The 24th amendment. >The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
      - LyndsySimon 8y ago
        Well, there you go :) Thank you. I'm surprised and a bit embarrassed to admit I was ignorant of the fact that it was clearly spelled out in an Amendment, but am happy to have rectified that ignorance.
- elyobo 8y ago
  ^ said in answer to a sensible argument against ID checks at the polls, you can't please some people.
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  The argument against is simply to ask: what real problem is being solved? And more: the argument consists of digging deeper and asking why, in the past decade, such a sudden, incredible, apocalyptically urgent need has arisen for in-person checks at polling places, with no equivalent need for ID checks with absentee/mail-in ballots. Fraud with mail-in ballots would be orders of magnitude easier to pull off. Why don't states with draconian polling-place ID laws also have draconian ID laws for mailed-in ballots? Why, in those states, don't you need to bring multiple proofs of identity, residence and citizenship to a notary to stamp your ballot in triplicate before mailing it in? If fraud really was what they were worried about, they'd be consistent across these types of ballots. They aren't. Also it's worth looking into the whole package of policies that usually comes with these rules. It's not just ID rules; it's a particular kind of ID, and a particular set of paperwork requirements, and closing down ID-issuance offices in certain locations, and closing down polling places in certain locations, and reducing hours for voting at the locations that remain open, and... well, let's just say meditate on that and you'll figure out what "problem" is being solved. If you're still not convinced, just go read the defenders of these policies, in their own words, in court filings, explaining why they're doing this. Voting is fundamental enough that it should only be restricted in the event of pressing, urgent, demonstrated, proven issues, and only the absolute minimum restrictions should be put in place. Voter ID doesn't "solve" any such issue, and is not the minimum necessary restriction in any event (there are already mechanisms for challenging suspected fraudulent voting, if you're truly worried about that).
  - VLM 8y ago
    "Fraud with mail-in ballots would be orders of magnitude easier to pull off." As recent bombers have discovered, this isn't the 70s Unibomber era anymore, and every piece of mail is individually bar code tracked and enormous computerized fingerprint databases exist along with CCTV footage and cell phone monitoring databases. Using the US mail to commit a crime in a general sense (not strictly election fraud) would have been fairly untraceable in 1970 but half a century later it would be an extremely foolish strategy. The USPS is slightly less locked down than my bank, but much more locked down than my local food store, for example.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > I have never heard a single sensible argument against ID checks at the polls. It adds cost and there is no indication of an actual existing problem that it would solve that justifies the cost. Even if you ignore the fact that all actual voter ID proposals have been fairly overtly aimed at discouraging voting among selected groups of eligible voters that tend to vote in a way unfavorable to the preferences of those promoting voter ID, or that several times implementation of voter ID has been accompanied by targeted efforts to reduce access to new/replacement IDs in areas where, again, disfavored voters by the group advancing voter ID love, and even the more basic fact that it adds another point of potential failure due to human error even when pursued honestly, the fact that it to all indications provides nothing of value for the direct, immediate added cost is enough reason to oppose it.
  - sheepmullet 8y ago
    > provides nothing of value for the direct, immediate added cost is enough reason to oppose it. At a minimum it provides more confidence and faith in the voting system. That’s not a small benefit. It also provides a safeguard against fraud in future elections. It’s easily worth the small cost of requiring an ID. The real reason the Democrats strongly oppose it is they currently have a lock on the “don’t care about or follow politics but can be dragged along by friends” votes.
    - boomboomsubban 8y ago
      >At a minimum it provides more confidence and faith in the voting system. That’s not a small benefit. There's no evidence suggesting a meaningful amount of false votes are being cast by people without IDs. So if you don't think fraud is going on, you won't be more confident. If you do think fraud is happening without any substantial evidence, why would this change make you more confident? Additionally, allowing voting without an ID also provides confidence and faith in the voting system. Why trust a voting system that rejects people for forgetting their wallet or for being a walking teetotaler?
    - fjp 8y ago
      Sure you should be required ID to vote but only if it is way, way easier to get ID. I think you may underestimate just how hard it is to obtain ID in most of America. First, you have to locate the 5+ forms: birth certificate, multiple bills in your name at your address, previous id if any, etc. Many people (homeless people come to mind) would never be able to obtain all these records. Trying to obtain a drivers license at age 18 was a massive undertaking and myself and my family and had lived in the exact same house for my entire life! Now imagine. You're poor. You're working multiple jobs, taking care of your children, etc. Even if you manage to come into the DMV on the first try with all the forms perfectly ready and in order - something the DMV makes nearly impossible - you will still probably going to wait 2+ hours to even get up to the window to start the process. When you add up traveling to the DMV, being there, and coming back, you could be missing the vast majority of a day of work, something that can get many minimum-wage workers fired. In the abstract, requiring stringent ID to vote seems like something everyone should get behind. In practice in the United States, these laws are only enacted by Republicans that are threatened by shifting demographics. If all poor people in major population centers were voting, the Republican party would all but evaporate, or have to severely alter its message
- soundwave106 8y ago
  There is no national identity card in the United States and there traditionally has been strong bipartisan resistance against this sort of an initiative in this country. The defacto "photo ID" in the United States is a state issued driver's license. Yes, some places informally use this for age verification as a result. But not everyone has the ability to drive (whether by choice or by disability), so not everyone is going to have this document. So identification for this purpose will have to rely on a patchwork of various documents in order for it to work. But even considering this, if photo ID were tailored in a bipartisan manner as such to ensure complete access is possible, there probably wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately this does not seem to be the case in some states. The classic argument you hear, for instance, regarding Texas' often-struck-down-but-still-living-on voting ID requirements (https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/forms/id/acceptable-forms-of-ID.pdf https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/forms/id/acceptable-fo...), is that a handgun license is considered a sufficient form of voting ID, but a college photo ID is not. I will add, reviewing the document, that from my perspective, it is logically puzzling to me why, for those aged 70 and older, it is okay to have an infinitely expired ID and still be allowed to vote given the typical "voter ID" arguments you hear in favor. Unless there is a "demographic advantage" here that the law is covertly aiming for, that is.
  - XorNot 8y ago
    Or put another way: if voter ID were considered a serious issue, then the obvious first issue to solve would be establishing a new national ID system. This would solve other problems - for example the use of insecure social security numbers as de facto national ID, and passwords, which you give to everybody yet can be used to steal your identity simply by knowing. Like, this is actually a big problem in the US that affects numerous people, and would save the economy million of dollars minimum, probably more, by solving in a secure way. Then, with reasonable confidence that national ID had the uptake rate necessary to pull it's lack of below the level of impact which would effect elections, you could make voter ID mandatory. Weirdly, no one ever seems to start with the - far more problematic - "hey national ID is kind of a big problem..." when they propose voter ID though. They also don't start with any data about in-person voter fraud (except if you count all the people who get caught trying to commit it to "prove" it's totally easy to do everytime this comes up).
- awinder 8y ago
  https://www.npr.org/2013/10/30/241891800/texas-voter-id-law-creates-a-problem-for-some-women https://www.npr.org/2013/10/30/241891800/texas-voter-id-law-...
- specialist 8y ago
  Probably because you've never heard any one suggest that we not require IDs to vote. Identity is determined, confirmed during the registration step. Identity is reaffirmed at the poll site, with both ID and signature verification. (Address and signature for postal ballots.) The manufactured outrage about "voter fraud" is used to justify ratcheting up the voter id requirements. Specifically, requiring voters have government issued photo id. Which costs money. Which makes it a poll tax. Which is unconstitutional. Provide government id for free and everyone who supports democracy and enfranchisement is totally on board. -- Those of us who understand election administration also oppose the unnecessary bureaucratic gatekeeping imposed in places like Georgia. For example, if your drivers license says "chris co255" and your voter id says "chris-co255", even though everything else matches, your registration will be purged. Cast opposing such kafkaesque draconian measures as partisan if you wish.
sheepmullet 8y ago
> Because of the lack of a voter fraud problem, the disparate impact is clearly the main objective of the laws Or they don’t believe your estimates of low levels of voter fraud.
- amake 8y ago
  Easy solution: find and document actual cases of voter fraud. Oops.
  - Sacho 8y ago
    How would you stage a legal way to do this?
    - SolaceQuantum 8y ago
      We know of plenty high profile cases already of people voting in the name of deceased, etc.
      - learc83 8y ago
        Take a look at the section on "Dead People Voting". https://www.factcheck.org/2017/01/more-trump-deception-on-voter-fraud/ https://www.factcheck.org/2017/01/more-trump-deception-on-vo... The vast majority of dead people voting come from reports of states comparing voting records to death records. In one example South Carolina reported that 953 people voted after being deceased between 2005 and 2012. However when they investigated 207 cases from the 2010 election they found that '106 cases were the result of clerical errors by poll managers; 56 cases were the result of bad data matching, meaning that the person in question was not actually dead; 32 cases were “voter participation errors,” including stray marks on lists erroneously indicting they had voted; three cases were absentee ballots issued to registered voters who cast ballots and later died before Election Day; and 10 cases contained “insufficient information in the record to make a determination.”'
    - amake 8y ago
      How can you justify cracking down on it if you can't even prove that it happens?
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
A couple of problems with this view. The first is that voter fraud is not easy to detect. When I voted all I had to do was walk in, sign a sheet by my name, and go vote. There was no verification or validation of anything. I could have just as well signed by another individual's name. If I was smart I'd do it somewhere closer to the closing of poll times to help minimize the chances that they'd show up. I could then go from station to station doing similar things. The second is that the past does not predict the future. Politics getting kind of absurd in the US. People are radicalizing to an extreme degree. When people are assaulting and trying to intimidate one another because of relatively minor differences of political opinion, it should be assumed that voter fraud is going to be an increasingly severe threat to election integrity. Maybe most importantly of all. You don't want to wait until it's a severe issue to stop it. At that point you risk having already have lost the faith of the electorate and that's only going to lead to bad outcomes. You want to preempt bad actors.
- salvar 8y ago
  And as soon as any of these individuals came in to vote and saw that someone had already voted fraudulently on their behalf, an investigation would start. And you'd get maybe what, three or four votes in exchange for the very real possibility of facing severe punishment? Why aren't more instances of voters realizing that someone has already voted on their behalf if this is so easy and smart?
  - pwg 8y ago
    > Why aren't more instances of voters realizing that someone has already voted on their behalf if this is so easy and smart? I can see two reasons (there are likely more): 1) If someone is going to vote as another, and they are smart about it, they will do some pre-research to pick out likely non-voters to become. Voting as someone else who is not going to vote would not likely be caught, because that non-voter will have no opportunity to notice the 'heist' since they do not go vote. 2) At least in the US, with low voter turnout (55% for the 2016 election is quoted by this page [1]) then someone has a somewhat large chance of simply randomly picking a non-voter as their "surrogate", and if they do win that pick, then that non-voter will not notice due to their not going to the polls. Now, whether either of these strategies would allow an individual to amass sufficient votes to change an outcome is unknown. Even "close" races in the US often have a few thousand votes difference in the final counts, so for someone (or some group) to change an outcome they either have to find enough #1's above to amount to several thousand votes or have to "win" at #2 picks enough without "losing" at a #2 pick enough to get caught out. So it feels like it would be difficult to pull off a few thousand of these, in a single day, without getting caught unnless a fairly large group is involved. And the problem then (with large groups) likely shifts to keeping the entire group quiet about their activity (i.e., leaks from a group member become the downfall point, not other voters noticing double voting). [1] https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/popular-vote-turnout-2016/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/popular-vote-turnout...
VLM 8y ago
By analogy, are you arguing that we have FAR more criminals committing traffic violations such as speeding than we do serial killers, therefore we should have no laws against serial killing and only punish people who speed on the interstate?
- ddingus 8y ago
  If we got all the speeders, the impact on everyone would be significant. Like all cars broadvast their speed all the time, by way of voter ID requirement. So we do not bother. That said, my state autoregisters people as they come of age and get an ID. Vote by mail has high participation rates. People can walk into an elections office and vote if they have some difficulty. Doing that is free, they just gotta get there. People even run ballots out to voters. I did that volunteer work one year. Was cool actually. I helped voters vote.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Because of the lack of a voter fraud problem, the disparate impact is clearly the main objective of the laws Well, that and the fact that the people sponsoring the laws keep getting caught saying that either the racial or partisan impact (or both) are the point when they think no one but their ideological allies is around to hear. Sure, there's external circumstances and policy action which supports that conclusion without the admissions, but they also keep admitting it.
bbatha 8y ago
Let's also be clear. Voter ID laws are not typically tied to national IDs they are typically tied to state drivers licenses and IDs. Which is the crux of the problem since those forms of ID are typically only issued at DMVs and are thus difficult to get for folks who cannot drive or do not live near a DMV. Republicans have also been vehemently opposed to mandatory nationally issued ID cards in the past for fears of federal overreach. Though given the party's current immigration and voter ID stances I'm not sure they'd sit on the same side of the debate the next time it comes up.

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?
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    Are you a teenager? I haven't been carded for alcohol purchases in years. I take a bus to work, so I don't need a driver's license. I live every day just fine without ID.
    - chrisco255 8y ago
      No, I'm in my 30s but I have a young face. By the way, I can't rent a hotel room without ID. Can't rent an apartment without ID...can't take out a loan without ID. I think ID is required even to open a bank account these days. Are you telling me you don't have an ID? Or if you didn't have one, that it would be difficult to get one? It's probably more work to register to vote than to get an actual ID and the latter will probably statistically have a bigger impact on your life.
  - techsupporter 8y ago
    Yes, you can fly without ID. The TSA’s website says as much: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/identification https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/identification At least in my state, you can also travel on a train, go to a baseball game, attend a concert, and buy lottery tickets and cigarettes and beer (provided you look old enough) without ID. If you want to make a voter ID compulsory, let’s have that discussion but included within it must be that the card is free, available the same day, easy to get on a weekend, accepted by every state and territory and voting location, and has minimal paperwork requirements for all circumstances of birth including home, midwife, unknown parent or parents, overseas, and domestic to two non-citizen parents. Until you do that, the ID requirement is effectively disenfranchisement and that cannot stand for voting.
- specialist 8y ago
  The noise machine also conflates voter registration errors with election fraud. For example, radical right wing pundit Ann Coulter was registered to vote in two places at the same time. (I don't recall if she also cast both ballots. Unlikely.) That is an error, not a fraud. Such errors are inevitable in our state-based voter registration database administration. Worsened because only registered people are tracked. Versus listing all people and having flags for their eligibility. The fix is nation wide universal automatic voter registration. Just like every other mature democracy.
  - chrisco255 8y ago
    I disagree on the nation-wide voter registration. Besides being probably unconstitutional, it has an effect of centralizing the power of the vote into the Federal government. It would be very difficult to pull off fraud in all 50 states, but it would be at least 50 times less difficult to do it in one centralized bureaucracy.
- godshatter 8y ago
  How can people be so sure there is no fraud when they are not asking for an ID? Wouldn't it be better to work to fix the problem of a lack of ID than to just throw up our hands and claim we don't need it?
  - TheCoelacanth 8y ago
    Fix the problem of lack of ID first, then we can require ID to vote. Doing it in the other order is an unacceptable infringement on the right to vote.
boomboomsubban 8y ago
The simple argument is that it can be considered a poll tax, and those are unconstitutional.
- justtopost 8y ago
  Finally, a sensible argument. I do think an ID that you need to have and is gvt issued should be baid by taxes. But noone likes those.
- LyndsySimon 8y ago
  I've always wondered about this, but haven't dug into it - why is a poll tax unconstitutional, but the federal excise tax on firearms and ammunition not?
  - boomboomsubban 8y ago
    The 24th amendment. >The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
    - LyndsySimon 8y ago
      Well, there you go :) Thank you. I'm surprised and a bit embarrassed to admit I was ignorant of the fact that it was clearly spelled out in an Amendment, but am happy to have rectified that ignorance.
elyobo 8y ago
^ said in answer to a sensible argument against ID checks at the polls, you can't please some people.
ubernostrum 8y ago
The argument against is simply to ask: what real problem is being solved? And more: the argument consists of digging deeper and asking why, in the past decade, such a sudden, incredible, apocalyptically urgent need has arisen for in-person checks at polling places, with no equivalent need for ID checks with absentee/mail-in ballots. Fraud with mail-in ballots would be orders of magnitude easier to pull off. Why don't states with draconian polling-place ID laws also have draconian ID laws for mailed-in ballots? Why, in those states, don't you need to bring multiple proofs of identity, residence and citizenship to a notary to stamp your ballot in triplicate before mailing it in? If fraud really was what they were worried about, they'd be consistent across these types of ballots. They aren't. Also it's worth looking into the whole package of policies that usually comes with these rules. It's not just ID rules; it's a particular kind of ID, and a particular set of paperwork requirements, and closing down ID-issuance offices in certain locations, and closing down polling places in certain locations, and reducing hours for voting at the locations that remain open, and... well, let's just say meditate on that and you'll figure out what "problem" is being solved. If you're still not convinced, just go read the defenders of these policies, in their own words, in court filings, explaining why they're doing this. Voting is fundamental enough that it should only be restricted in the event of pressing, urgent, demonstrated, proven issues, and only the absolute minimum restrictions should be put in place. Voter ID doesn't "solve" any such issue, and is not the minimum necessary restriction in any event (there are already mechanisms for challenging suspected fraudulent voting, if you're truly worried about that).
- VLM 8y ago
  "Fraud with mail-in ballots would be orders of magnitude easier to pull off." As recent bombers have discovered, this isn't the 70s Unibomber era anymore, and every piece of mail is individually bar code tracked and enormous computerized fingerprint databases exist along with CCTV footage and cell phone monitoring databases. Using the US mail to commit a crime in a general sense (not strictly election fraud) would have been fairly untraceable in 1970 but half a century later it would be an extremely foolish strategy. The USPS is slightly less locked down than my bank, but much more locked down than my local food store, for example.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> I have never heard a single sensible argument against ID checks at the polls. It adds cost and there is no indication of an actual existing problem that it would solve that justifies the cost. Even if you ignore the fact that all actual voter ID proposals have been fairly overtly aimed at discouraging voting among selected groups of eligible voters that tend to vote in a way unfavorable to the preferences of those promoting voter ID, or that several times implementation of voter ID has been accompanied by targeted efforts to reduce access to new/replacement IDs in areas where, again, disfavored voters by the group advancing voter ID love, and even the more basic fact that it adds another point of potential failure due to human error even when pursued honestly, the fact that it to all indications provides nothing of value for the direct, immediate added cost is enough reason to oppose it.
- sheepmullet 8y ago
  > provides nothing of value for the direct, immediate added cost is enough reason to oppose it. At a minimum it provides more confidence and faith in the voting system. That’s not a small benefit. It also provides a safeguard against fraud in future elections. It’s easily worth the small cost of requiring an ID. The real reason the Democrats strongly oppose it is they currently have a lock on the “don’t care about or follow politics but can be dragged along by friends” votes.
  - boomboomsubban 8y ago
    >At a minimum it provides more confidence and faith in the voting system. That’s not a small benefit. There's no evidence suggesting a meaningful amount of false votes are being cast by people without IDs. So if you don't think fraud is going on, you won't be more confident. If you do think fraud is happening without any substantial evidence, why would this change make you more confident? Additionally, allowing voting without an ID also provides confidence and faith in the voting system. Why trust a voting system that rejects people for forgetting their wallet or for being a walking teetotaler?
  - fjp 8y ago
    Sure you should be required ID to vote but only if it is way, way easier to get ID. I think you may underestimate just how hard it is to obtain ID in most of America. First, you have to locate the 5+ forms: birth certificate, multiple bills in your name at your address, previous id if any, etc. Many people (homeless people come to mind) would never be able to obtain all these records. Trying to obtain a drivers license at age 18 was a massive undertaking and myself and my family and had lived in the exact same house for my entire life! Now imagine. You're poor. You're working multiple jobs, taking care of your children, etc. Even if you manage to come into the DMV on the first try with all the forms perfectly ready and in order - something the DMV makes nearly impossible - you will still probably going to wait 2+ hours to even get up to the window to start the process. When you add up traveling to the DMV, being there, and coming back, you could be missing the vast majority of a day of work, something that can get many minimum-wage workers fired. In the abstract, requiring stringent ID to vote seems like something everyone should get behind. In practice in the United States, these laws are only enacted by Republicans that are threatened by shifting demographics. If all poor people in major population centers were voting, the Republican party would all but evaporate, or have to severely alter its message
soundwave106 8y ago
There is no national identity card in the United States and there traditionally has been strong bipartisan resistance against this sort of an initiative in this country. The defacto "photo ID" in the United States is a state issued driver's license. Yes, some places informally use this for age verification as a result. But not everyone has the ability to drive (whether by choice or by disability), so not everyone is going to have this document. So identification for this purpose will have to rely on a patchwork of various documents in order for it to work. But even considering this, if photo ID were tailored in a bipartisan manner as such to ensure complete access is possible, there probably wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately this does not seem to be the case in some states. The classic argument you hear, for instance, regarding Texas' often-struck-down-but-still-living-on voting ID requirements (https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/forms/id/acceptable-forms-of-ID.pdf https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/forms/id/acceptable-fo...), is that a handgun license is considered a sufficient form of voting ID, but a college photo ID is not. I will add, reviewing the document, that from my perspective, it is logically puzzling to me why, for those aged 70 and older, it is okay to have an infinitely expired ID and still be allowed to vote given the typical "voter ID" arguments you hear in favor. Unless there is a "demographic advantage" here that the law is covertly aiming for, that is.
- XorNot 8y ago
  Or put another way: if voter ID were considered a serious issue, then the obvious first issue to solve would be establishing a new national ID system. This would solve other problems - for example the use of insecure social security numbers as de facto national ID, and passwords, which you give to everybody yet can be used to steal your identity simply by knowing. Like, this is actually a big problem in the US that affects numerous people, and would save the economy million of dollars minimum, probably more, by solving in a secure way. Then, with reasonable confidence that national ID had the uptake rate necessary to pull it's lack of below the level of impact which would effect elections, you could make voter ID mandatory. Weirdly, no one ever seems to start with the - far more problematic - "hey national ID is kind of a big problem..." when they propose voter ID though. They also don't start with any data about in-person voter fraud (except if you count all the people who get caught trying to commit it to "prove" it's totally easy to do everytime this comes up).
awinder 8y ago
https://www.npr.org/2013/10/30/241891800/texas-voter-id-law-creates-a-problem-for-some-women https://www.npr.org/2013/10/30/241891800/texas-voter-id-law-...
specialist 8y ago
Probably because you've never heard any one suggest that we not require IDs to vote. Identity is determined, confirmed during the registration step. Identity is reaffirmed at the poll site, with both ID and signature verification. (Address and signature for postal ballots.) The manufactured outrage about "voter fraud" is used to justify ratcheting up the voter id requirements. Specifically, requiring voters have government issued photo id. Which costs money. Which makes it a poll tax. Which is unconstitutional. Provide government id for free and everyone who supports democracy and enfranchisement is totally on board. -- Those of us who understand election administration also oppose the unnecessary bureaucratic gatekeeping imposed in places like Georgia. For example, if your drivers license says "chris co255" and your voter id says "chris-co255", even though everything else matches, your registration will be purged. Cast opposing such kafkaesque draconian measures as partisan if you wish.

sheepmullet 8y ago

> Because of the lack of a voter fraud problem, the disparate impact is clearly the main objective of the laws Or they don’t believe your estimates of low levels of voter fraud.

amake 8y ago
Easy solution: find and document actual cases of voter fraud. Oops.
- Sacho 8y ago
  How would you stage a legal way to do this?
  - SolaceQuantum 8y ago
    We know of plenty high profile cases already of people voting in the name of deceased, etc.
    - learc83 8y ago
      Take a look at the section on "Dead People Voting". https://www.factcheck.org/2017/01/more-trump-deception-on-voter-fraud/ https://www.factcheck.org/2017/01/more-trump-deception-on-vo... The vast majority of dead people voting come from reports of states comparing voting records to death records. In one example South Carolina reported that 953 people voted after being deceased between 2005 and 2012. However when they investigated 207 cases from the 2010 election they found that '106 cases were the result of clerical errors by poll managers; 56 cases were the result of bad data matching, meaning that the person in question was not actually dead; 32 cases were “voter participation errors,” including stray marks on lists erroneously indicting they had voted; three cases were absentee ballots issued to registered voters who cast ballots and later died before Election Day; and 10 cases contained “insufficient information in the record to make a determination.”'
  - amake 8y ago
    How can you justify cracking down on it if you can't even prove that it happens?

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

A couple of problems with this view. The first is that voter fraud is not easy to detect. When I voted all I had to do was walk in, sign a sheet by my name, and go vote. There was no verification or validation of anything. I could have just as well signed by another individual's name. If I was smart I'd do it somewhere closer to the closing of poll times to help minimize the chances that they'd show up. I could then go from station to station doing similar things. The second is that the past does not predict the future. Politics getting kind of absurd in the US. People are radicalizing to an extreme degree. When people are assaulting and trying to intimidate one another because of relatively minor differences of political opinion, it should be assumed that voter fraud is going to be an increasingly severe threat to election integrity. Maybe most importantly of all. You don't want to wait until it's a severe issue to stop it. At that point you risk having already have lost the faith of the electorate and that's only going to lead to bad outcomes. You want to preempt bad actors.

salvar 8y ago
And as soon as any of these individuals came in to vote and saw that someone had already voted fraudulently on their behalf, an investigation would start. And you'd get maybe what, three or four votes in exchange for the very real possibility of facing severe punishment? Why aren't more instances of voters realizing that someone has already voted on their behalf if this is so easy and smart?
- pwg 8y ago
  > Why aren't more instances of voters realizing that someone has already voted on their behalf if this is so easy and smart? I can see two reasons (there are likely more): 1) If someone is going to vote as another, and they are smart about it, they will do some pre-research to pick out likely non-voters to become. Voting as someone else who is not going to vote would not likely be caught, because that non-voter will have no opportunity to notice the 'heist' since they do not go vote. 2) At least in the US, with low voter turnout (55% for the 2016 election is quoted by this page [1]) then someone has a somewhat large chance of simply randomly picking a non-voter as their "surrogate", and if they do win that pick, then that non-voter will not notice due to their not going to the polls. Now, whether either of these strategies would allow an individual to amass sufficient votes to change an outcome is unknown. Even "close" races in the US often have a few thousand votes difference in the final counts, so for someone (or some group) to change an outcome they either have to find enough #1's above to amount to several thousand votes or have to "win" at #2 picks enough without "losing" at a #2 pick enough to get caught out. So it feels like it would be difficult to pull off a few thousand of these, in a single day, without getting caught unnless a fairly large group is involved. And the problem then (with large groups) likely shifts to keeping the entire group quiet about their activity (i.e., leaks from a group member become the downfall point, not other voters noticing double voting). [1] https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/popular-vote-turnout-2016/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/popular-vote-turnout...

VLM 8y ago

By analogy, are you arguing that we have FAR more criminals committing traffic violations such as speeding than we do serial killers, therefore we should have no laws against serial killing and only punish people who speed on the interstate?

ddingus 8y ago
If we got all the speeders, the impact on everyone would be significant. Like all cars broadvast their speed all the time, by way of voter ID requirement. So we do not bother. That said, my state autoregisters people as they come of age and get an ID. Vote by mail has high participation rates. People can walk into an elections office and vote if they have some difficulty. Doing that is free, they just gotta get there. People even run ballots out to voters. I did that volunteer work one year. Was cool actually. I helped voters vote.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> Because of the lack of a voter fraud problem, the disparate impact is clearly the main objective of the laws Well, that and the fact that the people sponsoring the laws keep getting caught saying that either the racial or partisan impact (or both) are the point when they think no one but their ideological allies is around to hear. Sure, there's external circumstances and policy action which supports that conclusion without the admissions, but they also keep admitting it.

bbatha 8y ago

Let's also be clear. Voter ID laws are not typically tied to national IDs they are typically tied to state drivers licenses and IDs. Which is the crux of the problem since those forms of ID are typically only issued at DMVs and are thus difficult to get for folks who cannot drive or do not live near a DMV. Republicans have also been vehemently opposed to mandatory nationally issued ID cards in the past for fears of federal overreach. Though given the party's current immigration and voter ID stances I'm not sure they'd sit on the same side of the debate the next time it comes up.