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Because there’s no significant amount of fraud occurring that ID requirements would fix, and ID requirements are often made to unfairly disenfranchise certain g

Because there’s no significant amount of fraud occurring that ID requirements would fix, and ID requirements are often made to unfairly disenfranchise certain groups.

FakeComments 8y ago
Can you cite something to support that? It sounds like a just-so claim: it’s not really a problem, and the people complaining are just bad people! As far as I’m aware, not only is there not accurate study — jurisdictions like Washington intentionally make it difficult to track whether non-citizens are voting by issuing them IDs and offering to register them to vote sans additional proof of citizenship. This is why WA has to have enhanced ID — they don’t meet the federal standards of ensuring people they issue ID to are here legally. It seems strange that people refuse to even talk about it and resort to nasty ad hominems if there genuinely is no issue. By contrast, insulting the motivations of people genuinely trying to stand up for the law and act with integrity because you decided to employ force and just override them is deeply, unrecoverably immoral.
- kevingadd 8y ago
  Go look for citations to support your claim that voter ID is needed and identity fraud is pervasive in elections. It'll be hard to find some, because historically it just doesn't happen. It'd be one thing to put those laws in place in response to pervasive fraud, but historically we just have lawmakers explicitly saying they did it to reduce voter turnout which is... kind of a mistake. Whether or not ID is issued to non-citizens is a massively different issue. People need ID for all sorts of stuff - that doesn't mean everyone with ID is automatically going out there and skipping work to stand in line to vote.
  - andrewla 8y ago
    > because historically it just doesn't happen I understand the objections to voter ID based on unequal access to acceptable identification. But I don't understand the "it just doesn't happen" argument. This kind of voter fraud seems like it would be nearly impossible to detect. I guess you could look at how often ballots are spoiled because of signature mismatches or incidences of "the registry shows that you already voted". It seems like once voter id laws are passed, any laws or regulations limiting access to ID are de facto challengeable under the Equal Protection principle.
    - kevingadd 8y ago
      Many crimes are impossible to detect. That isn't a valid argument for going after crimes in a way that has a proven negative impact on democracy. The ID laws are already challenged, but the nature of our courts means they remain in place for years while the gears of justice turn.
      - andrewla 8y ago
        The proven negative impact of the voter id laws, as far as I know, is very small. Michigan had .3% non-id voters, and Texas had ~.01% non-id voters. Both states allow voters to fill out an affidavit. These stats were just found offhand, I'm not sure if there's a comprehensive review. So we have a small proven negative impact on democracy from voter id laws, and a small unproven negative impact from their absence; I don't think it's unreasonable to prevent a crime that is easily preventable under those circumstances.
        mikeash 8y ago
        The incidence of voter fraud in the 2016 election was approximately 0.000003%. Why do your numbers get labeled as "proven" and mine as "unproven"? You're eager to declare it to be impossible to figure out how pervasive voter fraud is based on imagined hypothetical difficulties, but you're eager to pull out numbers saying that ID requirements don't discourage people, despite obvious holes in the measurement (such as people who decided not to vote because they don't know about the affidavit).
        blackflame7001 8y ago
        The whole point of this article is to make elections more secure not be complacent with the status quo. Not having an ID and needing an ID to vote are 2 different issues that democrats insist on making the same. Just give every citizen a free ID. It would cost less than 1 days interest on the national debt. The real reason is because democrats want to turn texas blue like they did to new mexico and dominate elections with just 3 states
  - blackflame7001 8y ago
    Go look for Russian collusion, “it’ll be hard to find some, because historically it just doesn't happen” Still satisfied with your argument?
- FireBeyond 8y ago
  > jurisdictions like Washington intentionally make it difficult to track whether non-citizens are voting by issuing them IDs and offering to register them to vote sans additional proof of citizenship. This is why WA has to have enhanced ID — they don’t meet the federal standards of ensuring people they issue ID to are here legally. You are not automatically registered to vote just because you have a WA driver license. I moved here from Australia, got my DL, doesn't mean in any way shape or form that I can vote as a permanent resident, nor can I register.
  - FakeComments 8y ago
    > > offering to register them to vote sans additional proof of citizenship > You are not automatically registered to vote just because you have a WA driver license. I find it interesting you didn’t actually critique what I said. In my experience, that’s common with people who hold your position. There was also no attempt to reply with actual facts: just more fallacious arguments when they were called out about making an unsupported claim and ad hominem — > Because there’s no significant amount of fraud occurring that ID requirements would fix, and ID requirements are often made to unfairly disenfranchise certain groups. That’s what HN groupthink is: unsupported facts and ad hominems in support, downvotes and strawman responses to people who disagree.
    - FireBeyond 8y ago
      You said: > issuing them IDs and offering to register them to vote sans additional proof of citizenship Washington state doesn't "offer to register you to vote based on you getting a Washington Driver's License". WA DOL on Voter Registration: "You will be required to show that you are: - A citizen of the United States. - A legal resident of Washington State and have lived at your address for at least 30 days before the election. - At least 18 years old when you vote. - Not under Department of Corrections supervision for a Washington felony conviction. and - Not disqualified from voting due to a court order." So your statement that Washington is "offering to register people to vote "sans additional proof of citizenship" is factually false. So, absolutely did I critique what you said. It's wrong. Washington's Drivers License does not meet federal standards because it doesn't require citizenship or residency _to be issued_, not because they're registering or offering to register non-citizens to vote (because the Fed governments solution to that would be to ignore that actual issue, and just say it doesn't meet Fed ID requirements, sure). "Fallacious arguments" - I quoted the WA DOL. Where is your source that the refusal to accept the state DL federally is due to "voter registration of non-citizens"? As it is, Washington ALSO offers the Enhanced Drivers License which _does_ meet federal requirements, showing citizenship proof, primarily used for land travel to Canada.
daenz 8y ago
>ID requirements are often made to unfairly disenfranchise certain groups It's interesting to hear what those "certain groups" think about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odB1wWPqSlE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odB1wWPqSlE
- mikeash 8y ago
  A video with anecdotes, this is sure to be worth my time!
  - daenz 8y ago
    Saying that the thoughts of people affected by policies you claim to support isn't "worth your time" really undermines the idea that you have their best interests in mind.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      I don’t have the time or resources to interview all 235 million eligible voters in the US. I’ll have to rely on others to sample them. Any sample comes with the potential for bias or error so it needs to be done well. I see no reason to think that this four-minute video, whose description says it has interviews with people from Harlem, comes even remotely close. Am I wrong?
      - daenz 8y ago
        >Am I wrong? You're conflating a scientific study on who does and does not have a valid ID with what people think about people assuming they have no ID because of their skin color. They're orthogonal concepts. All of the black people interviewed in that video found it ignorant and offensive that people assume that because they're black, they likely don't have ID or know how to get ID, and the white liberals had no problem making broad, negative assumptions about black people, if it supported their political views. That's the point I'm trying to make.
        8y ago
blackflame7001 8y ago
Your comment makes no sense in context with the original article. Why would someone spend all the time and effort to hack voting machines when they can just walk up look at the list and pick a name without a signature and say yup thats me. Ive worked at a poll it just a list with peoples names sitting on a table
- mikeash 8y ago
  Because you have to be physically present in order to do that, and nobody wants to risk getting thrown in jail if they pick a name that’s already voted, or that the poll worker happens to know.
  - blackflame7001 8y ago
    How else would you do it on a machine not connected to the internet?
    - mikeash 8y ago
      You could pull a Stuxnet and create malware that would spread over whatever devices are used to program the voting machines. I believe they typically just use standard USB thumb drives, and are notoriously insecure. However, the article talks about "election systems" which encompasses much more than just voting machines. Voter registration records are a prime target and those are usually (always?) connected to the internet. You don't need to actually alter any votes to swing an election. Just delete or alter the registrations of some people who you know will tend to vote the other way.
- tomjakubowski 8y ago
  Those attacks don't scale at all and could only be a concern for local elections in small towns and the like.
  - blackflame7001 8y ago
    Neither does machine tampering because they are not networked.

Because there’s no significant amount of fraud occurring that ID requirements would fix, and ID requirements are often made to unfairly disenfranchise certain groups.

FakeComments 8y ago

Can you cite something to support that? It sounds like a just-so claim: it’s not really a problem, and the people complaining are just bad people! As far as I’m aware, not only is there not accurate study — jurisdictions like Washington intentionally make it difficult to track whether non-citizens are voting by issuing them IDs and offering to register them to vote sans additional proof of citizenship. This is why WA has to have enhanced ID — they don’t meet the federal standards of ensuring people they issue ID to are here legally. It seems strange that people refuse to even talk about it and resort to nasty ad hominems if there genuinely is no issue. By contrast, insulting the motivations of people genuinely trying to stand up for the law and act with integrity because you decided to employ force and just override them is deeply, unrecoverably immoral.

kevingadd 8y ago
Go look for citations to support your claim that voter ID is needed and identity fraud is pervasive in elections. It'll be hard to find some, because historically it just doesn't happen. It'd be one thing to put those laws in place in response to pervasive fraud, but historically we just have lawmakers explicitly saying they did it to reduce voter turnout which is... kind of a mistake. Whether or not ID is issued to non-citizens is a massively different issue. People need ID for all sorts of stuff - that doesn't mean everyone with ID is automatically going out there and skipping work to stand in line to vote.
- andrewla 8y ago
  > because historically it just doesn't happen I understand the objections to voter ID based on unequal access to acceptable identification. But I don't understand the "it just doesn't happen" argument. This kind of voter fraud seems like it would be nearly impossible to detect. I guess you could look at how often ballots are spoiled because of signature mismatches or incidences of "the registry shows that you already voted". It seems like once voter id laws are passed, any laws or regulations limiting access to ID are de facto challengeable under the Equal Protection principle.
  - kevingadd 8y ago
    Many crimes are impossible to detect. That isn't a valid argument for going after crimes in a way that has a proven negative impact on democracy. The ID laws are already challenged, but the nature of our courts means they remain in place for years while the gears of justice turn.
    - andrewla 8y ago
      The proven negative impact of the voter id laws, as far as I know, is very small. Michigan had .3% non-id voters, and Texas had ~.01% non-id voters. Both states allow voters to fill out an affidavit. These stats were just found offhand, I'm not sure if there's a comprehensive review. So we have a small proven negative impact on democracy from voter id laws, and a small unproven negative impact from their absence; I don't think it's unreasonable to prevent a crime that is easily preventable under those circumstances.
      - mikeash 8y ago
        The incidence of voter fraud in the 2016 election was approximately 0.000003%. Why do your numbers get labeled as "proven" and mine as "unproven"? You're eager to declare it to be impossible to figure out how pervasive voter fraud is based on imagined hypothetical difficulties, but you're eager to pull out numbers saying that ID requirements don't discourage people, despite obvious holes in the measurement (such as people who decided not to vote because they don't know about the affidavit).
        blackflame7001 8y ago
        The whole point of this article is to make elections more secure not be complacent with the status quo. Not having an ID and needing an ID to vote are 2 different issues that democrats insist on making the same. Just give every citizen a free ID. It would cost less than 1 days interest on the national debt. The real reason is because democrats want to turn texas blue like they did to new mexico and dominate elections with just 3 states
- blackflame7001 8y ago
  Go look for Russian collusion, “it’ll be hard to find some, because historically it just doesn't happen” Still satisfied with your argument?
FireBeyond 8y ago
> jurisdictions like Washington intentionally make it difficult to track whether non-citizens are voting by issuing them IDs and offering to register them to vote sans additional proof of citizenship. This is why WA has to have enhanced ID — they don’t meet the federal standards of ensuring people they issue ID to are here legally. You are not automatically registered to vote just because you have a WA driver license. I moved here from Australia, got my DL, doesn't mean in any way shape or form that I can vote as a permanent resident, nor can I register.
- FakeComments 8y ago
  > > offering to register them to vote sans additional proof of citizenship > You are not automatically registered to vote just because you have a WA driver license. I find it interesting you didn’t actually critique what I said. In my experience, that’s common with people who hold your position. There was also no attempt to reply with actual facts: just more fallacious arguments when they were called out about making an unsupported claim and ad hominem — > Because there’s no significant amount of fraud occurring that ID requirements would fix, and ID requirements are often made to unfairly disenfranchise certain groups. That’s what HN groupthink is: unsupported facts and ad hominems in support, downvotes and strawman responses to people who disagree.
  - FireBeyond 8y ago
    You said: > issuing them IDs and offering to register them to vote sans additional proof of citizenship Washington state doesn't "offer to register you to vote based on you getting a Washington Driver's License". WA DOL on Voter Registration: "You will be required to show that you are: - A citizen of the United States. - A legal resident of Washington State and have lived at your address for at least 30 days before the election. - At least 18 years old when you vote. - Not under Department of Corrections supervision for a Washington felony conviction. and - Not disqualified from voting due to a court order." So your statement that Washington is "offering to register people to vote "sans additional proof of citizenship" is factually false. So, absolutely did I critique what you said. It's wrong. Washington's Drivers License does not meet federal standards because it doesn't require citizenship or residency _to be issued_, not because they're registering or offering to register non-citizens to vote (because the Fed governments solution to that would be to ignore that actual issue, and just say it doesn't meet Fed ID requirements, sure). "Fallacious arguments" - I quoted the WA DOL. Where is your source that the refusal to accept the state DL federally is due to "voter registration of non-citizens"? As it is, Washington ALSO offers the Enhanced Drivers License which _does_ meet federal requirements, showing citizenship proof, primarily used for land travel to Canada.

daenz 8y ago

>ID requirements are often made to unfairly disenfranchise certain groups It's interesting to hear what those "certain groups" think about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odB1wWPqSlE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odB1wWPqSlE

mikeash 8y ago
A video with anecdotes, this is sure to be worth my time!
- daenz 8y ago
  Saying that the thoughts of people affected by policies you claim to support isn't "worth your time" really undermines the idea that you have their best interests in mind.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    I don’t have the time or resources to interview all 235 million eligible voters in the US. I’ll have to rely on others to sample them. Any sample comes with the potential for bias or error so it needs to be done well. I see no reason to think that this four-minute video, whose description says it has interviews with people from Harlem, comes even remotely close. Am I wrong?
    - daenz 8y ago
      >Am I wrong? You're conflating a scientific study on who does and does not have a valid ID with what people think about people assuming they have no ID because of their skin color. They're orthogonal concepts. All of the black people interviewed in that video found it ignorant and offensive that people assume that because they're black, they likely don't have ID or know how to get ID, and the white liberals had no problem making broad, negative assumptions about black people, if it supported their political views. That's the point I'm trying to make.
      - 8y ago

blackflame7001 8y ago

Your comment makes no sense in context with the original article. Why would someone spend all the time and effort to hack voting machines when they can just walk up look at the list and pick a name without a signature and say yup thats me. Ive worked at a poll it just a list with peoples names sitting on a table

mikeash 8y ago
Because you have to be physically present in order to do that, and nobody wants to risk getting thrown in jail if they pick a name that’s already voted, or that the poll worker happens to know.
- blackflame7001 8y ago
  How else would you do it on a machine not connected to the internet?
  - mikeash 8y ago
    You could pull a Stuxnet and create malware that would spread over whatever devices are used to program the voting machines. I believe they typically just use standard USB thumb drives, and are notoriously insecure. However, the article talks about "election systems" which encompasses much more than just voting machines. Voter registration records are a prime target and those are usually (always?) connected to the internet. You don't need to actually alter any votes to swing an election. Just delete or alter the registrations of some people who you know will tend to vote the other way.
tomjakubowski 8y ago
Those attacks don't scale at all and could only be a concern for local elections in small towns and the like.
- blackflame7001 8y ago
  Neither does machine tampering because they are not networked.