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I don't see any particular reason why the identification process for a corporation should be more stringent than a library card. What is astonishing to me is th

I don't see any particular reason why the identification process for a corporation should be more stringent than a library card. What is astonishing to me is that both are meaningfully more stringent than voting. In Minnesota for example, all one needs is another registered voter to vouch for them. https://www.sos.state.mn.us/elections-voting/register-to-vote/register-on-election-day/ https://www.sos.state.mn.us/elections-voting/register-to-vot...

m463 7y ago
I see voting as the sandbox/turf of politicians, with huge battles for all ground gain or lost.
teachrdan 7y ago
To the contrary: There were only four known cases of voter fraud in the 2016 elections[0]; more stringent voting requirements suppresses voting, especially by poor, black and/or Latinx voters.[1] It certainly seems the case that more damage has been done to society via corporations to which no human person can be associated than by voter fraud. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/0-000002-percent-of-all-the-ballots-cast-in-the-2016-election-were-fraudulent/?utm_term=.1bd9a0995e5d https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/0-... [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/02/15/do-voter-identification-laws-suppress-minority-voting-yes-we-did-the-research/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/02/1...
- mberning 7y ago
  Are you saying poor people and brown people don’t know how to get a state ID? That’s pretty ridiculous and in the latter case racist.
- foreach9885 7y ago
  Because we have unauthenticated voting in most blue states, we can not know how rampant voter fraud is. The only detectable voter fraud would be extreme corner cases, where they have a confession, or some other kind of evidence. Because as of right now, we are not allowed to verify who it is that is voting. Frankly, the federal government should not accept the outcomes of any elections from California, until they can hold a real election.
- fastball 7y ago
  In [current year], arguably every US citizen should have some form of photo ID. It's pretty useful for a lot more than just voting. For example, more and more banks / financial institutions are using automated systems + a picture of your photo ID in order to confirm your identity when opening up a bank account, etc. Seems like we should focus on making sure poor/minorities have easy/free access to IDs, rather than keeping the voting process lax.
  - TheCoelacanth 7y ago
    Great, do that, then require an ID to vote. The other way around is taking away peoples' fundamental rights.
    - fastball 7y ago
      Why not both at the same time?
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    The proponents of voter ID always want to put the requirement in place first but not the resources to make it happen. Until that changes, I am deaf to their 'concern'.
- souprock 7y ago
  It's pretty circular reasoning to argue against methods for detecting voter fraud on the basis that we haven't detected voter fraud. If there is voter fraud, it might go away if we got reliable detection. Fraud is less likely when being caught is certain, and it is far more likely when being caught is about as likely as getting hit by lightening. Even if there isn't voter fraud, the mere fact that people are worried about it is undermining trust in our elections. That needs to be fixed, and the only way to fix it is to have a means to prove that there is no voter fraud.
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    GP isn't arguing against detecting voter fraud. They're arguing against making the registration process harder in order to prevent (basically nonexistent) voter fraud. The reason people in the U.S. are worried about voter fraud is that one side of the political spectrum is pushing the narrative — without any real evidence — that voter fraud is rampant. We shouldn't make it more difficult to vote in order to fix a made-up problem.
    - foreach9885 7y ago
      Until we can authenticate voters, elections are invalid by default. How would you even prove that fraud is NOT happening, when many US states are essentially on the honor system? In California, I can register to vote from a Russian IP address without any form of ID or proof of residence. It's even easier than getting food stamps. Let me know if you want me to dig up proof for you.
      - zucker42 7y ago
        Luckily, some people will get suspicious when you ask for the ballot to be sent to Moscow.
      - tptacek 7y ago
        In fact, California voter registration requires both identification and proof of residency. Please do provide the proof you're referring to.
- cabaalis 7y ago
  I wish I could read the second link, but not interested in bypassing their income (and not interested enough to pay them :) ) I'd like to know their research. I had to sign up with my address, and I have to prove my identity when I vote. That all seems perfectly reasonable to me. Even a low-tech ink mark used by some places seems perfectly fine. The law is full of tradeoffs, and I think proving you have voted only once and where you are allowed to vote is perfectly legitimate.
  - mbrumlow 7y ago
    Side topic on bypassing their income. If you are not going to pay them, and not going to view it -- then they lost the income -- you might as well bypass the pay wall..
lutorm 7y ago
Voting is a constitutional right, forming a corporation or getting a library card is not.
- sneak 7y ago
  What about purchasing a firearm?
  - Operyl 7y ago
    How was that relevant to the conversation?
    - nostromo 7y ago
      He's pointing out that if one believes you should be able to vote without ID because it's a civil right, then you should also be able to buy a gun without ID because it's a civil right. My guess is that he or she is saying that it's reasonable in both cases to require ID.
      - lurquer 7y ago
        You don’t need ID to buy a gun in the US. Private transactions are completely paper and record free. (Unless you are from some non-flyover state.) It’s only when you sell guns as a dealer that you are required to get ID and whatnot from the purchaser. (Even then, there is no penalty for BUYING the gun without ID; the penalty attaches to the SELLER.)
      - sneak 7y ago
        Quite the opposite. I think it is unreasonable to demand government paperwork as a prerequisite for basic human rights. If it is not reasonable to demand an ID to blog or to vote, it is not reasonable to demand an ID to obtain arms.
    - mikestew 7y ago
      How much identification is needed to exercise one “constitutional right” versus another? Should there be a difference? Though one might legitimately take the question to be flame-baity, I think it’s a valid question in light of the original statement.
reaperducer 7y ago
In Minnesota for example, all one needs is another registered voter to vouch for them. My thoughts on this are old school. Like 1700's old school. A person's right to vote exists with or without documentation. A piece of paper, an entry in a ledger, or a row in a database has no bearing on whether that right exists, or should be exercised. In many of the states where I've lived (13 so far), all that was needed to vote in the absence of identification was to sign an affidavit stating that I am who I say I am. The people at the polling station could ask for ID, but they couldn't require it. It's up to the people who handle the vote (often the county clerk or county board of elections) to decide later if my vote was valid or not. A lot of that is changing these days as the concept of being constantly tracked, monitored, and tabulated becomes normalized in America. Just a generation ago we made fun of the Soviet Union and various totalitarian regimes for having police stop people for no reason and demanding, "papers, please." Now there are people who think it's perfectly OK to require domestic passports ("Real ID" and similar) just to walk down the street. I wonder if two generations from now people will think we're old and crazy because we don't think it's OK for the government to require a chip be implanted in our brains so our thoughts can be monitored by bureaucratic minders. It's sounds like tinfoil hat sci-fi slippery slopism, but so would today's facial recognition in airports to people just 50 years ago.
- waffle_ss 7y ago
  Umm the 1700's in America were the era of needing to have land ownership to vote (more than half of white men couldn't vote), poll taxes, exclusion of blacks, native Americans, and women, religious tests, and so on. The 15th Amendment that changed some of that wasn't even passed until 1870. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_St...
  - ColanR 7y ago
    However, that's orthogonal to the issue; documentation of your right to vote is not one of the requirements of possessing that right. (as parent said, "A person's right to vote exists with or without documentation.") It is a dramatic improvement that the people with the right to vote has been expanded since the 1700s, but what you said doesn't actually speak against the basic idea that documentation is not relevant to the exercise of ones rights. As an aside: once documentation is required, we enter a position where we do not have our rights until proven otherwise.
scott_paul 7y ago
I increasingly think the US should look into adopting something akin to Estonia's voting system. Perhaps with some added zero-knowledge proof layer so that it can be known that all votes were valid, but not exactly who voted which way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Estonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Estonia
- foreach9885 7y ago
  Honestly, that is a great idea, but it would never happen. It would be called racist if not enough non-white people sign up for it. No matter how easy you make enrollment.
  - pstuart 7y ago
    Irony alert!
Spooky23 7y ago
That’s the difference between a right and a privilege. Borrowing a book is a privilege. You have a right to vote. Rights come without condition. Many municipal elections only require residency, and the state cannot compel you to have an identification, be literate, or participate in society beyond voting. A hermit living in a cave, a software engineer, or a person who just moved to a place are all humans and all subject to the same rights.

m463 7y ago

I see voting as the sandbox/turf of politicians, with huge battles for all ground gain or lost.

teachrdan 7y ago

To the contrary: There were only four known cases of voter fraud in the 2016 elections[0]; more stringent voting requirements suppresses voting, especially by poor, black and/or Latinx voters.[1] It certainly seems the case that more damage has been done to society via corporations to which no human person can be associated than by voter fraud. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/0-000002-percent-of-all-the-ballots-cast-in-the-2016-election-were-fraudulent/?utm_term=.1bd9a0995e5d https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/0-... [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/02/15/do-voter-identification-laws-suppress-minority-voting-yes-we-did-the-research/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/02/1...

mberning 7y ago
Are you saying poor people and brown people don’t know how to get a state ID? That’s pretty ridiculous and in the latter case racist.
foreach9885 7y ago
Because we have unauthenticated voting in most blue states, we can not know how rampant voter fraud is. The only detectable voter fraud would be extreme corner cases, where they have a confession, or some other kind of evidence. Because as of right now, we are not allowed to verify who it is that is voting. Frankly, the federal government should not accept the outcomes of any elections from California, until they can hold a real election.
fastball 7y ago
In [current year], arguably every US citizen should have some form of photo ID. It's pretty useful for a lot more than just voting. For example, more and more banks / financial institutions are using automated systems + a picture of your photo ID in order to confirm your identity when opening up a bank account, etc. Seems like we should focus on making sure poor/minorities have easy/free access to IDs, rather than keeping the voting process lax.
- TheCoelacanth 7y ago
  Great, do that, then require an ID to vote. The other way around is taking away peoples' fundamental rights.
  - fastball 7y ago
    Why not both at the same time?
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  The proponents of voter ID always want to put the requirement in place first but not the resources to make it happen. Until that changes, I am deaf to their 'concern'.
souprock 7y ago
It's pretty circular reasoning to argue against methods for detecting voter fraud on the basis that we haven't detected voter fraud. If there is voter fraud, it might go away if we got reliable detection. Fraud is less likely when being caught is certain, and it is far more likely when being caught is about as likely as getting hit by lightening. Even if there isn't voter fraud, the mere fact that people are worried about it is undermining trust in our elections. That needs to be fixed, and the only way to fix it is to have a means to prove that there is no voter fraud.
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  GP isn't arguing against detecting voter fraud. They're arguing against making the registration process harder in order to prevent (basically nonexistent) voter fraud. The reason people in the U.S. are worried about voter fraud is that one side of the political spectrum is pushing the narrative — without any real evidence — that voter fraud is rampant. We shouldn't make it more difficult to vote in order to fix a made-up problem.
  - foreach9885 7y ago
    Until we can authenticate voters, elections are invalid by default. How would you even prove that fraud is NOT happening, when many US states are essentially on the honor system? In California, I can register to vote from a Russian IP address without any form of ID or proof of residence. It's even easier than getting food stamps. Let me know if you want me to dig up proof for you.
    - zucker42 7y ago
      Luckily, some people will get suspicious when you ask for the ballot to be sent to Moscow.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      In fact, California voter registration requires both identification and proof of residency. Please do provide the proof you're referring to.
cabaalis 7y ago
I wish I could read the second link, but not interested in bypassing their income (and not interested enough to pay them :) ) I'd like to know their research. I had to sign up with my address, and I have to prove my identity when I vote. That all seems perfectly reasonable to me. Even a low-tech ink mark used by some places seems perfectly fine. The law is full of tradeoffs, and I think proving you have voted only once and where you are allowed to vote is perfectly legitimate.
- mbrumlow 7y ago
  Side topic on bypassing their income. If you are not going to pay them, and not going to view it -- then they lost the income -- you might as well bypass the pay wall..

lutorm 7y ago

Voting is a constitutional right, forming a corporation or getting a library card is not.

sneak 7y ago
What about purchasing a firearm?
- Operyl 7y ago
  How was that relevant to the conversation?
  - nostromo 7y ago
    He's pointing out that if one believes you should be able to vote without ID because it's a civil right, then you should also be able to buy a gun without ID because it's a civil right. My guess is that he or she is saying that it's reasonable in both cases to require ID.
    - lurquer 7y ago
      You don’t need ID to buy a gun in the US. Private transactions are completely paper and record free. (Unless you are from some non-flyover state.) It’s only when you sell guns as a dealer that you are required to get ID and whatnot from the purchaser. (Even then, there is no penalty for BUYING the gun without ID; the penalty attaches to the SELLER.)
    - sneak 7y ago
      Quite the opposite. I think it is unreasonable to demand government paperwork as a prerequisite for basic human rights. If it is not reasonable to demand an ID to blog or to vote, it is not reasonable to demand an ID to obtain arms.
  - mikestew 7y ago
    How much identification is needed to exercise one “constitutional right” versus another? Should there be a difference? Though one might legitimately take the question to be flame-baity, I think it’s a valid question in light of the original statement.

reaperducer 7y ago

In Minnesota for example, all one needs is another registered voter to vouch for them. My thoughts on this are old school. Like 1700's old school. A person's right to vote exists with or without documentation. A piece of paper, an entry in a ledger, or a row in a database has no bearing on whether that right exists, or should be exercised. In many of the states where I've lived (13 so far), all that was needed to vote in the absence of identification was to sign an affidavit stating that I am who I say I am. The people at the polling station could ask for ID, but they couldn't require it. It's up to the people who handle the vote (often the county clerk or county board of elections) to decide later if my vote was valid or not. A lot of that is changing these days as the concept of being constantly tracked, monitored, and tabulated becomes normalized in America. Just a generation ago we made fun of the Soviet Union and various totalitarian regimes for having police stop people for no reason and demanding, "papers, please." Now there are people who think it's perfectly OK to require domestic passports ("Real ID" and similar) just to walk down the street. I wonder if two generations from now people will think we're old and crazy because we don't think it's OK for the government to require a chip be implanted in our brains so our thoughts can be monitored by bureaucratic minders. It's sounds like tinfoil hat sci-fi slippery slopism, but so would today's facial recognition in airports to people just 50 years ago.

waffle_ss 7y ago
Umm the 1700's in America were the era of needing to have land ownership to vote (more than half of white men couldn't vote), poll taxes, exclusion of blacks, native Americans, and women, religious tests, and so on. The 15th Amendment that changed some of that wasn't even passed until 1870. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_St...
- ColanR 7y ago
  However, that's orthogonal to the issue; documentation of your right to vote is not one of the requirements of possessing that right. (as parent said, "A person's right to vote exists with or without documentation.") It is a dramatic improvement that the people with the right to vote has been expanded since the 1700s, but what you said doesn't actually speak against the basic idea that documentation is not relevant to the exercise of ones rights. As an aside: once documentation is required, we enter a position where we do not have our rights until proven otherwise.

scott_paul 7y ago

I increasingly think the US should look into adopting something akin to Estonia's voting system. Perhaps with some added zero-knowledge proof layer so that it can be known that all votes were valid, but not exactly who voted which way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Estonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Estonia

foreach9885 7y ago
Honestly, that is a great idea, but it would never happen. It would be called racist if not enough non-white people sign up for it. No matter how easy you make enrollment.
- pstuart 7y ago
  Irony alert!

Spooky23 7y ago

That’s the difference between a right and a privilege. Borrowing a book is a privilege. You have a right to vote. Rights come without condition. Many municipal elections only require residency, and the state cannot compel you to have an identification, be literate, or participate in society beyond voting. A hermit living in a cave, a software engineer, or a person who just moved to a place are all humans and all subject to the same rights.