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> a lack of identification requirements for elections that make certain classes of fraud difficult to detect. Go on, because let me tell you what this looks li

by js2 7y ago

> a lack of identification requirements for elections that make certain classes of fraud difficult to detect. Go on, because let me tell you what this looks like in practice here in NC. Here, you currently have to register and then provide your name to a poll worker, then sign that you voted. The only plausible fraud I can imagine if I wanted to vote more than once is to give the name of someone else and hope they don't show up to vote. There's no way I can imagine to do this at a significant scale without it going undetected. (You'd have to somehow get a bunch of fake names registered or figure out names of people who aren't likely to vote, then find people who are willing to commit fraud to vote under those names and get them to do so during early voting I guess.) Beginning next year, we need to present ID to vote, but the acceptable IDs are fairly restrictive[1,2]. In particular, my college aged daughter who will be voting for the first time next year is not able to use her state college issued ID[3]. Nor can she use her expired DMV learner's permit. Now fortunately, she has a passport and she'll use that. But otherwise, she'd have to get some form of acceptable ID. This is not well-publicized, and I guarantee there will be first time student voters next year who will be surprised to learn they can't vote with their college ID, and must instead to submit a provisional ballot. I am certain this will suppress many many more votes than fraudulent votes, if fraudulent votes even exist. 1. https://www.ncsbe.gov/Voter-Id https://www.ncsbe.gov/Voter-Id 2. "Of the approximately 850 universities, colleges, state and local employers, including charter schools, and tribal entities that were eligible to have their identification cards approved, 81 institutions submitted requests to the State Board of Elections. We do not in all cases know why the majority of institutions chose not to request approval, but in some cases institutions raised concerns that they believed they could not meet the current statutory requirements." https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/Voter%20ID/Correspondence%20to%20Co-Chairs%202019-03-15.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/Voter%20ID/Corresponde... 3. https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/Voter%20ID/Student%2C%20Employee%20and%20Tribal%20ID%20Approvals.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/Voter%20ID/Student%2C%...

andrewla 7y ago
Implementation of voter ID laws leaves some room for improvement, to understate it, and there's a reason why I put it last on the list. That said, it does appear that NC will accept student ids from most schools [1], thought of course it's possible that your daughter goes to a school that does not conform to the voter id standards. The attack vector for signature-based roll verification is mostly along the lines of submitting votes for non-voting eligible voters, whose names can easily be harvested from voter rolls and looking at historical voting records (coupled, of course, with inside knowledge of which identities have already been used in previous election cycles, so appear to be active even though the agent in question knows that they are actually inactive). I don't know how common this is -- nobody does -- because it's almost impossible to detect without more information about who is voting. You may be right, and it may be insignificant. It is easy for voter id to verge into voter suppression territory, but to throw an old meme on its side, "voter id is impossible to implement, says only country that does not implement voter id". [1] https://www.ncsbe.gov/Voter-ID https://www.ncsbe.gov/Voter-ID
- js2 7y ago
  America has a problem with too little voting, not too much. NC could just ask you to present your voter registration card. That would be sufficient in preventing the type of fraud you imagine, unless you imagine ID fraud too. And most school IDs, including all but two of the UNC schools, are not eligible. I assure you my daughter's school ID is not. The voter ID laws are a pretty transparent attempt to suppress Democratic votes. I'd be okay with IDs if they created zero additional friction in the voting process, but they do not.

by js2 7y ago

andrewla 7y ago

Implementation of voter ID laws leaves some room for improvement, to understate it, and there's a reason why I put it last on the list. That said, it does appear that NC will accept student ids from most schools [1], thought of course it's possible that your daughter goes to a school that does not conform to the voter id standards. The attack vector for signature-based roll verification is mostly along the lines of submitting votes for non-voting eligible voters, whose names can easily be harvested from voter rolls and looking at historical voting records (coupled, of course, with inside knowledge of which identities have already been used in previous election cycles, so appear to be active even though the agent in question knows that they are actually inactive). I don't know how common this is -- nobody does -- because it's almost impossible to detect without more information about who is voting. You may be right, and it may be insignificant. It is easy for voter id to verge into voter suppression territory, but to throw an old meme on its side, "voter id is impossible to implement, says only country that does not implement voter id". [1] https://www.ncsbe.gov/Voter-ID https://www.ncsbe.gov/Voter-ID

js2 7y ago
America has a problem with too little voting, not too much. NC could just ask you to present your voter registration card. That would be sufficient in preventing the type of fraud you imagine, unless you imagine ID fraud too. And most school IDs, including all but two of the UNC schools, are not eligible. I assure you my daughter's school ID is not. The voter ID laws are a pretty transparent attempt to suppress Democratic votes. I'd be okay with IDs if they created zero additional friction in the voting process, but they do not.