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It seems like Canada (for Federal elections at least) and most European countries have voter ID laws [0]. Notably, the UK does not; they scrapped government iss

It seems like Canada (for Federal elections at least) and most European countries have voter ID laws [0]. Notably, the UK does not; they scrapped government issued ID cards altogether in 2011([1]). I'm not sure why requiring ID to vote is so controversial in the US. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_Identification_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_Identification_laws [1] https://www.gov.uk/identitycards https://www.gov.uk/identitycards

naravara 7y ago
They don't need it. You need your voter registration card or some other way to identify yourself (like a piece of mail with your name on it) to vote in your precinct and they take your name off the list once you vote. Voter ID laws are intended solely to make it harder to vote by requiring a specific ID (driver's license or state issued ID) to vote. They won't accept your passport, a lease, a library card, or any other vetted and validated way of verifying who you are. This is intended to suppress participation by people who are unlikely to have a current license or state issued ID which is disproportionately people who don't own cars (poor, young, and/or urban) or people who have to move a lot. If your ID isn't your current address or at least within the precinct, once again, you're barred from voting. It's meant to privilege property owners (less likely to have their address change frequently) at their expense of people with less stable residential situations and it undermines the premise behind universal franchise.
- eindiran 7y ago
  France has a similar setup to what you described; however, in towns and cities with >1000 voters, they do require a state-issued identification document specifically because using mail/other forms of id and a large list of names doesn't scale well. See here: https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F1361 https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F1361
  - naravara 7y ago
    In the US elections are hyper-local, so you can generally only vote in a specific precinct based on where you live. If the list of names is getting really large, that's a sign that you don't have enough precincts/locations for the neighborhood. That, incidentally, is another voter suppression strategy to make the lines so long that people are forced to choose between being late for work/appointments or getting to vote. And this has a fun additive effect with other voter suppression strategies. If the lines are long because the precincts are too few and under-staffed, you can make the lines EVEN LONGER by making the poll workers review IDs, explain to each person what is and isn't a valid ID, have to explain the provisional ballot process because they don't pass some arbitrary rule, and so on and so forth.
    - gus_massa 7y ago
      Or you can vote on Sundays, like most countries.
    - gremlinsinc 7y ago
      what they need is IF a voter id is required make it so it's super easy to get one and ALL voting precincts have to issue them at time of voting. Also make mandatory early voting where you can vote at a large number of public places from Oct 1st through 2nd tuesday in November which is also a national holiday w/ holiday pay and mandatory time off if requested. This would make lines a less-issue because you can vote anytime you want.
- masonic 7y ago
  You need your voter registration card Where? This is never the case in CA. or some other way to identify yourself Meaning... you need ID?
Simulacra 7y ago
It’s controversial because one party favors strong voter ID laws which means in the American system the other party must oppose it. A more concrete answer is that the party that favors less restrictions on voting, believes that everyone under the governed regardless of disposition, nationality, age, etc. should have the right to vote. The other party believes that the law says you must be 18 and a citizen to vote in federal elections, and that’s how it should be, and if the law says that then there must be someway to verify that.
- mullingitover 7y ago
  That other party has a long history or preventing "the wrong people" from voting by any means available: murder, intimidation, "literacy tests," gerrymandering districts, and making requirements that are very difficult for the "wrong people" to obtain. The level of hysteria over election fraud is wildly disproportional to the number of documented cases of said fraud.
  - newfriend 7y ago
    How easy is it to detect cases of fraud when no one is required to supply identification?
  - hnlurker 7y ago
    We really ought to bring back literacy tests. They should just be applied to all voters.. Even better, you can't vote unless you can pass a US Citizenship Exam. Then we could open the voting up to all citizens regardless of age, too. Win, win, win.
jbob2000 7y ago
It's not that voter ID is controversial, it's that the Republicans make it really difficult to get ID in their states. Canada makes it easy to get ID, we don't de-fund our government offices to make it difficult to get registered. You can renew your driver's license online now, so we invest in programs to make it easier to get and keep your ID.
- eindiran 7y ago
  If that's the case, then folks should be focused on making it easier to get state ID and widen the class of IDs that can be used (state ID/voter ID card/passport/driver's license). From this page though, it seems like people actually do think voter ID itself is controversial: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_St... There was even a Supreme Court case in the US about whether it was constitutional for a state to implement one: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-election/u-s-top-court-rejects-challenge-to-wisconsin-voter-id-law-idUSKBN0MJ1DZ20150323 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-election/u-s-to...
  - jadell 7y ago
    > If that's the case, then folks should be focused on making it easier to get state ID and widen the class of IDs that can be used (state ID/voter ID card/passport/driver's license). Yes, exactly. And that should be done before we require those IDs in order to vote.
  - jbob2000 7y ago
    Ok there’s Voter ID, as in a special card that you must get in order to vote, and voter ID, which is just a collection of various forms of identification that the government respects for the purposes of voting. I was referring to the latter - you’re allowed to show up to vote in Canada with your passport, for example.
mullingitover 7y ago
It's a vote suppression tactic when the IDs aren't trivially easy to obtain. A county in Wisconsin only issued them from a DMV that was only open on the fifth Wednesday of every month[1]. >That DMV service center is inside the Sauk City Community Center. And, sure enough, as Oliver’s piece stated, it’s open only on the fifth Wednesday of every month, from 8:15 a.m. to 4 p.m. > The DMV doesn’t list the actual dates, so we looked them up. The four fifth Wednesdays in 2016 are in, as Oliver noted, March, June, August and November. [1] https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2016/feb/19/john-oliver/office-provides-id-voting-one-wisconsin-burg-open-/ https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2016/feb/19/...
- neonIcon 7y ago
  So let's change the rules to make them more easily attainable, instead of throwing out the idea of something that we desperately need in this country.
  - mullingitover 7y ago
    Can you explain why the current system, under which voter fraud is astonishingly rare, is something we desperately need to change?
    - 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
      One side says we don't need change. One side says we do. If you can't convince the other side that voter fraud is rare, then a step that prevents it while at the same time not discriminating between voters seems like it might be mutually agreeable.
      - mullingitover 7y ago
        The side that says we do has repeatedly been found to be making that case in bad faith, with the underlying goal of reducing voter turnout. Do you think it's that important to humor a group whose ultimate goal is mass disenfranchisement?
neonIcon 7y ago
It is required for almost every other conceivable activity that an adult might want to do. However when applied to voting it suddenly becomes some sort of suppression tactic.. Mind boggling
- alistairSH 7y ago
  One of those activities (voting) is constitutionally protected.
  - masonic 7y ago
    Only for those legally eligible to vote... which is the whole point.
    - alistairSH 7y ago
      Except there's never been any indication of widespread voter fraud. Like I said, ID laws a solution in search of a problem.
- mcphage 7y ago
  > However when applied to voting it suddenly becomes some sort of suppression tactic.. Mind boggling Mind boggling until you read about the ongoing history of voter suppression in the US.
scj 7y ago
Canada's voter identification laws changed for 2015, then reverted for 2019. This was due to change in governments. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-election-2015-voter-id-rules-stand-judge-rules-1.3156519 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-election-2015-voter... Realistically, in the short term the law is going to be "whatever the government wants it to be until the Supreme Court sets a precedent".
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  Yes, in the last Canadian election you didn't need ID to vote, you just needed someone with an ID to vouch for you.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> I'm not sure why requiring ID to vote is so controversial in the US. Because there is no evidence of a problem that it would solve and because it has consistently been deliberately engineered as a system of disenfranchisement of eligible voters and the people pushing it (even recently) keep getting caught openly touting its benefits in that direction when they think only their political allies are listening, as well as being the same people pushing other techniques designed to disenfranchise the same people they try to use voter ID to disenfranchise. Its kind of a "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, can't get fooled again" situation, to borrow the wise words of former President George W. Bush.
tombert 7y ago
Most people (as far as I know) don't have a direct issue with voter ID laws inherently. The issue comes down to the fact that most implementations have been surgically targeted to affect certain racial groups [0], combined with the fact that widespread voter fraud has not been demonstrated to be a problem. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_St... A North Carolina law was overturned as "its provisions deliberately target African-Americans with almost surgical precision … in an effort to depress black turnout at the polls."
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bryanlarsen 7y ago
Your wikipedia link for Canada says one option is: > Take an oath and have an elector who knows the voter vouch for them (both of whom must make a sworn statement). This person must have authorized identification and their name must appear on the list of electors in the same polling division as the voter. This person can only vouch for one person and the person who is vouched for cannot vouch for another elector. IOW, voter ID is not required in Canada.
cam_l 7y ago
Australia does not require voter id, has compulsory voting, paper ballots, postal voting, weekend voting, very low levels of voter fraud.. and right wing parties still win elections. The republicans shouldn't be so worried.
- simonblack 7y ago
  You left out early voting, where you can vote for several weeks before the actual election date. <grin>

naravara 7y ago

They don't need it. You need your voter registration card or some other way to identify yourself (like a piece of mail with your name on it) to vote in your precinct and they take your name off the list once you vote. Voter ID laws are intended solely to make it harder to vote by requiring a specific ID (driver's license or state issued ID) to vote. They won't accept your passport, a lease, a library card, or any other vetted and validated way of verifying who you are. This is intended to suppress participation by people who are unlikely to have a current license or state issued ID which is disproportionately people who don't own cars (poor, young, and/or urban) or people who have to move a lot. If your ID isn't your current address or at least within the precinct, once again, you're barred from voting. It's meant to privilege property owners (less likely to have their address change frequently) at their expense of people with less stable residential situations and it undermines the premise behind universal franchise.

eindiran 7y ago
France has a similar setup to what you described; however, in towns and cities with >1000 voters, they do require a state-issued identification document specifically because using mail/other forms of id and a large list of names doesn't scale well. See here: https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F1361 https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F1361
- naravara 7y ago
  In the US elections are hyper-local, so you can generally only vote in a specific precinct based on where you live. If the list of names is getting really large, that's a sign that you don't have enough precincts/locations for the neighborhood. That, incidentally, is another voter suppression strategy to make the lines so long that people are forced to choose between being late for work/appointments or getting to vote. And this has a fun additive effect with other voter suppression strategies. If the lines are long because the precincts are too few and under-staffed, you can make the lines EVEN LONGER by making the poll workers review IDs, explain to each person what is and isn't a valid ID, have to explain the provisional ballot process because they don't pass some arbitrary rule, and so on and so forth.
  - gus_massa 7y ago
    Or you can vote on Sundays, like most countries.
  - gremlinsinc 7y ago
    what they need is IF a voter id is required make it so it's super easy to get one and ALL voting precincts have to issue them at time of voting. Also make mandatory early voting where you can vote at a large number of public places from Oct 1st through 2nd tuesday in November which is also a national holiday w/ holiday pay and mandatory time off if requested. This would make lines a less-issue because you can vote anytime you want.
masonic 7y ago
You need your voter registration card Where? This is never the case in CA. or some other way to identify yourself Meaning... you need ID?

Simulacra 7y ago

It’s controversial because one party favors strong voter ID laws which means in the American system the other party must oppose it. A more concrete answer is that the party that favors less restrictions on voting, believes that everyone under the governed regardless of disposition, nationality, age, etc. should have the right to vote. The other party believes that the law says you must be 18 and a citizen to vote in federal elections, and that’s how it should be, and if the law says that then there must be someway to verify that.

mullingitover 7y ago
That other party has a long history or preventing "the wrong people" from voting by any means available: murder, intimidation, "literacy tests," gerrymandering districts, and making requirements that are very difficult for the "wrong people" to obtain. The level of hysteria over election fraud is wildly disproportional to the number of documented cases of said fraud.
- newfriend 7y ago
  How easy is it to detect cases of fraud when no one is required to supply identification?
- hnlurker 7y ago
  We really ought to bring back literacy tests. They should just be applied to all voters.. Even better, you can't vote unless you can pass a US Citizenship Exam. Then we could open the voting up to all citizens regardless of age, too. Win, win, win.

jbob2000 7y ago

It's not that voter ID is controversial, it's that the Republicans make it really difficult to get ID in their states. Canada makes it easy to get ID, we don't de-fund our government offices to make it difficult to get registered. You can renew your driver's license online now, so we invest in programs to make it easier to get and keep your ID.

eindiran 7y ago
If that's the case, then folks should be focused on making it easier to get state ID and widen the class of IDs that can be used (state ID/voter ID card/passport/driver's license). From this page though, it seems like people actually do think voter ID itself is controversial: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_St... There was even a Supreme Court case in the US about whether it was constitutional for a state to implement one: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-election/u-s-top-court-rejects-challenge-to-wisconsin-voter-id-law-idUSKBN0MJ1DZ20150323 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-election/u-s-to...
- jadell 7y ago
  > If that's the case, then folks should be focused on making it easier to get state ID and widen the class of IDs that can be used (state ID/voter ID card/passport/driver's license). Yes, exactly. And that should be done before we require those IDs in order to vote.
- jbob2000 7y ago
  Ok there’s Voter ID, as in a special card that you must get in order to vote, and voter ID, which is just a collection of various forms of identification that the government respects for the purposes of voting. I was referring to the latter - you’re allowed to show up to vote in Canada with your passport, for example.

mullingitover 7y ago

It's a vote suppression tactic when the IDs aren't trivially easy to obtain. A county in Wisconsin only issued them from a DMV that was only open on the fifth Wednesday of every month[1]. >That DMV service center is inside the Sauk City Community Center. And, sure enough, as Oliver’s piece stated, it’s open only on the fifth Wednesday of every month, from 8:15 a.m. to 4 p.m. > The DMV doesn’t list the actual dates, so we looked them up. The four fifth Wednesdays in 2016 are in, as Oliver noted, March, June, August and November. [1] https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2016/feb/19/john-oliver/office-provides-id-voting-one-wisconsin-burg-open-/ https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2016/feb/19/...

neonIcon 7y ago
So let's change the rules to make them more easily attainable, instead of throwing out the idea of something that we desperately need in this country.
- mullingitover 7y ago
  Can you explain why the current system, under which voter fraud is astonishingly rare, is something we desperately need to change?
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
    One side says we don't need change. One side says we do. If you can't convince the other side that voter fraud is rare, then a step that prevents it while at the same time not discriminating between voters seems like it might be mutually agreeable.
    - mullingitover 7y ago
      The side that says we do has repeatedly been found to be making that case in bad faith, with the underlying goal of reducing voter turnout. Do you think it's that important to humor a group whose ultimate goal is mass disenfranchisement?

neonIcon 7y ago

It is required for almost every other conceivable activity that an adult might want to do. However when applied to voting it suddenly becomes some sort of suppression tactic.. Mind boggling

alistairSH 7y ago
One of those activities (voting) is constitutionally protected.
- masonic 7y ago
  Only for those legally eligible to vote... which is the whole point.
  - alistairSH 7y ago
    Except there's never been any indication of widespread voter fraud. Like I said, ID laws a solution in search of a problem.
mcphage 7y ago
> However when applied to voting it suddenly becomes some sort of suppression tactic.. Mind boggling Mind boggling until you read about the ongoing history of voter suppression in the US.

scj 7y ago

Canada's voter identification laws changed for 2015, then reverted for 2019. This was due to change in governments. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-election-2015-voter-id-rules-stand-judge-rules-1.3156519 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-election-2015-voter... Realistically, in the short term the law is going to be "whatever the government wants it to be until the Supreme Court sets a precedent".

bryanlarsen 7y ago
Yes, in the last Canadian election you didn't need ID to vote, you just needed someone with an ID to vouch for you.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> I'm not sure why requiring ID to vote is so controversial in the US. Because there is no evidence of a problem that it would solve and because it has consistently been deliberately engineered as a system of disenfranchisement of eligible voters and the people pushing it (even recently) keep getting caught openly touting its benefits in that direction when they think only their political allies are listening, as well as being the same people pushing other techniques designed to disenfranchise the same people they try to use voter ID to disenfranchise. Its kind of a "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, can't get fooled again" situation, to borrow the wise words of former President George W. Bush.

tombert 7y ago

Most people (as far as I know) don't have a direct issue with voter ID laws inherently. The issue comes down to the fact that most implementations have been surgically targeted to affect certain racial groups [0], combined with the fact that widespread voter fraud has not been demonstrated to be a problem. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_St... A North Carolina law was overturned as "its provisions deliberately target African-Americans with almost surgical precision … in an effort to depress black turnout at the polls."

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bryanlarsen 7y ago

Your wikipedia link for Canada says one option is: > Take an oath and have an elector who knows the voter vouch for them (both of whom must make a sworn statement). This person must have authorized identification and their name must appear on the list of electors in the same polling division as the voter. This person can only vouch for one person and the person who is vouched for cannot vouch for another elector. IOW, voter ID is not required in Canada.

cam_l 7y ago

Australia does not require voter id, has compulsory voting, paper ballots, postal voting, weekend voting, very low levels of voter fraud.. and right wing parties still win elections. The republicans shouldn't be so worried.

simonblack 7y ago
You left out early voting, where you can vote for several weeks before the actual election date. <grin>