5 ms·
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 pre
by 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 agoFrance 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 agoIn 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 agoOr you can vote on Sundays, like most countries.
- gremlinsinc 7y agowhat 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 agoYou need your voter registration card Where? This is never the case in CA. or some other way to identify yourself Meaning... you need ID?