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It is amazing how many problems in the US exist simply because the government lacks knowledge about its people. From the census, to maintaining voter rolls, to

• dmix 6y ago
  Hasn’t this been fought against for ages? There’s a reason it’s a mishmash of state driven solutions instead of one big federal ID database. Not to mention the groups who fight against using any form of identification at all during voting.
  • behringer 6y ago
    Of course, and it's also completely unnecessary. We are innocent until proven guilty. If I show up at a polling place (or in this case, requesting or mailing a voting packet), show them some sort of identity and address, then I should be able to vote. If you're caught committing voter fraud, you should go to jail. It's simple, and has always been effective.
    • chrisseaton 6y ago
      Do you apply the same standard to your bank account? Someone with some sort of identity and address should be able to withdraw your bank account until proven guilty?
      • behringer 6y ago
        That is the standard applied at banks...
        • chrisseaton 6y ago
          No they also ask for a unique identifier (bank number) and an access code (PIN) and a token (bank card). That's three-auth. Two things you have to know and one thing you have to have. That's pretty good. I think that's what people are suggesting maybe voting should have.
          • behringer 6y ago
            Voting does have something like that...
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            • chrisseaton 6y ago
              I'm sorry, what you're describing as the authorisation required for voting or for going to the bank doesn't match my experience of reality. Banks do not just require an address and ID card, and voting does not require anything more than an address. Almost all your comments on everything are downvoted so I'm guessing you're a troll and I'm going to ignore you.
              • behringer 6y ago
                I'm being downvoted because HN is a bastion of white privilege. The reality is, voter fraud isn't really happening, and voter verification is currently perfectly sufficient, and any bank policies about requiring SSNs or state issued ID is entirely know your customer stuff and nothing to do with validating the account owner.
    • burfog 6y ago
      That makes catching people impossible. We can't even determine the level of fraud, so faith in our voting system is eroded. Even if you believe that there is no fraud, you should be deeply concerned that many other people are losing faith in election integrity. Elections are considered fraudulent until proven otherwise. We certainly could have decently secure elections without ID. Like this: You show up to vote in person, a good photo is taken, and you say who you are. That info is then made public. Political parties and other interested groups can sift through the photos, maybe with an AI, to find any crime. It's almost perfect. The main trouble is that fraud detection happens after the voting, so a person who doesn't fear prison can do as desired.
      • behringer 6y ago
        We can and we have determined the level of fraud. Hint: It's nearly 0. The right is simply fear mongering to push their racist agenda.
      • jones1618 6y ago
        Everyone is concentrating on the wrong thing. There are two possible kinds of voter fraud (both extremely rare), "retail fraud" (i.e. individual voters) and "wholesale fraud" (i.e. bulk fraud). Voter ID laws mostly "fix" a non-existent problem of individual false votes with the express intent of discouraging votes. The real problem you want to fix is "wholesale fraud" which means securing the whole system from voting machines (which should be open-source and paper-audited) to how votes are tallied. Think about it. If you were going to steal votes would you go to all the trouble to forge or hijack individual votes or would you bribe someone to flip a couple of digits at a county office? Of course, a trustworthy system includes how mail-in votes are tracked and verified but that is a well-understood problem working well for thousands and thousands of absentees, military personnel and whole states full of people who have voted that way regularly for decades.
  • slg 6y ago
    Yes, and if you listen to many of the people arguing against it the reason we don't have a national database of citizens is because the one thing stopping the US government from turning into Nazis and committing another genocide is poor record keeping. EDIT: I am being hyperbolic here, but the second reply to my first comment was doing exactly this. We can't have this database because of the Nazis.
    • whatshisface 6y ago
      There are many abuses for a national database less severe than genocide, and many "apocalypse scenarios" less likely than fascism in the US.
      • slg 6y ago
        I was being hyperbolic much as the people who are against this policy are hyperbolic, but the idea is true at any level of governmental abuse. If we fear government overreach, bad record keeping is never going to offer much protection.
    • lehi 6y ago
      The US Census has already been used to round up Japanese-Americans into internment camps. Post-9/11, the Census has handed over the locations and countries of origin of Arab-Americans to DHS/CBP.
      • slg 6y ago
        The point isn't that the US government has never done anything evil or will never do anything evil again. The point is that you aren't going to stop someone determined to commit evil by making it slightly more administratively difficult. If we fear that eventual evil, let's work to prevent it. Let's stop allowing this potential abuse to be the sole deciding factor against us doing good work today. It didn't stop us when we built the interstate highway system, which was largely built to facilitate military transport, so why should it stop us now? Also I'm not asking for a database including every possible detail about a person. I see no reason why something like race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, or an number of other traits should be recorded. But a simple database with names, DOB, most recent address, a national id, etc would be extremely helpful.
• lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24104862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24104862 This guy ran France's database for that when the Nazis invaded. They wanted a list of the Jews out of the database. The problem with tracking all of us is trusting the next administration Then again I prefer a more robust solution than hoping someone refuses to run a SELECT query.
  • Spivak 6y ago
    I think your point stands as for why we don’t want such a database but between Social Security which is now tied to the new federal driver’s licenses, taxes, and the census I think it’s a tough sell that the government couldn’t assemble the same data.
    • pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      Agreed, but surely the More Evil Government could just buy a marketing database - or have NSA download it - and know everything down to what size underpants people wear and which specific businesses and organisations they support. Facebook - without checking the specific details - can probably tell the locality and religious position of most of their users; certainly enough to direct the Neue Gestapo to arrest you. But they also have raw address and religion details, which makes it somewhat easier.
  • Denvercoder9 6y ago
    Such a database doesn't need to include religion or ethnicity. You can come a long way with just name and address.
  • pedrocr 6y ago
    And the very place where that happened now has a database again but without any of that information in it. The lesson that no database at all can exist seems like the wrong one. Pretty much every EU country has a database of citizens that is also then used to define who can vote where. It works fine. Those same places also do a census as a completely different effort for different reasons.
• spanhandler 6y ago
  The most frustrating thing is they seem to know—or be able to get if they want—everything about us until that information would help make life easier, then suddenly they're clueless and you have to go round up all the info for them, sometimes from other branches of government.
• hef19898 6y ago
  Especially amazing as I know of no EU country that has the same problems (of course some of those cases happen, but there we talk about single digits in absolute cases). Take Germany for example, or France as much as I can tell: You move, you register a new primary residency, where you vote. Your residency is also you voter registration (not sure why separating the two makes any sense). You leave the country permanently, you declare it, when your French, you can register at the consulate in the new country of residency. Guess what, you get your ballot by mail to that address. Carrying passports or ID cards, check. No unidentified residents. Dead voters, no problem. Registered residencies are constantly updated with birth and death certificates. Voting by is, as is voting in general, a solved problem. Including paper trails and enough voting places for everyone. Voting happens on Sundays.
  • rtkwe 6y ago
    There's a lot of reasons but the number one one is because there's only a two party system here in the US and the Republican one by it's policies and histories is almost entirely reliant on non-white voters not showing up in the electorate. It's not quiet, in NC they've explicitly targeted voting days and locations that are predominantly Democratic and non-white [0]. Second is just our whole system, the states are independent and run their own voting so tracking movement between states is harder in places that having intentionally done something like motorvotor (where ID and voter registration happen together). [1] [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/north-carolina-voter-id/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/north-carolina-voter-id/ [1] Again generally opposed by Republicans because it would mean more voters which demographically isn't good for them.
    • microcolonel 6y ago
      > Republican one by it's policies and histories is almost entirely reliant on non-white voters not showing up in the electorate You could make the literal exact argument in reverse with at least as much credibility.
      • rtkwe 6y ago
        Democrats aren't the ones pushing to lock people out of voting. Republicans are the only ones pushing actively for and currently dependent on minoritarian rule.
• merpnderp 6y ago
  The central database would be useless because a significant numbers of Americans think requiring proof of who you are is voter suppression.
  • dlp211 6y ago
    No one thinks that. The fundamental problem is the recognition that the lack of a central database has led to citizens who have the right to vote being denied that right. Voting is a right, voting is a right, voting is a right. If the US government is going to deny a person that right, the burden of proof is in them.
    • caseysoftware 6y ago
      > a significant numbers of Americans think requiring proof of who you are is voter suppression. > No one thinks that. > "Voter ID requirements limit the number of people who are able to cast a ballot." Ref: https://www.aclu.org/facts-about-voter-suppression https://www.aclu.org/facts-about-voter-suppression The first page of results for "id laws voter suppression" turned up similar statements from the WaPo, Atlantic, Wired, Vox, and quotes numerous politicians. Your "no one thinks that" is not in line with reality.
      • unethical_ban 6y ago
        Literally requiring some form of identification is not crazy. That said, the Republican path of establishing voter ID laws is often part of a pattern of "let's make it hard for the poor and working class to get proper ID, and to vote". Reducing early voting, not making ID cards free, etc. Voting should be a universal right in this country. The government should be putting in maximum effort to assist everyone who wants to vote, to be ready when the time comes, and enable early voting as much as possible.
        • DuskStar 6y ago
          I'm pretty sure some of the "ohmygod you're suppressing voters!" articles are about states with free IDs. (Or extremely cheap - for instance in Michigan an ID is $10)
• logicslave 6y ago
  Efforts to actively monitor/keep track of citizens are suppressed by the left. There is even an effort to stop the government from asking who is a citizen and who is not. If you think this is because of humanitarian reasons, you are sorely mistaken
• deleted 6y ago
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• tathougies 6y ago
  These kinds of voter ID requirements are opposed by the same party that now wants mail in ballots. The countries of the eu are much closer to the Republican party in terms of nationalism than they'd like to admit.
• monadic2 6y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong but there doesn't appear to be much evidence of widespread voter fraud. Election fraud and voter suppression on the other hand....
  • _-david-_ 6y ago
    How would you expect the government to detect thr amount voter fraud? There have been cases of voter fraud in every state we just don't know the number.
    • monadic2 6y ago
      Presumably with better verification techniques that don't result in voter suppression, like signature "verification".