4 ms·

Texas Senate Passes One of the Nation’s Strictest Voting Bills

42 points by belltaco 5y ago

benguild 5y ago
Did they have any actual reasons for the limits that outweighed the equal access legitimacy?
- aaronbrethorst 5y ago
  Yes, it is a helpful step towards locking in minoritarian rule. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/advantage-gop/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/advantage-gop/
DisjointedHunt 5y ago
>the bill would prohibit election officials from sending absentee ballots to all voters, regardless of whether they had requested them; ban using tents, garages, mobile units or any temporary structure as a polling location; further limit who could vote absentee; and add new identification requirements for voting by mail. >Partisan poll watchers would also have more access and autonomy under the bill’s provisions, and election officials could be more harshly punished if they make mistakes or otherwise run afoul of election codes and laws. Why does the United States allow anyone to vote without identification is a shocking question to be asking in 2021.
- jacob2484 5y ago
  Exactly - IDs are required for pretty much everything else we do. Voting should be no different.
  - sweetheart 5y ago
    Do you still feel that way when considering how this would inhibit many people who cannot get IDs from voting? It's their right, no? Just because they don't have a means to obtain an ID doesn't mean their voice shouldn't carry weight in our democracy.
    - alkonaut 5y ago
      To be absolutely clear: I hope no one is suggesting that there should be any voter ID laws that aren’t preceded by ensuring people have ID (free, easy access). The voter ID discussion should be phrased as “assuming 99.9% have ID, do you think it’s a good idea to check it when voting?” The answer to that question is: “yes”. The other question (much less interesting!) is “assuming ID access and possession is as skewed as today, is it a good idea to require ID for voting?”. The answer to that question is an equally easy “No”.
    - chrismcb 5y ago
      Why can't they get an id?
      - gremlinsinc 5y ago
        Cost. If it's $25, that's too much for some people. Time cost. If they work 8-5, or two jobs, they can't get time off to go get an id. That's just a few off the top of my head.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  Because poll taxes are unconstitutional.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    That does seem to be a lynchpin in many of the rulings against voter ID requirements. There's an obvious workaround: the elimination of fees for ID. That's curiously aligned with the party goal of cutting taxes, but for some reason I never see that come up in this kind of legislation.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  You need to identify yourself to register to vote, and to vote you have to arrive at the poll, state your name and address, and sign a sworn statement. The system is practically impossible to abuse, evidenced by the fact that there have been almost no documented cases of anyone abusing it. The reason identification laws are bad is because they disproportionately affect black people, who are less likely to have state identification, and that is because there are many people still alive today who were born in counties that literally refused to issue birth certificates to black people. It is very easy for someone to just sit there behind a computer and question why someone might not have government identification, but think it through.
  - HideousKojima 5y ago
    >You need to identify yourself to register to vote, and to vote you have to arrive at the poll, state your name and address, and sign a sworn statement. The system is practically impossible to abuse, evidenced by the fact that there have been almost no documented cases of anyone abusing it. Or it's because it's rarely caught and charges are rarely pressed: https://www.wsj.com/articles/voter-fraud-a-myth-thats-not-what-new-york-investigators-found-1485994200 https://www.wsj.com/articles/voter-fraud-a-myth-thats-not-wh... 61 out of 63 attempts to vote fraudulently were successful, and one was rejected only because the poll worker happened to be the mother of the person they were trying to fraudulently vote as. Until there's widespread and thorough pentesting of the election systems in various states it's impossible to say at what rate fraud does or does not occur.
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      Who cares? Retail one-at-a-time vote fraud doesn't scale, is extremely risky (it's a felony) and doesn't happen at problematic levels. On the other hand, disenfranchising the 13% of black Americans who lack a photo ID is obviously going to swing elections.
      - HideousKojima 5y ago
        There's plenty of ways to commit voter fraud. The fact that the most blatant and easy to catch was so successful should be worrisome to anyone.
- SonicScrub 5y ago
  The US does not have any universally available form of government ID that is automatically given freely to all citizens, therefore any piece of photo id is behind a paywall of some kind. Voting should not be limited to only those who hold a passport, or a driver's license, etc. Other democracies have very liberal requirements on what constitutes an ID, and they do just fine. For example, here's the list of acceptable identification documents to participate in Canadian elections. https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&document=index&lang=e https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&do... The list covers everything from parolee cards, health cards (which are issued free of charge), firearm licenses, to letters of residency from a homeless shelter/soup kitchen, thus ensuring everyone can vote regardless of which walk of life they are from. It's also worth noting that this law is not being passed in good faith to protect the integrity of elections, as there is little to no evidence that there is a threat. It is a partisan attempt to limit the voting rights of groups that for various reasons typically don't have identification cards, as there is significant overlap between those people and those who tend to vote in opposition to the those currently in power.
  - moistly 5y ago
    It is disconcerting that your post, which is factual in every statement, is downvoted. Truth is downvoted on Hacker News? That is fucked-up behaviour. We can be better than this.
- cpgxiii 5y ago
  If all US states had free, easy-to-use programs to ensure that all residents had useful government-provided ID, or a common, free, federally-provided ID, this wouldn't be an issue. However, that is not the case, and so long as the requirement to have an ID costs money, it effectively amounts to a poll tax that serves to suppress low-income voters. In practice, most people in most states probably do vote with IDs, since providing your ID is the easiest way for the poll workers to find your registration. And of course in the processes most people use to register to vote, some (if not multiple) form(s) of identification must generally be provided. The reality is that no significant ID-solved voter fraud exists in the US, so while nice in principle, voter ID laws only serve to suppress voter turnout.
- uniacid 5y ago
  >Why does the United States allow anyone to vote without identification is a shocking question to be asking in 2021. I feel this is a huge misconception, everyone has to identify for the most part to get your voter registration card for example, so to claim we are allowing votes without identification is false. Voter registration usually also includes your signature which is verified on all ballots mailed or otherwise. For example last year I had to verify that my ballot was actually coming from me since they questioned my signature as it was an old signature I used. I sent in the proper documents to update said signature and prove I am who I said I was and it was done and over with.
- sergers 5y ago
  Not sure the downvotes. As a non-american(as this is a worldwide site), I was literally wondering the same thing. Having no form of identification? That's crazy... Not knowing the specific challenges. In Canada you don't need to have "ID" as govt form of identification, you still need to be able to identify yourself. They offer 3 options. Passport/driver's license/provincial I'd card. Then if you don't have that, there are secondary items like student id + utility bill, or indigenous status card. Then lastly, you can have someone who does have ID vouch for u. "You can still vote if you declare your identity and address in writing and have someone who knows you and who is assigned to your polling station vouch for you. The voucher must be able to prove their identity and address. A person can vouch for only one person (except in long-term care institutions)." Source: https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&document=index&lang=e https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&do...
- bioinformatics 5y ago
  Same reason they use Fahrenheit and Imperial measurements.
klyrs 5y ago
> Still, the bill includes a provision that could make overturning an election easier. Texas election law had stated that reversing the results of an election because of fraud accusations required proving that illicit votes had actually resulted in a wrongful victory. If the bill passes, the number of fraudulent votes required to do so would simply need to be equal to the winning vote differential; it would not matter for whom the fraudulent votes had been cast. Wow, this establishes an incredibly perverse incentive. If a party believes that they will lose, they can engage in fraud in favor of the opposite party (e.g. burning boxes of ballots in safe districts), and spoil the vote. If the same party is already in power, it would appear that they could just keep playing this game, pardoning the offenders each time, and maintain control of the "interim" government indefinitely.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  >If the bill passes, the number of fraudulent votes required to do so would simply need to be equal to the winning vote differential; it would not matter for whom the fraudulent votes had been cast. >Wow, this establishes an incredibly perverse incentive. If a party believes that they will lose, they can engage in fraud in favor of the opposite party (e.g. burning boxes of ballots in safe districts), and spoil the vote. By this rule, they could have the election overturned by casting fraudulent votes for their own party.
- liquidise 5y ago
  I’m not sure. If Party A expects Party B to win by 1%, A can seek to frame B with fraud by creating 1% more vote for B, who now wins by roughly 2%, meaning the bill doesn’t apply as the margin is greater than the fraud. I don’t disagree with your assessment but I think the result is more complex. This becomes a statistical cat and mouse game, which again is a total distraction from the actual purpose of the voting process.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    Indeed, that's a fair point. Perhaps it's not quite as easy as I initially imagined, but that doesn't really ease my concerns
cletus 5y ago
THIS IS WHY VOTING SHOULD BE MANDATORY. Opponents argue that the uninformed will vote. The alternative however is much worse: disenfranchisement (eg why exactly can't felons vote?), active efforts to purge the wrong kind of voters from the electoral rolls [1] and voter suppression in the form of voter ID laws when no evidence of widespread voter fraud has ever been documented. Australia has mandatory voting and it's non-controversial. It's technically not even mandatory voting. If you want to drop and empty ballot into the box so as to not to vote you can. You never have to wait in line for hours. Make no mistake: removing access to absentee ballots, voter ID and efforts like Georgia making it illegal to give water to someone in line to vote have two goals: 1. To feed into the baseless GOP base delusion that the election was somehow stolen. It's virtue signaling for the Trump faithful because no GOP politician wants to be the next Liz Cheney and lose their next primary; and 2. To make it harder for Democrats to vote and to make less of them vote. That's it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force
- foobiekr 5y ago
  Each time there is an election here in California, I get to vote on presidency, senators sometimes, representatives, propositions... and then a whole pile of people I've never heard of, who have minimal bios, and about whom no meaningful research is possible beyond what basically amounts to advertising. The work required to choose which candidate makes sense for these lower tier positions seems basically impossible and I do reference a number of voter guide sites. Realistically, if someone who cares enough to put some effort into it cannot reasonably convince himself that he is making informed decisions for the approximately half of the ballot that these candidates for whatever, is it really unfair to assume people who don't care and are forced to vote will do anything but vote randomly or purely by party affiliation?
  - moistly 5y ago
    > and then a whole pile of people I've never heard of From the outside, it looks crazy. So many service positions that are treated as political positions instead of employee positions. So many positions that should have qualifications as a requirement for employment (e.g. education, certification, training), turned into positions that have no qualification requirements save for one: get elected. People of no competency mucking up jobs that require competency. Coroners who have no education whatsoever! Animal Control guys with no animal training! Sheriffs and whatnot with no legal training! It’s fantastically insane!
giomasce 5y ago
Please, do not assume there is just one nation in the world, and write "United States" instead of "nation".

42 points by belltaco 5y ago

benguild 5y ago

Did they have any actual reasons for the limits that outweighed the equal access legitimacy?

aaronbrethorst 5y ago
Yes, it is a helpful step towards locking in minoritarian rule. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/advantage-gop/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/advantage-gop/

DisjointedHunt 5y ago

>the bill would prohibit election officials from sending absentee ballots to all voters, regardless of whether they had requested them; ban using tents, garages, mobile units or any temporary structure as a polling location; further limit who could vote absentee; and add new identification requirements for voting by mail. >Partisan poll watchers would also have more access and autonomy under the bill’s provisions, and election officials could be more harshly punished if they make mistakes or otherwise run afoul of election codes and laws. Why does the United States allow anyone to vote without identification is a shocking question to be asking in 2021.

jacob2484 5y ago
Exactly - IDs are required for pretty much everything else we do. Voting should be no different.
- sweetheart 5y ago
  Do you still feel that way when considering how this would inhibit many people who cannot get IDs from voting? It's their right, no? Just because they don't have a means to obtain an ID doesn't mean their voice shouldn't carry weight in our democracy.
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    To be absolutely clear: I hope no one is suggesting that there should be any voter ID laws that aren’t preceded by ensuring people have ID (free, easy access). The voter ID discussion should be phrased as “assuming 99.9% have ID, do you think it’s a good idea to check it when voting?” The answer to that question is: “yes”. The other question (much less interesting!) is “assuming ID access and possession is as skewed as today, is it a good idea to require ID for voting?”. The answer to that question is an equally easy “No”.
  - chrismcb 5y ago
    Why can't they get an id?
    - gremlinsinc 5y ago
      Cost. If it's $25, that's too much for some people. Time cost. If they work 8-5, or two jobs, they can't get time off to go get an id. That's just a few off the top of my head.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
Because poll taxes are unconstitutional.
- klyrs 5y ago
  That does seem to be a lynchpin in many of the rulings against voter ID requirements. There's an obvious workaround: the elimination of fees for ID. That's curiously aligned with the party goal of cutting taxes, but for some reason I never see that come up in this kind of legislation.
jeffbee 5y ago
You need to identify yourself to register to vote, and to vote you have to arrive at the poll, state your name and address, and sign a sworn statement. The system is practically impossible to abuse, evidenced by the fact that there have been almost no documented cases of anyone abusing it. The reason identification laws are bad is because they disproportionately affect black people, who are less likely to have state identification, and that is because there are many people still alive today who were born in counties that literally refused to issue birth certificates to black people. It is very easy for someone to just sit there behind a computer and question why someone might not have government identification, but think it through.
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  >You need to identify yourself to register to vote, and to vote you have to arrive at the poll, state your name and address, and sign a sworn statement. The system is practically impossible to abuse, evidenced by the fact that there have been almost no documented cases of anyone abusing it. Or it's because it's rarely caught and charges are rarely pressed: https://www.wsj.com/articles/voter-fraud-a-myth-thats-not-what-new-york-investigators-found-1485994200 https://www.wsj.com/articles/voter-fraud-a-myth-thats-not-wh... 61 out of 63 attempts to vote fraudulently were successful, and one was rejected only because the poll worker happened to be the mother of the person they were trying to fraudulently vote as. Until there's widespread and thorough pentesting of the election systems in various states it's impossible to say at what rate fraud does or does not occur.
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    Who cares? Retail one-at-a-time vote fraud doesn't scale, is extremely risky (it's a felony) and doesn't happen at problematic levels. On the other hand, disenfranchising the 13% of black Americans who lack a photo ID is obviously going to swing elections.
    - HideousKojima 5y ago
      There's plenty of ways to commit voter fraud. The fact that the most blatant and easy to catch was so successful should be worrisome to anyone.
SonicScrub 5y ago
The US does not have any universally available form of government ID that is automatically given freely to all citizens, therefore any piece of photo id is behind a paywall of some kind. Voting should not be limited to only those who hold a passport, or a driver's license, etc. Other democracies have very liberal requirements on what constitutes an ID, and they do just fine. For example, here's the list of acceptable identification documents to participate in Canadian elections. https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&document=index&lang=e https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&do... The list covers everything from parolee cards, health cards (which are issued free of charge), firearm licenses, to letters of residency from a homeless shelter/soup kitchen, thus ensuring everyone can vote regardless of which walk of life they are from. It's also worth noting that this law is not being passed in good faith to protect the integrity of elections, as there is little to no evidence that there is a threat. It is a partisan attempt to limit the voting rights of groups that for various reasons typically don't have identification cards, as there is significant overlap between those people and those who tend to vote in opposition to the those currently in power.
- moistly 5y ago
  It is disconcerting that your post, which is factual in every statement, is downvoted. Truth is downvoted on Hacker News? That is fucked-up behaviour. We can be better than this.
cpgxiii 5y ago
If all US states had free, easy-to-use programs to ensure that all residents had useful government-provided ID, or a common, free, federally-provided ID, this wouldn't be an issue. However, that is not the case, and so long as the requirement to have an ID costs money, it effectively amounts to a poll tax that serves to suppress low-income voters. In practice, most people in most states probably do vote with IDs, since providing your ID is the easiest way for the poll workers to find your registration. And of course in the processes most people use to register to vote, some (if not multiple) form(s) of identification must generally be provided. The reality is that no significant ID-solved voter fraud exists in the US, so while nice in principle, voter ID laws only serve to suppress voter turnout.
uniacid 5y ago
>Why does the United States allow anyone to vote without identification is a shocking question to be asking in 2021. I feel this is a huge misconception, everyone has to identify for the most part to get your voter registration card for example, so to claim we are allowing votes without identification is false. Voter registration usually also includes your signature which is verified on all ballots mailed or otherwise. For example last year I had to verify that my ballot was actually coming from me since they questioned my signature as it was an old signature I used. I sent in the proper documents to update said signature and prove I am who I said I was and it was done and over with.
sergers 5y ago
Not sure the downvotes. As a non-american(as this is a worldwide site), I was literally wondering the same thing. Having no form of identification? That's crazy... Not knowing the specific challenges. In Canada you don't need to have "ID" as govt form of identification, you still need to be able to identify yourself. They offer 3 options. Passport/driver's license/provincial I'd card. Then if you don't have that, there are secondary items like student id + utility bill, or indigenous status card. Then lastly, you can have someone who does have ID vouch for u. "You can still vote if you declare your identity and address in writing and have someone who knows you and who is assigned to your polling station vouch for you. The voucher must be able to prove their identity and address. A person can vouch for only one person (except in long-term care institutions)." Source: https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&document=index&lang=e https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&do...
bioinformatics 5y ago
Same reason they use Fahrenheit and Imperial measurements.

klyrs 5y ago

> Still, the bill includes a provision that could make overturning an election easier. Texas election law had stated that reversing the results of an election because of fraud accusations required proving that illicit votes had actually resulted in a wrongful victory. If the bill passes, the number of fraudulent votes required to do so would simply need to be equal to the winning vote differential; it would not matter for whom the fraudulent votes had been cast. Wow, this establishes an incredibly perverse incentive. If a party believes that they will lose, they can engage in fraud in favor of the opposite party (e.g. burning boxes of ballots in safe districts), and spoil the vote. If the same party is already in power, it would appear that they could just keep playing this game, pardoning the offenders each time, and maintain control of the "interim" government indefinitely.

whatshisface 5y ago
>If the bill passes, the number of fraudulent votes required to do so would simply need to be equal to the winning vote differential; it would not matter for whom the fraudulent votes had been cast. >Wow, this establishes an incredibly perverse incentive. If a party believes that they will lose, they can engage in fraud in favor of the opposite party (e.g. burning boxes of ballots in safe districts), and spoil the vote. By this rule, they could have the election overturned by casting fraudulent votes for their own party.
liquidise 5y ago
I’m not sure. If Party A expects Party B to win by 1%, A can seek to frame B with fraud by creating 1% more vote for B, who now wins by roughly 2%, meaning the bill doesn’t apply as the margin is greater than the fraud. I don’t disagree with your assessment but I think the result is more complex. This becomes a statistical cat and mouse game, which again is a total distraction from the actual purpose of the voting process.
- klyrs 5y ago
  Indeed, that's a fair point. Perhaps it's not quite as easy as I initially imagined, but that doesn't really ease my concerns

cletus 5y ago

THIS IS WHY VOTING SHOULD BE MANDATORY. Opponents argue that the uninformed will vote. The alternative however is much worse: disenfranchisement (eg why exactly can't felons vote?), active efforts to purge the wrong kind of voters from the electoral rolls [1] and voter suppression in the form of voter ID laws when no evidence of widespread voter fraud has ever been documented. Australia has mandatory voting and it's non-controversial. It's technically not even mandatory voting. If you want to drop and empty ballot into the box so as to not to vote you can. You never have to wait in line for hours. Make no mistake: removing access to absentee ballots, voter ID and efforts like Georgia making it illegal to give water to someone in line to vote have two goals: 1. To feed into the baseless GOP base delusion that the election was somehow stolen. It's virtue signaling for the Trump faithful because no GOP politician wants to be the next Liz Cheney and lose their next primary; and 2. To make it harder for Democrats to vote and to make less of them vote. That's it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force

foobiekr 5y ago
Each time there is an election here in California, I get to vote on presidency, senators sometimes, representatives, propositions... and then a whole pile of people I've never heard of, who have minimal bios, and about whom no meaningful research is possible beyond what basically amounts to advertising. The work required to choose which candidate makes sense for these lower tier positions seems basically impossible and I do reference a number of voter guide sites. Realistically, if someone who cares enough to put some effort into it cannot reasonably convince himself that he is making informed decisions for the approximately half of the ballot that these candidates for whatever, is it really unfair to assume people who don't care and are forced to vote will do anything but vote randomly or purely by party affiliation?
- moistly 5y ago
  > and then a whole pile of people I've never heard of From the outside, it looks crazy. So many service positions that are treated as political positions instead of employee positions. So many positions that should have qualifications as a requirement for employment (e.g. education, certification, training), turned into positions that have no qualification requirements save for one: get elected. People of no competency mucking up jobs that require competency. Coroners who have no education whatsoever! Animal Control guys with no animal training! Sheriffs and whatnot with no legal training! It’s fantastically insane!

giomasce 5y ago

Please, do not assume there is just one nation in the world, and write "United States" instead of "nation".