7 ms·

I'd love to read the actual paper, not just the abstract. The statement near the end of the abstract - "Finally, strict ID requirements have no effect on fraud

I'd love to read the actual paper, not just the abstract. The statement near the end of the abstract - "Finally, strict ID requirements have no effect on fraud, actual or perceived." - seems surprising to me, and I'd like to see how they arrived at that conclusion.

johntfella 5y ago
pdf: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w25522/w25522.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w25522/w255...
jedimastert 5y ago
> The statement near the end of the abstract - "Finally, strict ID requirements have no effect on fraud, actual or perceived." - seems surprising to me, and I'd like to see how they arrived at that conclusion. If I had to take a guess, I'd say that voter fraud was already very low to begin with, and the rare occurrences that do happen wouldn't be helped with ID laws.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  It's the "perceived" part that I am suspicious of (and I assume the GP too). It makes sense to me that strict ID laws don't do much to fight actual fraud because the systems in place are pretty effective (moreso than ID laws, I'd think, since I've personally rarely had an up-to-date state ID). But how does it not have an effect on perceived fraud, when all of the people perceiving fraud are arguing for strict ID requirements? I think I know the answer (these people perceive fraud in response to their "team's" loss, regardless). But it would be interesting to read what the authors say.
  - Kranar 5y ago
    One hypothesis is that the motivation behind voter fraud never had anything to do with evidence suggesting that voter fraud occurs. Voter fraud is an excuse to enact legislation that makes it harder for certain demographics to vote. If that hypothesis is true, then people will never stop believing in voter fraud until said demographics no longer have any significant representation in politics.
  - HappySweeney 5y ago
    The perception of fraud is entirely due to loser politicians telling their supporters that they only lost due to fraud, and no amount of voter ID laws will change that.
    - rayiner 5y ago
      Not true. Taiwan doesn’t count votes in this highly visible public way (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqKt-lPfJuw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqKt-lPfJuw) because of “loser politicians.” Most western European countries also have significant voter security measures, although comparisons are often hard to make because they piggy-back voter registration on the mandatory residence registration process. In Germany for example you get a voting card in the mail, but you have to shlep to your local citizens office with proof of residency (lease, etc.) within 30 days of moving. In Georgia you can register to vote entirely on line, but they check your ID at voting time.
      - HappySweeney 5y ago
        I was referring to the US, specifically.
        rayiner 5y ago
        You think the appearance of secure elections functions any differently in the US? Whether or not election security is an actual problem, one side saying “just trust the process” is not going to be credible. That’s true in America, and that’s true in Taiwan. Hence the elaborate process in Taiwan.
        HappySweeney 5y ago
        Yes. Before the aforementioned losers began disparaging the system, trust in the election process was high.
        rayiner 5y ago
  - handrous 5y ago
    > It's the "perceived" part that I am suspicious of (and I assume the GP too). Poll citizens and ask how much voter fraud they think happened in the last election, in their state, before a voter ID law is passed. Wait for a voter ID requirement to be passed, and another election to happen. Ask again. Compare. Repeat a few different places if you want to be thorough. That's one method, anyway. ("Polled citizens' perception of a thing about the world is wildly wrong, and changes in that perception don't follow changes in reality the way you'd hope they would" is a so-common-it's-boring result in political science)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
klyrs 5y ago
This has been discussed to death, but I'll summarize what I've learned. Anonymous individuals don't get to vote. People who vote without an ID claim a name. At the polling station, they (the poll workers) look for that name on the voter roll. In many states, the voter is required to know an additional piece of information, like their mailing address on the voter roll. If you're not on the roll, then you don't get to vote -- or in some places, you get a provisional registration. It's possible to exploit this: you can claim somebody else's name, and apparently get away with casting their vote. If that person also votes, then that's easily detected. If the jurisdiction doesn't have a way to separate provisionally-authentic ballots from ID-verified ballots, then the election only needs to be re-done if the number of fraudulent votes is large enough to impact the outcome of the election. Elsewhere, both provisional ballots would be spoiled.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Does this actually work? I've voted in a number of elections where my ID didn't match my address. In those situations, they didn't take my word for it, I had to provide an alternative means of proof I am the person I claim to be and that I live where I'm registered. Also, what states have the individual find themselves on the voter roll? I've always had to provide the proof of my ID/address to a person at the polling station and they would find my ballot.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    I can't speak to whether or not this works, just summarizing what I know about how it's implemented. > Also, what states have the individual find themselves on the voter roll? I've added a parenthetical to clarify that. That would indeed be absurd.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > Also, what states have the individual find themselves on the voter roll? I've always had to provide the proof of my ID/address to a person at the polling station and they would find my ballot. In my state you show up and give a poll worker your name, and they look it up in a binder with the list of registered voters for the polling station and cross it off. The binder's open on a card table, so if you have good eyes and can read upside down you could get a name. I'm pretty sure there was a Murphy Brown episode where the title character actually committed vote fraud in this way (to vote before she was old enough). States do provide voter databases of registered voters (at least to the major parties for electioneering), so if you had access to one you could find a name to use. My state definitely does, because I once got election mail with my voting history for the last 5 or 6 federal elections.
lsiebert 5y ago
Yeah individual voter fraud, per all the vote security experts, basically isn't a thing, IE the rare instances never change election outcomes. Voting ID laws are at best security theater for non existent threats. At worst it's a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise minority voters, for example the NC voting law, where the legislature requested info on racial differences in how people vote before creating their bill. https://news.yahoo.com/north-carolina-court-rejects-republican-214807907.html https://news.yahoo.com/north-carolina-court-rejects-republic... Of course this suggests that efforts to GOTV helped mitigate the voter ID requirements, which is part of why GOTV efforts and other support for people voting is being targeted now in many states.
- Beldin 5y ago
  It also puts an extra barrier for re-enfranchising already disenfranchised voters. A way around such shenanigans could be some legislation where the government is required to give everyone an id card for free - and to put the onus on govt for achieving that. From my perspective, it's genuinely weird that requiring voter id would be disenfranchising... but I know that is how things are in the States. So either stop voter ID laws, or defang them by making IDs trivially available.
  - KennyBlanken 5y ago
    But then we need to be careful to make sure the requirements for getting an ID aren't too onerous. Trying to get a "RealID" for a family member was a nightmare because apparently her ORIGINAL birth certificate from 70 years ago was not acceptable to the asshole behind the desk at the DMV. So we had to get a certified copy from the county this person was born in that bore some seal or stamp the clerk wanted. Guess who had lost decades worth of birth records, thus requiring us to pay for a special search process that took weeks? An expensive, time-consuming nightmare start to finish. There are people out there who have no idea where they were born because their parents didn't tell them, people whose parents held their birth certificates hostage for whatever reason, etc. Lots of people who rent and share an apartment might not have a single utility bill in their name. "Just give us a bank bill" someone says. Welllll in getting all frothy about terrorism we now demand banks verify the identity of their customers using...a government issued ID. The whole thing gets cyclical very quickly.
jcranmer 5y ago
There are basically three kinds of voter fraud: in-person voter fraud, mail-in voter fraud, and outright ballot stuffing. Actual fraud mostly occurs with mail-in ballots. Perceived fraud, judging from my recollection of outrage over supposedly fraudulent election results in the past 20 years, focuses mainly on ballot stuffing. Strict voter ID mostly tackles in-person voter fraud, which doesn't feature prominently in actual or perceived fraud.
- IncRnd 5y ago
  > There are basically three kinds of voter fraud: in-person voter fraud, mail-in voter fraud, and outright ballot stuffing. Yea, that's not exactly a complete list. One example is undercounting. Another is changing people's party affiliation, so they cannot vote in primaries. You tried to simplify the far more extensive and comprehensive list of types of voter fraud into a list of categories. In doing so you removed all actionable information from the threat types. What you did is similar to saying that all computer hacks are remote or local. They are, but so what? That isn't actionable, because it removes all the actual descriptive information.
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    > Another is changing people's party affiliation, so they cannot vote in primaries. Aren't the primary elections the business of the parties conducting them and not really part of the democratic process at all, but rather a way for parties to find their favorite candidate to put up for the real election? In that case, it doesn't matter for voting rights if a party excludes someone from their own election, does it?
    - IncRnd 5y ago
      > Aren't the primary elections the business of the parties conducting them and not really part of the democratic process at all That's the ideal but not the real-world truth, where the parties are entangled with the legal process. If a person leaves one of the major parties, it is almost impossible for them to be recognized legally as a candidate for a presidential election. That's one of the reasons why you get Communists and Centrists in the same political party. The can't possibly ascribe to the same party platform, yet they are members of the same party.

johntfella 5y ago

pdf: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w25522/w25522.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w25522/w255...

jedimastert 5y ago

> The statement near the end of the abstract - "Finally, strict ID requirements have no effect on fraud, actual or perceived." - seems surprising to me, and I'd like to see how they arrived at that conclusion. If I had to take a guess, I'd say that voter fraud was already very low to begin with, and the rare occurrences that do happen wouldn't be helped with ID laws.

mywittyname 5y ago
It's the "perceived" part that I am suspicious of (and I assume the GP too). It makes sense to me that strict ID laws don't do much to fight actual fraud because the systems in place are pretty effective (moreso than ID laws, I'd think, since I've personally rarely had an up-to-date state ID). But how does it not have an effect on perceived fraud, when all of the people perceiving fraud are arguing for strict ID requirements? I think I know the answer (these people perceive fraud in response to their "team's" loss, regardless). But it would be interesting to read what the authors say.
- Kranar 5y ago
  One hypothesis is that the motivation behind voter fraud never had anything to do with evidence suggesting that voter fraud occurs. Voter fraud is an excuse to enact legislation that makes it harder for certain demographics to vote. If that hypothesis is true, then people will never stop believing in voter fraud until said demographics no longer have any significant representation in politics.
- HappySweeney 5y ago
  The perception of fraud is entirely due to loser politicians telling their supporters that they only lost due to fraud, and no amount of voter ID laws will change that.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    Not true. Taiwan doesn’t count votes in this highly visible public way (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqKt-lPfJuw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqKt-lPfJuw) because of “loser politicians.” Most western European countries also have significant voter security measures, although comparisons are often hard to make because they piggy-back voter registration on the mandatory residence registration process. In Germany for example you get a voting card in the mail, but you have to shlep to your local citizens office with proof of residency (lease, etc.) within 30 days of moving. In Georgia you can register to vote entirely on line, but they check your ID at voting time.
    - HappySweeney 5y ago
      I was referring to the US, specifically.
      - rayiner 5y ago
        You think the appearance of secure elections functions any differently in the US? Whether or not election security is an actual problem, one side saying “just trust the process” is not going to be credible. That’s true in America, and that’s true in Taiwan. Hence the elaborate process in Taiwan.
        HappySweeney 5y ago
        Yes. Before the aforementioned losers began disparaging the system, trust in the election process was high.
        rayiner 5y ago
- handrous 5y ago
  > It's the "perceived" part that I am suspicious of (and I assume the GP too). Poll citizens and ask how much voter fraud they think happened in the last election, in their state, before a voter ID law is passed. Wait for a voter ID requirement to be passed, and another election to happen. Ask again. Compare. Repeat a few different places if you want to be thorough. That's one method, anyway. ("Polled citizens' perception of a thing about the world is wildly wrong, and changes in that perception don't follow changes in reality the way you'd hope they would" is a so-common-it's-boring result in political science)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

klyrs 5y ago

This has been discussed to death, but I'll summarize what I've learned. Anonymous individuals don't get to vote. People who vote without an ID claim a name. At the polling station, they (the poll workers) look for that name on the voter roll. In many states, the voter is required to know an additional piece of information, like their mailing address on the voter roll. If you're not on the roll, then you don't get to vote -- or in some places, you get a provisional registration. It's possible to exploit this: you can claim somebody else's name, and apparently get away with casting their vote. If that person also votes, then that's easily detected. If the jurisdiction doesn't have a way to separate provisionally-authentic ballots from ID-verified ballots, then the election only needs to be re-done if the number of fraudulent votes is large enough to impact the outcome of the election. Elsewhere, both provisional ballots would be spoiled.

mywittyname 5y ago
Does this actually work? I've voted in a number of elections where my ID didn't match my address. In those situations, they didn't take my word for it, I had to provide an alternative means of proof I am the person I claim to be and that I live where I'm registered. Also, what states have the individual find themselves on the voter roll? I've always had to provide the proof of my ID/address to a person at the polling station and they would find my ballot.
- klyrs 5y ago
  I can't speak to whether or not this works, just summarizing what I know about how it's implemented. > Also, what states have the individual find themselves on the voter roll? I've added a parenthetical to clarify that. That would indeed be absurd.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Also, what states have the individual find themselves on the voter roll? I've always had to provide the proof of my ID/address to a person at the polling station and they would find my ballot. In my state you show up and give a poll worker your name, and they look it up in a binder with the list of registered voters for the polling station and cross it off. The binder's open on a card table, so if you have good eyes and can read upside down you could get a name. I'm pretty sure there was a Murphy Brown episode where the title character actually committed vote fraud in this way (to vote before she was old enough). States do provide voter databases of registered voters (at least to the major parties for electioneering), so if you had access to one you could find a name to use. My state definitely does, because I once got election mail with my voting history for the last 5 or 6 federal elections.

lsiebert 5y ago

Yeah individual voter fraud, per all the vote security experts, basically isn't a thing, IE the rare instances never change election outcomes. Voting ID laws are at best security theater for non existent threats. At worst it's a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise minority voters, for example the NC voting law, where the legislature requested info on racial differences in how people vote before creating their bill. https://news.yahoo.com/north-carolina-court-rejects-republican-214807907.html https://news.yahoo.com/north-carolina-court-rejects-republic... Of course this suggests that efforts to GOTV helped mitigate the voter ID requirements, which is part of why GOTV efforts and other support for people voting is being targeted now in many states.

Beldin 5y ago
It also puts an extra barrier for re-enfranchising already disenfranchised voters. A way around such shenanigans could be some legislation where the government is required to give everyone an id card for free - and to put the onus on govt for achieving that. From my perspective, it's genuinely weird that requiring voter id would be disenfranchising... but I know that is how things are in the States. So either stop voter ID laws, or defang them by making IDs trivially available.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  But then we need to be careful to make sure the requirements for getting an ID aren't too onerous. Trying to get a "RealID" for a family member was a nightmare because apparently her ORIGINAL birth certificate from 70 years ago was not acceptable to the asshole behind the desk at the DMV. So we had to get a certified copy from the county this person was born in that bore some seal or stamp the clerk wanted. Guess who had lost decades worth of birth records, thus requiring us to pay for a special search process that took weeks? An expensive, time-consuming nightmare start to finish. There are people out there who have no idea where they were born because their parents didn't tell them, people whose parents held their birth certificates hostage for whatever reason, etc. Lots of people who rent and share an apartment might not have a single utility bill in their name. "Just give us a bank bill" someone says. Welllll in getting all frothy about terrorism we now demand banks verify the identity of their customers using...a government issued ID. The whole thing gets cyclical very quickly.

jcranmer 5y ago

There are basically three kinds of voter fraud: in-person voter fraud, mail-in voter fraud, and outright ballot stuffing. Actual fraud mostly occurs with mail-in ballots. Perceived fraud, judging from my recollection of outrage over supposedly fraudulent election results in the past 20 years, focuses mainly on ballot stuffing. Strict voter ID mostly tackles in-person voter fraud, which doesn't feature prominently in actual or perceived fraud.

IncRnd 5y ago
> There are basically three kinds of voter fraud: in-person voter fraud, mail-in voter fraud, and outright ballot stuffing. Yea, that's not exactly a complete list. One example is undercounting. Another is changing people's party affiliation, so they cannot vote in primaries. You tried to simplify the far more extensive and comprehensive list of types of voter fraud into a list of categories. In doing so you removed all actionable information from the threat types. What you did is similar to saying that all computer hacks are remote or local. They are, but so what? That isn't actionable, because it removes all the actual descriptive information.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  > Another is changing people's party affiliation, so they cannot vote in primaries. Aren't the primary elections the business of the parties conducting them and not really part of the democratic process at all, but rather a way for parties to find their favorite candidate to put up for the real election? In that case, it doesn't matter for voting rights if a party excludes someone from their own election, does it?
  - IncRnd 5y ago
    > Aren't the primary elections the business of the parties conducting them and not really part of the democratic process at all That's the ideal but not the real-world truth, where the parties are entangled with the legal process. If a person leaves one of the major parties, it is almost impossible for them to be recognized legally as a candidate for a presidential election. That's one of the reasons why you get Communists and Centrists in the same political party. The can't possibly ascribe to the same party platform, yet they are members of the same party.