3 ms·

> This will be true provided that states make an effort to assure that all can obtain the required ID I really don't understand why that was not the focus when

> This will be true provided that states make an effort to assure that all can obtain the required ID I really don't understand why that was not the focus whenever this came up. Not having ID is a huge impediment to constructive participation in society. Need to open a bank account, take out a loan, rent a house, drive a car, fly somewhere, get a job, etc., etc., then you'll almost certainly need ID. Voting once every now and again of course is important, but to people who genuinely don't have the means to get ID for themselves, I'm sure it's a vanishingly small problem compared to their immediate concerns of surviving day to day. It's crazy that the outrage is about the ID requirement for voting and so much effort has gone into that, rather than being outraged about people not being able to get ID and the effort going in to making that easier for them.

thephyber 5y ago
People who care about policies are concerned with this. People who care only about politics or skewing power might, but only if fixing this disproportionately helps their base. Generally fixing this issue is done with very time intensive, high-touch non-profit work. States rarely put in the effort to assist the most complicated ID cases. There are lots of old people in the Mississippi Delta who never got birth certificates and who can’t use the most common documents to prove citizenship/ eligibility to vote. IIRC they can try to petition a judge / court, but it is a big hurdle, especially for people who are not highly motivated to vote and are people who don’t drive. Some people are left behind, but I can’t find good stats/estimates of how many are affected.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  > People who care about policies are concerned with this. Certainly not the loudest, party leaders, media, etc who have been telling us the problems they will have if voting required ID for years and years. Pretty terrible that they have been aware of this and have done really nothing to help those poor people except when it may affect them getting votes. Really makes you cynical about their motives and selfishness. I'm sure it's easier said than done, but they're passing trillion dollar budgets, going to war and bombing the brown people in Syria and Libya, bailing out banks that caused housing collapses, etc. They absolutely could solve this problem with a tiny modicum of effort in comparison. The really sad thing now with results like this is that they're likely to just stop caring about the problem entirely and forget these people if it doesn't actually affect their vote.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    You think people haven’t been trying to solve this problem? It’s hard and expensive. In the states where this is the biggest problem, they have some of the lowest spending on social services in the nation (and they are the same states very eager to push voter id laws). Go ask the state legislators there to increase social services spending in their annual budget to help fix this issue, and see how quickly you are laughed out of their offices.
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      I think compared to the people who make a lot of noise and outrage claiming to care deeply about the plight of these people who can't vote due to lack of ID, no. I don't know if I've ever heard about the issue when it hasn't been prompted or in the context of voter ID. > It’s hard and expensive. Again, I don't think it is relative to what else gets spent and what else gets done. Social services spending on a state and federal level is just gargantuan and increasing so I don't see quite where your last sentence connects to reality. https://madison.com/lifestyles/the-us-states-spending-the-most-on-welfare/collection_7a6a5511-0f45-50be-a45d-755f2c55b989.html#9 https://madison.com/lifestyles/the-us-states-spending-the-mo...
      - ModernMech 5y ago
        That people make a lot of noise about an issue doesn't change or negate the fact that it is an issue, and that people and organizations are indeed working on fixing it. If you haven't heard about an issue outside of a particular context, perhaps that is just related to the channels you are monitoring rather than the reality of the work being done on the ground. Your link shows that a lot of money is being spent, but not nearly enough, or perhaps in the wrong places. The ~$3000 per capita spending numbers are laughably small. People on average are going to use more than that per year. So the question is: how is that money actually distributed? Who is getting more than they need, because plenty are going without enough. Social programs are famously not very well funded, so your argument that social welfare programs are swimming in "gargantuan" levels of cash doesn't ring true to me, and the numbers you show bear that out. Like I said, expect people (like yourself) to balk at requests to increase funding in social programs. Usually the number one response I will get from legislators is that the already spend enough as is, why do they need to spend more? My wife was a social worker for a number of years, so I got to see how "social welfare" is actually spent. From what I witnessed inside the social work industrial complex, a number of corporations have sprung up that work to milk this government money without ever actually helping anyone in the process. They will hire social workers to visit people in need of crisis management or some other social service, but essentially their job is to just fill out reams and reams of paperwork leaving no time to actually help anyone. The corporation gets a huge stack of state dollars, the social worker gets a mere $14.00 for their hour, and the person in need is left wanting and in need. It's a difficult system to change because there are entrenched interests now dependent on the revenue stream. If you want in on that money, you're going to need the same lobbying power as these corporations.

thephyber 5y ago

People who care about policies are concerned with this. People who care only about politics or skewing power might, but only if fixing this disproportionately helps their base. Generally fixing this issue is done with very time intensive, high-touch non-profit work. States rarely put in the effort to assist the most complicated ID cases. There are lots of old people in the Mississippi Delta who never got birth certificates and who can’t use the most common documents to prove citizenship/ eligibility to vote. IIRC they can try to petition a judge / court, but it is a big hurdle, especially for people who are not highly motivated to vote and are people who don’t drive. Some people are left behind, but I can’t find good stats/estimates of how many are affected.

throwawaylinux 5y ago
> People who care about policies are concerned with this. Certainly not the loudest, party leaders, media, etc who have been telling us the problems they will have if voting required ID for years and years. Pretty terrible that they have been aware of this and have done really nothing to help those poor people except when it may affect them getting votes. Really makes you cynical about their motives and selfishness. I'm sure it's easier said than done, but they're passing trillion dollar budgets, going to war and bombing the brown people in Syria and Libya, bailing out banks that caused housing collapses, etc. They absolutely could solve this problem with a tiny modicum of effort in comparison. The really sad thing now with results like this is that they're likely to just stop caring about the problem entirely and forget these people if it doesn't actually affect their vote.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  You think people haven’t been trying to solve this problem? It’s hard and expensive. In the states where this is the biggest problem, they have some of the lowest spending on social services in the nation (and they are the same states very eager to push voter id laws). Go ask the state legislators there to increase social services spending in their annual budget to help fix this issue, and see how quickly you are laughed out of their offices.
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    I think compared to the people who make a lot of noise and outrage claiming to care deeply about the plight of these people who can't vote due to lack of ID, no. I don't know if I've ever heard about the issue when it hasn't been prompted or in the context of voter ID. > It’s hard and expensive. Again, I don't think it is relative to what else gets spent and what else gets done. Social services spending on a state and federal level is just gargantuan and increasing so I don't see quite where your last sentence connects to reality. https://madison.com/lifestyles/the-us-states-spending-the-most-on-welfare/collection_7a6a5511-0f45-50be-a45d-755f2c55b989.html#9 https://madison.com/lifestyles/the-us-states-spending-the-mo...
    - ModernMech 5y ago
      That people make a lot of noise about an issue doesn't change or negate the fact that it is an issue, and that people and organizations are indeed working on fixing it. If you haven't heard about an issue outside of a particular context, perhaps that is just related to the channels you are monitoring rather than the reality of the work being done on the ground. Your link shows that a lot of money is being spent, but not nearly enough, or perhaps in the wrong places. The ~$3000 per capita spending numbers are laughably small. People on average are going to use more than that per year. So the question is: how is that money actually distributed? Who is getting more than they need, because plenty are going without enough. Social programs are famously not very well funded, so your argument that social welfare programs are swimming in "gargantuan" levels of cash doesn't ring true to me, and the numbers you show bear that out. Like I said, expect people (like yourself) to balk at requests to increase funding in social programs. Usually the number one response I will get from legislators is that the already spend enough as is, why do they need to spend more? My wife was a social worker for a number of years, so I got to see how "social welfare" is actually spent. From what I witnessed inside the social work industrial complex, a number of corporations have sprung up that work to milk this government money without ever actually helping anyone in the process. They will hire social workers to visit people in need of crisis management or some other social service, but essentially their job is to just fill out reams and reams of paperwork leaving no time to actually help anyone. The corporation gets a huge stack of state dollars, the social worker gets a mere $14.00 for their hour, and the person in need is left wanting and in need. It's a difficult system to change because there are entrenched interests now dependent on the revenue stream. If you want in on that money, you're going to need the same lobbying power as these corporations.