25 ms·

In America you need photo ID to buy beer, purchase tobacco, or see a nipple in a movie theater, but not to vote. We're an odd country.

gambiting 4y ago
Wait, you don't need an ID to vote? How do people vote then? Like.....I'm really struggling to imagine how that works.
- deepdriver 4y ago
  It's actually a bit more complicated. My state doesn't require ID to vote, but some do. Some require a full photo ID and others don't. Photo ID is optional at the polls in about half of US states: https://www.usa.gov/voter-id https://www.usa.gov/voter-id Where I live you just show up at the polling place, sign on the line next to your name and address, and that's it. Separately, here's how to vote without ID in California: https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_ID_in_California https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_ID_in_California
- refurb 4y ago
  You pinky promise that you're eligible.
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  You don't need an ID to vote in Australia either. It works fine. What's hard to imagine? You get checked off on a list which includes all enrolled voters for that electorate.
  - gambiting 4y ago
    Yeah and how do they verify that you are who you are? You come to a polling place, say you are X, and they just.....trust you? That's the part that's hard to imagine for me.
    - sveiss 4y ago
      Yes. You’re ticked off a list, so that you can’t vote twice, and that helps spot anyone who does attempt to impersonate another voter. It’s not 100% foolproof, but it turns out voter fraud by impersonation is very rare, so it’s good enough. When you think in terms of “make sure every vote we count was legitimate”, then “not completely foolproof” becomes a solid argument for voter ID. Instead, if you take a wider view and think in terms of “getting the best quality estimate of the will of the voting population”, the argument against requiring ID (in the US at least) is that it would distort the results of the election far more than a tiny amount of undetected impersonation fraud does. This will vary by country. In the US, there are barriers to getting ID for some groups (you need to go in person during business hours, pay and wait an unknown amount of time, and this needs to happen weeks ahead of election days; this is a barrier to someone without transport juggling multiple jobs and childcare, for instance.) Other countries see the trade off differently, or use different fraud prevention approaches. For example, I know India uses indelible ink stains on fingers to prevent multiple voting, and in the UK, there is no ID requirement (yet) but the ballots are serialised and the secrecy of the ballot can be broken to investigate fraud allegations. Neither of these approaches would be culturally acceptable in the US.
    - anko 4y ago
      it's compulsory to vote. If people start rocking up and it says they have already voted, it will be caught pretty quickly. Australians are also fairly trustworthy
  - deepdriver 4y ago
    I don't know about Australia, but in America our lack of voter ID has led to contention in the past: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27550168 https://www.jstor.org/stable/27550168 Personally I think voter ID makes sense even if only to quash allegation of voter fraud. Voter ID enjoys overwhelming (>80%) bipartisan support from regular Americans. The main obstacle to new voter ID laws is the Democratic Party establishment. They calculate a marginal decrease in electoral margins if new voter ID laws were to be enacted. Of course then they wind up faced with fiascos like January 6, but politicians are nothing if not short-term planners. https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/25/politics/voter-id-election-law-voting-rights/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/25/politics/voter-id-election-la...
    - frenchy 4y ago
      > They calculate a marginal decrease in electoral margins if new voter ID laws were to be enacted. So what you're saying is that voter ID will result in some citizens not voting. Personally, that seems like a fair reason to oppose the measure.
    - tzs 4y ago
      > The main obstacle to new voter ID laws is the Democratic Party establishment. Propose voter ID laws that include provisions to make sure that it is easy and free for eligible voters to obtain the necessary ID and Democrats won't object.
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      Support is strong when you ask a one-dimensional question ("do you, in general, support voter ID?"). The poll linked from the CNN article demonstrates this: there's also overwhelming support for making voting easier, but voter IDs (without free and accessible ID services) will make it harder. And that's the crux of the common Democratic position: voter IDs are perfectly fine if we ensure access to IDs. But that needs to happen before or with any restrictions on voting, to prevent disenfranchisement.
      - corrral 4y ago
        Right—I'm for it if we had universal free national IDs and services to ensure everyone had one. It'd actually solve a ton of other problems, too, so yes, please, do that and then check IDs at the polls all you like. But that's a topic the Democrats are very divided on, and the Republicans really don't want, so it's never gonna happen. The result is that I'm not against IDing voters in principle but am in practice, given the current political situation and lack of demonstrated urgency or need that might justify the down-sides of doing it absent universal national IDs.
- AdamH12113 4y ago
  You have to register to vote in the US. Your name and signature are already on a list at the polling place. You can bring your voter registration card.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  In the US, your voting district maintains a voter roll, which in turn is updated based on voter registration. Registering to vote means proving that you're eligible to vote, and your name and information is checked against the voter roll when you do vote. In other words: in many places, you don't need to present an ID because you've already been identified. But it's a big country, and that's not the case everywhere: lots of states and municipalities do require you to present an additional ID, or at least to present your voter registration (and just your name and address).
  - rainsil 4y ago
    But couldn't you just claim somebody else's name/address (such as your neighbor's) when you go vote? Or is a photo stored on the voter roll?
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      The voter roll includes your name, your address, DOB, and maybe a few other identifying points. Depends on the state. Assuming you know all of those things, you could go vote as your neighbor. But there are strong incentives not to: if your neighbor votes either before or after you, the double-count will be noticed and audited. Your neighbor will be able to prove who they are, and you'll have walked into an incredibly easy-to-prove criminal charge. Similarly, for in person voting, you run the risk of being identified when you come in to vote the second time (presumably you aren't going to vote just once, since there's no point in the crime if it counts the same as your ordinary vote). Adding photo IDs would not meaningfully change the security model here, but would give pollworkers pretext to exclude lawful voters ("you don't look enough like your picture"). Edit: and, to be clear: this all makes sense because studies have consistently shown individual voter fraud to be virtually nonexistent in the US.
- bjoli 4y ago
  Voter ID laws are a hard sell in the US because of the extent to which they have been used for voter suppression. There is a recent North Carolina (??) example where the court striking down the law were about 1 inch from using the word "racist" in the ruling.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bdorn 4y ago
This is only true for 15 states. And half of those require you to return with an an ID for your vote to count.
- deepdriver 4y ago
  I didn't realize it was so few. My own state doesn't require voter ID. However it looks like the states that require ID tend to be smaller, and many larger states don't require it. 41% of the US population live in states like California with no voter ID laws, with an additional percentage in states where a photo ID (as opposed to a bank statement or utility bill) is optional: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jun/13/nikki-haley/rules-vary-35-states-require-some-form-id-vote/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jun/13/nikki-hale...

gambiting 4y ago

Wait, you don't need an ID to vote? How do people vote then? Like.....I'm really struggling to imagine how that works.

deepdriver 4y ago
It's actually a bit more complicated. My state doesn't require ID to vote, but some do. Some require a full photo ID and others don't. Photo ID is optional at the polls in about half of US states: https://www.usa.gov/voter-id https://www.usa.gov/voter-id Where I live you just show up at the polling place, sign on the line next to your name and address, and that's it. Separately, here's how to vote without ID in California: https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_ID_in_California https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_ID_in_California
refurb 4y ago
You pinky promise that you're eligible.
bigDinosaur 4y ago
You don't need an ID to vote in Australia either. It works fine. What's hard to imagine? You get checked off on a list which includes all enrolled voters for that electorate.
- gambiting 4y ago
  Yeah and how do they verify that you are who you are? You come to a polling place, say you are X, and they just.....trust you? That's the part that's hard to imagine for me.
  - sveiss 4y ago
    Yes. You’re ticked off a list, so that you can’t vote twice, and that helps spot anyone who does attempt to impersonate another voter. It’s not 100% foolproof, but it turns out voter fraud by impersonation is very rare, so it’s good enough. When you think in terms of “make sure every vote we count was legitimate”, then “not completely foolproof” becomes a solid argument for voter ID. Instead, if you take a wider view and think in terms of “getting the best quality estimate of the will of the voting population”, the argument against requiring ID (in the US at least) is that it would distort the results of the election far more than a tiny amount of undetected impersonation fraud does. This will vary by country. In the US, there are barriers to getting ID for some groups (you need to go in person during business hours, pay and wait an unknown amount of time, and this needs to happen weeks ahead of election days; this is a barrier to someone without transport juggling multiple jobs and childcare, for instance.) Other countries see the trade off differently, or use different fraud prevention approaches. For example, I know India uses indelible ink stains on fingers to prevent multiple voting, and in the UK, there is no ID requirement (yet) but the ballots are serialised and the secrecy of the ballot can be broken to investigate fraud allegations. Neither of these approaches would be culturally acceptable in the US.
  - anko 4y ago
    it's compulsory to vote. If people start rocking up and it says they have already voted, it will be caught pretty quickly. Australians are also fairly trustworthy
- deepdriver 4y ago
  I don't know about Australia, but in America our lack of voter ID has led to contention in the past: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27550168 https://www.jstor.org/stable/27550168 Personally I think voter ID makes sense even if only to quash allegation of voter fraud. Voter ID enjoys overwhelming (>80%) bipartisan support from regular Americans. The main obstacle to new voter ID laws is the Democratic Party establishment. They calculate a marginal decrease in electoral margins if new voter ID laws were to be enacted. Of course then they wind up faced with fiascos like January 6, but politicians are nothing if not short-term planners. https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/25/politics/voter-id-election-law-voting-rights/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/25/politics/voter-id-election-la...
  - frenchy 4y ago
    > They calculate a marginal decrease in electoral margins if new voter ID laws were to be enacted. So what you're saying is that voter ID will result in some citizens not voting. Personally, that seems like a fair reason to oppose the measure.
  - tzs 4y ago
    > The main obstacle to new voter ID laws is the Democratic Party establishment. Propose voter ID laws that include provisions to make sure that it is easy and free for eligible voters to obtain the necessary ID and Democrats won't object.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    Support is strong when you ask a one-dimensional question ("do you, in general, support voter ID?"). The poll linked from the CNN article demonstrates this: there's also overwhelming support for making voting easier, but voter IDs (without free and accessible ID services) will make it harder. And that's the crux of the common Democratic position: voter IDs are perfectly fine if we ensure access to IDs. But that needs to happen before or with any restrictions on voting, to prevent disenfranchisement.
    - corrral 4y ago
      Right—I'm for it if we had universal free national IDs and services to ensure everyone had one. It'd actually solve a ton of other problems, too, so yes, please, do that and then check IDs at the polls all you like. But that's a topic the Democrats are very divided on, and the Republicans really don't want, so it's never gonna happen. The result is that I'm not against IDing voters in principle but am in practice, given the current political situation and lack of demonstrated urgency or need that might justify the down-sides of doing it absent universal national IDs.
AdamH12113 4y ago
You have to register to vote in the US. Your name and signature are already on a list at the polling place. You can bring your voter registration card.
woodruffw 4y ago
In the US, your voting district maintains a voter roll, which in turn is updated based on voter registration. Registering to vote means proving that you're eligible to vote, and your name and information is checked against the voter roll when you do vote. In other words: in many places, you don't need to present an ID because you've already been identified. But it's a big country, and that's not the case everywhere: lots of states and municipalities do require you to present an additional ID, or at least to present your voter registration (and just your name and address).
- rainsil 4y ago
  But couldn't you just claim somebody else's name/address (such as your neighbor's) when you go vote? Or is a photo stored on the voter roll?
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    The voter roll includes your name, your address, DOB, and maybe a few other identifying points. Depends on the state. Assuming you know all of those things, you could go vote as your neighbor. But there are strong incentives not to: if your neighbor votes either before or after you, the double-count will be noticed and audited. Your neighbor will be able to prove who they are, and you'll have walked into an incredibly easy-to-prove criminal charge. Similarly, for in person voting, you run the risk of being identified when you come in to vote the second time (presumably you aren't going to vote just once, since there's no point in the crime if it counts the same as your ordinary vote). Adding photo IDs would not meaningfully change the security model here, but would give pollworkers pretext to exclude lawful voters ("you don't look enough like your picture"). Edit: and, to be clear: this all makes sense because studies have consistently shown individual voter fraud to be virtually nonexistent in the US.
bjoli 4y ago
Voter ID laws are a hard sell in the US because of the extent to which they have been used for voter suppression. There is a recent North Carolina (??) example where the court striking down the law were about 1 inch from using the word "racist" in the ruling.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bdorn 4y ago

This is only true for 15 states. And half of those require you to return with an an ID for your vote to count.

deepdriver 4y ago
I didn't realize it was so few. My own state doesn't require voter ID. However it looks like the states that require ID tend to be smaller, and many larger states don't require it. 41% of the US population live in states like California with no voter ID laws, with an additional percentage in states where a photo ID (as opposed to a bank statement or utility bill) is optional: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jun/13/nikki-haley/rules-vary-35-states-require-some-form-id-vote/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jun/13/nikki-hale...