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Texas allowed midwives to personally issue birth certificates. The political machinery in Texas has been historically pretty egregious on their abuse of these s

Texas allowed midwives to personally issue birth certificates. The political machinery in Texas has been historically pretty egregious on their abuse of these sorts of systems. They’ve cracked down in recent years. Birth certificates in general are pretty awful. IIRC there are like 12,000 known entities that issue them. Big states have required central registration for decades. For example, in New York the local municipality issues the birth certificate, but files a copy with the NYS (or NYC) Department of Health. Some smaller states left it to the town clerk in some tiny village. (Or did until relatively recently) There are many many corner cases with these sorts of records. Normie middle class people born in the US with two parents have very neat chains of custody of their records. There are millions who have very messy backgrounds or who don’t have their DOB or name officially recorded at all. Thats why voter ID laws are awful. You don’t have a fundamental right to an ID or obligation to have one, but you do have a right to vote. Putting friction in front of that is a means to disenfranchise people, it’s a form of poll tax.

kstrauser 2y ago
Huh, I didn't realize there was that much variance. I was also a little anxious that you were going to complain about Texas previously allowing trans people to update their gender or something similar. I totally agree about voter ID laws. I'm sympathetic to at least the claimed reasons for wanting them, but in practice there's statistically insignificant amounts of provably invalid voting. It's not worth disenfranchising millions of legitimate voters to stop the handful of frauds.
- Spooky23 2y ago
  Exactly. The problem with voting is that nobody does it! ID is a weird issue that unites the extreme left and right of the spectrum. The reactionaries are worried about the mark of the beast nonsense. When they cared about civil liberties beyond firearms, that would come up too. The left wingers are worried about disenfranchising the poor and elderly. Thats one of the reasons why the ID landscape is and has been so crazy - there was opposition to central birth records 100 years ago. Texas isn’t alone - in point it out because a few years ago a few thousand people, including serving military officers, were effectively stripped of citizenship. They were likely born in Mexico and issued a birth certificate on a fraudulent basis as an infant.

kstrauser 2y ago

Huh, I didn't realize there was that much variance. I was also a little anxious that you were going to complain about Texas previously allowing trans people to update their gender or something similar. I totally agree about voter ID laws. I'm sympathetic to at least the claimed reasons for wanting them, but in practice there's statistically insignificant amounts of provably invalid voting. It's not worth disenfranchising millions of legitimate voters to stop the handful of frauds.

Spooky23 2y ago
Exactly. The problem with voting is that nobody does it! ID is a weird issue that unites the extreme left and right of the spectrum. The reactionaries are worried about the mark of the beast nonsense. When they cared about civil liberties beyond firearms, that would come up too. The left wingers are worried about disenfranchising the poor and elderly. Thats one of the reasons why the ID landscape is and has been so crazy - there was opposition to central birth records 100 years ago. Texas isn’t alone - in point it out because a few years ago a few thousand people, including serving military officers, were effectively stripped of citizenship. They were likely born in Mexico and issued a birth certificate on a fraudulent basis as an infant.