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If ID is required, then your whole “Illegals must be tipping elections" argument just goes away. People keep making this debate in the US of “we need ID to prev

If ID is required, then your whole “Illegals must be tipping elections" argument just goes away. People keep making this debate in the US of “we need ID to prevent election fraud” vs “we can’t have ID required because ID can be hard to obtain”. It’s just silly. If you take a step back and make it easier to get an ID than the whole things resolves itself. The pro-ID people are happy Because only registered voters can vote and the non-ID people are happy because voting is accessible. The real question is, why are they not doing that? Every other country can do it, why not the US? Why do we have to be stuck in this silly debate forever? And I don’t believe the whole “the mean republicans won’t let us!” narrative. Democrats controlled the executive branch 12 of the last 16 years and control half the states. If they care about voters rights, why haven’t we tried to fix this?

yakz 1y ago
The lawmakers that demand ID for voting also work to reduce access to ID. The most obvious way is just closing facilities that issue IDs, but also through fees and documentation requirements.
Freedom2 1y ago
> Every other country can do it, why not the US? American exceptionalism is a real thing, unfortunately. And what I've found is that when confronted with a flaw or aspect of their society that could be improved, Americans tend to work backwards from the problem and try to explain away the problem, while inventing ridiculous hypotheticals for why other countries implementations won't work. See: this thread and voter ID, any kind of firearm laws, gerrymandering, lack of public transport, etc.
- nerdponx 1y ago
  Apart from the fact that you are basically disregarding all of the detail explanations on why the US is in fact different when it comes to voter ID, all of the things you mentioned are primarily decided by states, with relatively federal authority beyond the ability to withhold funding conditional on states adopting certain policies, which is a very crude instrument that is only used in a handful of circumstances like establishing a nationwide minimum drinking age. And what you will find is that there is a tremendous amount of heterogeneity across states in all of those categories.
  - Freedom2 1y ago
    I don't disagree. My comment has little to do with that. Let's take the fact that sales tax isn't baked into the price in the US, a common criticism of the US. I understand the sales tax is different per state. Not having the sales tax baked in is an annoyance, and I believe almost everybody would agree having it baked in would be an improvement. I don't understand why Americans work backwards to try and explain it away. I've genuinely seen comments such as: "What if the sales tax changes often? Then they have to reprint all the labels" (does this actually happen that often?) "They have to print different labels for each state" (Many stores already print different labels for regional pricing, or use e-ink) "It's not that hard to just compute +X%, just get better at math" (It's not hard but what's wrong with transparency and clarity with the price?) It's that kind of discussion that my comment is referring to.
hypeatei 1y ago
I'm not sure if you've ever voted, but States without ID requirements (about 15 of them total) don't just let you walk in and cast a ballot anonymously. If you were trying to commit fraud, you'd need to know a combination of things about the person you're pretending to be and sign the poll book or an affidavit[0]. Now try scaling that process up enough to change the outcome... you can't. Your assumptions about lack of ID = easy fraud is misguided. > Every other country can do it, why not the US? Elections are handled by the States themselves and so trying to tackle this on a federal level through the executive or Congress probably wouldn't go over very well considering it'd go against the constitution[1] (although that doesn't seem to be that big of a problem these days) 0: https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/voter-verification-without-id-documents https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/voter-verificat... 1: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S4-C1-2/ALDE_00013577/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S4-C1-2/...
nerdponx 1y ago
You basically just disregarded the comment you replied to and doubled down on your original idea. You are saying that the problem would be a non-problem if only we had voter ID was. However the evidence before you (and that includes evidence collected by conservative organizations that generally align with politically motivated voter suppression) is that the problem is effectively already a non-problem, due in part to the many other controls in place around voter registration and vote counting. Meanwhile there is quite a bit of evidence showing that your favorite solution to the non-problem is itself problematic, measurably so in the historical record. You are of course welcome to continue believing whatever you want to believe. But it's hopefully obvious by now to anyone reading this thread that your beliefs are not aligned with facts. It's like arguing that Python is bad because it has dynamic types, and if we all just adopted static types in Python then all type errors in Python would go away. Even if that is true, it's a ridiculous position to hold. If you want voter ID to be a thing, then you need to first establish a nationwide ID system that is equitable in terms of access. Until that exists, voter ID is a bad idea in the USA.
- celeritascelery 1y ago
  I think I have been convinced by this thread that risks of no-ID voting is fairly low. Certainly not nearly as big of an issue as I thought when I first posted. I still maintain that this should be a non-issue. ID’s are issued by the state, and they are the entities responsible for voting and voter registration. You don’t need a national database to fix this.

yakz 1y ago

The lawmakers that demand ID for voting also work to reduce access to ID. The most obvious way is just closing facilities that issue IDs, but also through fees and documentation requirements.

Freedom2 1y ago

> Every other country can do it, why not the US? American exceptionalism is a real thing, unfortunately. And what I've found is that when confronted with a flaw or aspect of their society that could be improved, Americans tend to work backwards from the problem and try to explain away the problem, while inventing ridiculous hypotheticals for why other countries implementations won't work. See: this thread and voter ID, any kind of firearm laws, gerrymandering, lack of public transport, etc.

nerdponx 1y ago
Apart from the fact that you are basically disregarding all of the detail explanations on why the US is in fact different when it comes to voter ID, all of the things you mentioned are primarily decided by states, with relatively federal authority beyond the ability to withhold funding conditional on states adopting certain policies, which is a very crude instrument that is only used in a handful of circumstances like establishing a nationwide minimum drinking age. And what you will find is that there is a tremendous amount of heterogeneity across states in all of those categories.
- Freedom2 1y ago
  I don't disagree. My comment has little to do with that. Let's take the fact that sales tax isn't baked into the price in the US, a common criticism of the US. I understand the sales tax is different per state. Not having the sales tax baked in is an annoyance, and I believe almost everybody would agree having it baked in would be an improvement. I don't understand why Americans work backwards to try and explain it away. I've genuinely seen comments such as: "What if the sales tax changes often? Then they have to reprint all the labels" (does this actually happen that often?) "They have to print different labels for each state" (Many stores already print different labels for regional pricing, or use e-ink) "It's not that hard to just compute +X%, just get better at math" (It's not hard but what's wrong with transparency and clarity with the price?) It's that kind of discussion that my comment is referring to.

hypeatei 1y ago

I'm not sure if you've ever voted, but States without ID requirements (about 15 of them total) don't just let you walk in and cast a ballot anonymously. If you were trying to commit fraud, you'd need to know a combination of things about the person you're pretending to be and sign the poll book or an affidavit[0]. Now try scaling that process up enough to change the outcome... you can't. Your assumptions about lack of ID = easy fraud is misguided. > Every other country can do it, why not the US? Elections are handled by the States themselves and so trying to tackle this on a federal level through the executive or Congress probably wouldn't go over very well considering it'd go against the constitution[1] (although that doesn't seem to be that big of a problem these days) 0: https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/voter-verification-without-id-documents https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/voter-verificat... 1: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S4-C1-2/ALDE_00013577/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S4-C1-2/...

nerdponx 1y ago

You basically just disregarded the comment you replied to and doubled down on your original idea. You are saying that the problem would be a non-problem if only we had voter ID was. However the evidence before you (and that includes evidence collected by conservative organizations that generally align with politically motivated voter suppression) is that the problem is effectively already a non-problem, due in part to the many other controls in place around voter registration and vote counting. Meanwhile there is quite a bit of evidence showing that your favorite solution to the non-problem is itself problematic, measurably so in the historical record. You are of course welcome to continue believing whatever you want to believe. But it's hopefully obvious by now to anyone reading this thread that your beliefs are not aligned with facts. It's like arguing that Python is bad because it has dynamic types, and if we all just adopted static types in Python then all type errors in Python would go away. Even if that is true, it's a ridiculous position to hold. If you want voter ID to be a thing, then you need to first establish a nationwide ID system that is equitable in terms of access. Until that exists, voter ID is a bad idea in the USA.

celeritascelery 1y ago
I think I have been convinced by this thread that risks of no-ID voting is fairly low. Certainly not nearly as big of an issue as I thought when I first posted. I still maintain that this should be a non-issue. ID’s are issued by the state, and they are the entities responsible for voting and voter registration. You don’t need a national database to fix this.