5 ms·

The arguments pro and con are purely motivated by partisan concerns. its believed that more democratic voters are less likely to have an id, therefore voter id

The arguments pro and con are purely motivated by partisan concerns. its believed that more democratic voters are less likely to have an id, therefore voter id laws supposedly favors republicans. that supposed fact is at the heart of the entire debate and as far as i know there is nothing more to it.

sugarpimpdorsey 1y ago
> its believed that more democratic voters are less likely to have an id This notion that Democrats keep pushing - that a sizable portion of their voting base is too dumb to get an ID - when massive developing countries like India that are still struggling with basic things like sanitation have long ago solved this problem - is nothing short of embarrassing. There are people in rural India that live in straw huts that have EPIC cards. The solution, if this problem exists as they say, is to get everyone proper ID. Not "let's have just anyone vote and we'll trust their word". Universal PKI-backed national ID would be a program everyone should be behind but it would never see the light of day in the US, because maintaining a "disenfranchised" voting bloc is more valuable as a bargaining chip than the positive social contributions of such a program.
- jeltz 1y ago
  This goes to show neither party is interested in a working society. I find republicans a lot worse but as you say of the democrats actually cared they would have done like most of the rest of the world and made sure IDs are easy to get.
  - favorited 1y ago
    How exactly are the Democrats supposed to do that? Somehow require everyone to get a passport card? Introduce some new kind of federal identification card? That would go over great. It's impossible enough to get things done these days, why should they waste political capital solving a problem that doesn't exist?
- otterley 1y ago
  We've been trusting our voters' word for centuries and it hasn't been a problem yet. Why all the distrust all of a sudden? What changed?
  - lesuorac 1y ago
    It has been a problem! Even paper ballots have been a problem! Jimmy Carter has documented his own first hand account with it. > We asked John Pope, a friend of ours, to go to the courthouse to represent me. When he arrived he was dismayed to see the local political boss, Joe Hurst, ostentatiously helping my opponent. He was requiring all voters to mark their ballots on a table in front of him and telling them to vote for Homer Moore. The ballots were then dropped through a large hole in a pasteboard box, and John watched Hurst reach into the box several times, remove some ballots, and discard them. https://www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/the-first-campaign-an-excerpt-from-jimmy-carters-new-memoir-a-full-life/ https://www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/the-fi...
    - otterley 1y ago
      Let me rephrase: it hasn't been a problem of such magnitude or importance that has motivated the populace clamoring for changing it (compare with, say, the temperance movement). Also, the plural of anecdote is not data.
    - tasty_freeze 1y ago
      You are confusing election fraud with voter fraud. Voter fraud is a non-issue, but election fraud is something that absolutely needs to be worried about. One thing I have asked a handful of R friends and family is this: after 2016 Trump claimed 3M+ illegal votes were cast. Not only did he have a personal interest in rooting out such illegal voting, but he was duty-bound to do something about it. He formed a committee, headed by Kris Kobach (which is its own significant story) to investigate ... and nothing came of it. So, which is it: was Trump negligent in not stopping this massive amount of illegal voting, were they incompetent in that they didn't find any, or were they just lying? Another recurring news item every two years is about how some eagle-eyed county registrar has found hundreds of dead people enrolled to vote. Huzzah, voter fraud proved once again! The fact is that people die all the time (and move away) and one of the routine duties of the registrar is to use official records to scrub the voter rolls. When my folks died I didn't go to the registrar and ask them to remove their names. In the half a dozen times I've moved I've never notified the registrar that I've moved. Such reports are a non-story. The next time someone brings it up I'd love to ask: hey, what is the breakdown on that list? How many of them are not citizens? How many are affiliated with each party. I'm sure it would show that there is no conspiracy going on, just people moving and dying.
- CharlesW 1y ago
  The actual argument by anyone who cares about voting rights concerns structural barriers to obtaining ID (hint: doesn't include stupidity). India's Aadhaar ID system, which still struggles with duplicate and missing voter records, doesn't magically solve any of the problems you mention. > Not "let's have just anyone vote and we'll trust their word". That's not how it works here. Voter registration requires proof of eligibility, poll books, signatures, and address checks are used for verification. Thanks in part to multiple levels of safeguards, impersonation fraud has been effectively non-existent. Of course, Rockland County and similar cases may prove the existence of other attacks on our democracy that don't depend on impersonation fraud.
  - jeltz 1y ago
    > Voter registration requires proof of eligibility, poll books, signatures, and address checks are used for verification. And how is that less of a barrier than requiring an ID? Just fix so that it is easy to get an ID like most other countries have.
    - jeffbee 1y ago
      You are welcomed to fix this. There is not a single Democrat anywhere in America who will be mad if you fix this. Everyone will congratulate you. The problem is that Republican-controlled states have arranged to systematically make it harder for urban people to get ID cards, and have systematically structured the system such that even born citizens cannot get one due to having never had a birth certificate (because they were born in Jim Crow jurisdictions that refused to record the births of Black people).
      - sugarpimpdorsey 1y ago
        > The problem is that Republican-controlled states have arranged to systematically make it harder for urban people to get ID cards Source? The fact is you need ID for SNAP and Medicaid benefits. So who are all these people with no ID, no money, no food, no identity, no anything but somehow all eligible voters?
- tshaddox 1y ago
  India's voter ID cards are federal IDs issued by the Election Commission of India. There is no such widespread federal ID in the United States and likely no feasible candidates for quickly ramping up ID card issuance to all U.S. voters. And my guess is that most political support for voter ID laws is paired with explicit opposition to any competently-run federal ID program.
- jakelazaroff 1y ago
  > The solution, if this problem exists as they say, is to get everyone proper ID. That's not the solution because lack of ID isn't really the problem. These problem is that the Republican party's goal is to disenfranchise people who demographically tend to vote Democratic. The difficulty in getting an ID is not an accidental feature of the system — it is an intentional policy choice made to prevent people from exercising their right to vote. Until this root problem is fixed, any bureaucratic solutions are simply a game of whack-a-mole. If you make IDs easy to obtain, legislatures will enact rules preventing people from using them [1]. If you amend the state constitution to enfranchise felons, legislatures will invent procedural reasons to re-disenfranchise them [2]. [1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/states-have-added-nearly-100-restrictive-laws-scotus-gutted-voting-rights https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/stat... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement_in_Florida https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement_in_F...
  - FireBeyond 1y ago
    > state constitution to enfranchise felons, legislatures will invent procedural reasons to re-disenfranchise them "Funnily", Donald Trump, a convicted felon, was allowed to vote in Florida, who typically bars convicted felons from voting, because "he had not yet been sentenced, therefore the conviction was not yet complete". I guarantee any other Floridian in the same position will be laughed at if they try to vote using this (non) precedent.
- atmavatar 1y ago
  Getting an ID is not as simple as you make it out to be. For many people, getting an ID requires taking a day off work, which for many can mean their family is going to miss one or more meals, or even worse, that they miss a car or rent payment. Consequently, this is also a strong reason why Republicans have repeatedly blocked attempts to make voting day a national holiday, while at the same time strategically closing down polling locations -- so working poor (predominantly registered Democrats) have a harder time voting. But it gets even worse than that. During segregation era, it wasn't uncommon for black women to be turned away from hospitals and be forced to give birth via midwives, then be unable to obtain birth certificates for their children. Because they have no official birth certificates, states deny them IDs. Example: https://atlantablackstar.com/2025/05/07/florida-woman-real-id-never-issued-a-birth-certificate-and-repeatedly-denied-one/ https://atlantablackstar.com/2025/05/07/florida-woman-real-i... Voter ID laws are explicitly designed to disenfranchise these people, because they're virtually always proposed by individuals representing the very states that denied black people birth certificates, and in many cases, those same individuals proposing the laws lived through the very era when those birth certificates were still actively being denied. That said: I'm mostly in agreement - the solution is to get these people proper IDs (and by extension, birth certificates). However, I think you'll find the very people proposing these ID laws are going to be the same ones stonewalling any attempts to address the problems I laid out.
  - somebehemoth 1y ago
    To support the idea of unexpected difficulties in getting ID, I suggest reading about the North Carolina DMV. More direct evidence: try to schedule an appointment with the NC DMV via their online appointment system from any metropolitan area of the state and probably most others. Most people would not expect this to be a problem since the state requires online booking to do all kinds of identification related services.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  The red states consistently make it harder for Democratic leaning populations to get ID. Everything from closing places where ID is available to places like Texas make gun permits a legal form of ID and not student IDs. In some places native Americans can’t get IDs because of their address. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-voter-suppression-laws-target-native-americans https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-... https://journals.law.harvard.edu/crcl/voter-discrimination-through-voter-id-in-alabama/ https://journals.law.harvard.edu/crcl/voter-discrimination-t... In Florida, voters passed a law that made it easier for people released from prison to vote. It was still blocked by the legislation. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/28/ron-desantis-sued-voting-rights-group https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/28/ron-desantis...
  - 1659447091 1y ago
    > to places like Texas make gun permits a legal form of ID and not student IDs. A student ID does not require the holder to get both a state and FBI background check. Besides the background checks, obtaining a license to carry (Texas gun permit) also requires an ID that could be used for voting itself. Student IDs, not so much. Also, I think people really underestimate the number of Democrat leaning gun owners in Texas. There are far more relevant examples to use, including cost and difficultly navigating bureaucracy for obtaining documents. Throwing that Texas example in there weakens the argument and I really wish people would stop so the real arguments can be taken seriously.
    - scarface_74 1y ago
      To get a student ID, you have to have a government ID from your home state or a passport. You don’t think schools just take your word for it as they allow you to use their services that cost tens of thousands a year?
      - 1659447091 1y ago
        Community colleges also issue student IDs Forgery is far more simple for those than a LTC
- jedimastert 1y ago
  > This notion that Democrats keep pushing - that a sizable portion of their voting base is too dumb to get an ID Citation needed
- mindslight 1y ago
  > Universal PKI-backed national ID would be a program everyone should be behind I for one am not behind this until we have actual privacy laws with teeth, and those laws have put a stop to the ongoing widespread abuses of the identification system we already have. As it stands, people's nebulous fear of handing out their DL/SSN numbers is the main thing holding back a deluge of every other business (including websites) demanding your ID for one purported reason or another, but really to augment their surveillance databases.
- const_cast 1y ago
  > that a sizable portion of their voting base is too dumb to get an ID Literally not a single soul on Earth has ever said this. Rather, what they're saying, which is an indisputable fact is: - getting an ID requires money and access to a DMV - DMVs are segregated by race because of prior factors like districting and redlining. - Black Americans are more likely to vote Democrat. - Black Americans are more likely to be poor and therefore are less likely to have an ID. - therefore, Democrats on average have less ID. Again, this isn't an opinion, it's just factual based off of very simple logic and statistics. You can literally go look up, right now, what percentage of Black Americans have ID versus white Americans. Its not a talking point, it's just real. The US is complex and has hundreds of years of extreme racism under it's belt. Newsflash - that means not everything is perfectly split by race or equality accessible. > The solution, if this problem exists as they say, is to get everyone proper ID Wow, you make it sounds so easy. Why then is it that, despite decades peddling voted ID laws, the GOP absolutely refuses to even humor the idea of making ID more accessible? Could it be that their intentions arent as pure as yours?
dehrmann 1y ago
That's the standard narrative, but it could work out in unexpected ways because of who has time to vote and the ability to get to polling places.

sugarpimpdorsey 1y ago

> its believed that more democratic voters are less likely to have an id This notion that Democrats keep pushing - that a sizable portion of their voting base is too dumb to get an ID - when massive developing countries like India that are still struggling with basic things like sanitation have long ago solved this problem - is nothing short of embarrassing. There are people in rural India that live in straw huts that have EPIC cards. The solution, if this problem exists as they say, is to get everyone proper ID. Not "let's have just anyone vote and we'll trust their word". Universal PKI-backed national ID would be a program everyone should be behind but it would never see the light of day in the US, because maintaining a "disenfranchised" voting bloc is more valuable as a bargaining chip than the positive social contributions of such a program.

jeltz 1y ago
This goes to show neither party is interested in a working society. I find republicans a lot worse but as you say of the democrats actually cared they would have done like most of the rest of the world and made sure IDs are easy to get.
- favorited 1y ago
  How exactly are the Democrats supposed to do that? Somehow require everyone to get a passport card? Introduce some new kind of federal identification card? That would go over great. It's impossible enough to get things done these days, why should they waste political capital solving a problem that doesn't exist?
otterley 1y ago
We've been trusting our voters' word for centuries and it hasn't been a problem yet. Why all the distrust all of a sudden? What changed?
- lesuorac 1y ago
  It has been a problem! Even paper ballots have been a problem! Jimmy Carter has documented his own first hand account with it. > We asked John Pope, a friend of ours, to go to the courthouse to represent me. When he arrived he was dismayed to see the local political boss, Joe Hurst, ostentatiously helping my opponent. He was requiring all voters to mark their ballots on a table in front of him and telling them to vote for Homer Moore. The ballots were then dropped through a large hole in a pasteboard box, and John watched Hurst reach into the box several times, remove some ballots, and discard them. https://www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/the-first-campaign-an-excerpt-from-jimmy-carters-new-memoir-a-full-life/ https://www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/the-fi...
  - otterley 1y ago
    Let me rephrase: it hasn't been a problem of such magnitude or importance that has motivated the populace clamoring for changing it (compare with, say, the temperance movement). Also, the plural of anecdote is not data.
  - tasty_freeze 1y ago
    You are confusing election fraud with voter fraud. Voter fraud is a non-issue, but election fraud is something that absolutely needs to be worried about. One thing I have asked a handful of R friends and family is this: after 2016 Trump claimed 3M+ illegal votes were cast. Not only did he have a personal interest in rooting out such illegal voting, but he was duty-bound to do something about it. He formed a committee, headed by Kris Kobach (which is its own significant story) to investigate ... and nothing came of it. So, which is it: was Trump negligent in not stopping this massive amount of illegal voting, were they incompetent in that they didn't find any, or were they just lying? Another recurring news item every two years is about how some eagle-eyed county registrar has found hundreds of dead people enrolled to vote. Huzzah, voter fraud proved once again! The fact is that people die all the time (and move away) and one of the routine duties of the registrar is to use official records to scrub the voter rolls. When my folks died I didn't go to the registrar and ask them to remove their names. In the half a dozen times I've moved I've never notified the registrar that I've moved. Such reports are a non-story. The next time someone brings it up I'd love to ask: hey, what is the breakdown on that list? How many of them are not citizens? How many are affiliated with each party. I'm sure it would show that there is no conspiracy going on, just people moving and dying.
CharlesW 1y ago
The actual argument by anyone who cares about voting rights concerns structural barriers to obtaining ID (hint: doesn't include stupidity). India's Aadhaar ID system, which still struggles with duplicate and missing voter records, doesn't magically solve any of the problems you mention. > Not "let's have just anyone vote and we'll trust their word". That's not how it works here. Voter registration requires proof of eligibility, poll books, signatures, and address checks are used for verification. Thanks in part to multiple levels of safeguards, impersonation fraud has been effectively non-existent. Of course, Rockland County and similar cases may prove the existence of other attacks on our democracy that don't depend on impersonation fraud.
- jeltz 1y ago
  > Voter registration requires proof of eligibility, poll books, signatures, and address checks are used for verification. And how is that less of a barrier than requiring an ID? Just fix so that it is easy to get an ID like most other countries have.
  - jeffbee 1y ago
    You are welcomed to fix this. There is not a single Democrat anywhere in America who will be mad if you fix this. Everyone will congratulate you. The problem is that Republican-controlled states have arranged to systematically make it harder for urban people to get ID cards, and have systematically structured the system such that even born citizens cannot get one due to having never had a birth certificate (because they were born in Jim Crow jurisdictions that refused to record the births of Black people).
    - sugarpimpdorsey 1y ago
      > The problem is that Republican-controlled states have arranged to systematically make it harder for urban people to get ID cards Source? The fact is you need ID for SNAP and Medicaid benefits. So who are all these people with no ID, no money, no food, no identity, no anything but somehow all eligible voters?
tshaddox 1y ago
India's voter ID cards are federal IDs issued by the Election Commission of India. There is no such widespread federal ID in the United States and likely no feasible candidates for quickly ramping up ID card issuance to all U.S. voters. And my guess is that most political support for voter ID laws is paired with explicit opposition to any competently-run federal ID program.
jakelazaroff 1y ago
> The solution, if this problem exists as they say, is to get everyone proper ID. That's not the solution because lack of ID isn't really the problem. These problem is that the Republican party's goal is to disenfranchise people who demographically tend to vote Democratic. The difficulty in getting an ID is not an accidental feature of the system — it is an intentional policy choice made to prevent people from exercising their right to vote. Until this root problem is fixed, any bureaucratic solutions are simply a game of whack-a-mole. If you make IDs easy to obtain, legislatures will enact rules preventing people from using them [1]. If you amend the state constitution to enfranchise felons, legislatures will invent procedural reasons to re-disenfranchise them [2]. [1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/states-have-added-nearly-100-restrictive-laws-scotus-gutted-voting-rights https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/stat... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement_in_Florida https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement_in_F...
- FireBeyond 1y ago
  > state constitution to enfranchise felons, legislatures will invent procedural reasons to re-disenfranchise them "Funnily", Donald Trump, a convicted felon, was allowed to vote in Florida, who typically bars convicted felons from voting, because "he had not yet been sentenced, therefore the conviction was not yet complete". I guarantee any other Floridian in the same position will be laughed at if they try to vote using this (non) precedent.
atmavatar 1y ago
Getting an ID is not as simple as you make it out to be. For many people, getting an ID requires taking a day off work, which for many can mean their family is going to miss one or more meals, or even worse, that they miss a car or rent payment. Consequently, this is also a strong reason why Republicans have repeatedly blocked attempts to make voting day a national holiday, while at the same time strategically closing down polling locations -- so working poor (predominantly registered Democrats) have a harder time voting. But it gets even worse than that. During segregation era, it wasn't uncommon for black women to be turned away from hospitals and be forced to give birth via midwives, then be unable to obtain birth certificates for their children. Because they have no official birth certificates, states deny them IDs. Example: https://atlantablackstar.com/2025/05/07/florida-woman-real-id-never-issued-a-birth-certificate-and-repeatedly-denied-one/ https://atlantablackstar.com/2025/05/07/florida-woman-real-i... Voter ID laws are explicitly designed to disenfranchise these people, because they're virtually always proposed by individuals representing the very states that denied black people birth certificates, and in many cases, those same individuals proposing the laws lived through the very era when those birth certificates were still actively being denied. That said: I'm mostly in agreement - the solution is to get these people proper IDs (and by extension, birth certificates). However, I think you'll find the very people proposing these ID laws are going to be the same ones stonewalling any attempts to address the problems I laid out.
- somebehemoth 1y ago
  To support the idea of unexpected difficulties in getting ID, I suggest reading about the North Carolina DMV. More direct evidence: try to schedule an appointment with the NC DMV via their online appointment system from any metropolitan area of the state and probably most others. Most people would not expect this to be a problem since the state requires online booking to do all kinds of identification related services.
scarface_74 1y ago
The red states consistently make it harder for Democratic leaning populations to get ID. Everything from closing places where ID is available to places like Texas make gun permits a legal form of ID and not student IDs. In some places native Americans can’t get IDs because of their address. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-voter-suppression-laws-target-native-americans https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-... https://journals.law.harvard.edu/crcl/voter-discrimination-through-voter-id-in-alabama/ https://journals.law.harvard.edu/crcl/voter-discrimination-t... In Florida, voters passed a law that made it easier for people released from prison to vote. It was still blocked by the legislation. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/28/ron-desantis-sued-voting-rights-group https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/28/ron-desantis...
- 1659447091 1y ago
  > to places like Texas make gun permits a legal form of ID and not student IDs. A student ID does not require the holder to get both a state and FBI background check. Besides the background checks, obtaining a license to carry (Texas gun permit) also requires an ID that could be used for voting itself. Student IDs, not so much. Also, I think people really underestimate the number of Democrat leaning gun owners in Texas. There are far more relevant examples to use, including cost and difficultly navigating bureaucracy for obtaining documents. Throwing that Texas example in there weakens the argument and I really wish people would stop so the real arguments can be taken seriously.
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    To get a student ID, you have to have a government ID from your home state or a passport. You don’t think schools just take your word for it as they allow you to use their services that cost tens of thousands a year?
    - 1659447091 1y ago
      Community colleges also issue student IDs Forgery is far more simple for those than a LTC
jedimastert 1y ago
> This notion that Democrats keep pushing - that a sizable portion of their voting base is too dumb to get an ID Citation needed
mindslight 1y ago
> Universal PKI-backed national ID would be a program everyone should be behind I for one am not behind this until we have actual privacy laws with teeth, and those laws have put a stop to the ongoing widespread abuses of the identification system we already have. As it stands, people's nebulous fear of handing out their DL/SSN numbers is the main thing holding back a deluge of every other business (including websites) demanding your ID for one purported reason or another, but really to augment their surveillance databases.
const_cast 1y ago
> that a sizable portion of their voting base is too dumb to get an ID Literally not a single soul on Earth has ever said this. Rather, what they're saying, which is an indisputable fact is: - getting an ID requires money and access to a DMV - DMVs are segregated by race because of prior factors like districting and redlining. - Black Americans are more likely to vote Democrat. - Black Americans are more likely to be poor and therefore are less likely to have an ID. - therefore, Democrats on average have less ID. Again, this isn't an opinion, it's just factual based off of very simple logic and statistics. You can literally go look up, right now, what percentage of Black Americans have ID versus white Americans. Its not a talking point, it's just real. The US is complex and has hundreds of years of extreme racism under it's belt. Newsflash - that means not everything is perfectly split by race or equality accessible. > The solution, if this problem exists as they say, is to get everyone proper ID Wow, you make it sounds so easy. Why then is it that, despite decades peddling voted ID laws, the GOP absolutely refuses to even humor the idea of making ID more accessible? Could it be that their intentions arent as pure as yours?

dehrmann 1y ago

That's the standard narrative, but it could work out in unexpected ways because of who has time to vote and the ability to get to polling places.