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> Person who shows up to vote is legally allowed to vote How does that work though? What's the root of trust identifying me as me to a government who, at most,
by hansvm 9mo ago
> Person who shows up to vote is legally allowed to vote
How does that work though? What's the root of trust identifying me as me to a government who, at most, has a written record somewhere of my birth, and definitely not enough information to tie that to any particular face or body.
- robomartin 9mo agoI have to present my passport to get on a plane, enter into another country, register into a hotel and return to this country. I have to show either my passport card (another passport-like ID in the US) or my RealID-equipped drivers license to fly within the US. They also make me stand in front of a camera. Nearly every nation on earth does this. It's nothing new. We have the technology and the means. This isn't a problem.
- trothamel 9mo agoIn a lot of places, it's a photo ID. Usually that required a birth certificate to get, and often a few more pieces of corroborating information to make it harder.
- hansvm 9mo agoWithout a root of trust though, how much good is that? When I needed a copy of my birth certificate to get a CA driver's license, I just sent my home state $10-$20 and pinky promised that I was me. Getting utility bills or whatever delivered to your favorite name isn't hard either. It's cheap and easy to bootstrap your way into somebody's identity. Maybe the payout isn't worth it, but (a) empirically, people seem to be willing to spend a lot more than that per vote if necessary, and (b) it's not substantially harder or riskier to do that than to risk prison voting for a dead person or whatever else some fraudster might cook up; if we think this is an important system which people are trying to rig then the proposed cure just keeps honest people honest.