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The outcry in the US over requiring someone to show an ID to vote is one of the most bizarre things to come out of that country. And, to make it even more unusu

The outcry in the US over requiring someone to show an ID to vote is one of the most bizarre things to come out of that country. And, to make it even more unusual, it's coming from the left, the very people who used to love issuing IDs, numbers, and whose intellectual and ideological predecessors set up most of those schemes. Practically, as much as the anarchist in me doesn't like that, you cannot have a mass society without strong, trusted IDs so this is a lost cause. Get used to them.

djur 13y ago
The American left is opposed to voter ID because it's a vote suppression scheme -- not all eligible voters have IDs or have access to obtain them. The voter ID bills have gone hand-in-hand with restrictions on early voting and same-day voter registration, which makes the intention clear. On the other hand, I have yet to see one of these bills accompanied by legislation intended to help people without IDs get them.
- spindritf 13y ago
  I have yet to see one of these bills accompanied by legislation intended to help people without IDs get them. I have just googled it and, apparently, it's a constitutional requirement to issue IDs at no cost if they're required to vote. Arkansas for example is waiting with the implementation of their voting ID law precisely for that reason. The new law won't take effect until January or when funding is available for the state to provide free photo IDs required under the law, whichever is later. http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2013/jun/19/panel-reviewing-rules-voter-id-law/?f=news http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2013/jun/19/panel-reviewi...
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    I invite you to try and get one of those free IDs, which are often accompanied by a demand for documentation that, again, the underprivileged are likely to have trouble getting, if it even exists. This is assuming the DMV office doesn't play dumb and deny any knowledge of their obligations. There is a distinction between constitutional requirements and what happens in practice. I don't know where you're from, maybe there is stricter enforcement of rights there, but here in the US, on the ground, rights are regularly violated with impunity by local officials.
    - MichaelSalib 13y ago
      Indeed. My father in law was denied an ID when he moved to a different state. He is a US citizen of Pakistani origin, and the DMV staff refused to issue him a drivers' license because they were convinced that the was not a US citizen. He showed them his US passport. They claimed it was fake. He showed them his drivers license from his home state. They rejected it. He showed them his veterans card identifying him as a retired US Air Force officer. They laughed.
      - Casseres 13y ago
        It sounds like the DMV staff you encountered were bigots. I would report them. Get the local media involved. Offer to wait while they call the police since having a fake passport is a crime.
        MichaelSalib 13y ago
        It was my father in law, not me. And of course they were bigots. That's the point: there are a lot of bigots in the US. He thought it wasn't worth the effort to report them, and frankly, I kind of agree. Who wants to spend years fighting in court, maybe having to spend their own hard earned money, and maybe having to deal with the bigots' friends on the police force harassing them? Especially after they just started working a new job?
        nknighthb 13y ago
        Report them? To whom? Follow the chain up and you're likely to find a Republican governor and legislature who think the DMV staff were doing exactly what they were supposed to. If the local media even covered it, I'd expect their angle to be the suspicious brown guy who was prevented from infiltrating our political system by heroic DMV staff.
        cema 13y ago
        It sounds like the DMV staff you encountered were bigots. Not just bigots; they failed their jobs. Could be a serious legal case. (If true.)
- smsm42 13y ago
  Would it be fair to conclude that any setup that requires ID is a suppression scheme? I.e., if ID is required for travel - is it a travel rights suppression scheme? If the ID is required for real estate ownership - that is a real estate ownership suppression scheme? If the ID is required to own a firearm - is it a firearm ownership suppression scheme? Note I'm not asking if IDs were used in the past to suppress votes - I'm sure there were cases where that happened. What you're claiming is that ID requirement and voter suppression is the same, which is much stronger claim. So what I am asking is this ID requirement that makes it suppression or how one can distinguish suppression ones from non-suppression ones?
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    The set of people who do not have and/or will have trouble getting IDs has little if any overlap with the set of people who travel by air, purchase real estate, or lawfully purchase firearms.
    - smsm42 13y ago
      I wasn't asking about which sets of people overlap or not. I was asking what makes ID requirement be identical with suppression - is it ID requirement itself or something else? If it is something else - what exactly it is? Is it where set of people is relevant - it is OK to ask some people to show the papers but not the others? Which people should be exempt and which should not be?
      - MichaelSalib 13y ago
        We know that voter id requirements are based in voter suppression because those requirements are targeted to preventing an attack that is economically infeasible and they don't even effectively mitigate the attack. Look at my other comments in this thread for the details, but in brief, the cost of using voter impersonation fraud is extremely high, the probability that authorities will detect it is also high, and the penalties for breaking the law in this way are very serious. What's more, bypassing the ID requirement is trivial for criminals, in the same way that bored teenagers can purchase alcohol whenever they want because forging ID cards is easy. Note also that IDs are actually not required for flying in the US. Flying without an ID is annoying and time consuming, but definitely doable (I've done it).
- dingaling 13y ago
  > not all eligible voters have IDs or have access to obtain them In Northern Ireland, a country which traditionally suffered from electoral 'problems', people without ID can now apply for a free Electoral Identity Card as part of the electoral registration process. A photo is required, but if applying in person then no other identity documents are required to obtain it. It is useful in that it also gives them a first-step ID to open bank accounts and for domestic travel.
- Jtsummers 13y ago
  > not all eligible voters have IDs or have access to obtain them. Not all eligible voters have IDs that satisfy the new rules. We always had to identify ourselves. My first vote was cast without a driver's license and I used (IIRC) some documents (school registration, student ID, birth certificate, not sure the combination) that satisfied the requirements at the time. I may have used my military dependent ID (a federal gov't issued photo ID). The majority of my classmates probably had driver's licenses, but there was a significant minority in the same boat I was.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> The outcry in the US over requiring someone to show an ID to vote is one of the most bizarre things to come out of that country. There's a specific historical reason for it related to practices tied to Jim Crow (and the fact that the groups backing Voter ID now mostly have no evidence of actual problems that it solves, and are often tied to other make-voting-less-convenient-and-with-more-excuses-for-outright-denial policies.) > And, to make it even more unusual, it's coming from the left, the very people who used to love issuing IDs, numbers, and whose intellectual and ideological predecessors set up most of those schemes. The reason its coming from what passes for "the left" (center-right instead of far right) in America is discussed above, but I don't think that this description of "the left" -- either what passes for left in America or the Left more generally -- is particularly accurate. > Practically, as much as the anarchist in me doesn't like that, you cannot have a mass society without strong, trusted IDs so this is a lost cause. We've had mass societies for a long time without strong, trusted IDs.
nknighthb 13y ago
I gather you're not from the US, and are unfamiliar with our civil rights history. You can start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfranchisement_after_the_Reconstruction_Era http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfranchisement_after_the_Reco... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965 Voter ID laws are simply the latest play in a long history of attempts to disenfranchise minorities and the poor. They have no other practical purpose. There is no mass vote fraud occurring in the US. It's another red herring, like terrorism.
- lifeformed 13y ago
  I'm not too familiar on this issue, but how does requiring ID disenfranchise minorities and the poor? Don't they already have IDs?
  - djur 13y ago
    Not necessarily. If they don't drive or travel there's no reason for them to have state IDs, especially in rural areas.
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    No, millions do not. And even those that do often have to contend with issues like name changes from marriage, or just forgetting to renew them (you usually get reminders in the mail, but we're talking about people who may not even have a fixed address). Even where IDs can be gotten "free", the states with voter ID requirements are also the states likely to demand proof of identity and citizenship that are difficult or impossible for many citizens to meet.
    - jack-r-abbit 13y ago
      > And even those that do often have to contend with issues like name changes from marriage, or just forgetting to renew them (you usually get reminders in the mail, but we're talking about people who may not even have a fixed address). Don't we all have to contend with those things? Do minorities and the poor get some sort of free pass on these sorts of obligations? EDIT: added the parent's parenthetical comment since they felt it was important. I don't want to come off as misquoting or quoting out of context.
gertef 13y ago
Hint: The world makes more sense when you stop trying to force it into a "left vs right" model.
lnanek2 13y ago
The outcry is from the left because these laws are always by the right in order to make it more difficult for demographics that vote left to vote. They come from a long line of laws in a similar vein, such as literacy tests full of trick questions, etc.. The general idea is just to make it tough enough to vote that poor people can't.
mortyseinfeld 13y ago
And, to make it even more unusual, it's coming from the left, the very people who used to love issuing IDs, numbers, and whose intellectual and ideological predecessors set up most of those schemes. You're right. "Let me see your papers comrade".
meddlepal 13y ago
Everyone should have a secure, single identity card in any modern developed nation that can be used for identity verification. One card. Federal and State governments can assign privileges to the card (driving, medicare etc.). Even expand it so the card can be used to verify credit and debit card authenticity etc. That's my dream, but right now we are stuck in firmly in 20th century-modes of thinking about ID. I'm long past the point of caring about the Government having some database of where I go or who I transact with. They seem to have been able to already figure out how to do it without my permission so let's just make this whole tracking thing transparent now. Practically speaking, getting an ID in the United States right now is not difficult. Why do we keep excusing people from having a basic mechanism to prove who they say they are? If you cannot handle getting and maintaining an ID maybe one ought not be able to vote because you're just not responsible enough to handle it.
- MichaelSalib 13y ago
  Why do we keep excusing people from having a basic mechanism to prove who they say they are? Given that bored teenagers in search of beer can easily forge IDs, what makes you think current photo ID cards are an effective certificate for proving identity? If you cannot handle getting and maintaining an ID maybe one ought not be able to vote because you're just not responsible enough to handle it. See, this notion right here? This is literally unamerican. Americans get to vote. It doesn't matter if you think they're lazy or smell bad or if they don't demonstrate responsibility to your satisfaction: you don't get to decide which citizens can vote. A lot of people have died so that Americans can vote without your approval.
  - meddlepal 13y ago
    I don't think photo ID's are an effective certificate for proving identity. I'd like to see something stronger put into place. I would agree 100% positive identification is likely impossible given current technology but I think we can do a lot better than photo ID. Felon's are restricted from voting and the constitutionality of it has been upheld. We can absolutely restrict who votes. I strongly disagree that such an idea is "un-American".
hrktb 13y ago
The first step for this is to have a national ID or something equivalent (some ID universally issuable)...and it seems very very far away yet.

djur 13y ago

The American left is opposed to voter ID because it's a vote suppression scheme -- not all eligible voters have IDs or have access to obtain them. The voter ID bills have gone hand-in-hand with restrictions on early voting and same-day voter registration, which makes the intention clear. On the other hand, I have yet to see one of these bills accompanied by legislation intended to help people without IDs get them.

spindritf 13y ago
I have yet to see one of these bills accompanied by legislation intended to help people without IDs get them. I have just googled it and, apparently, it's a constitutional requirement to issue IDs at no cost if they're required to vote. Arkansas for example is waiting with the implementation of their voting ID law precisely for that reason. The new law won't take effect until January or when funding is available for the state to provide free photo IDs required under the law, whichever is later. http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2013/jun/19/panel-reviewing-rules-voter-id-law/?f=news http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2013/jun/19/panel-reviewi...
- nknighthb 13y ago
  I invite you to try and get one of those free IDs, which are often accompanied by a demand for documentation that, again, the underprivileged are likely to have trouble getting, if it even exists. This is assuming the DMV office doesn't play dumb and deny any knowledge of their obligations. There is a distinction between constitutional requirements and what happens in practice. I don't know where you're from, maybe there is stricter enforcement of rights there, but here in the US, on the ground, rights are regularly violated with impunity by local officials.
  - MichaelSalib 13y ago
    Indeed. My father in law was denied an ID when he moved to a different state. He is a US citizen of Pakistani origin, and the DMV staff refused to issue him a drivers' license because they were convinced that the was not a US citizen. He showed them his US passport. They claimed it was fake. He showed them his drivers license from his home state. They rejected it. He showed them his veterans card identifying him as a retired US Air Force officer. They laughed.
    - Casseres 13y ago
      It sounds like the DMV staff you encountered were bigots. I would report them. Get the local media involved. Offer to wait while they call the police since having a fake passport is a crime.
      - MichaelSalib 13y ago
        It was my father in law, not me. And of course they were bigots. That's the point: there are a lot of bigots in the US. He thought it wasn't worth the effort to report them, and frankly, I kind of agree. Who wants to spend years fighting in court, maybe having to spend their own hard earned money, and maybe having to deal with the bigots' friends on the police force harassing them? Especially after they just started working a new job?
      - nknighthb 13y ago
        Report them? To whom? Follow the chain up and you're likely to find a Republican governor and legislature who think the DMV staff were doing exactly what they were supposed to. If the local media even covered it, I'd expect their angle to be the suspicious brown guy who was prevented from infiltrating our political system by heroic DMV staff.
      - cema 13y ago
        It sounds like the DMV staff you encountered were bigots. Not just bigots; they failed their jobs. Could be a serious legal case. (If true.)
smsm42 13y ago
Would it be fair to conclude that any setup that requires ID is a suppression scheme? I.e., if ID is required for travel - is it a travel rights suppression scheme? If the ID is required for real estate ownership - that is a real estate ownership suppression scheme? If the ID is required to own a firearm - is it a firearm ownership suppression scheme? Note I'm not asking if IDs were used in the past to suppress votes - I'm sure there were cases where that happened. What you're claiming is that ID requirement and voter suppression is the same, which is much stronger claim. So what I am asking is this ID requirement that makes it suppression or how one can distinguish suppression ones from non-suppression ones?
- nknighthb 13y ago
  The set of people who do not have and/or will have trouble getting IDs has little if any overlap with the set of people who travel by air, purchase real estate, or lawfully purchase firearms.
  - smsm42 13y ago
    I wasn't asking about which sets of people overlap or not. I was asking what makes ID requirement be identical with suppression - is it ID requirement itself or something else? If it is something else - what exactly it is? Is it where set of people is relevant - it is OK to ask some people to show the papers but not the others? Which people should be exempt and which should not be?
    - MichaelSalib 13y ago
      We know that voter id requirements are based in voter suppression because those requirements are targeted to preventing an attack that is economically infeasible and they don't even effectively mitigate the attack. Look at my other comments in this thread for the details, but in brief, the cost of using voter impersonation fraud is extremely high, the probability that authorities will detect it is also high, and the penalties for breaking the law in this way are very serious. What's more, bypassing the ID requirement is trivial for criminals, in the same way that bored teenagers can purchase alcohol whenever they want because forging ID cards is easy. Note also that IDs are actually not required for flying in the US. Flying without an ID is annoying and time consuming, but definitely doable (I've done it).
dingaling 13y ago
> not all eligible voters have IDs or have access to obtain them In Northern Ireland, a country which traditionally suffered from electoral 'problems', people without ID can now apply for a free Electoral Identity Card as part of the electoral registration process. A photo is required, but if applying in person then no other identity documents are required to obtain it. It is useful in that it also gives them a first-step ID to open bank accounts and for domestic travel.
Jtsummers 13y ago
> not all eligible voters have IDs or have access to obtain them. Not all eligible voters have IDs that satisfy the new rules. We always had to identify ourselves. My first vote was cast without a driver's license and I used (IIRC) some documents (school registration, student ID, birth certificate, not sure the combination) that satisfied the requirements at the time. I may have used my military dependent ID (a federal gov't issued photo ID). The majority of my classmates probably had driver's licenses, but there was a significant minority in the same boat I was.

dragonwriter 13y ago

> The outcry in the US over requiring someone to show an ID to vote is one of the most bizarre things to come out of that country. There's a specific historical reason for it related to practices tied to Jim Crow (and the fact that the groups backing Voter ID now mostly have no evidence of actual problems that it solves, and are often tied to other make-voting-less-convenient-and-with-more-excuses-for-outright-denial policies.) > And, to make it even more unusual, it's coming from the left, the very people who used to love issuing IDs, numbers, and whose intellectual and ideological predecessors set up most of those schemes. The reason its coming from what passes for "the left" (center-right instead of far right) in America is discussed above, but I don't think that this description of "the left" -- either what passes for left in America or the Left more generally -- is particularly accurate. > Practically, as much as the anarchist in me doesn't like that, you cannot have a mass society without strong, trusted IDs so this is a lost cause. We've had mass societies for a long time without strong, trusted IDs.

nknighthb 13y ago

I gather you're not from the US, and are unfamiliar with our civil rights history. You can start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfranchisement_after_the_Reconstruction_Era http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfranchisement_after_the_Reco... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965 Voter ID laws are simply the latest play in a long history of attempts to disenfranchise minorities and the poor. They have no other practical purpose. There is no mass vote fraud occurring in the US. It's another red herring, like terrorism.

lifeformed 13y ago
I'm not too familiar on this issue, but how does requiring ID disenfranchise minorities and the poor? Don't they already have IDs?
- djur 13y ago
  Not necessarily. If they don't drive or travel there's no reason for them to have state IDs, especially in rural areas.
- nknighthb 13y ago
  No, millions do not. And even those that do often have to contend with issues like name changes from marriage, or just forgetting to renew them (you usually get reminders in the mail, but we're talking about people who may not even have a fixed address). Even where IDs can be gotten "free", the states with voter ID requirements are also the states likely to demand proof of identity and citizenship that are difficult or impossible for many citizens to meet.
  - jack-r-abbit 13y ago
    > And even those that do often have to contend with issues like name changes from marriage, or just forgetting to renew them (you usually get reminders in the mail, but we're talking about people who may not even have a fixed address). Don't we all have to contend with those things? Do minorities and the poor get some sort of free pass on these sorts of obligations? EDIT: added the parent's parenthetical comment since they felt it was important. I don't want to come off as misquoting or quoting out of context.

gertef 13y ago

Hint: The world makes more sense when you stop trying to force it into a "left vs right" model.

lnanek2 13y ago

The outcry is from the left because these laws are always by the right in order to make it more difficult for demographics that vote left to vote. They come from a long line of laws in a similar vein, such as literacy tests full of trick questions, etc.. The general idea is just to make it tough enough to vote that poor people can't.

mortyseinfeld 13y ago

And, to make it even more unusual, it's coming from the left, the very people who used to love issuing IDs, numbers, and whose intellectual and ideological predecessors set up most of those schemes. You're right. "Let me see your papers comrade".

meddlepal 13y ago

Everyone should have a secure, single identity card in any modern developed nation that can be used for identity verification. One card. Federal and State governments can assign privileges to the card (driving, medicare etc.). Even expand it so the card can be used to verify credit and debit card authenticity etc. That's my dream, but right now we are stuck in firmly in 20th century-modes of thinking about ID. I'm long past the point of caring about the Government having some database of where I go or who I transact with. They seem to have been able to already figure out how to do it without my permission so let's just make this whole tracking thing transparent now. Practically speaking, getting an ID in the United States right now is not difficult. Why do we keep excusing people from having a basic mechanism to prove who they say they are? If you cannot handle getting and maintaining an ID maybe one ought not be able to vote because you're just not responsible enough to handle it.

MichaelSalib 13y ago
Why do we keep excusing people from having a basic mechanism to prove who they say they are? Given that bored teenagers in search of beer can easily forge IDs, what makes you think current photo ID cards are an effective certificate for proving identity? If you cannot handle getting and maintaining an ID maybe one ought not be able to vote because you're just not responsible enough to handle it. See, this notion right here? This is literally unamerican. Americans get to vote. It doesn't matter if you think they're lazy or smell bad or if they don't demonstrate responsibility to your satisfaction: you don't get to decide which citizens can vote. A lot of people have died so that Americans can vote without your approval.
- meddlepal 13y ago
  I don't think photo ID's are an effective certificate for proving identity. I'd like to see something stronger put into place. I would agree 100% positive identification is likely impossible given current technology but I think we can do a lot better than photo ID. Felon's are restricted from voting and the constitutionality of it has been upheld. We can absolutely restrict who votes. I strongly disagree that such an idea is "un-American".

hrktb 13y ago

The first step for this is to have a national ID or something equivalent (some ID universally issuable)...and it seems very very far away yet.