8 ms·

Could non-citizens decide the November election?

25 points by lsh123 12y ago

gambiting 12y ago
Could someone please give me a quick explanation on how voting works in the US? Do you just turn up and vote? Where I live you need to bring your national ID with you(it looks like a driving licence), staff at the voting office checks the number to see if you haven't voted already, and then you are given a sheet to put your vote on. How could non-citizens even register to vote in the US?
- lsh123 12y ago
  It varies state by state but in general you first register to vote by submitting a snail mail or an online application; and then just show up at the voting place, find yourself in a long list of names, and vote. Personally, I never had to show any kind of ID during the process.
  - x1798DE 12y ago
    In Texas they just added a voter ID law, and my experience was essentially the same as it used to be in Massachusetts - show up, you're on a long list of names, etc, but now you have to show a government-issued ID to vote. I'm not sure how it works if you vote by mail or do early voting.
- VLM 12y ago
  As a public service I will make a fast post that it is completely state controlled. Not federal level. Where I live we dump all state drivers license and state ID card records into a pool and thats about 99% of the population right there. Volunteer octogenarians at the public elementary school your kids would attend, ask you your address and then name and then tag you in the records as having voted, then hand out "scantron" ballots and pencils which are optically scanned and reported to central control hourly or so and the ballots are later spot checked. Every task takes at least two octogenarians, we have a one party system in the USA with two competing P.R. firms and each firm provides one overseer for each job. Never in my life have I had to provide ID to vote. There is a policy no one really knows to handle people who recently move or refuse to obtain a free ID card or a relatively cheap drivers license. Note that we give out "free" state ID cards upon demand, but obtaining the prerequisite certified birth certificate is no picnic and costs something like $95, if you don't already have one. Identity theft is quite trivial but the punishment is somewhat severe once you're caught.
- cafard 12y ago
  I have voted voted most recently in the District of Columbia. There you do provide a photo ID, in my case my driver's license. At this point I don't remember whether or not I had to provide photo ID in Maryland: that was year's ago. Nor do I remember how I registered to vote here, but I think it probably was at the Department of Motor Vehicles when I got my DC driver's license. In Maryland, I think that I mailed in a form one time; in Colorado, long ago, I drove to the county courthouse and registered with the county clerk.
- djur 12y ago
  I'm going to answer a question implied by your question first. There is no single effective record of citizenship in the United States, nor is there any kind of national ID program. Social Security numbers are frequently used as proof of identity but it is possible not to have one. They are not proof of citizenship. To give you an idea of what this looks like, to get an official photo ID from the State of Oregon you need to provide proof of state residency (generally this takes the form of a utility bill, bank correspondence, etc. with your name and an in-state address on it), identity (a social security card, another state ID, a passport), and legal presence in the US -- which either means legal residency or citizenship. In the case of naturalized citizens, this is simple: you're issued paperwork when you gain citizenship. Proof of natural citizenship is more complicated[1], because there's a lot of ways to be born a US citizen, some of which don't automatically result in documents being filed. People who drive will get a state driver's license, which generally has the same requirements in addition to a driving test and the like. State ID cards are frequently just driver's licenses with an indication added that they aren't actually a license to drive! That all leads to the actual answer to your question: every state handles voting differently. Some require you to register in advance, others don't; some require photo ID, others don't. My state and a few others conduct voting by mail. Eligibility standards are also allowed to vary by state, with a few constitutional limitations introduced by amendment. That's a whole topic in itself, but the brief summary is that there is no constitutionally defined positive right to vote in the US, only a set of criteria that states are not allowed to use to exclude voters (age if older than 18, sex, race). Any major reform of this system would require a constitutional amendment, which is a very high bar to jump in the US. [1]: http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/DMV/pages/driverid/idproof.aspx#legal_presence http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/DMV/pages/driverid/idproof.aspx#l...
  - gambiting 12y ago
    Thank you very much for the throughout explanation. I always assumed there was an easy way to determine if someone is a citizen or not, but clearly that's not the case. It does make the whole voting issue a lot more complicated, had no idea it was as such.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
jawns 12y ago
To sum up the researchers' proposal for preventing non-citizens from voting: Demanding photo ID is ineffective, because many non-citizens nonetheless do have a valid photo ID. A better way to prevent them from voting, the researchers suggest, is to merely let everyone know as they present themselves for voting that you have to be a U.S. citizen to vote. (It appears that less-educated non-citizens are more likely to have cast a vote, possibly because they didn't realize they weren't allowed to.)
- soneil 12y ago
  There's many more shades of grey than that, unfortunately. People are genuinely uncomfortable about challenging your residency status. In a number of situations, it's illegal to do so, and this seems to lend discomfort to situations where it's acceptable, or even expected. I lived in the US (legally) for 5 years. In that time I held three jobs, opened a bank account, got a loan for a car, etc. The topic of my residency only came up once - at the airport on the day I arrived. When I got my 2-year card renewed for a further 10, I made a point of letting my employer know ('mom & pop' shop, so I had some feel for their concerns). He looked genuinely uncomfortable - like he wasn't sure if he should even look at it. I had to tell him; don't worry man, you didn't ask. So I can quite easily imagine that on both sides (I've read that, eg, first-generation cubans tend towards democrat, and second-generation tend towards republican - this isn't unique to one side), when trying to make sure that all-important minority vote are all registered and savvy, this topic may not come up. They may not feel entitled to ask, or be afraid of offending, etc. When you're going door to door trying to squeeze every vote you can out of them, you don't want to be that guy that comes off as "are you meant to be in my country?" Trust me - we really don't like that guy. I guess what I'm getting at is that you can have a perfectly innocent scenario where someone they can assume to know what they're talking about, has come to their door and reminded them to register - and then we try to fault them for not knowing better. All in all, it is clear as mud. I'm not sure I'd even say "less-educated", as I don't obviously consider myself in that category - but I was never clear on which elections I was, and wasn't (local/state/national?) allowed to vote in. I gather I'm allowed to vote for the county sherif, but not for the president. And everything in between is just one big grey area.
ewoodrich 12y ago
There are a number of problems with this article and the cited study. This, in particular, is highly questionable: We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted. A majority of non-citizens in Voter ID states self-report that they were required to show photo ID (which they could not have had) and subsequently voted successfully? I don't think Voter ID is very effective, but that statistic just doesn't make any sense. The study is based on self-reporting from only about 500 non-citizens, from a larger pool of about 30,000 voters, by the way. EDIT: My point is a bit unclear, but I am not suggesting that non-citizens cannot have any sort of photo ID, only that the photo ID would not correspond with an existing citizen's voter registration.
- dustcoin 12y ago
  A majority of non-citizens in Voter ID states self-report that they were required to show photo ID (which they could not have had) Non-citizens can acquire legitimate photo ID (a driver's license, for example).
  - ewoodrich 12y ago
    Not a form of photo ID that can be used as a "Voter ID", however. The photo ID presented at the polling place would have to correspond with the existing voter registration. A non-citizen driver's license isn't proof of citizenship, and that is what is required by voter ID (with some variations based on the individual state, of course).
    - soneil 12y ago
      I'm curious, what ID can be assumed to be proof of citizenship? The only thing that springs to mind (I'll admit I'm not american, but have a little experience there) would be a birth certificate. Which generally doesn't fall under 'Photo ID'. (Genuine question; I realise such matters very wildly from state to state, and my experience is limited to Michigan - which didn't have this requirement, and I don't believe issues any ID other than drivers licence, or a 'state ID' - a voluntary substitute for the drivers licence where the licence isn't held)
eevilspock 12y ago
They already do. It's called corporate personhood and free speech, where by "speech" we mean unlimited amounts of money given to the PACs and candidates of their choice. So says the Supreme Court.
- ende 12y ago
  They actually don't. Citizens United and similar cases are not actually grounded in corporate personhood, though it is a common misconception that that's the case. The ruling in CU merely states that the government is denied the ability tO regulate speech, irrespective of what the object that speech emanates from is.
  - eevilspock 12y ago
    I beg to differ. Firstly, I did not reference Citizens United, but the Supreme Court. But regardless, since you bring it up, the majority opinion in Citizens United rests on the idea that corporations are protected by the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendments. It is simplistic and naive to treat corporations as just "an association of people", or even that their political interests align with their shareholders'. The vast majority of shareholders are simply looking at their return on the dollar, with little understanding of or the time and resources to look into a corporations political financing and lobbying activities, much less have access to the behind the scenes of what is really going on. A corporation takes on a will and "conscience" of its own, not necessarily in sync with its shareholders or even employees. The other basis of the ruling, that monetary contributions are protected as "free speech", is a problem because money is not anywhere near evenly distributed, and so overwhelmingly undermines the idea of "one-person, one vote". This problem would still exist without corporations having "money as free speech" rights, but it is even worse if corporations have it. I agree with Justice Stevens that "A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold."
    - ende 12y ago
      >>the majority opinion in Citizens United rests on the idea that corporations are protected by the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendments This is false. Go read the ruling yourself. It says nothing about corporate personhood. Not a single word. The entire ruling rests purely on the fact that the government is expressly prohibited from infringing on speech. The subject of speech is completely irrelevant. If rocks and trees suddenly started speaking, the government could not infringe on that speech, not because the right of speech for trees and rocks is protected by the first amendment, but because the first amendment denies the government the power to infringe upon speech, period. It is absolutely astonishing how much fuss has been generated over such a widespread ignorance of basic legal fact.
RexRollman 12y ago
I personally don't have a problem requiring photo-ID to vote, but when it is required, then a basic photo-ID should be provided for free to everyone. Otherwise, it will adversely affect low income voters.
- lsh123 12y ago
  I actually like the proposed in the article solution: educate people at the voting place. It is low-cost and doesn't create yet another bureaucracy to distribute photo-IDs.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  If such a system is implemented where everyone gets a free id, then it will end up used for everything. This was the fear with social security numbers way back when, and they wrote laws to prevent it being used except for official SSA purposes. Even those laws eventually eroded, first letting credit agencies and the IRS use them, and later on just about everything else. I'd rather that the friction here lead to people killing the voter id laws, rather than universal ids being issued.
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    Photo ID is already used for everything.
    - tobinfricke 12y ago
      Where, in the United States, "Photo ID" is basically synonymous with "Drivers' license". A strange state of affairs, indicative of our car-dependent society.
      - elektronjunge 12y ago
        You can get a state issued photo id that is not a driver's license. It just happens that nearly everyone has a driver's license, which is also government issued, so its convient to combine the two cards. Though state issued ids prove different things. For instance, states conforming to the REAL ID laws it says that you are a legal resident. For other states it just means that the state issued you an id card.
tedchs 12y ago
Warning, the outcome of all those words seems to be "We tried to find out, but we still don't know if there has been or could be an impact".
mhorton 12y ago
It is more likely that non-citizens in foreign countries through the use of PAC donation can decide and influence our electorate than illegal fraudulent voting. What is so scary is that anonymous PAC money is legal!
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
Personally I would guess that systemic voter disenfranchisement has a much bigger impact.
bryanlarsen 12y ago
The standard counter argument against voter ID laws is not that non-citizens don't affect the election, but it's that voter ID laws are a cure worse than the disease. In other words, voter ID laws add enough friction to the system, especially for those that don't already have one of the approved ID's, that some people who would otherwise have voted, don't. Do voter ID laws disenfranchise more legitimate votes than illegitimate ones?
- owenmarshall 12y ago
  > Do voter ID laws disenfranchise more legitimate votes than illegitimate ones? Almost certainly. Remember that voter ID laws only tackle one type of potential fraud: I go to the polls and impersonate someone else. That's it. Absentee overvoting, over-registration, ballot stuffing - these aren't addressed by requiring an ID. So now, some numbers: in a paper put together by Justin Levitt, a con-law professor, he was able to find 31 instances of in-person vote fraud that would've been prevented by requiring ID at the polls.[1] Even if we assume we're undercounting dramatically, there's still no real evidence to indicate that requiring an ID would make a real impact. DOJ estimates are that between 600,000-700,000 registered voters in Texas alone lack an ID[2]. So yeah, there's no real evidence that indicates requiring a registered voter to have a photo ID does anything but "place a burden on lots of registered voters that don't have IDs". -- [1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/06/a-comprehensive-investigation-of-voter-impersonation-finds-31-credible-incidents-out-of-one-billion-ballots-cast/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/06/a... [2]: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/how-voter-id-laws-are-being-used-to-disenfranchise-minorities-and-the-poor/254572/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/how-vote...
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Citing the Atlantic article from 2 years ago while ignoring the results of this new study is disingenuous at best. Up to last week I also thought that the number of illegal voters was negligible, but after looking at this study and establishing the quality of the CCES dataset on which it is based, I have to revise that opinion. Ignoring data that you don't like is fundamentally self-defeating. More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010. The number of non-citizens in the US is about 30 million - ~12m legal permanent residents, ~12 million who have immigrated illegally, and ~6m on various non-permanent visas. So you're looking at ~600k who voted illegally in 2010 and maybe ~1.7m who did so in 2008. That's a hell of a lot of people. Now, I agree that overall this is less than the number of citizens who don't have ID, although I have serious doubts about the genuine political engagement or desire to vote of anyone who is entitled to a US ID and doesn't get one. So numerically it's less of an issue. But it's a problem because it corrupts the political process in 2 ways; it bring results into question, and it allows people who don't like a result to cast aspersions on it by appealing tot he general principle, even in places where the numbers don't support a claim of being swung by illegal voters. It's also a problem for the people who vote illegally (who are likely to be less educated, as the article points out); voting illegally is treated as a major federal crime and can lead to permanent, no-appeal and no-expiration deportation, and even retroactive cancellation of US citizenship if a naturalized citizen is later discovered to have voted illegally, with no statute of limitations as far as I can recall.
robomartin 12y ago
It's very simple: Voting is a privilege reserved for US Citizens. Naturalized or Native. It is a travesty not to have a mechanism ensuring that only citizens vote. This has nothing whatsoever with economic circumstance or political party. The vast majority of US citizens can more than afford whatever might be required to confirm their citizenship. Everyone is walking around with cellphones, iPhones, watching satellite and cable TV, using DSL at home, etc. Those who truly don't have the means ought to get help from the rest of us. If you have a cellphone, cable TV and DSL at home you can damn well spend $150 or so every ten years to obtain voting documentation. We can even make that expense tax deductible. You want to vote? Prove that you are entitled to doing so. Present a valid US passport. Simple as that. Don't have the money to pay for a US passport? There's an app for that: http://www.uscis.gov/feewaiver http://www.uscis.gov/feewaiver So, there, those without the means or those experiencing hardship can get a US passport for free. I'm confused. What's the problem?
- inimini 12y ago
  There's no problem, only people who feel entitled to have problems. Voting doesn't change a thing anyway. I thought they'd start to understand that with Obama, but apparently he failed to betray enough promises for the sheeple to wake up.
- teraflop 12y ago
  Of course it's not that simple. First of all, the waiver form you linked to is applicable to USCIS, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Passports are issued by the State Department. As far as I can determine, they waive the application fee for US government employees who travel only on official business, but there's no waiver for economic hardship. Second, you can't just wave your hands and say "those who truly don't have the means ought to get help from the rest of us" as if saying it makes it so. If you suggest a policy change that will disenfranchise the poor unless some other public assistance program is established, you are de facto suggesting disenfranchisement. Creating an explicit financial disincentive to vote is not quite as bad as making it impossible to vote at all, but it's close.
- lsiebert 12y ago
dllthomas 12y ago
This is all quite interesting, but to me the most interesting piece is that Arkansas had suffrage for aliens until 1928.

25 points by lsh123 12y ago

Could someone please give me a quick explanation on how voting works in the US? Do you just turn up and vote? Where I live you need to bring your national ID with you(it looks like a driving licence), staff at the voting office checks the number to see if you haven't voted already, and then you are given a sheet to put your vote on. How could non-citizens even register to vote in the US?

lsh123 12y ago
It varies state by state but in general you first register to vote by submitting a snail mail or an online application; and then just show up at the voting place, find yourself in a long list of names, and vote. Personally, I never had to show any kind of ID during the process.
- x1798DE 12y ago
  In Texas they just added a voter ID law, and my experience was essentially the same as it used to be in Massachusetts - show up, you're on a long list of names, etc, but now you have to show a government-issued ID to vote. I'm not sure how it works if you vote by mail or do early voting.
VLM 12y ago
As a public service I will make a fast post that it is completely state controlled. Not federal level. Where I live we dump all state drivers license and state ID card records into a pool and thats about 99% of the population right there. Volunteer octogenarians at the public elementary school your kids would attend, ask you your address and then name and then tag you in the records as having voted, then hand out "scantron" ballots and pencils which are optically scanned and reported to central control hourly or so and the ballots are later spot checked. Every task takes at least two octogenarians, we have a one party system in the USA with two competing P.R. firms and each firm provides one overseer for each job. Never in my life have I had to provide ID to vote. There is a policy no one really knows to handle people who recently move or refuse to obtain a free ID card or a relatively cheap drivers license. Note that we give out "free" state ID cards upon demand, but obtaining the prerequisite certified birth certificate is no picnic and costs something like $95, if you don't already have one. Identity theft is quite trivial but the punishment is somewhat severe once you're caught.
cafard 12y ago
I have voted voted most recently in the District of Columbia. There you do provide a photo ID, in my case my driver's license. At this point I don't remember whether or not I had to provide photo ID in Maryland: that was year's ago. Nor do I remember how I registered to vote here, but I think it probably was at the Department of Motor Vehicles when I got my DC driver's license. In Maryland, I think that I mailed in a form one time; in Colorado, long ago, I drove to the county courthouse and registered with the county clerk.
djur 12y ago
I'm going to answer a question implied by your question first. There is no single effective record of citizenship in the United States, nor is there any kind of national ID program. Social Security numbers are frequently used as proof of identity but it is possible not to have one. They are not proof of citizenship. To give you an idea of what this looks like, to get an official photo ID from the State of Oregon you need to provide proof of state residency (generally this takes the form of a utility bill, bank correspondence, etc. with your name and an in-state address on it), identity (a social security card, another state ID, a passport), and legal presence in the US -- which either means legal residency or citizenship. In the case of naturalized citizens, this is simple: you're issued paperwork when you gain citizenship. Proof of natural citizenship is more complicated[1], because there's a lot of ways to be born a US citizen, some of which don't automatically result in documents being filed. People who drive will get a state driver's license, which generally has the same requirements in addition to a driving test and the like. State ID cards are frequently just driver's licenses with an indication added that they aren't actually a license to drive! That all leads to the actual answer to your question: every state handles voting differently. Some require you to register in advance, others don't; some require photo ID, others don't. My state and a few others conduct voting by mail. Eligibility standards are also allowed to vary by state, with a few constitutional limitations introduced by amendment. That's a whole topic in itself, but the brief summary is that there is no constitutionally defined positive right to vote in the US, only a set of criteria that states are not allowed to use to exclude voters (age if older than 18, sex, race). Any major reform of this system would require a constitutional amendment, which is a very high bar to jump in the US. [1]: http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/DMV/pages/driverid/idproof.aspx#legal_presence http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/DMV/pages/driverid/idproof.aspx#l...
- gambiting 12y ago
  Thank you very much for the throughout explanation. I always assumed there was an easy way to determine if someone is a citizen or not, but clearly that's not the case. It does make the whole voting issue a lot more complicated, had no idea it was as such.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago

jawns 12y ago

To sum up the researchers' proposal for preventing non-citizens from voting: Demanding photo ID is ineffective, because many non-citizens nonetheless do have a valid photo ID. A better way to prevent them from voting, the researchers suggest, is to merely let everyone know as they present themselves for voting that you have to be a U.S. citizen to vote. (It appears that less-educated non-citizens are more likely to have cast a vote, possibly because they didn't realize they weren't allowed to.)

soneil 12y ago
There's many more shades of grey than that, unfortunately. People are genuinely uncomfortable about challenging your residency status. In a number of situations, it's illegal to do so, and this seems to lend discomfort to situations where it's acceptable, or even expected. I lived in the US (legally) for 5 years. In that time I held three jobs, opened a bank account, got a loan for a car, etc. The topic of my residency only came up once - at the airport on the day I arrived. When I got my 2-year card renewed for a further 10, I made a point of letting my employer know ('mom & pop' shop, so I had some feel for their concerns). He looked genuinely uncomfortable - like he wasn't sure if he should even look at it. I had to tell him; don't worry man, you didn't ask. So I can quite easily imagine that on both sides (I've read that, eg, first-generation cubans tend towards democrat, and second-generation tend towards republican - this isn't unique to one side), when trying to make sure that all-important minority vote are all registered and savvy, this topic may not come up. They may not feel entitled to ask, or be afraid of offending, etc. When you're going door to door trying to squeeze every vote you can out of them, you don't want to be that guy that comes off as "are you meant to be in my country?" Trust me - we really don't like that guy. I guess what I'm getting at is that you can have a perfectly innocent scenario where someone they can assume to know what they're talking about, has come to their door and reminded them to register - and then we try to fault them for not knowing better. All in all, it is clear as mud. I'm not sure I'd even say "less-educated", as I don't obviously consider myself in that category - but I was never clear on which elections I was, and wasn't (local/state/national?) allowed to vote in. I gather I'm allowed to vote for the county sherif, but not for the president. And everything in between is just one big grey area.

ewoodrich 12y ago

There are a number of problems with this article and the cited study. This, in particular, is highly questionable: We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted. A majority of non-citizens in Voter ID states self-report that they were required to show photo ID (which they could not have had) and subsequently voted successfully? I don't think Voter ID is very effective, but that statistic just doesn't make any sense. The study is based on self-reporting from only about 500 non-citizens, from a larger pool of about 30,000 voters, by the way. EDIT: My point is a bit unclear, but I am not suggesting that non-citizens cannot have any sort of photo ID, only that the photo ID would not correspond with an existing citizen's voter registration.

dustcoin 12y ago
A majority of non-citizens in Voter ID states self-report that they were required to show photo ID (which they could not have had) Non-citizens can acquire legitimate photo ID (a driver's license, for example).
- ewoodrich 12y ago
  Not a form of photo ID that can be used as a "Voter ID", however. The photo ID presented at the polling place would have to correspond with the existing voter registration. A non-citizen driver's license isn't proof of citizenship, and that is what is required by voter ID (with some variations based on the individual state, of course).
  - soneil 12y ago
    I'm curious, what ID can be assumed to be proof of citizenship? The only thing that springs to mind (I'll admit I'm not american, but have a little experience there) would be a birth certificate. Which generally doesn't fall under 'Photo ID'. (Genuine question; I realise such matters very wildly from state to state, and my experience is limited to Michigan - which didn't have this requirement, and I don't believe issues any ID other than drivers licence, or a 'state ID' - a voluntary substitute for the drivers licence where the licence isn't held)

eevilspock 12y ago

They already do. It's called corporate personhood and free speech, where by "speech" we mean unlimited amounts of money given to the PACs and candidates of their choice. So says the Supreme Court.

ende 12y ago
They actually don't. Citizens United and similar cases are not actually grounded in corporate personhood, though it is a common misconception that that's the case. The ruling in CU merely states that the government is denied the ability tO regulate speech, irrespective of what the object that speech emanates from is.
- eevilspock 12y ago
  I beg to differ. Firstly, I did not reference Citizens United, but the Supreme Court. But regardless, since you bring it up, the majority opinion in Citizens United rests on the idea that corporations are protected by the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendments. It is simplistic and naive to treat corporations as just "an association of people", or even that their political interests align with their shareholders'. The vast majority of shareholders are simply looking at their return on the dollar, with little understanding of or the time and resources to look into a corporations political financing and lobbying activities, much less have access to the behind the scenes of what is really going on. A corporation takes on a will and "conscience" of its own, not necessarily in sync with its shareholders or even employees. The other basis of the ruling, that monetary contributions are protected as "free speech", is a problem because money is not anywhere near evenly distributed, and so overwhelmingly undermines the idea of "one-person, one vote". This problem would still exist without corporations having "money as free speech" rights, but it is even worse if corporations have it. I agree with Justice Stevens that "A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold."
  - ende 12y ago
    >>the majority opinion in Citizens United rests on the idea that corporations are protected by the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendments This is false. Go read the ruling yourself. It says nothing about corporate personhood. Not a single word. The entire ruling rests purely on the fact that the government is expressly prohibited from infringing on speech. The subject of speech is completely irrelevant. If rocks and trees suddenly started speaking, the government could not infringe on that speech, not because the right of speech for trees and rocks is protected by the first amendment, but because the first amendment denies the government the power to infringe upon speech, period. It is absolutely astonishing how much fuss has been generated over such a widespread ignorance of basic legal fact.

RexRollman 12y ago

I personally don't have a problem requiring photo-ID to vote, but when it is required, then a basic photo-ID should be provided for free to everyone. Otherwise, it will adversely affect low income voters.

lsh123 12y ago
I actually like the proposed in the article solution: educate people at the voting place. It is low-cost and doesn't create yet another bureaucracy to distribute photo-IDs.
NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
If such a system is implemented where everyone gets a free id, then it will end up used for everything. This was the fear with social security numbers way back when, and they wrote laws to prevent it being used except for official SSA purposes. Even those laws eventually eroded, first letting credit agencies and the IRS use them, and later on just about everything else. I'd rather that the friction here lead to people killing the voter id laws, rather than universal ids being issued.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  Photo ID is already used for everything.
  - tobinfricke 12y ago
    Where, in the United States, "Photo ID" is basically synonymous with "Drivers' license". A strange state of affairs, indicative of our car-dependent society.
    - elektronjunge 12y ago
      You can get a state issued photo id that is not a driver's license. It just happens that nearly everyone has a driver's license, which is also government issued, so its convient to combine the two cards. Though state issued ids prove different things. For instance, states conforming to the REAL ID laws it says that you are a legal resident. For other states it just means that the state issued you an id card.

tedchs 12y ago

Warning, the outcome of all those words seems to be "We tried to find out, but we still don't know if there has been or could be an impact".

mhorton 12y ago

It is more likely that non-citizens in foreign countries through the use of PAC donation can decide and influence our electorate than illegal fraudulent voting. What is so scary is that anonymous PAC money is legal!

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago

Personally I would guess that systemic voter disenfranchisement has a much bigger impact.

bryanlarsen 12y ago

The standard counter argument against voter ID laws is not that non-citizens don't affect the election, but it's that voter ID laws are a cure worse than the disease. In other words, voter ID laws add enough friction to the system, especially for those that don't already have one of the approved ID's, that some people who would otherwise have voted, don't. Do voter ID laws disenfranchise more legitimate votes than illegitimate ones?

owenmarshall 12y ago
> Do voter ID laws disenfranchise more legitimate votes than illegitimate ones? Almost certainly. Remember that voter ID laws only tackle one type of potential fraud: I go to the polls and impersonate someone else. That's it. Absentee overvoting, over-registration, ballot stuffing - these aren't addressed by requiring an ID. So now, some numbers: in a paper put together by Justin Levitt, a con-law professor, he was able to find 31 instances of in-person vote fraud that would've been prevented by requiring ID at the polls.[1] Even if we assume we're undercounting dramatically, there's still no real evidence to indicate that requiring an ID would make a real impact. DOJ estimates are that between 600,000-700,000 registered voters in Texas alone lack an ID[2]. So yeah, there's no real evidence that indicates requiring a registered voter to have a photo ID does anything but "place a burden on lots of registered voters that don't have IDs". -- [1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/06/a-comprehensive-investigation-of-voter-impersonation-finds-31-credible-incidents-out-of-one-billion-ballots-cast/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/06/a... [2]: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/how-voter-id-laws-are-being-used-to-disenfranchise-minorities-and-the-poor/254572/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/how-vote...
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Citing the Atlantic article from 2 years ago while ignoring the results of this new study is disingenuous at best. Up to last week I also thought that the number of illegal voters was negligible, but after looking at this study and establishing the quality of the CCES dataset on which it is based, I have to revise that opinion. Ignoring data that you don't like is fundamentally self-defeating. More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010. The number of non-citizens in the US is about 30 million - ~12m legal permanent residents, ~12 million who have immigrated illegally, and ~6m on various non-permanent visas. So you're looking at ~600k who voted illegally in 2010 and maybe ~1.7m who did so in 2008. That's a hell of a lot of people. Now, I agree that overall this is less than the number of citizens who don't have ID, although I have serious doubts about the genuine political engagement or desire to vote of anyone who is entitled to a US ID and doesn't get one. So numerically it's less of an issue. But it's a problem because it corrupts the political process in 2 ways; it bring results into question, and it allows people who don't like a result to cast aspersions on it by appealing tot he general principle, even in places where the numbers don't support a claim of being swung by illegal voters. It's also a problem for the people who vote illegally (who are likely to be less educated, as the article points out); voting illegally is treated as a major federal crime and can lead to permanent, no-appeal and no-expiration deportation, and even retroactive cancellation of US citizenship if a naturalized citizen is later discovered to have voted illegally, with no statute of limitations as far as I can recall.

robomartin 12y ago

It's very simple: Voting is a privilege reserved for US Citizens. Naturalized or Native. It is a travesty not to have a mechanism ensuring that only citizens vote. This has nothing whatsoever with economic circumstance or political party. The vast majority of US citizens can more than afford whatever might be required to confirm their citizenship. Everyone is walking around with cellphones, iPhones, watching satellite and cable TV, using DSL at home, etc. Those who truly don't have the means ought to get help from the rest of us. If you have a cellphone, cable TV and DSL at home you can damn well spend $150 or so every ten years to obtain voting documentation. We can even make that expense tax deductible. You want to vote? Prove that you are entitled to doing so. Present a valid US passport. Simple as that. Don't have the money to pay for a US passport? There's an app for that: http://www.uscis.gov/feewaiver http://www.uscis.gov/feewaiver So, there, those without the means or those experiencing hardship can get a US passport for free. I'm confused. What's the problem?

inimini 12y ago
There's no problem, only people who feel entitled to have problems. Voting doesn't change a thing anyway. I thought they'd start to understand that with Obama, but apparently he failed to betray enough promises for the sheeple to wake up.
teraflop 12y ago
Of course it's not that simple. First of all, the waiver form you linked to is applicable to USCIS, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Passports are issued by the State Department. As far as I can determine, they waive the application fee for US government employees who travel only on official business, but there's no waiver for economic hardship. Second, you can't just wave your hands and say "those who truly don't have the means ought to get help from the rest of us" as if saying it makes it so. If you suggest a policy change that will disenfranchise the poor unless some other public assistance program is established, you are de facto suggesting disenfranchisement. Creating an explicit financial disincentive to vote is not quite as bad as making it impossible to vote at all, but it's close.
lsiebert 12y ago

dllthomas 12y ago

This is all quite interesting, but to me the most interesting piece is that Arkansas had suffrage for aliens until 1928.