4 ms·

Well, the people caught in this trap can find it difficult to take time out of their schedule on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, not to mention

by fpgeek 12y ago

Well, the people caught in this trap can find it difficult to take time out of their schedule on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, not to mention the many other hoops they may have to jump through in order to be counted politically.

alkonaut 12y ago
This is just the next tragedy. Register in order to get to vote? People (100%) not having ID's? Why not issue ID's to everyone and just be done with it? Passports would be good... Early voting seems to be possible in most states, and with at least 4 days of voting before the tuesday, most people should be able to do it. How can it not be a requirement for all states to provide early voting?
- gambiting 12y ago
  I am not from US, but as someone explained this to me - issuing everyone national IDs like we have in EU would be incredibly hard if not impossible,because there is not one certain way to establish if someone is a citizen or not, so a lot of people in US would perceive such attempt as being a discriminatory one.
  - dkhenry 12y ago
    Its actually quite easy to issue everyone an ID as most people already have one. Over 90% of individuals have a drivers license that could be used, That has nothing to say of any of the other official ID's that you could use, however the very very very small minority of individuals who don't have ID's are so reliable a voting bloc for one party that anything that might reduce the size of that bloc is not even entertained. So no amount of resources or effort will ever convince that party to adopt a policy requiring ID's since that will result in the loss of at least some votes which would hurt them.
    - alkonaut 12y ago
      Maybe a deal that is neutral could be made? Example: no registration to vote, require id, election on Sunday/holiday. If you include voting rights for ex-convicts or even voting in prison you'd more than counter the effect of voter ID (this I assume would not be a popular opinion among R?)
      - dkhenry 12y ago
        I think any change would be poison to one side or the other. Which is a shame since there is no technical hurdle to overcome to provide secure and easy voting for everyone. You could totally remove all barriers to voting and make a secure system where everyone was enabled to vote and vote securely, but because there are partisan politics at play we won't get it.
  - VLM 12y ago
    "because there is not one certain way to establish if someone is a citizen or not" Only about half the states require citizenship to vote, this can be trivially verified on wikipedia. Its technically illegal at the federal level to vote in a federal election if you're not a citizen but that's only enforced politically "making examples of" and voter intimidation purposes and so forth. It seems among the young HN participants, or maybe foreign participants, there is culturally almost no understanding of whats federal and whats state level in the USA. I would assume this is an intentional goal of the educational system, to make control of the population simpler. There is also an undercurrent of those who actually understand this simple fact not saying much, because "everyone knows" that you get 50 states into a big pile, anything you say about them can and will be wrong in some minor detail in one state and your entire argument will be viciously attacked because being only 98% right is the same as 0% right. There is also at least a three step game being played where the first step is "demand ID to vote" rather than the existing "we trust you" system. The second step is state ID is technically free if you have the documentation required. The third step is making the documentation required change annually and sometimes be very expensive, almost impossible to obtain and you can always blame the victim for not having all the right paperwork. My wife doesn't have a "real id" because it would just cost too much and be too much of a PITA to fix, so when a "real id" level license is required to vote, she'll be disenfranchised from voting. Eventually it will be enough of a PITA for her to obtain the docs she needs and we can certainly afford it, its only $100 or so, but that's a weeks labor for other social classes... very much intentionally.
    - gambiting 12y ago
      Like I have said in my own comment - I am not from US. For me, the very concept of non-citizens voting is.....bizarre. Also, the problem with US citizens not being just given IDs is also bizarre - when people in my country turn 18, they just collect their ID for free at the nearest government office, and that ID can also be used as a passport for travelling inside the EU, negating the need to ever pay for a passport for most people. It certainly does not seem to be difficult, because everyone is registered as a citizen from birth, unless someone becomes a naturalized citizen, so they are also added to the national database. In the States I understand the difficulty is that there is no such database - people can be Americans without having paperwork to necessarily prove it, and so demanding such paperwork is seen as discriminatory. Am I correct? And no, as a European I very frequently do not understand what is governed on your federal or state level. In fact, this separation has never ever been mentioned in my own education,and I only know of it because I frequent places like HN.
fwn 12y ago
Wait what? No postal voting in the US? This is peculiar.
- shawabawa3 12y ago
  There definitely is at least in some (most?) states
awalton 12y ago
They're also entirely disenfranchised as a living generation, since both sides of the political spectrum in the US are more interested in fighting battles for companies like Comcast and AT&T than caring about problems like the big corporations actively exploiting the working poor and the welfare system - and being bold enough to put those words into their own presentations without any political backlash - or fixing healthcare. The one time they do hire a guy to fix things, it turns out he can't do it because Congress obstinately blocked his way at every pass. His political rivals turned a compromise, non-universal health care plan into a three ring circus that somehow made the poor think things were getting worse for them, despite how many have been able to get access to healthcare for the first time in their lives. Unfortunately for us, the guy we hired just doesn't have a strong enough backbone to stand up to the legislature and the FCC and the corporations and tell them in no uncertain words that this situation is no longer acceptable. Polite, articulate words simply won't cut it anymore. I come from Kentucky, the state with one of the most successful deployments of the health care program in the nation, and Mitch has actively campaigned on repealing it, right to their faces, and yet they supported him at the polls. That's how fucked up this situation has become. It's quite hard not to be disenfranchised and think there's nothing we can do.

by fpgeek 12y ago

alkonaut 12y ago

This is just the next tragedy. Register in order to get to vote? People (100%) not having ID's? Why not issue ID's to everyone and just be done with it? Passports would be good... Early voting seems to be possible in most states, and with at least 4 days of voting before the tuesday, most people should be able to do it. How can it not be a requirement for all states to provide early voting?

gambiting 12y ago
I am not from US, but as someone explained this to me - issuing everyone national IDs like we have in EU would be incredibly hard if not impossible,because there is not one certain way to establish if someone is a citizen or not, so a lot of people in US would perceive such attempt as being a discriminatory one.
- dkhenry 12y ago
  Its actually quite easy to issue everyone an ID as most people already have one. Over 90% of individuals have a drivers license that could be used, That has nothing to say of any of the other official ID's that you could use, however the very very very small minority of individuals who don't have ID's are so reliable a voting bloc for one party that anything that might reduce the size of that bloc is not even entertained. So no amount of resources or effort will ever convince that party to adopt a policy requiring ID's since that will result in the loss of at least some votes which would hurt them.
  - alkonaut 12y ago
    Maybe a deal that is neutral could be made? Example: no registration to vote, require id, election on Sunday/holiday. If you include voting rights for ex-convicts or even voting in prison you'd more than counter the effect of voter ID (this I assume would not be a popular opinion among R?)
    - dkhenry 12y ago
      I think any change would be poison to one side or the other. Which is a shame since there is no technical hurdle to overcome to provide secure and easy voting for everyone. You could totally remove all barriers to voting and make a secure system where everyone was enabled to vote and vote securely, but because there are partisan politics at play we won't get it.
- VLM 12y ago
  "because there is not one certain way to establish if someone is a citizen or not" Only about half the states require citizenship to vote, this can be trivially verified on wikipedia. Its technically illegal at the federal level to vote in a federal election if you're not a citizen but that's only enforced politically "making examples of" and voter intimidation purposes and so forth. It seems among the young HN participants, or maybe foreign participants, there is culturally almost no understanding of whats federal and whats state level in the USA. I would assume this is an intentional goal of the educational system, to make control of the population simpler. There is also an undercurrent of those who actually understand this simple fact not saying much, because "everyone knows" that you get 50 states into a big pile, anything you say about them can and will be wrong in some minor detail in one state and your entire argument will be viciously attacked because being only 98% right is the same as 0% right. There is also at least a three step game being played where the first step is "demand ID to vote" rather than the existing "we trust you" system. The second step is state ID is technically free if you have the documentation required. The third step is making the documentation required change annually and sometimes be very expensive, almost impossible to obtain and you can always blame the victim for not having all the right paperwork. My wife doesn't have a "real id" because it would just cost too much and be too much of a PITA to fix, so when a "real id" level license is required to vote, she'll be disenfranchised from voting. Eventually it will be enough of a PITA for her to obtain the docs she needs and we can certainly afford it, its only $100 or so, but that's a weeks labor for other social classes... very much intentionally.
  - gambiting 12y ago
    Like I have said in my own comment - I am not from US. For me, the very concept of non-citizens voting is.....bizarre. Also, the problem with US citizens not being just given IDs is also bizarre - when people in my country turn 18, they just collect their ID for free at the nearest government office, and that ID can also be used as a passport for travelling inside the EU, negating the need to ever pay for a passport for most people. It certainly does not seem to be difficult, because everyone is registered as a citizen from birth, unless someone becomes a naturalized citizen, so they are also added to the national database. In the States I understand the difficulty is that there is no such database - people can be Americans without having paperwork to necessarily prove it, and so demanding such paperwork is seen as discriminatory. Am I correct? And no, as a European I very frequently do not understand what is governed on your federal or state level. In fact, this separation has never ever been mentioned in my own education,and I only know of it because I frequent places like HN.

fwn 12y ago

Wait what? No postal voting in the US? This is peculiar.

shawabawa3 12y ago
There definitely is at least in some (most?) states

awalton 12y ago

They're also entirely disenfranchised as a living generation, since both sides of the political spectrum in the US are more interested in fighting battles for companies like Comcast and AT&T than caring about problems like the big corporations actively exploiting the working poor and the welfare system - and being bold enough to put those words into their own presentations without any political backlash - or fixing healthcare. The one time they do hire a guy to fix things, it turns out he can't do it because Congress obstinately blocked his way at every pass. His political rivals turned a compromise, non-universal health care plan into a three ring circus that somehow made the poor think things were getting worse for them, despite how many have been able to get access to healthcare for the first time in their lives. Unfortunately for us, the guy we hired just doesn't have a strong enough backbone to stand up to the legislature and the FCC and the corporations and tell them in no uncertain words that this situation is no longer acceptable. Polite, articulate words simply won't cut it anymore. I come from Kentucky, the state with one of the most successful deployments of the health care program in the nation, and Mitch has actively campaigned on repealing it, right to their faces, and yet they supported him at the polls. That's how fucked up this situation has become. It's quite hard not to be disenfranchised and think there's nothing we can do.