I'm a progressive liberal, but I believe this is hogwash. Many countries have a government issued national card for citizens. It's not a huge deal. Activists have made it seem like it's a way to suppress voters but I think that's largely BS.
We could start a campaign now, or just after the next election in 2020, and get people to sign up for cards by 2028, and enforce that then. We have census every 10 years, it's something the country can easily coordinate.
>I'm a progressive liberal, but I believe this is hogwash. Many countries have a government issued national card for citizens. It's not a huge deal. Activists have made it seem like it's a way to suppress voters but I think that's largely BS.
Have you tried educating yourself on the matter? For "some" reason, there are large swaths of land where people have to travel 25+ miles and pay with their already taxed income just for the displeasure of standing in line at the DMV/etc.
Tell me how much of a priority this is to someone who might not be able to drive their own car, or take time out of their job for.
I don't understand why someone would front their statement with "I'm a progressive liberal" while remaining intentionally obtuse, unless they're arguing in bad faith to begin with.
Sure, if you had a free and convenient citizen ID card, requiring ID to vote might be just fine.
As it is currently, it's absolutely a way to suppress the vote of low-income (and minority) people. In many areas of many states getting photo ID is non-trivial, especially if you're in a shitty job.
There is a ton of literature on this. Many elected state and local governments, especially in the South, work actively against the voting interests of large swaths of their populations. Whether through gerrymandering, or processes that improperly remove registrations, or that remove polling places, or that place improper obstacles like fees or clean civic record requirements in the ways of voters, or any of literally hundreds of techniques. Requiring government-issued IDs is just the rhetorical cover for these far more restrictive and extremely pervasive techniques.
The basic argument is that requiring an ID to vote is racially motivated as a tool of suppression and an avenue by which to violate basic civil rights. If this the case, then is requiring a government issued ID to travel, either by auto or air, put in place to prevent minorities from freely traveling around the United States?
Are government mandated requirements to produce an ID when purchasing a firearm an effort to prevent black ownership of legal firearms?
Once you get beyond the arguments around voting, it wildly begins to fall apart, and either shows a complete lack of logical consistency in standing up for minority rights, or an ulterior motive is at play.
> Are government mandated requirements to produce an ID when purchasing a firearm an effort to prevent black ownership of legal firearms?
The registration/license requirement which was introduced with the gun control act (with NRA backing) was pretty much introduced as a response to Black Panthers publically/legally carrying guns. So, in a way, yes.
No, not nearly every eligible voters has one, and the distribution is significantly skewed by race and a number of other demographic factors.
And more than one of the politicians pushing voter ID has been recorded in what seemed to be politically safe venues pointing to those biases as motivating factors.
Sounds like a good idea to me, for those without driver's license it'd provide a way to vote without the hassle of getting a non-drivers ID card.
Only issues I could think of are:
1. No central registry of addresses, so how would the government know where to send the IDs.
2. Where would the photograph for the ID come from?
3. Possible fraud/abuse from stolen mail
Other countries were able to figure it out, so can we. Voting license proponents never seem to want to send eligible voters their free voting licenses, though.
> Other countries were able to figure it out, so can we
I mean the solution to #1 is obvious: forced registration. I think you'll have a hard time getting people on board with passing a law for that.
It just seems like an hour at the DMV would solve all 3 problems at once: provide address, current photo, and reduce fraud/abuse. Seems like a good system to me.
Can you give me an example of what other country(-ies) system you're thinking about? I'm curious how it's handled elsewhere as well without the need to appear in person to get an ID.
Sorry could you clarify... why would you need Voting Card? I mean normal state ID must be enough no? Like everyone has to have one so they can prove their age and citizenship and where they live no?
IDs are not mandatory at either the State or Federal level in the USA.
The most common type of identification is a State driver's license, but there are also alternative non-driver license ID cards available. None of these IDs are mandatory, but are nearly required to live in modern society (open a bank account, drive a car, vote, etc).
There are a lot of things in modern society that you need a government ID to do. If adding voting to that list is the defining feature that forces the government to make it economical for every adult to have an ID, then that is a win.
Everyone should have an ID because of how important they are for accessing government benefits, freedom of mobility, employment, etc.
If that means that getting an ID should pay you $100 instead of cost you $100 then I’m totally for that.
Again, to reiterate, I believe that getting an ID should be economically neutral at worst (which means you should be paid at least a few dollars for going through the trouble to get one) regardless of whether IDs are required to vote, but if a voting requirement is what it would take to make that happen it’s a perfect win/win.
The same people that want voters to provide ID when voting are very against free national ID cards. There are plenty of games that you can play at the state level in discouraging or somehow confusing the ID issue (does the address have to up to date on your DL, or even the right state for college students?), which doesn’t apply when a national ID is considered (none of that info is on your passport, but it costs $100+ to get that).
We require ID in almost every kind of daily transaction imaginable, from healthcare to banking, employment, travel, alcohol, cigarettes, all other government services, and so on. But go apoplectic when we try to use it for one transaction every two years and act as if over half the population lacks the ability to participate in daily basic society.
Black people are intelligent enough to get ID's, as are women and any other minority in this country. The constant denigration as if they lack the faculties or intelligence to get an ID is pretty insulting.
Let's say we have 100k people that live in a few poor counties where not everyone has government ID and they can't afford to spend time / money to go very far. Now, if 40k of those people need an ID to vote, reducing the hours that the nearest DMV operates will reduce the number of people that get an ID.
Now, you might say, "but why can't they just go to the DMV in the next county?" or "why can't they get their IDs well ahead of time?", and you'd have a valid question! But when you have 100k people.. creating what looks like a minor inconvenience will definitely translate to fewer voters in the end. Now, lets create a bunch of minor inconveniences and the numbers really start to shrink.
What are better suggestions to prevent voter fraud? We know from history that voting fraud is a thing, in the 1800s it was known that political parties would pay fresh immigrants to vote (like the scene in Upton Sinclaire's "The Jungle"), or to even kidnap people and force them into voting [1]. So we can't rely on good faith.
I'm under the impression that to vote you must register in a voting district, surely that registration requires something like a birth certificate or a SSN, which I believe is the only requirement for a government issued ID... Operating on the idea that the requirement for government IDs may in fact be a good faith measure to prevent voter fraud, would perhaps an optimal solution be to bring a web camera to that voting registration area and simultaneously issue IDs there?
To be honest, I thought it was a non-issue since my voter registration is also my draft registration, so I assume I provided some form of citizenship proof when I registered. It was a while ago though so I don't recall the details.
The common solution when little documentation exists is to apply ink at voting booths. Something that comes off in a few days, but otherwise bonds to the top layer of people’s skin. That’s plenty for one person one vote. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_ink
As to having non residents vote, vastly more eligible voters don’t vote than people ineligible to vote. Honestly, as much hoopla as this gets it’s clear from recent elections it’s a non issue. Look for actual examples of this happening and your coming up empty.
A paranoid individual might claim that this ink could be tampered with or replaced with washable ink.
Can the same argument not be made for requiring voter IDs? youeseh I'm replying to says it's "few numbers" adding up. Another thread from sverige in this tree links vox and nyt saying that requiring ID has small numbers effect of turnout. So saying that their concern of voter fraud is a small numbers thing kind of lacks heft as an argument.
If these are both the case, then why not go with the requirement (and possibly make the requirement "easier" by issuing IDs at the same time/place) so there's no possibility of contesting the election results with regard to this particular issue?
In person voter fraud requires a large base of conspirators who are never caught, committing a federal crime on behalf of a political actor who also needs to somehow incentivize them to do so without being caught.
Whereas suppressing turn out just requires making it difficult for someone to have a bunch of ID they normally don't need on them in any part of their lives.
These laws are never just "photo ID" - they're always a box truck of weird edge rules about the type of ID.
My state lets me get a state ID even if I don't have a driver's license. The ID has my current address on it and my face too. I think that's plenty of proof.
Also, the DMV offices, where I can get my state ID has plenty of locations and they're open often enough and long enough every day that it doesn't prevent people from getting their ID.
Between those two, I think we're doing a pretty good job of keeping enough people honest that voter suppression or voting fraud aren't big enough issues here.
>I'm under the impression that to vote you must register in a voting district, surely that registration requires something like a birth certificate or a SSN
In California, at least, you can just use your state ID number and last four digits of your SSN [1]. California gives IDs to illegal aliens and SSNs are available to many non-citizens. These might have been checked for citizenship or might not. I suspect that they are not since the SSA itself wants you to bring the naturalization certificate if you want to change your non-citizen SSN card to a citizen's one. California never asked me for proof of citizenship so either it has an access to the citizenship data unavailable to the SSA or it just registers anyone with an SSN and a state ID.
We know from history that voter fraud is, very generally, something that can possibly happen.
However, the available evidence suggests that at present, voter fraud in the US (at least of the type that voter ID would prevent) is extraordinarily rare. [1] It's so rare that any measure that even slightly decreases turnout rates will likely cost at least an order of magnitude (if not multiple) more legitimate votes than illegitimate ones, meaning that the overall accuracy of the voting results will be reduced.
There's plenty of time to change course if and when there's an actual uptick in voter fraud, as opposed to an uptick in evidence-free allegations from politicians.
In Argentina everyone has a national identity card. It cost about US$5, and you can ask for an exception if you don't have the money. And I swear this is not the more organized and efficient country in the word.
To get one, you have to ask for a date about 2 or 3 weeks in advance, and you go to one of the official buildings. The process takes like 15 minutes and they send the ID to your home 2 or 3 weeks later.
Sometimes the government puts a truck with a mobile office in some parks. Sometimes you can get one also in some big shopping malls without a previous date. And if you wish, you can pay more to get the ID in the next day. Also, you can make your passport in the same office.
I heard this fraud implemented in Texas forces low income people without vehicles to travel 400+ miles by bus to the nearest DMV to get the correct replacement voting documentation (many seniors/disabled).
When conservatives (racists) attack voters using economics (in this case a voter tax), they know precisely which non-white voters they are targeting.
Poor people don't have IDs because they don't drive and don't have driver's licenses, and they don't have the work flexibility or the luxury to go to the DMV, afaik
Hey, I watched the video and found it interesting that the guy interviewed people in Berkeley and New York - places where voter suppression is not an issue.
You can't imagine an American that cannot afford $50-100 for a government I.D.? You can imagine (& possibly smell) the feces on the street but not the poor people who excrete it?
We know most Americans can't come up with $400 for an emergency, are you going to act like this won't impact voting?
This thread is why people are forcing diversity quotas even when it seems unnecessary, income diversity should be next.
You need a government ID to apply for food stamps or welfare or medicaid/social security, and to apply for unemployment or a job. It would seem like a poor person would utilize those services.
Also, you need an ID to have a bank account, buy a cellphone, buy alcohol or cigarettes.
> Also, you need an ID to have a bank account, buy a cellphone, buy alcohol or cigarettes.
Incorrect on all three accounts in the U.S.
Some states might have a law requiring ID for alcohol or cigarettes, but at least one definitely does not. Some stores actually violate their state's law with their store's ID policies.
I've done all three without ID (alcohol, not cigarettes though). Yes, it is possible to have a bank account without ID.
> Yes, it is possible to have a bank account without ID.
Where do you get that from? It seems incorrect: "You’ll need to provide a valid, government-issued photo ID, such as a driver’s license or a passport, or a state ID card from the Department of Motor Vehicles." [1]
> Some states might have a law requiring ID for alcohol or cigarettes, but at least one definitely does not. Some stores actually violate their state's law with their store's ID policies.
All states require you to be 21 to buy alcohol. Which states do not require you to provide ID for that?
Seems like we might be splitting hairs here due to laws such as Indianas that "Indiana has a photo identification requirement for all off-premises transactions to anyone who is or reasonably appears to be less than forty (40) years of age." [3]
So yes, some liquor seller might be lax on enforcement or judge you to look over 40. However, that doesn't change the laws.
"To open a checking or savings account, the bank or credit union will need to verify your name, date of birth, address, and ID number. An ID number can be a social security number or an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). To get an ITIN, you will need to fill out a form with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) .
If you don’t have a U.S. government-issued SSN or ITIN, some banks and credit unions will accept a passport number and country of issuance, an alien identification card number, or other government-issued ID number." [1]
Just to make sure we are on the same page, we are equating "ID" to a physical identification card, right? Since I think that's what this conversation stemmed from.
I bet those credit unions were just running my Social Security Number against a database to make sure it matched with the name, DOB, etc I provided.
I wonder if there is a legal definition of "verify" when it comes to banks and customers. Verifying could just be asking the customer, what their name is.
Since they need to verify your address as well I presume IDing with social security card also require providing a piece of mail.
Getting someone’s social security card is hard so this plus a piece of mail or government picture IDs seem fair for an election. Basically, the banking bar.
