I personally find issue with the idea of convicts being unilaterally disbarred from voting while I also feel that verifying the identification of the voter is pretty crucial to a believable vote. But I didn't read the whole thing. There might be more objectionable material that I missed or didn't understand properly.
There’s a real risk that voter ID laws could bar more legitimate voters than illegitimate. If you feel there were, say, 1000 fraudulent votes but that voter ID legislation would prevent 10000 legitimate votes, would that be an acceptable trade off? I say no. And from what I have read in the past the ratio is far worse.
I mean, I have needed ID to vote for 30 years. I don't understand the objection to making some effort to verify that the person presenting himself as J. Random Voter is actually who he says he is.
> For Settles to get one of those, his name has to match his birth certificate — and it doesn’t. In 1964, when he was 14, his mother married and changed his last name. After Texas passed a new voter-ID law, officials told Settles he had to show them his name-change certificate from 1964 to qualify for a new identification card to vote.
> So with the help of several lawyers, Settles tried to find it, searching records in courthouses in the D.C. area, where he grew up. But they could not find it. To obtain a new document changing his name to the one he has used for 51 years, Settles has to go to court, a process that would cost him more than $250 — more than he is willing to pay.
That's a pretty clear illegal poll tax, if you ask me.
Pretty clear not an illegal poll tax since this man is an edge case who uses a name with no proof. It’s sad that this is ultimately his mother’s fault, and he can’t ask her for the $250 to fix this.
It's his mother's fault for losing the documentation of his name change.
Am I prepared? Yes. I have all my important identity documents locked in a fire safe. If something should happen to them, I'm willing to pay the $250, etc. amount to fix the problem.
I asked if you'd accept "you don't get Constitutional right X because you're an edge case" if it were your edge case and not someone else's.
($250 is, to many on HN, an insignificant amount. To some in the world, it's the sort of expense that'd mean eviction or having to skip your diabetes meds for the week. No one should have to pick between necessary expenses and their right to vote like this.)
You changed your question by paraphrasing. Surely, you know how the original question could be inferred to be more about the specific thing we're discussing. But I'll placate you and answer your clarified question:
Yes. I live in California and own guns, so I've already seen my state make many compromises on the most liberal (not as in 'left') interpretation of my 2nd Amendment rights. Some of the laws even result in extra fees. And no, I don't "get" my 2nd Amendment right in the same sense that people "get" that right in Texas.
Anyway, I'm not sure we're going to get through talking past each other on this topic. Voter id is clearly intended to ensure and enforce an implicit voting right that my-vote-counts-the-same-as-yours (disregarding any complaints about the Electoral College). If people cannot acknowledge that and want to pretend voting is identical to, say, speech, I'm not sure how to even continue the conversation from there.
Thank you for scare quotes around something I never said. What will you accuse me of next?
I don't think any of this is "worth it," I just don't agree with coming up with sob stories as a counterexample. It's not that hard to hold onto important government documents like your birth certificate, social security card, etc. The argument against disenfranchisement shouldn't look like such a clear edge case.
If anything, I think there's a case to be made that the government shouldn't be using paper documents handed to potentially irresponsible parents to verify identity, and then holding someone responsible for their parents' fuck-ups. But the jump from such an argument to saying we shouldn't verify voter identity at all is an absurd one.
It’s also really easy for someone to steal your documents. It’s not unheard of for an abusive partner to steal documents in order to trap their victim.
I know your pattern now, you’ll call this another edge case sob story and set it aside because it isn’t convenient for your argument.
As for your paper document argument… what is your proposed alternative? You must have one, else you wouldn’t have floated it.
Abusive partners exerting control by restricting access to important documents is a very real problem for many women, and men for that matter. Also this is something abusive parents and human traffickers do. It should not be minimized and trivialized as “my dog ate my voter id”.
I’m trivializing the use of the victim of an event as justification to say we can’t have voter id. It’s a strange argument, coming off as if voter id laws and protecting people from spousal abuse must be at odds, so anyone who supports voter id must support spousal abuse as well.
Is the next argument that Hitler wanted voter id? At what point do we get to actually discuss the merits of validating a person is who they say they are so they get exactly one vote?
If you want to champion a law that impacts someone's fundamental rights as a citizen, rights protected by the US Constitution, it's your duty as a fellow citizen to consider the impact of that law on everyone, and to show that you've taken appropriate consideration as to the first and second order impact of your proposal.
Implementing a voter ID law in the way being pushed right now will disenfranchise people, and it seems like every time an example of an impacted group is brought it, they are summarily dismissed and their existence minimized as "edge cases" or mocked. e.g. "What, are minorities so dumb they can't get an ID?" or in this case "What, did the dog eat your voter ID?"
But it doesn't change the fact that this law you are pushing will take away their rights. What are you going to propose to make them whole, or did you not think it through that far? It would just be nice if you would demonstrate you are as concerned with disenfranchising your fellow citizens as you are cracking down on suspected and heretofore yet unproven massive voter fraud.
> At what point do we get to actually discuss the merits of validating a person is who they say they are so they get exactly one vote?
Well, it would be nice if the side claiming massive systemic voter fraud would prove their claims. That would be a good starting point. Then we could have actionable fixes that address a specific problem to minimize collateral damage. I just don't understand why we have to engage in a massive civic project that will strip rights from citizens under literally no burden of proof for those making these claims.
Why do you think I'm obligated to defend the position that "massive systemic voter fraud" is the only valid reason for asking people to identify themselves when voting? It's interesting considering I never brought up massive systemic voter fraud, I only brought up that a $250 fee to resolve a one-off problem with someone's identity, that his mother ultimately caused, isn't a "poll tax."
Apologies for replying to your question with a question. What is hard and expensive about voting today?
I'm interested in your experiences on the topic, as I've personally not had a voting experience that was hard or expensive. For what it's worth, I'm considered a minority in the U.S.
It depends on where you are. In my state (Oregon), voting is easy and secure. We vote by mail as a default and if you move and don't get your ballot, you can go to any voting office and request all the way up until when polls close on election day.
Now, if you are in republican held states like Alabama or Georgia, it's going to be a different story. republicans use several methods to disenfranchise voters, voter ID is just one of them.
1. republicans always aim to have the shortest polling hours possible. This benefits them because their base tends to be older and more time/ability to vote during the day. Working-class voters are especially impacted by this because if they can even get time off during the day, they probably will have to pay for the privilege of voting in the form of sacrificing hours at work and getting a reduced paycheck.
2. The second thing republicans do is close polling stations in areas they don't expect a lot of support. This creates massive wait times for folks who are more likely to vote Democrat.
Those hourly workers who are already sacrificing money to vote have to take even more time off to cast their ballot.
3. Another tactic is voter roll purges. A lot of folks don't know that they've been unenrolled from the voter rolls till they show up on election day. This particularly effects renters who might not realize they aren't registered at their current address, and miss mail regarding it because its sent to their former address.
4. republicans will also just shamelessly attempt to discourage Democratic turnout. For example, Georgia got rid of voting early Sunday morning to put a damper on the 'Souls to Polls' movement. There is no rationalization for this. They didn't even bother to lie about it. They just wanted to squash a successful Black get-out-the-vote initiative.
>3. Another tactic is voter roll purges. A lot of folks don't know that they've been unenrolled from the voter rolls till they show up on election day. This particularly effects renters who might not realize they aren't registered at their current address, and miss mail regarding it because its sent to their former address.
I hear this a lot, but states do have to keep their voter rolls up-to-date by law. People move in and out all the time, and not everyone votes in every election. Are there mechanisms that you think are effective in reducing the chances of someone mistakenly getting removed, while still allowing for stale records to be dropped?
There are two things that could alleviate the problem without disenfranchising voters. One, don't purge voter roles right before major elections. Two, allow for same day registration updates.
You show up, they find you in the system at your old address, you submit an updated registration card, they hand you a ballot, and we all move on with our lives.
I think that's totally reasonable, but I'm still left wondering when and how states should actually carry out purging their voter records. Would a year before a presidential/midterm election be fair? Six months? What about primary elections?
As for same-day registration, I'm sort of for it, but only if people understand the cost involved. And it's not about money. I served as a poll worker in California many years ago, which has very accommodating rules for voting. You can register same-day, vote out-of-precinct, the whole smash. It makes it really easy for voters, which is a good thing. But it has a price: it makes the check-in process more complicated. If there are a lot of people who need to do same-day registration (as was the case in my precinct when the city renamed a street a few weeks before the election), then it causes long lines.
Why would you do it before major elections if it's just about book keeping? You could purge them a month after mid-terms and a month after general Presidential because those get the most turnout.
When you purge your voter roles becomes a lot less important if you allow for registration/reregistration on election day regardless.
Oregon has same day registration update (and we have motor voter) and no long-lines because we vote primarily by mail.
Disenfranchising voters to 'avoid long-lines' is just a red herring.
There are lots of ways to create quick, safe voting. Election problems are the result of a deliberate attempt to make voting harder for certain people. Full stop.
I've lived in Michigan, Georgia, Florida, and Texas and (again, as a minority) have never experienced any of these. I'll admit that confirmation bias is a real thing and may apply here, however these points smell of common media talking points and heavy, heavy tribalism. Even as a registered Democrat, I just do not buy into the "Democrats are purveyors of voting righteousness and the Republicans are out to destroy our right to vote" narrative.
That's great for you! That doesn't really have any bearing on the documented reality of republican disenfranchisement of voters.
Sometimes 'common media talking points' are talking points because a real and serious problem exists. There's plenty of evidence of the problem if you want to take the time to get educated on it.
republicans ARE out to destroy the right to vote. They are actively anti-democracy to the point of spreading outright lies about the 2020 Presidential election and attempting to overthrow the democratically elected candidate for US President. This really isn't a 'both sides' thing.
When you have to pretend that both sides are bad so as to appear fair, we call that 'enlightened centrism'. republicans represent a minority of Americans. They'd never have power again if we had fair democratic elections. Democrats represent the majority of Americans. They benefit greatly from fair democratic elections. It's just that simple.
> republicans represent a minority of Americans. They'd never have power again if we had fair democratic elections. Democrats represent the majority of Americans. They benefit greatly from fair democratic elections. It's just that simple.
This is the truth, and is why Republicans are doing what they are doing. It's not because Republicans are bad and Democrats are good. It's because Republicans are going to lose otherwise.
When it comes to voter ID, the devil is in the details. I'm a poll worker in Virginia and think our ID laws are pretty fair. We accept driver's licenses and passports, sure, but we also take employer photo ID, any current Virginia school ID, and even old Virginia driver's licenses up to a year after expiration. If a state gives affordances like these to make it easy for people to fulfill the ID requirement, I don't see what the problem is.
And I don't think fraud is a particularly good reason to be for voter ID. The ID requirement seems to speed the line along. We don't need people to spell out their names, especially for non-native English speakers with uncommon or foreign names. The security argument for voter ID strikes me as bogus, but it has a place for efficiency and accessibility.
The problem is not at the point of acceptance, it's at the point of issuance. An egregious violator is Alabama, which systematically closed DMVs in Black counties [1].
The point of modern voting suppression is it's designed such that each hurdle on its own looks reasonable to people new to the issue. But the aggregate is intended to suppress voters in a targeted way. The architects of these programs even publicly say as much, it's not a secret.
Without making the direct comparison, it's worth noting that the Jim Crow voter suppression laws similarly evolved from humble beginnings. That's why it's important to watch the trend line, and these laws do not trend in the direction of more voter participation.
I don't think we're disagreeing here. I did say the devil is in the details. I'm putting forth Virginia as a state that does it well (i.e., there are multiple independent sources of valid ID, so we can't pull Alabama-like DMV shenanigans), and pointing out that voter ID has value in ways not often discussed, particularly in making the voter check-in process go more smoothly.
There are interesting trade-offs to consider in the voter ID discussion.
This is also why, until the Roberts court gutted the VRA, the courts looked at outcomes of policies and not just intent -- anyone can say the intent was to stop fraud, but if the outcomes are suppression, that used to matter. No more, and that's why state legislatures have jumped at the chance to enact so many laws that "stop fraud" (a problem for which there has not been, and still does not have, any evidence.)
I don't know anything about Virginia, but based on your comment alone I see clearly what the problem is. What you described is a system that disenfranchises everyone that satisfies tree simple rules: doesn't drive, don't travel internationally, and don't work for a large company. E.g. urban poor service-industry worker (outside of chains, no restaurant issues employer IDs).
>What you described is a system that disenfranchises everyone that satisfies tree simple rules: doesn't drive, don't travel internationally, and don't work for a large company. E.g. urban poor service-industry worker (outside of chains, no restaurant issues employer IDs).
If you took a few moments to look up our voter ID requirements, you'd find that your characterization is totally unfair and inaccurate. We also accept utility bills, government checks (i.e., for those on government assistance), and a signed affidavit saying you have an ID. I'm a Virginia homer through and through; I think we do voter ID the right way.
Any citizen or legal resident can obtain a state Real ID compliant card even if they don't drive, travel, or work. Most states offer reduced or free fees for low income individuals.
People that believe that are substituting feelings for evidence, so passing laws to assuage their concerns doesn’t make sense. That’d be like requiring drug testing for people to get public assistance, but worse because voting is so fundamental.
I personally find issue with the idea of convicts being unilaterally disbarred from voting while I also feel that verifying the identification of the voter is pretty crucial to a believable vote. But I didn't read the whole thing. There might be more objectionable material that I missed or didn't understand properly.