Hacker News Reader

Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

In all seriousness, I too think it's silly we do not ID folks before voting.

However, one of the common hurdles seems to be that ID's are not free, as-in folks need to pay to get government issued ID (which is crazy, if you think about it. you don't even own your ID - the issuing state does) and this may negatively impact our poorest population's ability to participate in elections.

Why don't we issue government ID's for free (paid via taxes, naturally), and then ID folks at the voting booth? Only citizens have the right to vote, why not protect that right?

View on HN

It's not even that you have to pay a couple of bucks for an ID, it's that you have to get to a DMV, wait in line for five hours (true story, thanks Connecticut), and then get sent home because you didn't bring 8 pieces of mail sent to your previous 3 addresses, and the raised seal on your birth certificate (if you even have your birth certificate) was the wrong diameter (not quite true story, exaggerated for dramatic effect).

If my mom hadn't been there to very vocally insist that yes, that is the original birth certificate that the hospital issued after I was born, and yes she would know because she was there, then I would've had an awfully hard time getting a photo ID.

Coupled with DMV closures that (depending on who you ask) were targeted along racial lines, these little cards that we take for granted can be damn near impossible for some citizens to get.

https://thinkprogress.org/after-alabama-enforces-voter-id-sh...

That would be a valid argument if a) you didn't need your ID/Drivers license for virtually everything else that's good in society and b) You had to wait until registration day to get an ID card.

The fair thing to do is to require proper identification in elections. The fair thing to do is to make sure anyone that needs an ID/Drivers license is able to get one, if they are verifiable citizens.

Isn't that mostly an argument to fix broken bureaucracies around IDs?

And they are broken, to be sure. I recently moved away from NJ, but when I was there, renewing my driver's license was a real chore. Their antiquated computer system can't hold a string as long as "Christopher", so they abbreviate on my DL. That becomes a problem at renewal time, because my DL does not match my other IDs, so I always must supply my birth certificate, and jump through other hoops.

That system is broken, and needs fixing irrespective of voting rights.

Heh, try Texas. Vehicle registration and Drivers Licenses are done in different places. If you register the vehicle(s) first, you have to bring proof that you've registered any/all vehicle(s) when you get your license. This is very difficult when you have multiple vehicles, drive in one car with your wife and all vehicles are in both of your names.

The fun part is the registration is the window sticker and you don't need to keep any other paperwork as proof of registration (so we didn't). Also, they can't look up registrations because of different computer systems. We had to take pictures of all the registration stickers, email them to the person processing our license applications (while we sat at the desk), then waited for an hour while they called the state Police to verify the plates matched our address and our names.

After all of that, we both received our licenses in the mail with typos on them.

The most humorous part of the whole situation: We lived in Texas before (and both of our previous licenses were still within the expiration dates). But, we were told, because we had obtained licenses in another state we had to do new applications. Our new licenses have the same ID numbers as the previous ones.

There's two main parts to it:

1. The actual amount of in-person voting fraud is incredibly tiny... something on the order of 30 cases per billion votes [1]. This means that any voting ID measure is basically guaranteed to interfere in more legitimate votes (easy example: ex-Amish people who never had government documents) than fraudulent ones.

2. There's a long, long history of people in the US claiming to support voter ID, while actually using the laws involved to suppress minority voters. For example, Republican legislators in North Carolina looked up data categorized by race and type of vote, then used it to remove the voting methods, days, and forms of ID most used by minorities, in the name of "protecting against voter fraud" [2].

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-com...

[2]: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-n...

> The actual amount of in-person voting fraud is incredibly tiny... something on the order of 30 cases per billion votes

It doesn't matter what the national rate is (though it's likely higher than 30 per billion votes), what matters is that it happens. Plus there is more than simple impersonation. There is multiple voting. There is voting by ineligible voters. None of these can be stopped unless we can get to a place where verification can happen.

For example, a single county in Virginia has thousands of people who report on their jury duty forms that they are not citizens but who then go on to vote in elections.[1] The point is if they were not citizens then they were voting illegally. And if they were citizens but lied on their jury duty questionnaires they have committed a felony and thus ineligible to vote.

[1] https://pjmedia.com/blog/massive-non-citizen-voting-uncovere...

It's not silly at all. Many populations have difficulty maintaining current state-issued IDs with current addresses displayed on them. Remember that voting is a constitutionally guaranteed right. Driving is not. ID is not.

Example: Your mother falls and breaks her hip, requiring that she move into an assisted living facility in a neighboring town. How does she get to DMV to get her state-issued ID updated?

Example: You're a chambermaid at a hotel, which requires that you work from 5AM to 4PM daily. You don't own a car and you don't get PTO or paid breaks. DMV is open from 8-4, closed from 12-1. Your 1-year lease wasn't renewed and you had to move recently. What do you do?

You also have the issue of right to vote. Municipal elections in my city require residency, not citizenship. How do you distinguish between these elections?

Voter-ID proposals sound reasonable and neutral, but only exist to increase the friction associated with voting to decrease voter turnout, particularly among the poor, elderly and minorities. Just like Amazon has one-click to increase conversion, and eats the cost of accidental orders, the voting system needs to be as frictionless as possible for a strong democracy.

Some states do already have strict voter ID laws. I think Georgia is one of them. As they currently stand, they've been shown to disproportionally affect black and latino voters. There is nothing stopping any of these states from passing legislation to raise taxes to give ids away for free as well. You'll never see that though, because the states that have strict voter ID laws are Republican and giving away ids for free would give away their advantage over the Democrats.

You need to do more than make them free — they also need to be obtainable at times other than weekdays 9 to 5, when people are working. And they need to be obtainable without a car. Basically, it's been found that there are (presumably unintentional) roadblocks toward some underprivileged people getting IDs, and until those are sorted out, they are unsuitable for use as you describe.

Every citizen has a federally issued identification number, aka your social security number.

We could have a list at each voting center. You show up, tell them your SSN (or better yet, produce a card showing it - and yes, I know we'd need to do better than flimsy paper like the current cards are printed on), they cross it off the list and you go vote. Your ID can't be re-used - and your name doesn't matter.

1 ID, 1 Vote... sort of thing.

So what happens if you go to vote and they tell you "no, somebody already used your SSN, too bad"?

So you propose we allow you to vote again - now knowing full well someone else committed vote fraud in some attempt to taint the election?

"Again"? In this theoretical scenario, I never voted in the first place. Why should I be responsible for what someone else did?

Are you implying we should accept known fraudulent votes and count them towards results?

In this theoretical scenario, my vote is the legitimate one, and your rule would accept the known fraudulent vote instead of mine just because that one was cast first.

Social security numbers can and have been issued to multiple people[1]. And some people have been issued multiple social security numbers[2] (which would allow them to vote more than once). Social security numbers are not a good unique identifier.

[1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/3004654/government/a-tale-of-...

[2] http://oig.ssa.gov/audits-and-investigations/audit-reports/A...

SSNs aren't guaranteed unique. They are not an effective ID, even though many groups try to treat them as such.

> SSNs aren't guaranteed unique

They're supposed to be, however sometimes they aren't. That's a bureaucratic and easily solvable issue, however.

Nope, SSNs aren't mandatory. Many people don't have one, use the wrong one, have two or have some other issue. Voting is a right.

Every person lives somewhere. You register in advance.

The person sees a list of people, one of which is "Spooky23, 123 Spooky St, Spookytown, CA"

I walk up to the table and say "Hi, I'm Spooky23". I sign the paper, am assigned a number, get a ballot, and vote. You're name and address cannot be used again.

> Nope, SSNs aren't mandatory

That's not correct. Every citizen is assigned one at birth. You cannot choose to not have one, and it's not optional to pay into the system. I agree, however, some people have issues with theirs, but that doesn't preclude a voting ID system from being effective.

> I walk up to the table and say "Hi, I'm Spooky23

The problem is with people who do not vote, and someone else uses their vote illegitimately.

Showing a government issued ID of some sort solves that issue for the most part.

At-birth SSN issuance is a relatively recent innovation, and there are living people born before that time. Paying into SS is not mandatory in the sense that it is perfectly legal to accept employment from one of the many (mostly public agency, but IIRC there are also some narrow exceptions in private industry) employers who are not mandated to, and have not chosen to, pay into SS.

You apply for a social security card at birth. You're not compelled to. (See: https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10023.pdf )

Most people do, because you cannot claim a dependent for tax purposes without an SSN. But we're a nation of >300M people. There are many exceptions.

Because there are many people who bristle at the thought of being required to possess a government-issued ID, and this would in effect be requiring that. Of course, most people _do_ have one, but there are enough who choose not to (or want it not to be a requirement for ideological reasons) that this is an obstacle.

Also, what good does that do for people who vote by mail? I live abroad, how would they check my ID exactly? I suppose we could do a public-key setup like Estonia, but I can't imagine that rollout going smoothly.

Citizens living abroad are generally known, either via tax filings or you notified the embassy, etc.

I'd think people living abroad are a small enough number to manage some other means of verification (such as your social security number, which every citizen has for free, can only be used to vote 1 time per election).

> Because there are many people who bristle at the thought of being required to possess a government-issued ID

Fair point - however they all already have a government issued ID - a social security number. Instead of a driver's license, we could use that then. I'm just arguing for _some_ form of verification that you are who you claim to be, and that you only get 1 vote per election.

Right now, you can walk into a voting center and just make up a name. The person will find you somewhere on the list and either admit you to vote without any further scrutiny, or inform you that your voting place is someplace else (they'll even give you the address!).

You're proposing quite a lot of bureaucracy to solve a problem which literally does not exist.

Despite extreme focus on this issue by right-wing groups in the past decade or so, the number of cases of voter fraud is laughably small.

A quick google search seems to claim otherwise. I've seeing articles as extreme as claiming 1 in 5 registered voters in Ohio are bogus individuals.[1] It seems, it matters greatly who does the "investigation" and in what light/political climate.

Regardless, even if there was zero voter fraud - it's crazy to think we check ID's to buy cough syrup, alcohol, every time you use a credit card, see a rated R movie, rent a car, rent an apartment, etc... but not when you vote.

[1] http://humanevents.com/2012/09/17/vote-fraud-alert-one-out-o...

Given that investigations have found about 30 cases of voter fraud per billion votes [1], is there any indication that these ineligible voters on the rolls actual lead to more voter fraud?

Given that the actual article being indirectly clickbaited [2] suggests these ineligible voters are people who "haven’t voted in at least four years or [...] apparently have moved", is there any evidence to suggest that they are "bogus" rather than normal people with out-of-date paperwork?

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-com...

[2]: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/09/16/vot...

>it's crazy to think we check ID's to buy cough syrup, alcohol, every time you use a credit card, see a rated R movie, rent a car, rent an apartment, etc

The difference between those things you listed and the right to vote is that they aren't listed in the constitution -- and it doesn't say anything about an ID card being needed to exercise that right. But it does say that race and a number of other factors should have no bearing.

It's funny that the "constitution party" (as some Republicans call themselves) seem to forget that.

The Constitution Party is an actual minor party, not an alternative name for the Republican Party.

OK, then I should have said the "party that wraps themselves in the constitution any chance they get".

Both major parties (and probably all third parties) do that, they just pick different parts to focus on and different parts to ignore.

You're clearly forgetting (or choosing to ignore) the part that says Citizens have the right to vote - not "every person".

ID'ing voters is simply a mechanism to protect Citizen's rights, as well as the integrity of our democracy.

You need a picture ID to enter a federal courthouse but you have a right to enter a courthouse.

Yes, absolutely. I think it's silly to not ID people at the voting booth, but we can't change it without fixing the accessibility of IDs first.

I hate to be cynical but there are groups who push back on ID'ing folks for voting, and my suspicion is their motivation is the illegitimate voters that weeds out. It really is the only reasoning that makes sense to me.

Given that there are statistically NO illegitimate voters to be weeded out, I think you have to look elsewhere to find the source of the pushback. Maybe check out the several states have used voter ID laws as a way to target and suppress minority voters (and been slapped back by various appellate courts over the past few months) for a start.

Given that investigations have found about 30 cases of voter fraud per billion votes[1], what illegitimate voters are you talking about?

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-com...

Federal judges recently struck down portions of voter ID laws in North Carolina and Wisconsin

In the case of Wisconsin

> “The evidence in this case casts doubt on the notion that voter ID laws foster integrity and confidence,” Peterson wrote. “The Wisconsin experience demonstrates that a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to real incidents of disenfranchisement, which undermine rather than enhance confidence in elections, particularly in minority communities. To put it bluntly, Wisconsin’s strict version of voter ID law is a cure worse than the disease.”

In North Carolina,

> “The new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision” and “impose cures for problems that did not exist,” Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote for the panel. “Thus the asserted justifications cannot and do not conceal the State’s true motivation.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/appeals-c...

In the case of North Carolina the representatives actually asked for information on how the proposed law would affect African American voters, then went ahead and did exactly the worst things.

Besides that

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-com...

NC is also terribly gerrymandered. It's a shame, I really liked living there. But, politically, it's a mess. A great state for higher education (Duke, the various UNCs, NCSU) and working in the tech industry (and others), but absolutely pitiful handling of K-12 education, voter and civil rights.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/19/gerrymanderi...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com