Philadelphia write-in candidate: I won with one vote
thehill.com
thehill.com
Is America unique in having so many elections and positions? This job title reminds me of the "Fuse alarm fuse" (which was the fuse for the alarm that checked if a fuse had blown)
In the lead up to an election I’d work, first up was ~2 hours of training. We were the ones in charge of the polling place, so we were the ones who needed to know all the processes and procedures.
The weekend before the election, I would pick up the supplies. Probably around 40-50 pounds of stuff. You aren’t allowed to leave In in your car: Once you sign the chain of custody for it, the next time you get out of your car is when you’re parked at home, ready to unload.
In the weeks before the election, I also would be getting in touch with whomever is in charge of the polling place site. You think it’s fun dealing with an HOA as a resident? Well, try dealing with them as an outsider.
So, leading up to the election (that is, prior to E-1), I would’ve logged about 7 hours, most of which was during a business day (training could be daytime or evening, as there were always multiple sessions available, and supplies pickup was always on a weekend).
Oh, and I was also responsible for managing the other people would be at the polling place.
On E-1, if I got prior OK from the property, I would set up some time during the evening. Sometimes one or two of my clerks would be available to help, but not always. Anything non-sensitive and nonessential was set up (so, no breaking seals yet!).
On E-Day I would be waking up around 4:30. Polls open precisely at 7, so I had to be at the polling place by 6. I would take attendance, administer the oath, go through the same oath myself, and then do all the seal verification and equipment setup. Then, the flood began.
If I had a full board, I could give everyone (and myself) a lunch and a break. If we were short, then we would do what we could. Luckily, we all got some sort of break!
There would be quiet times during the day, but it would often be nonstop during the morning (there was always a line at opening) and after 4.
Polls close at 8. We then had to do full packing, space cleanup, and all of the accounting. It was a win for us if we left by 9.
I then had to go to drop off everything, with a clerk driving behind me (to make sure I went directly to the drop off point). If anything was missing, I was on the hook for it. It was a win for me if I was out by 10.
Finally, on E+1, I’d have to return the facility key. Then I was truely done.
It was a drawn-out process, but almost everything we did had a very good reason. Yes, the hours were long, and the work was often not fun, but I took a _great_ deal of pride in it.
To be clear, I wasn't an employee of the Orange County Registrar of Voters, so I wouldn't count myself as being "on the inside". Neal Kelley, who was Registrar of Voters back when I volunteered, is still there today, and was doing alot of stuff with YouTube at the time. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/user/ocrov/videos
There is also a _ton_ of poll worker training info online, which you can read here: https://www.ocvote.com/volunteer/poll-worker-resource-center... The dates say 2016, because there won't be many updates in off years.
I first volunteered because Orange County were using the Hart InterCivic eSlate voting system. You can read about them here: https://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/voting-equipment/ha...
These systems didn't run Windows. They ran some sort of minimal OS that had a sub 10-second boot time. Power and data went through the same cable, with a DB-9 connector at each end. All case seams and unused ports had security seals on them, which were checked at pickup, at dropoff, and during the day (we had chain of custody paperwork that travelled with the hardware). All the voting machines had printers. The eSlates were in stand-up cases with all the necessary hardware (feet for standing up, privacy shroud, etc.), and which also kept all the ports covered up. Since power to the eSlates came through the data cable, anyone messing with a cable would take out their eSlate, and all the ones after it.
(NOTE: You may notice many setups having a power cable for each eSlate. That's not a power cable for the eSlate, it's a power cable for the printer. The printers are thermal printers, and draw enough power that they can't use the daisy-chain power source.)
All of our eSlates had printers. Ballots lived in each individual eSlate's memory, in the JBC's (the controller's) memory, and in paper form (the printer was sealed). It could run on battery for a limited time, though we couldn't use that, because the printer wouldn't work. We had a supply of paper ballots if all else failed. Emergency support (new equipment, more paper ballots, etc.) was available typically within an hour.
I ended up really liking the voting system, because it was simple on the face of it, but it was also clear to me that it wasn't using a Windows OS. I wish it was used more.
> As a technologist, what do you see as the major error modes of the American system of polling?
You're not going to get the answer you want. I know alot about the executing of the voting process for Orange County, California. That _might_ translate to other counties in California (as election policy is set most at the state level), but I'm not going to speak to other locales. To do so, I would need to study the county's training material, and see polling place-level records of a previous election.
But, _speaking specifically to Orange County, California_, I noticed two issues:
1. Change of Address often did not make it to the voter rolls. If you moved within a county, it was more likely to process OK, followed by moving between counties, but moving between states often didn't remove you from your former home's rolls.
I think this was a trust or coordination issue: Since policy is mostly set at the state level, it's easier to coordinate information transfer between counties in a state. There isn't much in the way of a Federal ID number, except for the SSN, and I doubt your Registrar would want anything to do with that number.
2. Your full ballot is most often only available at the polling places within your precinct. IMO, that is because of (a) the voting systems are not using full-featured OSes, so they lack the capacity to store that many different types + languages of ballots; plus (b) each polling place only has their own rolls, so your info is only listed at your polling place.
Note how both issues seem to be forms of information synchronization problems: Transferring data between regions (which doesn't have to happen quickly), or synchronizing voter sign-in data between polling places in real time.
Personally, in my opinion, I would rather _not_ have real-time sign-in data sync between polling places, because that adds more layers of technology that could go wrong.
Also, we had a good method of handling provisionals: If anything would go wrong procedural-wise, we would record information about you, and us (the polling place), and the situation. You would then sign paperwork saying that the information is correct, and you haven't already voted. You would then vote, with your ballet uniquely IDed. All the info, and the unique ID of the ballot, would go into a sealed envelope, which was treated like a voted ballot. Your vote would not count in the immediate numbers (the numbers released that night), but if everything checked out, it _would_ be counted in the final, certified numbers.
According to https://www.ocvote.com/results/left-to-count/provisionals-le..., OC had ~130k provisional ballots processed.
>Do you think fraud is wide-spread?
No, I do not think fraud is wide-spread (_in Orange County, California_), precisely because of the provisional process. For example, if someone voted by mail, the rolls reflect that. If someone then comes in and tries to vote using that name, then they have two choices:
1. Hand over your un-mailed, empty return envelope, and vote at the polls. We then void your envelope, and keep it in a special container, separate from everything else.
2. Vote provisionally.
(If you have a sealed, ready-to-mail return envelope, you could also drop it off to us directly, to save the stamp. We treated those the same as voted ballots.)
If anything appeared unusual, we would record all the information, and then the voter would vote provisionally.
It's worth noting that the provisional voting process added 5-10 minutes to the voting process, so perpetrating fraud would need a significant investment in manpower, with no guarantee that your provisional ballot would make it past the people at the ROV who would examine it.
The only real way I could think of to perpetrate voter fraud is to memorize a significant number of non-vote-by-mail voters' full names and addresses, and then claim to be them at the polling place. But, again, you need alot of manpower, because it's the same Clerks for the entire day, so if you show up multiple times, people will notice. Making vote-by-mail easy to do really helps stop this, because of what I described above.
> Is it even possible to measure fraud (since, by definition, if you detect it you eliminate it)?
Yes, you can. You take the rolls after the election, scan in the signatures, and compare those signatures to each voter's original registration. If a _specialist_ can confirm a signature mismatch, then you have the _possibility_ of one instance of voter fraud, which you (by definition) _cannot_ correct, because all the non-provisional ballots are anonymous.
This is another plus point for vote-by-mail, as you can catch these cases before removing the ballot from the envelope.
> Are there other methods of polling that might work better?
This question is too general for me to answer. For example, the system whereby states set election policy is something that comes from the country's history as a tight alliance of individual States, so IMO it's not really worth arguing that.
I think there could be two major improvements:
1. Make it _much_ easier for change of address info to get to Registrars of Voters. For example, when you terminate a rent/lease, or submit a Change of Address form to the USPS or DMV/BMV, that should trigger an automatic notification to the ROV for the county you are leaving. You would then take responsibility for registering at your new address.
The concern there is privacy, because it makes voter information even more valuable. That brings me to suggestion #2…
2. Have all voter communications go through the Registrar.
Instead of offering voter rolls for sale, the Registrar should serve as a conduit for mailing/calling.
I mean, companies like Facebook let you target ads towards specific groups of people. The Registrar knows who voted (though not who they voted for), and they know people's addresses & party affiliations. They also have the infrastructure in place for doing large mailings (since they mail out ballots), so if you're a candidate and you want to mail stuff to certain people, give the materials to the Registrar and have them do it.
Not only that, removing people from the voter roll for this reason almost always results in headlines implying or outright stating that this is voter suppression. There's even a popular conspiracy theory about the 2016 US presidential election (started by journalist Greg Palast) that relies on the assumption that almost every voter marked for removal from the rolls in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin in this process was a Democrat voter whose vote was suppressed.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/could_not_get_elected_dogcatc...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/06/02/a-...
It was a fun experience. One of the other judges was an elderly man who served in WW2, but on the german side. He was Danish and conscripted at 14 to do air defense work in the last days of the war.
I thought it was an amazing statement about America.
In some jurisdictions in the United States, coroners are elected officials who needn't have any medical training at all.
But the office may have different responsibilities: here, their main function is to determine how someone died when there are questions about that, in the first instance via an investigation delegated to appropriate professionals and then, where necessary, by presiding over a judicial inquest.
Election judges should be the most non-partisan role in government.
There also a ban on any election material within a certain distance of a poling place though blank colours are allowed for poll watchers.
Reminds me I must see about volunteering for the next election
I'd also imagine the powers of an election judge are pretty limited. It sounds like they're the Philly equivalent of the person who runs an individual polling place in NY. Not much wiggle room for causes of any sort.
"This actually will be a great way for me to be more involved in my neighborhood and work actively toward more progressive change. I actually have a background in community organizing, and while I'm not entirely sure how this position could align with that, it seems like an opportunity to find some ways to at least more deeply connect with my neighbors."
He's talking about becoming more active in his community on a personal level.
You know what, I'm really tired of this. This idea that a role is "non-partisan" is hogwash and has NEVER reflected reality.
Even worse, the Republicans do NOT believe this, and they utilize every single advantage to a position in order to advance their agenda.
These kinds of false equivalencies that somehow the left is required to take the "high road" and remain hamstrung while the right can punch below the belt all they want must die.
Sometimes you have to punch a bully to get the message through. It's time for the right to meet the fist of the left.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/29/obamas.first.campaign...
In his first race for office, seeking a state Senate seat on Chicago's gritty South Side in 1996, Obama effectively used election rules to eliminate his Democratic competition.
As a community organizer, he had helped register thousands of voters. But when it came time to run for office, he employed Chicago rules to invalidate the voting petition signatures of three of his challengers.
The move denied each of them, including incumbent Alice Palmer, a longtime Chicago activist, a place on the ballot. It cleared the way for Obama to run unopposed on the Democratic ticket in a heavily Democrat district.
1 Methods
1.1 Impediments to voter registration
1.2 Photo ID laws
1.3 Purging of voter rolls
1.4 Limitations on early voting
1.5 Felon disenfranchisement
1.6 Transgender disenfranchisement
1.7 Disinformation about voting procedures
1.8 Inequality in Election Day resources
1.9 Closure of DMV offices
1.10 Caging lists
1.11 Gerrymandering
1.12 Jim Crow laws
1.13 Off-year elections
https://www.aclu.org/issues/voting-rights/fighting-voter-sup...
In 2017, at least 99 bills that restrict access to registration and voting were introduced in 31 states. Thirty-two states have some form of voter ID law currently in effect. These ID laws don’t affect all people equally: people of color, low-income people, the elderly, students, and people with disabilities disproportionately lack the types of IDs that states deem acceptable.
http://projectcensored.org/the-right-to-vote-a-candid-histor...
In 2012, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) influenced several states to pass restrictive voter ID laws, which particularly impacted low-income voters, people with disabilities, and voters of color. Electoral reform is needed, López reports. Elections and the fight for voting rights are tools to be used to bring about revolutionary change and real democracy for the multiracial working class.
There has not been any corporate media coverage of this story as of March 19, 2012.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/opinion/voter-suppression...
...The Ohio law removed voters from eligibility for sitting out three election cycles and failing to respond to a state warning that their eligibility was at risk; this was proof enough, the state said, that the voters had moved elsewhere. Ohio says the law is no more than housekeeping, an effort to tidy up the rolls, not voter suppression. But the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled last September that it violated federal law protecting registrants who choose not to vote....
(One of several specific measures noted.)
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/days-after-activ...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/29/us_voting_machines_...
Voting machine hacks are wholesale to voter fraud's retail, and can swing far more votes, within or across multiple states. Systemic suppression methods, including role exclusion, gerrymandering, and the like, are also similarly far more efficient.
A high vote count is not an unmitigated good.
Just as the suppression of votes by women, ownership rights of men over wives and children, sale of useless (or harmful) patent medicines, and the wholesale slaughter of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, the mentally retarded, and others in Germany in the 1930s-1940s was, in the strict sense, legal.
What is also the case, however, in the specific instance of the voter-suppression methods listed is:
1. That there is record of them being specifically adopted with the goal of dissuading specific elements of the public from voting.
2. That similar methods have previously been found unconstitutional and/or illegal.
A thing being "legal" is not the only test of its goodness. A thing being strictly legal today is not an assurance that it will be legal tomorrow. A thing having a history of strongly resembling tactics used to, and being specifically presented as a way of, disenfranchising voters in ways that have been found specifically unconstitutional also generally bodes poorly for it.
He didn't say that.
And the other similar wording doesn't quite match "advance progressive causes", and sounds like commentary by the newspaper itself:
> Garcia is hopeful that the position will allow for pursuing progressive goals for the district through community organizing.
Still, I wonder why you'd think the "work actively toward more progressive change" quote couldn't be paraphrased as “advance progressive causes.”
But my real objection was the preceding bit, "he wants to use the election judge role to..."
The full quote continues "I actually have a background in community organizing, and while I'm not entirely sure how this position could align with that, it seems like an opportunity to find some ways to at least more deeply connect with my neighbors." It seems clear to me that he's talking about being more active in his community on a personal level, not contemplating electoral fraud.
I think your concern may be a little overblown.
> "This actually will be a great way for me to be more involved in my neighborhood and work actively toward more progressive change," Garcia told The Hill.
Context seems to indicate he was serious about this statement.
His tweets are tongue-in-cheek but that's not a reason to dismiss everything he says in the article.
Looking at the electoral ward division maps it’s not hard to see why: these political units only cover a few streets. There are hundreds of these subdivisions across the city. I’d argue that this is too minor of a role to even bother having an elected position for.
I suppose since these divisions are so tiny one might have a chance of knowing any individuals who might be running against each other, but otherwise, what criteria would one judge the best candidate?
Depending on your views, you might also think it's inappropriate for this position to even joke about that, which I can sort of see. I don't think it was a serious suggestion though.
Would you also bet he's serious about Taco Tuesday? Because you have exactly as much evidence for one as the other.
Although I do take your comment and apparent inability to extend the benefit of a doubt as fairly negative indicator of the public's ability to work through the current political divide productively. :/
> Please move to Manayunk, where I now rule and now plan to secede from the United States.
There are also nearly a dozen tweets following that of the same form (e.g. "The weird thing is, I demanded people always call me Judge Garcia, way before this even happened!")
It's also quite laughable to chatter about "appropriateness in politics" referring to America, considering a bunch of idiot republicans drafted a tax bill in the middle of the night with scribbles in margins and passed it as law in our country without reading it, less than 24 hours ago (as of the time of writing this comment.)
"Appropriateness" is a code word for "it's ok to make things measurably worse, if you just smile while doing it." But if you make a stupid joke about the Sex Crime President on Twitter, apparently -- that's just not cool, maaaaan, and it like, you know, like, tells us tons about the lame politics of the people, maaaaaaaaaan, it's soooooooo obvious, so easy to see. That's why I'm a genius of political analysis.
I think the part that applies is:
Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
So I guess "idiot republicans" is a bit uncivil; but on the other hand rushing the approval of an important bill drafted under the influence of sleep deprivation is pretty idiotic. Whenever a political committee or similar announces that they will discuss until agreement, even if that means working through the night, I take it to mean "We are going to get drunk until we're too sick to care and just sign that stupid paper to get home.", since the result is functionally equivalent.
As someone who isn't American, I find it very disturbing and it makes me doubt both this whole site and YC itself. Has YC become some sort of political activist foundation recently? It was not this way a few years ago.
I think you can definitely get correct and incorrect facts, but doesn't it break down when insults at one group are allowed, but insults at the other group aren't? That seems like just being an asshole.
And from what I can tell, both of your political parties are in full science denial. Republicans deny climate change, and Democrats deny XY chromosomes determining sex. Well, "not all Democrats" and "not all Republicans", obviously.
Your type of tribal thinking is a cancer that will cause much hardship for your country in future.
People don’t dunk on you because you have a different political affiliation — they do it because you regularly deny the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change and then blame conspiracy theories and tribalism for the completely predictable responses you receive.
> Your type of tribal thinking is a cancer that will cause much hardship for your country in future.
You wrote this same thing in reply to another poster before realized he’s not from the States and deleting it. Glad you found another spot to dump it!
Hacker News can't escape the broader climate of political divisiveness, but we can do our utmost to preserve this site as one that gratifies our intellectual curiosity. The best way for the community to help is to 1) comment according to the guidelines, 2) flag those that violate them (and don't say that you did—this also breaks the guidelines and leads us off topic).
I don't mean that in snark in the least. I mean it factually, the polls keep coming back with record disapproval. There's a reason for that. More people would prefer a higher degree of civility in politics, rather than lower.
A lot of people disagreed with George W Bush for example, but he had to launch a catastrophic, protracted, pointless war that lasted for years, to erode his approval numbers to where Trump is at during his first year. Bush was far more civil and respected as a politician (and he wasn't regarded as all that great at it).
The other side is most people aren't doing well financially.I know tons of people who work all the time, and are just too exhausted/demoralized by the end of day for anything but tv and beer.
The apathy, desperation, political violence/polarization, filter bubbles, poor economy for the average person, rise of the new alt-right, antifa, and resurgence of the extreme/alt-left all make me feel like a collapse is coming.
Setting: 2016 US Election
- Everybody is screaming in my ear all day every day "YOUR VOTE COUNTS, GET IN THERE AND VOTE"
- Tons of people go to vote
- The candidate with the lesser number of votes wins the election
All I know is, simply put, my vote feels worth nothing and so I now deafen myself to politics as much as possible. Much more worthwhile to focus energy on building businesses and making money that I can donate to charity rather than wasting away in my armchair yelping about politics proven to be outside my control.
It's frustrating to be surrounded by those who think conservative media is not only flawless, but the only source of truth, who feel cornered to vote for a candidate that they don't believe in because they feel beholden to our two-party system. If we could simply make those individuals feel confident in the ability of their vote, we would get right out of the two-party system.
As bleak as things are, though, I haven't given up. To do so would be to give up my liberty to these idiots, without a fight.
If local elections really "mattered", I'm sure the two party system would have found a way for the people of Florida and or Ohio to "elect" them for me.
Local election seem to matter to RWA/"conservative" types who want to include intelligent design, anti climate change in their school books or put 10 Commandments monuments in public spaces.
(Insert an observation about Alabama here)
Don't forget China holds elections, but that does not mean people's votes count.
Whether or not your city closes/opens drug/alcohol treatment centers or homeless shelters will affect your life much more than Trump boasting about how he's going to build a wall.
Heck, the town supervisor from my hometown lived on the street right behind us. Growing up, it would be possible to hop across the fence in the backyard and be in his yard. Talk about access to your representatives.
Too much emphasis is being placed on the federal govt., which I believe is a terrible trend for all of us Americans. Trump made a huge wave of anger after withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, but there is nothing stopping my home state from making their own ad-hoc agreement (of course, states do not have authority to engage in international diplomacy, but I'm speaking about the principle of, say, NYS committing itself to a zero-carbon emission pledge within XX years, and setting goals for all the towns and cities to help contribute).
Even without considering the lives lost, both American and foreign: The Afghan & Irak war have cost $5 trillion over the years. That's $60,000 for every US family of four that could have been put to other uses if those wars had been limited to a fast and cheap campaign against the Taliban government.
The republican primaries had 31M votes. The presidential election had 137M. In the primaries voters also get a wider selection of candidates to choose from.
I don't know if there is anything preventing voters from participating in both the democrat and the republican primaries. If it's allowed I'd just pray that two great candidates win in the primaries and not fret to much about the presidential election.
There's no such thing as the "alt-left".
How you make people care? Unfortunately it might be crises makes them care. No crises, no consequences, no confrontation with the alternative? Then people find something else to care about, rather than care about what seems to be a non-issue that doesn't involve or affect them and isn't interesting anyway.
There are tens of millions of people in the US that really want <X> to change, for a lot of <X>. However, without acting as a unified group they don't matter because they're dwarfed by equally disorganized and apathetic people who don't care. There are many examples from around the world of people getting what they want when they are numerous and well organized. Don't even need to look far, NRA is an example of this collective power (to some extent) in the US itself.
There is a social engineering solution to this somewhere, just like the current situation is a result of deliberate social engineering, not some inevitable evolution of democracy.
Depending on what Congress does, they don't even need to wait for the policy to be enacted before it could be affecting their sales, stock prices, and executive compensation.
In contrast, there aren't any companies who are so directly financially tied to the First Amendment. Oh, sure, it's a public good, but you can't sell free speech the same way you can sell guns.
As a scenario and extension to your theory, what if the period of people largely not caring results in an entirely different class of politician being more successful, where partisanship and political maneuvering are more useful than actually achieving useful change? When "stuff breaks down and people start caring again", what if those politicians aren't up to the job of actually fixing what's breaking?
I'm not sure that necessarily explains our current status, but it is a morbid line of thought.
That said, yes, you might see a fall out of government not working. But rebuilding a welfare state will take generations. If you don't fix the political system this will fail too.
How do you measure it cross-culturally? It’s a farce metric that’s used by politicians because they can make it bend however they want. Ecuador is happy too, maybe we should be more like them? If Zimbabwe was happy would that be evidence we need to be more like Zimbabwe?
http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2017/
If people only care about politics when the system is broken, why do 80-90% vote in elections.
My point is that people don't vote because the system is broken. People are more likely to vote if they believe it to make a difference.
People in the US have lost faith in democracy. This is unlikely to cause more people to vote. I'm not offering a solution. Just that things are not magically going to become better because people are going to start voting when things are this bad.
> Usually you judge whether something is broken when it fails to meet your expectations
Most Americans I talk to say that they want their government to help people who needs help: mentally ill, uninsured people with medical conditions.
Even conservative Americans agrees that people in need should be helped. How else would you call yourself a Christian.
Nevertheless, I see people in desparate need of help on American streets every day. Are you saying this is a new thing, and that it haven't been broken for 20-30 years?
Or maybe a better explanation is that the will of the people is actively surpressed? Be it voter ID laws surpressing Democrats, or the democrats themselves surpressing the voices of progressives through superdelegates and closed primaries, there are serious issues with our democracy.
Throw in a populace that's been the victim of a failing education system for decades due to candidates who slash taxes (and thus budgets).
And now, when the problems are so acute, I find it very interesting that the narrative becomes that all these issues are the fault of the lazy voters. A convenient, and false narrative.
https://rewire.news/ablc/2014/10/16/well-actually-pretty-har...
I understand that it's important to protect our poor and all that, but requiring proof of citizenship to vote seems pretty important to me in our democracy, and is an incredibly low bar that nearly everyone is already capable of meeting.
http://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/do...
https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-...
[1] https://ballotpedia.org/Brennan_Center_for_Justice#Bias
edit: Why am I being downvoted for doing research on citations? It's kind of important to be critical of these kind of things.
"A portion of the population without a drivers license – whether valid or not – will have a photo ID, but without an analysis by race and location, it is not possible to estimate that population. "
The question here isn't whether or not they have valid drivers license, it's whether or not they have a valid photo ID good enough to vote with.
Thank you for providing that link, though. It's less biased than the others so far.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/alabama-drivers-licen...
There's a lot of people who live in the "fringes" of society who don't have an ID.
My uncle, for example. He lived with my grandma his whole life and didn't have a driver's license, car, or a job other than to run errands for my grandma.
I also have a friend who does not have an ID. Her husband takes care of everything and she doesn't drive.
It's unusual but not illegal to live like that.
I'm sorry you live in a bubble and can't see past it.
So I go into the DMV with my expired ID and expired passport and a stack of mail with my current address and a stack of debit and credit cards and my social security card. They will not do anything without my birth certificate. Crap.. Lost that when my basement flooded. I will head over to vital records.
Then the lady at the DMV told me that they closed down the vital records office in Eugene and my only option was to go to Portland. So right here I have to spend 60 bucks on a round trip to get to Portland two hours away.
So I get the bus the next day and go to vital records. Again more expense for the Max. So I get them to print out a birth certificate. I had to pay 40 bucks for them to do it. Then they want to see my ID. Wait it is expired. They will not accept it.
I am told my options are to have a parent or sibling come in to vouch for me. Difficulty.. Parents are dead and my sister at the time lived on the east coast.
So here I am stuck. I know, I will have my sister get on a plane to come out here. It will cost but it needs to be done. So she does. So now I need to pay for a last minute ticket for her. And shit, it will be a while so I need to get a hotel for the night. And I should probably cover my sisters lost wages for a few days.
In the end I got my birth certificate. Off to the DMV where I paid 40 bucks for a state issued ID.
This all was fantastically expensive.
And really.. They closed the vital records office in a city that has 200,000 people. The only option for the entire state is Portland. One office for 4 million people and Oregon is a physically large state.
So yes.. Getting a state issued ID can be incredibly hard and expensive. Even if everything was perfect and I was able to easily get the documents it would still be 80 bucks to just get a ID card.
I otherwise agree with your point, if it is that ID is too expensive to require for voting. It amounts to a poll tax.
Better to make it the job of a federal agency. Let's call it the Federal Elections Commission. ID is free, and they track you down to issue it, kinda like the census. Then I might be able to support requiring the ID for voting.
It's a chicken and egg problem. I understand and respect why they want to make it hard to get the birth certificate since we've made it the key to the kingdom. It used to be quite easy to get when I was younger, I for some reason have three copies of mine from over the years.
Not everybody is so lucky unfortunately.
If you look at the people affected it's clear that it is racial disenfranchisement under a different name.
Requiring IDs and then denying IDs to a particular race would be racial disenfranchisement. Simply requiring an ID isn't.
And in the end, I think it makes a lot of sense for an ID to be required in order to place a vote.
Because there are barriers, and expensive fees for many, intentional or not. The article above gives a couple stories of the issues people face trying to get ID for voting.
Until everyone can automatically and without cost obtain an ID for voting, these are new versions of poll taxes.
And yet, no politician campaigns for that because it would actually resolve the issue.
A politician who campaigns for that will be beset upon by the right wing as it heaves into a fit over they're spying on us, they're trying to track us. Because in actually solving the nonexistent problem, they threaten the true reason for the problem being posed.
But you decided to take only the slice of the problem that fit your talking point, and that is the real problem.
My "talking point", such as it is, is that one political party is actively disinterested in democracy (while the other is more or less ambivalent), and that nobody in that actively-disinterested party is going to let the ambivalent party make this happen. Because it empowers them for it to not happen. It's not rocket science.
Yes. The argument is pretty straightforward: explicitly mentioning race would be blatantly illegal, so legislators are targeting a variable that correlates with race and using that as a proxy instead. Old-school disenfranchisement laws did much the same thing, using the voting eligibility of one's grandfather as the condition for exemption from poll taxes, literacy tests, and so on (whence we get the term "grandfather clause").
https://rewire.news/ablc/2014/10/16/well-actually-pretty-har...
Now, getting to the DMV to apply for an ID card can be a hardship on people given the hours that the DMV operates and the fact that you usually need to set aside several hours to deal with waiting in line and such. If you hold 2 or 3 jobs, and missing part of a shift means getting fired, you probably don't have the time to go to get an ID. (Hell, you probably also don't have the time to actually go to the polls to vote, but that's another issue.)
And what if you're homeless? Getting an ID is probably very low on the list of things you can afford, even at $8. Also how do they mail it to you if you don't have an address?
At any rate, isn't this fixing a problem I don't think we don't have? Where is the evidence of rampant voter fraud that would recommend even an ID requirement?
In person voter fraud is extremely rare[1], this is why requiring photo ID to vote has been struck down as voter supression in many states[2]
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/03/he...
[2]https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/15/528457693...
IDs should be required but they should also be very easy to obtain. The government should go out of its way to make it as easy a possible. Being undocumented is not useful to any citizen, it creates an underclass. People should have IDs and we should care about voter fraud, whether its 1 vote or 1 million.
That the parties won't do this shows that both sides have something to gain by keeping things the way they are, they just want to win, regardless of the sanctity of the vote or the well-being of the people.
There's nothing inherently wrong with existing as a living being without declaring your existence (or, realistically, asking permission for your existence) to the government.
Nobody is complaining about animals roaming the world freely without documents. In fact birds routinely cross borders without being stopped or even noticed.
Why do people need to be monitored?
You don't have to mandate it for anything but voting. But if you do want one, they should be easy for anyone to obtain. If the poor can't prove who they are, they can't do a lot. They'll always be poor.
Do you have a source to support this claim?
As I previously pointed out, voter fraud is incredibly rare[1] practically non-existent.
Creating laws and administering laws both take time and resources. Can you support your claim identification is needed with any sort of rational, data based arguments or are you operating on emotion?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/03/he...
Of course it would take time and resources, but to make it easy for people to obtain IDs would be one of the cheaper things we can do as a nation.
You need an ID to get a lot of jobs, get funding for school, etc. If it's not easy for people to get IDs, we are limiting them anyway, so by argument we should be making them easy to obtain. That's my datapoint. It's a very natural way to empower people.
The source of the source you link to kind of backs up OP's point. It's not an unbiased source. So why do they think ID's should not be required?
I mean just thinking about, verifying who a person is before they vote seems like 101 common sense to me.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/10/05/ho...
This stuff isn't accidental.
The other side would like to keep this same group (who can't be arsed to get IDs) from voting by whatever means necessary. Drug laws and felony disenfranchisement are likely part of this same scheme.
I'm not pleased with political shenanigans in general. And objectively I think if IDs are required they should be very easy to get and cost free even. That's the real problem.
But saying we don't need to verify who a person is before they vote is just f'n fishy as hell. Shenanigans. All cries about "disenfranchisement" aside. Washington Post (and friends) put this stuff out because they are clearly in first group.
Now, getting to the DMV to apply for an ID card can be a hardship on people given the hours that the DMV operates and the fact that you usually need to set aside several hours to deal with waiting in line and such. If you hold 2 or 3 jobs, and missing part of a shift means getting fired, you probably don't have the time to go to get an ID. (Hell, you probably also don't have the time to actually go to the polls to vote, but that's another issue.)
If this statement can be made in this same thread and upvoted as an argument for why IDs are too difficult to get for voting purposes, surely that's an unnecessary hardship irrespective of voting and should be fixed.
But it still would be a ridiculous argument.
ID's should be easier to get, yes, but the fact it's an inconvenience for some small minority of people shouldn't undermine the principals of one person one vote nor make it difficult to verify eligibility.
ID is required to vote—remember that we're talking about which kinds of ID are to be accepted.
So the argument should be, how much assurance do you need to allow a citizen to vote? No security is perfect, and increased security usually decreases usability.
If you started expanding something like social security numbers to be a real ID system with photo ID and digital 2FA, then maybe in 10-15 years you can make it a requirement.
That's how long time adopting of such systems takes in other countries... With much smaller populations
Establish a universal ID first and eliminate any access bias then we can talk about requiring it to vote. Given that there is no evidence of any real problem that it actually solves in voting, it's more important to avoid creating new problems than to rush into it as a solution for speculative potential future problems.
So we're at an impasse.
See, my deal is, you want to make this whole system more complicated at several steps, and for what benefit? To solve what problem?
I'd rather keep the system as simple as possible--cheaper, easier, less can go wrong that way, and more people get to vote and participate in governance.
When everything is important and urgent, nothing is.
I didn’t know HN had guidelines specifically disallowing all forms of yelling.
I guess what I'm asking is that if things are rotting upstream of these positions, then maybe they are "rationally vacant"?
The same control of education as a tool to shape the common public mind was also exerted on media, which is why I say when people start arguing about Huxley and Orwell, that its a brave new world, until you resist... Then its 1984.
If you want to know how prohibition happend just look at the low point for voter participation.
There's no magical "back in the day" when everything was better. It's up to us to make things better, lamenting changes or new technology and longing for a lost past that never was won't help.
Long before we had "fake news" vs "real news" we had "no news" and hearsay from a dude in a bar. Same shit, different day.
Or, to put a finer point on it: some people think the only way to fix the system is e.g. "violent protesting", but they abhor being seen to personally enact violence more than they want change. Other people think the only way to fix the system is e.g. "becoming involved with politics", but they abhor being seen as a politician more than they want change. Etc.
There are problems people want solved, but the same people that want the problems solved have things they not only care about, but which society expects them and tells them and perhaps in some senses brainwashes them to prioritize over their own needs. Everyone in the modern world is afflicted to some degree with a social anxiety telling them that their families and friends would disapprove of their doing anything so outré as actually fighting for change (rather than preaching-to-the-choir about change), especially when that could hurt or endanger said family and friends. As the thinking goes, you're just not supposed to risk the people you love for something as silly as bettering democracy.
(And yes, that's even true when a person's family and friends are outwardly exactly the people who claim to want change, and who hold forth about the change that needs to happen, and disapprove of the people who don't similarly hold forth. The people who spend their time signalling that they care about change, are some of the least interested in associating with the people who actually enact that change.)
Modern Western culture seemingly has entered a failure-mode unprecedented in history, where we have nobody willing to go first, to stand out, to do what needs to be done, to enact the changes everyone else wants. We've run out of empathetic iconoclasts—people who see the suffering of distant/distributed others, and for whom that aggregate suffering outweighs the risk that might come to the comfortable-life-in-obscurity of all their closer companions. The people with hearts that bleed for their fellow citizens, but then don't shrivel back at the thought of their companions being the ones who end up bleeding.
> You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid... You refuse to do it because you want to live longer... You're afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you're afraid someone will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand.
> Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you're just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nobody is, per se, afraid of low-probability high-impact events like being shot (otherwise nobody would join the military.)
But everyone is afraid of high-probability low-impact events, like being shunned by your community for committing a faux pas.
So, if actually acknowledging an elephant-in-the-room issue—or actually trying to get that issue fixed in a way that steps on people's toes, instead of endlessly debating how to get the issue fixed without stepping on anyone's toes—is considered such a faux pas; if it's considered something that gets you branded as low-status even by the people you're working to help, rather than something that gets you branded, at least in some small community, a hero—then the human mind just seems to say "fuck this strategy." We need acceptance—not from everyone, but at least from the people we are most trying to help. Without that, we see no reason to help them.
tl;dr: MLK Jr. may have had to choose to be a hero, but he never had to choose to be Batman. It's seemingly impossible to choose to be Batman. (Well, at least with normal human psychology. But even outside of that—even assuming benevolent schizoid folk who think Batman is a great life-path—we've set up our systems of education and accreditation so that such benevolent schizoid folk fall through the cracks, becoming excluded from society before they can ever make any impact.)
If people were worth saving they wouldn't need saving. I need acceptance from myself, to be able to look myself in the eye, and I have that, by now. I made plenty of mistakes in my life, but I don't regret any instance of doing or trying to do the right thing, not to get gratitude or recognition from any external source, but because I consider it the right thing. Looking at just about anyone around me, it seems that much harder than never giving in is having given in, being broken or tamed, and then reclaiming yourself. And even suckier is never reclaiming yourself, now that is suffering. I wouldn't want to swap with any conformist or even just "average person who isn't rocking the boat" I know. They generally seem unhappy, slow, and boring even to themselves. I have my worst times behind me, they have their worst times still to come.
> we've set up our systems of education and accreditation so that such benevolent schizoid folk fall through the cracks, becoming excluded from society before they can ever make any impact.
Can't really confirm that for myself. You know how they say when you get into prison you have to not shirk the inevitable fight, or you're going to be the toy of others for the whole stay? Life is like that, too. I don't care what "random person who happens to be my contemporary" thinks of me, if anything, I would care what people like Sophie Scholl or Hannah Arendt would think of me. But more than that, what are the things you would think or say or do even if the whole world was against it? Because only that is really yours and really you. The rest doesn't hold water and will leave you in the ditch inevitably.
In past elections, whenever the issue of extremely hackable and vulnerable electronic voting machines was brought up, objections were raised that their use was too limited to make a big enough difference in the election. Well, here that's clearly not the case: the difference was so slight that such fraud could have tipped the scales.
http://phillyelectionresults.com/Citywide_Election_Results.h...
$100 is just astoundingly low.