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Comment by kockic | Hacker News Reader

I can't imagine that this is still a thing in 21st century. We should be able to travel anywhere.

You can see how there are many political battles in the US simply because Russia bought some political ads and other things that are perfectly legal for US citizens to do. Imagine if Russia literally sent several thousand people to states that allow people to vote without IDs.

> sent several thousand people to states that allow people to vote without IDs.

That is strictly not true, I believe. In the US, some form of ID (not necessary a Photo ID) is required to vote [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_St...

according to your link > No ID required to vote at ballot box: California, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Washington, D.C.

That's the top level view. A deep dig in the "Laws by state" section shows that some form of ID is still needed.

For example:

Maine: No ID needed at polling place if registered to vote at least one day prior to election. However an ID is required to vote if person was registered to vote on the day of the election

Massachusetts: Non-photographic ID is accepted at polling stations.

Minnesota: Non-photographic ID is accepted at polling stations.

Some of those states are also getting legislation requiring ID for voting.

Maine's law is pretty weak. All one has to do is register more than a day before the election and then they don't need an ID. I don't know how easy it is to register in Maine, but California is laughably easy. Just check the boxes saying that you don't have an ID, SSN, address or phone number, and then you can register with very little information.

That doesn't make any sense, e.g. having a Japanese passport doesn't let you vote in 180 countries you can visit.

Correct, but if Japanese people typically committed crime when in the US, then the US would want to limit the amount of them that enter and evaluate those people before coming.

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