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Comment by WillPostForFood | Hacker News Reader

I always find it ironic that the Republican party--the party of limited government--wants people to have to go to the bastion of efficiency known as the DMV (!!!) in order to vote.

Is it ironic? Republicans aren't calling for the abolishment of the DMV for driver's licenses. Requiring ID to vote is inline with requiring ID to drive.

I find it interesting the Democrats seem to idolize European governance, except for the part where requiring ID to vote is the norm.

edit: fixed typo - requiring id to vote is inline with requiring id to drive

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Dems problem with requiring ID is that it just so happens that those proposals are always alongside attempts to make it more difficult for poor people to get IDs in the first place. Dems would have no issue requiring ID if republicans would agree to give every US citizen an ID for free.

Voter ID laws are simply an attempt to keep poor people and minorities from voting and honestly it's sickening.

They are also an attempt to keep ineligible people from voting. There are positives to the argument that you can only ignore if you want to vilify the person making it.

>They are also an attempt to keep ineligible people from voting.

Which is not a problem. There were less than 100 cases of voter fraud in the last twenty years: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/10/13/th...

Preventing ineligible voting is red herring for suppressing legitimate voters, by creating extra hoops to jump through for certain classes of citizens.

I vilify the argument that voter fraud of the kind which would be addressed by voter ID exists at any meaningful scale in the US. It is putrid. Used as an justification for mass disenfranchisement, it is repugnant.

Well, this exactly should be the Democrats proposal - but for some resaon it isn't. It would be an easy way to pull wind out of the sails of republicans.

Proposals to give everyone an ID for free have also run into massive Republican opposition.

Make IDs free and mandatory for all citizens — like in those European countries — and there's no problem.

Until then, IDs are a poll tax — and to put it mildly, that's a problem.

The democrats are never going to call it a poll tax though because once you start calling statutory requirements to jump through non-free hoops to exercise rights "poll taxes" you've just paved the way to overturning a whole lot of gun control stuff.

Poll taxes are expressly forbidden by the 24th Amendment. I'm sure people will try and make arguments based on the 2nd Amendment, but they're really not comparable.

A photo ID is not a poll tax though. Just like requiring people to go to a polling place is not a poll tax. Just like people having to take time off of work is not a poll tax.

Requiring people to pay for the opportunity to vote is effectively a poll tax. I don't understand anyone trying to argue against this in good faith.

Would you say that someone having to own a car and buy gas so they can drive to the polling location is a poll tax?

Of course. Would you not?

>Make IDs free

Sure.

>and mandatory for all citizens

And what are the consequences if you don't get this now mandatory (federal?) ID? Presumably some sort of passport card like thing that doesn't actually let you travel across borders. What if you don't have the documentation you need? What if you don't have the time to go to the offices that provide these IDs?

For a lot of people, the cost of getting the Equivalent ID to a driver's license isn't the big issue. All the other things are.

I would accept those sets of problems if the voter ID serves as voter registration.

I would assume that if someone went to the trouble of getting an ID primarily just for voting, also registering wouldn't be a big burden.

Yeah, but the crux is making it impossible to rescind that registration a la voter purges!

But it is an easy fix. I agree that there should be universal voter registration, and see no reason why we can't issue voter registration cards with a photo on them, which then serve as a valid form of identification for whatever information we choose to make publicly available on them.

There's a scaling difference between the US and Europe. In the US, you might live a 4 hour drive from the nearest city large enough for a DMV. If you don't own a car, getting there and back can be a major obstacle.

You could solve these problems if you were willing to get a bit creative. For instance, the service could be provided by rural mail carriers.

IDs aren't free everywhere in Europe, in the Netherlands it's €56,80 for an ID card that is valid for 10 years. It is mandatory, though.

I find it interesting that you've deflected their entire argument and made up a straw man to burn.

I answered the argument directly. Requiring ID to vote is not "ironic' because:

Republicans aren't calling for the abolishment of the DMV for driver's licenses. Requiring ID to vote is inline with requiring ID to drive.

Voting does not have the same privilege level as driving. Also thought your argument equating voting to voting was snarky dismissal, not a typo.

> Requiring ID to vote is inline with requiring ID to drive.

One of those things is an inherent right of citizenship. The other is a privilege that requires proving one has allegedly mastered the skills and knowledge required to safely practice it.

> except for the part where requiring ID to vote

The reason should be obvious, people without ID are likely poor, and likely to vote for Democrats. Voter fraud is just misdirection on the part of Republicans.

No one any where is against identifying voters.

Voter ID is required to register. At which time it is verified and eligibility is adjudicated.

Identity is confirmed when a ballot is issued. For postal balloting, which is not opposed by Republicans, your address is proxy for identity. One exception is North Dakota; no ID is required, because presumably poll workers know their neighbors.

The issue is what forms of ID are required to be issued a ballot.

Pro democracy persons who support enfranchising their fellow citizens are content to accept many forms of official ID to confirm identity.

Anti democratic persons who openly advocate wide spread disenfranchisement demand restoring unconstitutional poll taxes.

>Identity is confirmed when a ballot is issued.

That is not necessarily true in the US. If I vote in person on election day in my town (I usually vote by mail or earlier at town hall) I give my address but do not have to present an ID.

I wrote: "One exception is North Dakota"

You replied: "That is not necessarily true in the US."

Yes, yes, yes. There are always exceptions in the USA. No one person can know them all.

Because every jurisdiction is a snowflake. And everything keeps changing. Causing us all to talk past each other. No small part of the challenge talking about this stuff rationally.

For your jurisdiction, the powers that be determined that your signature was sufficient verification, which can be compared against the signature on file (your registration), just like with postal ballots.

Satisfied?

I live in what is almost certainly a perfectly typical town in the Northeast US. And it's fully compliant with Massachusetts law.

Which is just one state as you say. But, if you follow the news, requiring ID is a very contentious topic that's often associated with disenfranchising voters so I assume it's not the norm.

Left unsaid in the kabuki over voter ID is The Correct Answer:

Universal automatic voter registration. Like every other mature democracy.

We now have a handful of complete rosters. Of everyone living and dead. Updated in near real-time.

We know with complete certainty if someone is eligible to vote.

We could just use any of our existing national demographic databases (NSA, Planitir, Facebook, LexisNexus, ChoicePoint, etc) for good governance. Instead of 50+ mutually incompatible chaotic mutant voter registration databases.

(Related: Just do a query, instead of walking around with clipboards every 10 years and doing a partial head count.)

Why don't we use the resources we already have to moot this issue?

Discuss.

> Universal automatic voter registration. Like every other mature democracy.

Exactly this. Every citizen should be automatically able to vote without any effort on their 18th birthday. I personally think it shouldn’t even require being 18, but should be permitted if elections are happening during your 18th year, but you haven’t hit your birthday yet—nobody turning 18 in 2020 should be unable to vote for the next president just because their birthday is after Election Day. We should be doing all we can, on the public dime, to the point of begging and dragging people to the nearest booth to participate in their government.

I think post offices are the perfect first place to look to for handling this. Far more citizens live in close proximity to a post office than a dmv. And as needs require and areas permit, we can look to libraries, state universities, and community colleges as additional points where one can handle voting needs—even casting ballots.

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