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Comment by youeseh | Hacker News Reader

It is a numbers game (no puns intended).

Let's say we have 100k people that live in a few poor counties where not everyone has government ID and they can't afford to spend time / money to go very far. Now, if 40k of those people need an ID to vote, reducing the hours that the nearest DMV operates will reduce the number of people that get an ID.

Now, you might say, "but why can't they just go to the DMV in the next county?" or "why can't they get their IDs well ahead of time?", and you'd have a valid question! But when you have 100k people.. creating what looks like a minor inconvenience will definitely translate to fewer voters in the end. Now, lets create a bunch of minor inconveniences and the numbers really start to shrink.

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What are better suggestions to prevent voter fraud? We know from history that voting fraud is a thing, in the 1800s it was known that political parties would pay fresh immigrants to vote (like the scene in Upton Sinclaire's "The Jungle"), or to even kidnap people and force them into voting [1]. So we can't rely on good faith.

I'm under the impression that to vote you must register in a voting district, surely that registration requires something like a birth certificate or a SSN, which I believe is the only requirement for a government issued ID... Operating on the idea that the requirement for government IDs may in fact be a good faith measure to prevent voter fraud, would perhaps an optimal solution be to bring a web camera to that voting registration area and simultaneously issue IDs there?

To be honest, I thought it was a non-issue since my voter registration is also my draft registration, so I assume I provided some form of citizenship proof when I registered. It was a while ago though so I don't recall the details.

[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/election-fraud-in-the-...

The common solution when little documentation exists is to apply ink at voting booths. Something that comes off in a few days, but otherwise bonds to the top layer of people’s skin. That’s plenty for one person one vote. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_ink

As to having non residents vote, vastly more eligible voters don’t vote than people ineligible to vote. Honestly, as much hoopla as this gets it’s clear from recent elections it’s a non issue. Look for actual examples of this happening and your coming up empty.

A paranoid individual might claim that this ink could be tampered with or replaced with washable ink.

Can the same argument not be made for requiring voter IDs? youeseh I'm replying to says it's "few numbers" adding up. Another thread from sverige in this tree links vox and nyt saying that requiring ID has small numbers effect of turnout. So saying that their concern of voter fraud is a small numbers thing kind of lacks heft as an argument.

If these are both the case, then why not go with the requirement (and possibly make the requirement "easier" by issuing IDs at the same time/place) so there's no possibility of contesting the election results with regard to this particular issue?

In person voter fraud requires a large base of conspirators who are never caught, committing a federal crime on behalf of a political actor who also needs to somehow incentivize them to do so without being caught.

Whereas suppressing turn out just requires making it difficult for someone to have a bunch of ID they normally don't need on them in any part of their lives.

These laws are never just "photo ID" - they're always a box truck of weird edge rules about the type of ID.

My state lets me get a state ID even if I don't have a driver's license. The ID has my current address on it and my face too. I think that's plenty of proof.

Also, the DMV offices, where I can get my state ID has plenty of locations and they're open often enough and long enough every day that it doesn't prevent people from getting their ID.

Between those two, I think we're doing a pretty good job of keeping enough people honest that voter suppression or voting fraud aren't big enough issues here.

>I'm under the impression that to vote you must register in a voting district, surely that registration requires something like a birth certificate or a SSN

In California, at least, you can just use your state ID number and last four digits of your SSN [1]. California gives IDs to illegal aliens and SSNs are available to many non-citizens. These might have been checked for citizenship or might not. I suspect that they are not since the SSA itself wants you to bring the naturalization certificate if you want to change your non-citizen SSN card to a citizen's one. California never asked me for proof of citizenship so either it has an access to the citizenship data unavailable to the SSA or it just registers anyone with an SSN and a state ID.

1. https://registertovote.ca.gov/

CA has also sent voter registration cards to those known to not be citizens in the Real 8D era.

We know from history that voter fraud is, very generally, something that can possibly happen.

However, the available evidence suggests that at present, voter fraud in the US (at least of the type that voter ID would prevent) is extraordinarily rare. [1] It's so rare that any measure that even slightly decreases turnout rates will likely cost at least an order of magnitude (if not multiple) more legitimate votes than illegitimate ones, meaning that the overall accuracy of the voting results will be reduced.

There's plenty of time to change course if and when there's an actual uptick in voter fraud, as opposed to an uptick in evidence-free allegations from politicians.

[1] https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysis/B...

In Argentina everyone has a national identity card. It cost about US$5, and you can ask for an exception if you don't have the money. And I swear this is not the more organized and efficient country in the word.

To get one, you have to ask for a date about 2 or 3 weeks in advance, and you go to one of the official buildings. The process takes like 15 minutes and they send the ID to your home 2 or 3 weeks later.

Sometimes the government puts a truck with a mobile office in some parks. Sometimes you can get one also in some big shopping malls without a previous date. And if you wish, you can pay more to get the ID in the next day. Also, you can make your passport in the same office.

If we can, you can.

I heard this fraud implemented in Texas forces low income people without vehicles to travel 400+ miles by bus to the nearest DMV to get the correct replacement voting documentation (many seniors/disabled).

When conservatives (racists) attack voters using economics (in this case a voter tax), they know precisely which non-white voters they are targeting.

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