Hacker News Reader

Comment by not_a_cop75 | Hacker News Reader

How hard is it really for a voter to reregister? You guys are making it sound like it they're taking away driver's licenses or something. All you have to do is hit the website. If you don't have internet access hit a library.

View on HN

Because this is HN and you're probably young-ish: When you're older and you've set down roots the last time you updated your voter registration was probably a few decades ago. Chances are your polling place hasn't likely changed either. So you know when elections come, you go to your usual polling place, give your name, get your ballet and "pull the lever" so to speak. You're not thinking "Oh I better double-check my voter registration!" because you haven't needed to do that in ages because your address and party affiliation hasn't changed in years.

The US is strange: It will wring its hands over low voter turnout while also actively making it more difficult to vote.

> The US is strange: It will wring its hands over low voter turnout while also actively making it more difficult to vote.

It's not strange, it's divided. One group is worried about low voter turnout. Another group is actively making it more difficult to vote. There is virtually no overlap between the two.

>The US is strange: It will wring its hands over low voter turnout while also actively making it more difficult to vote.

Hint: the people wringing their hands and the people making it more difficult to vote are not the same groups.

> It will wring its hands over low voter turnout while also actively making it more difficult to vote.

The republicans generally would prefer that lower-income folks don't vote because they generally vote for democrats, so of course they would like to see voter turn-out to be low.

Are we sure it's lower-income? Because if that were the case, then these Republican shenanigans in states like Ohio and Michigan would focus on rural areas. But we don't see that, we see them focusing almost exclusively on urban areas.

> The US is strange: It will wring its hands over low voter turnout while also actively making it more difficult to vote.

This all varies by state, too. Here in Oregon all voting is done by mail, and registration is automatic. It's meant to increase turnout and make it easy to vote.

Very similar in Washington (state) too; when you get a driving license or state ID the voting registration is built right in.

There's also mail in ballots by default, at least in King county (Seattle/Bellevue, much of the suburbs). (I think the whole state)

In Canada, we get mailed a Voter Information Card [1] a month or two before the election. This basically just has your name and your polling and advanced polling location(s). It of course goes to your registered address.

If you don't get this card, you know you're not registered (or are registered with the wrong address) and can fix that. You can even register at (what should be) your polling location on election day.

This isn't a hard problem to solve.

[1] https://www.elections.ca/content2.aspx?section=vote&dir=vic&...

(In Chicago) I get almost the exact same thing.

I update my voter registration sometimes twice a year to match the party I most like at the time, It's always been online - easy peasy. I expect to get downvoted to hell but I also don't get why showing an ID to vote is such a big deal. After all, I have to look up the numbers in my drivers license to vote.

Also, how is it hard to vote? Absentee ballots are totally easy to get. If I was blind, I might have to plan ahead to get the help to do it. Otherwise, no biggie.

> I update my voter registration sometimes twice a year

Well, almost nobody else behaves that way.

As someone else who does things that are not common, my advice would be to recognize that you are way off the curve and don't universalize your experience.

10% of households don't have a computer and 15% of adults don't have a driver's license. Maybe your experiences don't generalize to the rest of the population.

Also, many states require you register to far ahead of time and will arbitrarily purge you from the voting roles. So I guess my point is this is more of issue than you're making it seem.

> 10% of households don't have a computer

Does this include smart phones? Seems like percent of people with Internet access would be more relevant. I would think public libraries would also provide a lot of coverage here.

> 15% of adults don't have a driver's license

What's the statistic for adults with any kind of government issued identification? Surely that's more relevant for this debate than the driver's license statistic?

> What's the statistic for adults with any kind of government issued identification? Surely that's more relevant for this debate than the driver's license statistic?

A factor to keep in mind here is that it's an established tactic for Republicans to specifically allow alternative IDs used by whites for voting purposes, while banning alternative IDs used by blacks for voting purposes. A North Carolina law was struck down in 2016 specifically for this reason, for example.

Sure. Let's strike that shit down. Make sure ID requirements are even across the board. Seems like a pretty tractable problem.

Designing a system where people in power take actions that cause them to be less likely to remain in power is probably one of the most intractable problems in political science. It's why the U.S. has first past the post, why gerrymandering is a problem, and why voter ID laws are racist.

So to be clear, we can’t have common sense non-racist voter ID laws because the Republicans won’t allow it (and defeating entrenched interests is hopelessly intractable, so why bother), but somehow there will be more political will for no voter ID requirements at all?

No the point is that there are other voting reform laws that will have an actual effect on improving representation and don't have the practical effect of preventing black people from voting. I'm suggesting the problems we have with voting rights in this country are not caused by failing to require ID at polling stations. I'm not opposed to voter IDs in a theoretical sense, it just seems like either a unimportant or disingenuous thing to do first.

Of course, they don’t have the practical effect of preventing blacks from voting. Can we stop conflating abuses in the US with the same system that works uncontroversially all over the world? I’m not arguing it’s the most important thing to do, only that it’s ridiculous that we have a debate about whether or not it’s a problem and the solution is cheaper than investigating.

> Also, how is it hard to vote? Absentee ballots are totally easy to get.

Certain political factions put a lot of work into making it actively more difficult to use absentee ballots. For example: https://www.apnews.com/ae1c8f1af38f4b4fb0187553be7a6e72

Because generally it is very hard to commit voter fraud and adding an ID check does nothing but add an additional hoop for poor people to exercise their constitutional right.

US history is why its a big deal to show your ID to vote.

Wikipedia has a great summary of the racist policies voter ID laws were made to enforce, and that voter fraud is "vanishingly rare" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_St...

Maybe voter fraud is "vanishingly rare", but that statement in the wikipedia article only links to a NYT article which says:

> Academic studies have repeatedly concluded that fraud at the ballot box — the sort that photo identification requirements might reduce — is already vanishingly rare.

With no citation.

Anyway, "vanishingly rare" could mean that fewer than 1% of votes are fraudulent, but those fraudulent votes could be concentrated in a handful of key counties thereby having a big impact. I'm not arguing in favor of tougher voter ID restrictions but rather in favor of educated discourse.

I want to point out that there is no citation for this straw-man thought experiment.

Even the Heritage Foundation, which is incentivized to dig up as much voter fraud as it possibly can, has only found fewer than 1250 individual cases in what seems to be the last decade. This is overwhelmingly lower than the preposterous 1% presented in the above straw-man. https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud

Indeed my point was not just about voter fraud, but the racist history of Voter ID laws in the US. My overall point was that there is overwhelming and easily accessible evidence that voter ID laws are racist and that voter fraud is not an issue.

I can't tell what the "straw man" argument you're referring to. Could you clarify?

If only the southern racists during Jim Crow promoted voter suppression tactics as a way of reducing voter fraud like today.

You don't find out you need to re-register until it's too late.

For those who don't know, the last day you can register to vote before a general election is October 7

https://www.sos.state.oh.us/elections/voters/register/

And perhaps that is the real problem rather than the deregistration. Here in Canada you can register at the polling station on the day of the election.

The real problem is that one of our parties in the USA is passing laws to lower voter turnout.

The precise rules of voting don't really matter: as long as the anti-vote group gets what they want, they'll suppress the vote and strengthen themselves politically.

I mean notification should be a requirement of kicking people off the rolls. That seems reasonable.

Don't most places allow same day registration at the polls? Every state I've voted in does.

Edit: ok, 2/5ths isn't most but it's still a lot. Chill with the down-votes, it was an honest question, not an attack on your ideology.

Guess what the Republicans eliminated in Ohio a few years ago: Same-day voter registration.

Most do not.

> As of June 30, 2019, a total of 21 states plus the District of Columbia have enacted same day registration (SDR), which allows any qualified resident of the state to go to register to vote and cast a ballot all in that day.

http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/same-da...

And, same day isn't necessarily the best solution. For example, Oregon does vote-by-mail. This process would make it difficult to allow for same day registration. But, Oregon also has nation leading voter turnout. No polling places, no hassle, just an envelope in the mail.

* Oregon also does automatic registrations when interacting with the DMV.

Florida also does easy opt in voting (checkbox) with most DMV requests now too (not sure how long that’s been a thing).

Isn’t that a federal law (the voter motor law)? See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Voter_Registration_...

Didn’t know that was a law, neat.

Only 21 states[1] offer same-day registration. It's far less common in the south and midwest regions of the US.

[1] http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/same-da...

Nope, deadline was a week ago yesterday.

https://www.rockthevote.org/voting-information/election-date...

Only 17 states have same day registration. Ohio does not.

Sorta. There are problems with that approach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_ballot

> The rates of rejection vary widely across the states, with some states counting all or nearly all provisional ballots while others reject more than half.

I would expect maliciously executed voter purges to be accompanied by malicious rules on provisional ballots.

Only 17 states allow this. Only a subset of them have registration at the polls.

Why do people have to register to vote at all?

The state has a sort of pretty solid idea of where they live...

To make it more difficult for prospective voters who are perhaps not white, poorer, younger, are working multiple jobs, or are a single parent, just to name a few examples.

You can connect the dots on why groups like these are disenfranchised by the state.

Not really. You can easily move without informing the new state.

Millions of college students do it every year. The last move I made was in September so I hadn't changed licenses or filed income taxes yet, so they had no awareness of me yet.

Luckily I'm in a fairly permissive state and was able to register with a couple utility bills without any hassle.

Some sort of voter registration is a necessity when you can move 3000 miles in a weekend. Unfortunately it's often used to disenfranchise voters, but a significant subset of the population does not have up-to-date records. Registration is a way to fix that.

You can still do it automatically for a majority of voters though. Having to register should be the exception, not the norm.

Sure, it's done automatically when you apply for a driver's license or change your registration, by the Motor Voter Act. Registering to vote is incredibly easy if you keep your state documents up-to-date. We just moved states. When we got our driver's license, we checked a box to change our voting record. We received in the next week a letter from our old county asking us if we did indeed move and if we should be removed from their voter roll, as well as a letter from our new county informing us we will be voting there from now on.

But... driver's licenses or state IDs aren't the end all be all. If I keep real property in another state, I could potentially qualify for a license or state ID there as well, but that state would not be my main residence and I could not be a citizen of that state unless I actually intended to move there permanently. If I lived a more transient life, I would be able to freely choose which state I wanted to be a citizen of. Like if I spend 73 days exactly in each of five states and received mail there, then I would be able to choose which state to register in. There's no way for states to know or to control my movement without imposing arbitrary and illegal restrictions.

Not everyone is eligible to vote. Heck, I had to correct my wife’s driver license application because she definitely isn’t a citizen, and the question was phrased to be very confusing....

So the utility bills are sufficient to jump through the hoops before the fact but not at the time of voting?

One purpose for registration is to lock the person into voting in a particular district.

Why? Ballots can and do vary by district. Different districts have different representatives (on both state, county and town/city level)

Different districts have votes for different issues (state amendments, county amendments, town/city amendments)

Different districts have different local offices (county officers vs city/town officers)

Registering also locks a person into voting only once.

You are arguing from presumption of massive fraud. There's barely any fraud.

It's sort of ridiculous that some of your rejoinders are basic civics.

Because if you own ten houses in ten states, you only get to vote in one state, despite potentially being in residence in nine other states at various points of time. There are various criteria by which you qualify as being a citizen of exactly one state.

Right, but there's literally no good reason this has to be an a priori process anymore. We could easily have a system where you get to vote once in one place where you are eligible without having any preregistration.

Sure. Try getting 50 sovereign states to agree and get back to me. Its not like the federal government has any authority to decide how the states run an election

Harder than it is to not wrongfully remove them in the first place, which is really all that needs to be said.

I'd agree with you if a voter could just instantly register at the time of voting. Ideally there wouldn't be any need for registration at all.

From the article, it sounded like many of the people who were to be deregistered had no idea that it was about to happen, and they likely wouldn't find out until they showed up to vote on election day.

Well they are certainly trying to make it hard: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/court-upholds-ohi...

Problem is you have no reason to believe you've been dropped and show up to vote but are given a provisional (throwaway ) ballot.

I think instead of framing this issue as "how easy would it be to re-register" we could instead ask "why should anyone have to register to vote at all?" In the US, voting is a right, which is something that cannot and should not be taken away. Invalidating voting registration, especially in a targeted way, is deplorable.

In most democratic countries, voters are registered automatically. Requiring a manual registration step and placing maintenance of voter rolls in the hand of political appointees is just an invitation for shenanigans.

In addition, penalties are highly asymmetric. Denying an eligible voter their right to vote is virtually risk free. Casting a vote while being ineligible is subject to harsh punishments. Even with the current, political, process, government officials would think twice about illegally purging 20,000 voters if the penalty for that would be equivalent to the one for illegally casting 20,000 votes.

That’s actually a good argument for registering guns. I have to register for my voting rights, you have to register for your gun rights.

Registering to have, not registering the actual item. Same way you register to have to vote but you do not register the vote itself.

In my mind, the difficulty to do both should be equal, as making either more difficult than the other is suppressing the rights of a group to do which ever is more difficult.

Votes are definitely registered at the time they are cast.

As we see from this very article, the outcome of making people register for their rights is to deny them their rights. Don't race to the bottom, we'll all just end up... at the bottom.

The idea would be to equate the two to get rid of voter registration. Really, it’s to demonstrate the absurdity of both positions.

The way you framed it made it appear the opposite.

Yeah, my bad. I don’t have a strong position either way. It just is a very good way to illustrate the hypocrisy of holding one position but not the other.

There would be an uproar if we regulated voting the same way we regulated guns. Imagine if everyone who smoked weed and voted was committing a felony (to name but one example). Imagine if states had laws saying you need to take a class, pay a hundred bucks and get the police chief's permission before you could vote. Imagine if there was a federal agency that could unilaterally make rules about voting. Imagine if polling places were required to keep records of who voted for what when. Imagine if certain cities and states all but required extensive political connections to get a voting license. Trust me, you really don't want to regulate voting the way we regulate guns. There's a reason people like to compare various gun laws to poll taxes.

Edit: The down vote to reply ratio indicates that what I am saying is factually correct yet inconvenient.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com