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Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

It's a vote suppression tactic when the IDs aren't trivially easy to obtain. A county in Wisconsin only issued them from a DMV that was only open on the fifth Wednesday of every month[1].

>That DMV service center is inside the Sauk City Community Center. And, sure enough, as Oliver’s piece stated, it’s open only on the fifth Wednesday of every month, from 8:15 a.m. to 4 p.m.

> The DMV doesn’t list the actual dates, so we looked them up. The four fifth Wednesdays in 2016 are in, as Oliver noted, March, June, August and November.

[1] https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2016/feb/19/...

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"A county in Wisconsin only issued them from a DMV that was only open on the fifth Wednesday of every month[1]"

That's a flat lie, as the article itself makes clear. That particular DMV desk (not office) is just the nearest to that one small town (not county), and residents there can go to any other DMV in the state as well.

Meanwhile, you need an ID anyway to have a bank account, enter a Federal building or state courthouse (even if summoned to jury duty), etc.

Partisans are so desperate to push this narrative, truth goes by the wayside.

An id by mail should suffice, after all you have to live at that address to get the mail.

If you're homeless you should be able to give a thumbprint to validate your identity.

I mean we could technically just have a DB of thumbprints, that are ONLY tied to the fact that you are a citizen of x town. No name, address, etc.. So there's no way the db could be used against you by the NSA or FBI etc... But no matter what you can get a ballot even if you forget your id at home.

Or make it so same-day registration and id registration at voting places is a thing and make early voting standard so you have from October 1st through the 2nd Tuesday of November to vote. You can register at ANY voting booth, if you do not have ID your ID will be setup there as well for FREE.

Opening a bank account and entering the courthouse are not constitutionally protected rights.

The US abolished poll taxes in 1964. Since then, any action that places a financial burden on a potential voter is likely unconstitutional.

At the end of the day, the latest batch of ID requirements are a solution in search of a problem. Voter fraud at the polling station is rare in the US - existing protections work well enough that any contrary example is usually national news.

So let's change the rules to make them more easily attainable, instead of throwing out the idea of something that we desperately need in this country.

Can you explain why the current system, under which voter fraud is astonishingly rare, is something we desperately need to change?

Astonishingly rare doesn't seem to be the case[1] There are examples all over the place, ignoring them doesn't make them any less real..

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=voter+fraud&t=ffab&ia=news&iar=new...

A random web search is cool, but how about a scholarly article on the topic? http://www.projectvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/Politi...

> Most voter fraud allegations turn out to be something other than fraud. A review of news stories over a recent two year period found that reports of voter fraud were most often limited to local races and individual acts and fell into three categories: unsubstantiated or false claims by the loser of a close race, mischief and administrative or voter error.

Tellingly, the first hit in your search is for an article where the loser of a close race is making unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud.

I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say here - with your link (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=voter+fraud&t=ffab&ia=news&iar=new...) you seem to be implying that it will prove that there are examples "all over the place."

However, here are the first ten articles when I load that page:

0: Loser of KY governor's race "raises concerns" that there is voter fraud but has not yet submitted concrete proof to anyone (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kentucky-gov-matt-bevin-rai...)

1: A politician's wife is convicted of actual voting fraud; involving absentee ballots (which notably, voter ID laws don't really address, re: the topic a few replies up): https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/new-mexico/articles/...

2: Another article about item 1: https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/jury-finds...

3: A legal case relating to publicity of voter information, because the plaintiff wants to investigate for voter fraud: https://www.minnpost.com/state-government/2019/11/does-the-m...

4: An article about voter roll irregularities in Florida; the most interesting bits being some incorrect registrations (which do not necessarily indicate "fraud" as we'd commonly call it, though it may be illegal), and a few hundred cases of people who do seem to have cast multiple or irregular ballots (some from an unmentioned time period, and some from recent elections): https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/palm-beach/fl-ne-palm-vot...

5: A CalTech team analyses a different set of voter data and finds no fraud: https://www.cnet.com/news/new-algorithms-go-fraud-hunting-in...

6: An article in which the convicted politician's wife in article (1) complains that it is a witch hunt: https://www.abqjournal.com/1388391/laura-seeds-alleges-voter...

7: A letter to the editor alleging that according to the Heritage Fund, there is no widespread voter fraud problem: https://www.thegazette.com/subject/opinion/letters-to-the-ed...

8: An article about the convicted politician's wife in (1), this from before the case was decided: https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/jurors-wei...

9: An article about students in North Carolina who will be unable to use their student IDs to vote: https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2019/11/07/as...

Your link to a news search doesn't support your assertion that there are examples all over the place.

One side says we don't need change. One side says we do. If you can't convince the other side that voter fraud is rare, then a step that prevents it while at the same time not discriminating between voters seems like it might be mutually agreeable.

The side that says we do has repeatedly been found to be making that case in bad faith, with the underlying goal of reducing voter turnout. Do you think it's that important to humor a group whose ultimate goal is mass disenfranchisement?

It's not "rare". Only prosecution is rare, and conviction rates are high.

It's so blatant in CA that almost 20% of counties have more registered voters than people even eligible to vote at all.

https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/judicial-watch-...

Judicial Watch is most undoubtedly fake news: https://www.mediamatters.org/judicial-watch

"Judicial Watch was founded in 1994 by the anti-Clinton conspiracy theorist and prolific litigator Larry Klayman and during the 2016 election, it regularly pushed misinformation about Hillary Clinton. The organization and its president, Tom Fitton, have become shills of President Trump since he took office, and Fitton regularly appears on Fox to defend Trump."

Maybe try using a reputable source next time.

Sure, but those rules should be changed first. When people move to change the voting requirements without taking the steps to make sure everyone has reasonable access to ID, it sure looks like they're hoping for a specific partisan outcome and I have no problem with people assuming bad faith.

Yes, but let's make sure IDs are easily attainable and that every eligible voter already has one, and then let's make them required to vote. Doing the last step without the prerequisites isn't going to increase democracy, it will only suppress already marginalized groups of voters.

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