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Comment by cbhl | Hacker News Reader

I think that this is a fair question, especially if you don't live in the US.

The context is that certain populations in the US are known to be disenfranchised from getting ID. Here's an example from the Washington Post in 2016: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a...

I actually really like the process that Elections Canada uses. They verified that most Canadians have ID (86% have Driver's Licenses). They identified the most common issue (proof of address) and added a mitigating process (mailing Voter Information Cards). And finally, they have a fallback: as a third option, a person's identity can be vouched for by a person who does have ID. https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=med&dir=c76/id... https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=poli/r...

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I can see why a tiny minority of people would be disenfranchised, but unfortunately compromises have to be made to have a fair and rigorous election system. Edgecases exist where people slip through the bureaucratic cracks but those exist here too and I see no one complaining about it. If you for some reason lack identification papers you'd try to fix it by going through the processes that we have to verify your identity. Nobody ever complains and says that the system is actively disenfranchising them as that is patently ridiculous.

It's not a tiny minority. 11% of Americans and ~25% of black Americans don't have acceptable voter ID.

I'd suggest reading through the ACLU's article on voter ID laws to learn how the disenfranchisement is targeted in practice.

https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-...

Edit: I'll put two of them into Swedish context.

First, some rural areas in Texas are 170 miles from the nearest location they could apply for an ID. That's about the distance from Stockholm to Karlstad, which is much more difficult to travel without a train infrastructure like Sweden's.

Secondly, the cost of applying for an ID can range from $75-$175, or ~650-1500 krona. I noticed in another thread you mentioned Swedish voter IDs cost 350 crowns. Our voter IDs cost 2-4x as much in absolute terms. Sweden doesn't have a minimum wage, but for reference ours is $7.25/hr ($14,500 pre-tax annually, assuming a full-time 40hr/week job) and our 10th percentile household income is about $14,000 annually (~$122k SEK). So a voter ID can cost a low-income worker about 3 days of pre-tax income, likely 3.5 or 4 post-tax.

Do you really think you can get your documents done in Europe in every rural area? No, you travel to a bigger city, often using a bus and whatnot. Part of life, being a citizen. Every single opposition to having an ID to vote sounds insane to Europeans (UK excluded but they call us mainland anyway), and I can promise you they would take Republicans side on the issue.

The distances in the US are so much larger and the public transportation infrastructure is so much worse the comparison boggles the mind. Consider 170 miles the distance quoted is roughly half way across the entire country of Germany.

The issue problem is it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. In person voter fraud is hard to do in large numbers and there's only a handful of cases where people have voted more than once. Trump tried to create a panel to find voter fraud and found either nothing or basically nothing.

So on the one hand we have a solution to fraud that doesn't happen vs explicit and intentional voter disenfranchisement.

[0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/north-carolina-voter-id/

The IDs that are required to vote in Republican states are either free of charge, or they allow alternative ID documents.

Texas being a fine example: https://www.votetexas.gov/mobile/id-faqs.htm

There are free options that are easy to aquire. Not sure why there are so many myths about this.

The WaPo article has some glaring falsehoods. Of course in Texas you can vote with your concealed handgun license, it's the hardest one to get.

> Not sure why there are so many myths about this.

Politics. And not every place is Texas. Also, because there are precious few examples of voter fraud while there is ample evidence of voter suppression.

> disenfranchised

India with a 900 million eligible voters in 2019 elections had the biggest turnout - 67%. Aka over 600 million votes were cast and counted. They have strict voter ID laws. Despite having a large disenfranchised population.

This is just a talking point without any basis in facts.

Disenfranchisement is a bad excuse. That's like saying you don't want to get an SSL cert for your webapp because it costs too much. What is the security and integrity of your elections worth to you?

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