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Comment by Qasaur | Hacker News Reader

Then perhaps the federal authorities should push for federal ID cards so people can actually identify themselves when voting. It is beyond me how the State can enforce a non-voluntary tax liability on a citizen but has no way of reliably identifying said citizen - it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. ID cards in Sweden cost roughly 350 crowns, which is around 40 USD. If people can't be bothered to get one of those cards to vote in an election then I see no reason to accommodate them as the fee is so low and 99.9% of people can afford it. If they can't, they can ask a friend or election official to validate their identity at the election booth. I'm sure the government could provide ID cards free of charge cross-referenced with biometric data to avoid duplicates. This isn't a difficult problem to solve but it seems like the Democrats are trying to stonewall it any chance they get.

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>ID cards in Sweden cost roughly 350 crowns, which is around 40 USD. If people can't be bothered to get one of those cards to vote in an election then I see no reason to accommodate them as the fee is so low and 99.9% of people can afford it.

A $40 poll tax that "99.99% of people can afford" is still a poll tax.

The cost in Argentina is of US$3, and it is not necessary to get a new one for each election. You get one when you are born, a new card at 8 yeas old and a new one at 14 years old.

And if you can't pay for it, the government give it for free anyway.

In The Netherlands you can use your drivers license as form of ID hence use it as form of ID when voting.

Wouldn't that be possible in the US? Most people would happy to spend the (like) $40 to get a drivers license?

This country has a bad racial history, including disenfranchising Black people by charging people money so they could vote. So basically that's a non-starter because we know where that road goes.

There's little use for a drivers license if you live in a city, like the majority of Americans do. Drivers licenses must be renewed every couple of years. That means for many Americans, that they will need to get a license just to vote, and only to vote. They will also need to renew it at their own expense if they want to continue to participate in elections.

There are millions of eligible voters in the US for whom a $40 fee would be impossible to overcome. You don't understand how deep and how widespread poverty is in the US.

If you think the Republicans are pushing for a national ID and the Democrats are blocking them, you also don't understand the US political parties.

Seems like India does this well and they are the world's largest democracy and much poorer than the average American. Poverty is not an excuse for government incompetence (or even malice).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_(India)

Trying to wrap my head around "Poverty is not an excuse for government malice". Poor people are to blame for Republicans trying to disenfranchise them? Certainly those who vote for Republicans I guess...

Seems like you aren't in the US so maybe you don't know the history. Basically the US has a very long history of white supremacists protecting their own power and wealth at the expense of non-white people through disenfranchisement. This continues today. I'm arguing from the point of view that this is bad and should not be a basis for policy.

It's not that it's impossible for some practical reason, the problem is that the republican party (which still holds a huge amount of power at the federal, state, and local level even when they don't hold the presidency) actively wants to deprive people of their voting privilege because they suspect those people might decide to vote against them.

I said voting privilege here but I should have said "right to vote"

From your article, it looks like you can apply online for voter ID in India, and mail in identity documents. It is also free to obtain. That's voter ID done right.

In India, it is law that there must be a place to register for an ID every X miles from a village, and that the IDs are free of cost. The government even ended up building tons of registration building up in the mountains where nomadic herders live.

In America, when voting license legislation is passed, the government shutdown DMVs making it difficult and expensive to get a voting license.

You're comparing apples to oranges.

That last sentence is interesting. The state of things is that a few lawmakers, mostly Democrats, support a national ID, but then most Republicans and a bunch of other Democrats strongly oppose it. It's semi-bipartisan to hate the idea of national ID.

Meanwhile Republicans are very into requiring ID to vote, and a free Federal ID is a great way to allow for that while also solving a bunch of other problems that amount to a bunch of extra work, risk, and stress for normal people, but there's no way they'll join the (AFAIK) minority of Democrats supporting it to get it through, because they like ID to vote but hate, like, good, efficient ID systems, at the same time.

Opposition's mostly fear of government misuse, with overlap with a minority of people really certain it's a sign of the end times and marks us as servants of the Devil or something (I guess it's not when it's in other countries, or maybe those people are all servants of the Devil now, IDK). Democrats fear Republicans will use it to target minorities or set up rules effectively non-personing parts of the citizenry by denying them IDs, after they're (the IDs) made super-important. Republicans are afraid they'll be used to round up guns or track militia members or something. Basically a bunch of people on both sides are afraid of it, so it's a dead issue.

I think people outside of the US have a lot of difficulty imagining that conditions within the US could actually be as bad as they are. I think a lot of people within the US do as well.

Tell me about it. I'm shopping for non-employer family health coverage right now and I bet if people in the rest of the OECD knew what that looked like here they'd lobby the UN to send peacekeepers and relief aid. Country's great for making money, and also great at taking a bunch of it with little to show in return. And inconveniencing you for the privilege.

Five figures a year for another five figures of risk exposure, and none of it even applies except at about (optimistically) 1/3 of providers in one state—wrong hospital a mile from your house, you're uninsured. Travel out of state and get in a car wreck without getting some kind of travel insurance ahead of time which'll probably also find a way not to pay in the fine print anyway, like you're going to f#cking Colombia, you're uninsured. Ugh. This friggin' country.

(for those outside the US, you can translate "you're uninsured" to "you are definitely going bankrupt if you actually need a hospital for anything. If you're very lucky you'll still manage to get sufficient care before they realize you have no money left. And then if you also lose your job as a result of the health issue it gets really bad but at least you might get government insurance then, after it's too late to save you from permanent poverty.")

[EDIT] oh, and yes, that's about as good as it gets in my state—that's not, like, the worst option, that's ~ every option. Almost every insurance provider has left the individual (i.e. non-employer-provided) market, leaving bottom-feeders who've figured out new ways to deliver nearly-useless coverage while technically complying with the ACA, plus a few "non-compliant" coverage options that, aside from being crap (but at least cheap crap, instead of expensive crap) expose you to tax liabilities, if the Feds ever decide to start enforcing those again.

I would only add that, regardless of the severity of your condition, if a hospital discovers that you will be unable to pay they will simply send you home untreated.

Yep. An ER has to make sure you're not actively, immediately dying but after that you're cut loose and they don't have to do a thing. Good luck with that cancer or whatever. Plus if they do anything I'm sure they still send debt collectors after you even if they know you don't have money.

Knowing hospitals you'd end up with five debts from different companies from one uninsured post-heart-attack stabilization in one room at one ER. This also makes it nearly impossible to actually know you're covered for anything—one of those entities might not "take" your insurance, and now all that money you paid is useless and you're screwed anyway.

Navigating US healthcare feels like performing voodoo magic and tea-leaf-reading with some combination of your physical and financial health on the line, trying to balance it so if something goes wrong both are only badly harmed rather than catastrophically harmed.

[EDIT] on the plus side if you start off poor there's a decent chance the government does cover your health care, though it makes sure to make maintaining that super stressful—it's just that it's all set up so the health care system eventually gets a huge chunk of everyone's money, if they have any, and often all of the money, sooner or later. May not apply to the super rich but otherwise you're either poor and covered, or not-poor-but-not-rich and hoping you get the right roll on the dice so the healthcare system doesn't find a way to take all your money. And it is in all cases incredibly stressful even when you're not sick.

If you get all your information from the media, you'd think it was the end of the world.

Hint - it's not.

Congratulations. You have now instituted both a poll tax/at least obstacle to voting and a Federal ID card. You have pretty much managed to alienate the entire political spectrum in the US.

> Then perhaps the federal authorities should push for federal ID cards so people can actually identify themselves when voting.

> This isn't a difficult problem to solve but it seems like the Democrats are trying to stonewall it any chance they get.

You miss the entire bigger picture when you don't mention that Republicans have been consistently against federal ID laws of any sort, not Democrats. That shows the real motives in play.

I'd love to see required ID for voting and federal ID laws (together, all at once), as would most left leaning people. It'd be chump change to implement in the scheme of the US government. The fact it has not been done for as long as this issue has been talked about (at least a decade now) makes it clear what's actually going on.

You also have to look at the history. To have the stance of pro voter ID laws but anti-federal ID is just a modern day extension of Jim Crow.

> It is beyond me how the State can enforce a non-voluntary tax liability on a citizen but has no way of reliably identifying said citizen

Are there tax liabilities that depend on one's citizenship?

The United States taxes its citizens globally regardless of residence, yes. One of the only countries in the world that does that (the other is Liberia AFAIK).

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