Texas Senate Passes One of the Nation’s Strictest Voting Bills
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Wow, this establishes an incredibly perverse incentive. If a party believes that they will lose, they can engage in fraud in favor of the opposite party (e.g. burning boxes of ballots in safe districts), and spoil the vote. If the same party is already in power, it would appear that they could just keep playing this game, pardoning the offenders each time, and maintain control of the "interim" government indefinitely.
>Wow, this establishes an incredibly perverse incentive. If a party believes that they will lose, they can engage in fraud in favor of the opposite party (e.g. burning boxes of ballots in safe districts), and spoil the vote.
By this rule, they could have the election overturned by casting fraudulent votes for their own party.
I don’t disagree with your assessment but I think the result is more complex. This becomes a statistical cat and mouse game, which again is a total distraction from the actual purpose of the voting process.
Plus, think of what one example of a "fraudulent election" would do to nationwide discourse.
The Brooks Brothers Riot of 2000 did exactly that, and today's discourse is visibly impacted by its aftermath. It wasn't prosecuted, and Democrats complained about the potential illegitimacy of Bush's win for ages. When Trump called the 2020 election into question, Republicans pointed the finger at Democrats, essentially saying that turnabout is fair play.
>Partisan poll watchers would also have more access and autonomy under the bill’s provisions, and election officials could be more harshly punished if they make mistakes or otherwise run afoul of election codes and laws.
Why does the United States allow anyone to vote without identification is a shocking question to be asking in 2021.
The voter ID discussion should be phrased as “assuming 99.9% have ID, do you think it’s a good idea to check it when voting?”
The answer to that question is: “yes”.
The other question (much less interesting!) is “assuming ID access and possession is as skewed as today, is it a good idea to require ID for voting?”. The answer to that question is an equally easy “No”.
Time cost. If they work 8-5, or two jobs, they can't get time off to go get an id.
That's just a few off the top of my head.
The reason identification laws are bad is because they disproportionately affect black people, who are less likely to have state identification, and that is because there are many people still alive today who were born in counties that literally refused to issue birth certificates to black people. It is very easy for someone to just sit there behind a computer and question why someone might not have government identification, but think it through.
Or it's because it's rarely caught and charges are rarely pressed:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/voter-fraud-a-myth-thats-not-wh...
61 out of 63 attempts to vote fraudulently were successful, and one was rejected only because the poll worker happened to be the mother of the person they were trying to fraudulently vote as.
Until there's widespread and thorough pentesting of the election systems in various states it's impossible to say at what rate fraud does or does not occur.
If so, perhaps he's a bit, I dunno, biased?
I point this out not to say that connection must taint the source, but because there have been many investigations for the types of in-person voter fraud tested here ("died, moved out of the jurisdiction, or been convicted of a felony at least two years earlier").
And they've found bupkis. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_impersonation_(United_St... for many of the relevant studies and court cases.
You'll notice that real-world data should be more convincing as a pen test like the WSJ editorial described specifically excluded the estimated probability needed for a valid risk assessment.
Someone could crash a tank through my front door to grab my laptop. A tiger team might even demonstrate that on a similar building to mine. But I'm not going to install anti-tank barricades to reduce the chance that already unlikely event will happen.
Permit me therefore to remain suspicious about a WSJ op-ed piece written by what appears to be someone with a strong financial and/or political reason to cast doubt on existing election security even if that doubt is unjustified.
EDIT: The 'Alan Schulkin, came under pressure resign after he was caught on tape telling the truth' is from a Project Veritas video, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas#New_York_City_... :
> In a follow-up interview with the New York Post, Schulkin stated, "I should have said 'potential fraud' instead of 'fraud'". Referring to the Project Veritas operative who secretely recorded him, Schulkin said, "She was like a nuisance. I was just trying to placate her", noting that in his haste to get away from her he "was agreeing with her when I shouldn’t have been."
You'll note that Levy writes "telling the truth", but doesn't present the evidence that this is actually the truth.
Re: the lack of fraud: people obviously believe (or say they believe) this is a problem. So it (giving everyone free and easy access to ID and then requiring it to vote) seems like a trivial fix to that problem of trust. I realize it’s solving a problem that might not exist, but once everyone has ID it’s an easy decision, and there are other possible benefits of having more IDs.
Other democracies have very liberal requirements on what constitutes an ID, and they do just fine. For example, here's the list of acceptable identification documents to participate in Canadian elections. https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&do...
The list covers everything from parolee cards, health cards (which are issued free of charge), firearm licenses, to letters of residency from a homeless shelter/soup kitchen, thus ensuring everyone can vote regardless of which walk of life they are from.
It's also worth noting that this law is not being passed in good faith to protect the integrity of elections, as there is little to no evidence that there is a threat. It is a partisan attempt to limit the voting rights of groups that for various reasons typically don't have identification cards, as there is significant overlap between those people and those who tend to vote in opposition to the those currently in power.
In practice, most people in most states probably do vote with IDs, since providing your ID is the easiest way for the poll workers to find your registration. And of course in the processes most people use to register to vote, some (if not multiple) form(s) of identification must generally be provided. The reality is that no significant ID-solved voter fraud exists in the US, so while nice in principle, voter ID laws only serve to suppress voter turnout.
I feel this is a huge misconception, everyone has to identify for the most part to get your voter registration card for example, so to claim we are allowing votes without identification is false.
Voter registration usually also includes your signature which is verified on all ballots mailed or otherwise.
For example last year I had to verify that my ballot was actually coming from me since they questioned my signature as it was an old signature I used. I sent in the proper documents to update said signature and prove I am who I said I was and it was done and over with.
As a non-american(as this is a worldwide site), I was literally wondering the same thing.
Having no form of identification? That's crazy... Not knowing the specific challenges.
In Canada you don't need to have "ID" as govt form of identification, you still need to be able to identify yourself.
They offer 3 options. Passport/driver's license/provincial I'd card.
Then if you don't have that, there are secondary items like student id + utility bill, or indigenous status card.
Then lastly, you can have someone who does have ID vouch for u.
"You can still vote if you declare your identity and address in writing and have someone who knows you and who is assigned to your polling station vouch for you.
The voucher must be able to prove their identity and address. A person can vouch for only one person (except in long-term care institutions)."
Source: https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&do...
Opponents argue that the uninformed will vote. The alternative however is much worse: disenfranchisement (eg why exactly can't felons vote?), active efforts to purge the wrong kind of voters from the electoral rolls [1] and voter suppression in the form of voter ID laws when no evidence of widespread voter fraud has ever been documented.
Australia has mandatory voting and it's non-controversial. It's technically not even mandatory voting. If you want to drop and empty ballot into the box so as to not to vote you can. You never have to wait in line for hours.
Make no mistake: removing access to absentee ballots, voter ID and efforts like Georgia making it illegal to give water to someone in line to vote have two goals:
1. To feed into the baseless GOP base delusion that the election was somehow stolen. It's virtue signaling for the Trump faithful because no GOP politician wants to be the next Liz Cheney and lose their next primary; and
2. To make it harder for Democrats to vote and to make less of them vote.
That's it.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force
Realistically, if someone who cares enough to put some effort into it cannot reasonably convince himself that he is making informed decisions for the approximately half of the ballot that these candidates for whatever, is it really unfair to assume people who don't care and are forced to vote will do anything but vote randomly or purely by party affiliation?
From the outside, it looks crazy. So many service positions that are treated as political positions instead of employee positions. So many positions that should have qualifications as a requirement for employment (e.g. education, certification, training), turned into positions that have no qualification requirements save for one: get elected. People of no competency mucking up jobs that require competency. Coroners who have no education whatsoever! Animal Control guys with no animal training! Sheriffs and whatnot with no legal training! It’s fantastically insane!