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Comment by antonvs | Hacker News Reader

What this doesn't take into account is the degree to which introducing such requirements can more easily be exploited in future to introduce barriers to voting. We've already seen how far some people are willing to go to undermine the integrity of elections.

This means the real question is, to what extent does the current system contribute to integrity issues? So far, there doesn't seem to be much evidence that it does. So, what is the rationale for introducing additional ID requirements, beyond what already exists via voter registration, matching at the polls, etc.?

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Most countries have id requirements, and it's not viewed as a slippery slope towards voter suppression.

As an outsider, I find it really weird how instead of agreeing to id requirements, Sunday-voting, and automatic registration like most countries, Americans prefer to fight the other side's requirements with silly arguments like "We can't vote on a Sunday, that would offend The Lord!", and "We can't use ids to vote because black people don't know how to get them."

Voting on Saturday would work just fine in the US. There's little difference between the two weekend days in the US when it comes to some people working or not on those days (if you work Saturdays, you often also work Sundays; you're typically on a weekend shift in that case). Culturally it's an exceptionally obvious and easy compromise.

Unfortunately, Sunday voting could be seen as disenfranchising religious communities that treat Sundays as a Sabbath / day of rest.

You still have early voting if that is a complaint.

Personally, I agree, but I can easily see how not being able to vote in person on election day due to religious obligations would run afoul of the Supreme Court.

If the only day to vote was on Sunday, sure. But nobody is being oppressed by having the polls open on an additional day. And what about communities that observe Sabbath on Saturdays?

A significant number of people, especially those lower on the socioeconomic ladder, are working on weekends.

"Vote on saturday" would skew elections toward those who work M-F jobs.

We need mail-in voting. It would solve so many problems. But the reason one party has fought against it so hard is because stripping certain communities of their precincts and poll workers and such to create massive waits for voting is a key part of their disenfranchisement strategy...and keeping voting as an in-person activity because it does such a wonderful job of keeping The Poors out of polls, thus starving progressive candidates of votes.

> We need mail-in voting. It would solve so many problems. But the reason one party has fought against it so hard

...for other people (their own voters, because of age demographics of the parties, being disproportionately more likely to qualify for mail-in [absentee] ballots under the restrictive rules they prefer to general mail-in availability)...

Most countries have IDs though… you can’t do anything in most European countries without your ID. If we had to have a specific document to vote that we never need for anything else, we would be having the same arguments as you guys

>"You can’t do anything in most European countries without your ID."

That's the case in America, too.

The difference is that in the US there's no standard ID that's suitable for voting, that everyone has.

Not everyone has a driver's license. It's possible to get a non-driver ID from the motor vehicle department in most states, but not everyone without a driver's license has this either.

There's also no federal ID, other than a passport, which a large number (majority?) of people don't have.

This is a big part of the reason why separating voter registration from voting makes sense in the US. Voter registration allows identity to be confirmed using a variety of documents, which would be less practical to check at polling time.

The "solution" to this (assuming a solution is needed, which no-one seems to be able to justify well) is to have a federal ID or a federal ID standard (like Real ID), coupled with a requirement that every citizen has such an ID.

It's amusing that conservatives are the ones pushing for this "papers please" approach. Apparently their fear of imaginary voter fraud by imaginary immigrants outweighs their fear of a new federal government-imposed requirement that impacts their precious "freedoms".

I'm in favor of a Federal ID. I've never understood the opposition to it, especially considering each of us already has a few ID numbers issued to us by different federal agencies.

>"It's amusing that conservatives are the ones pushing for this "papers please" approach. Apparently their fear of imaginary voter fraud by imaginary immigrants outweighs their fear of a new federal government-imposed requirement that impacts their precious "freedoms".

This is some really snide rhetoric.

It's snide because it's identifying a huge, irrational hypocrisy in what's supposedly important to those people.

> I'm in favor of a Federal ID

But there isn't one now. This means that your original point about the case with IDs in America being similar to Europe is not actually relevant here.

In any case, what problem do you think requiring ID at time of voting is solving?

What I was getting at is, you need an ID card to do many things in America, mostly related to private business and civil services. You need one to open a bank account, doctors offices scan your ID card, you need one to pick up certain prescriptions, etc.. The idea that getting an ID to vote is some onerous burden doesn't hold up when you realize people pretty much need an ID during the other 729 days between election days in a two year cycle.

I think a Federal ID would be better for record-keeping, but even without one, people really should have to provide a robust identity verification document to vote. If someone just needs to show up and say "I am so-and-so" and doesn't need to provide anything but a signature, that doesn't seem secure at all.

Election fraud Chicago style: Illinois’ decades-old notoriety for election corruption is legendary https://www.salon.com/2016/02/14/election_fraud_chicago_styl...

It's more an issue that there is no unified, universal ID system in the US. Different states do things differently and have different requirements. I'd be more in favor of an ID requirement if there was a universal, free, accessible ID system in place, but there isn't, and implementing one is a similarly fraught political question.

Everyone has a social security number you could expand that to be the basis for a federal level id system like most other western countries.

You could, except currently a SSN is used more like a shared secret or password than a unique identifier. I would think that a green-field approach would be better than stapling yet more functionality onto an overloaded number that was never designed to be used the way we're using it.

The Department of Defense uses EDIPI, which is basically a second SSN-like number used to identify you for less-secure/serious stuff short of healthcare, etc...

https://itlaw.wikia.org/wiki/Electronic_Data_Interchange_Per...

> Most countries have id requirements, and it's not viewed as a slippery slope towards voter suppression.

Other countries have actual ID cards. They are issued for free to and required of every single citizen. The US does not: it has a long history of suspicion of national government IDs.

Because of this, a "voter ID" in US states can mean whatever the state legislature wants it to mean, and republican legislatures are often accused of restricting valid forms of identification to specifically those which republican voters have more often than democrat voters.

> it has a long history of suspicion of national government IDs.

I think it's more that the people in power and their supporters have had reason to make government IDs hard to come by for the transient, poor, and other undesirables. Or they simply don't want to 'muh tax dollars' going to the 'lazy bum' on the street getting a government ID card. I think there's also been a fair amount of pushing by the auto industry to make drivers licenses the default ID, too - starting in the fifties you really saw the "you have a car if you're important/Made It" attitude creep into US society.

By the way: did you notice that the politicians shouting loudest about illegal immigration tend to be associated with industries and states that use lots of illegal immigration (like, saaaaay, farming?)

It's not about stopping illegal immigration. It's about them having power over their workers. "Illegals" don't talk to police, public health officials, DAs, OSHA, etc about pesky things like missing/deducted paychecks, workplace safety, violence/theft, etc.

"They're stealing your jobs" is just how they sell it to Joe Q. Public, because one way to win someone over is to tell them that there's someone further down the ladder than them.

Most democratic countries don't seem to have a right wing that's been doing its best to undermine the integrity of elections in a way that works in their favor.

The countries where you see that kind of behavior tend to be the ones that have ended up with dictators or quasi-dictators. There's been plenty of serious discussion recently about the risk the US faces of ending up on that road.

Whatever the arguments might have been for this 5 or 10 years ago, now seems like a really bad time to make a change like this. And again, what is the positive case for making the change? What problem is being solved? There already is a voter identification requirement at registration time, and a mechanism for detecting fraudulent votes.

That party has, in internal presentations leaked to the public, stated to their own leadership (paraphrasing) "we are not popular, our platform is not popular. We cannot win elections unless we stop as many people from voting as possible, because our people ALWAYS vote."

Most other countries did not have legal and quasi-legal voter suppression of minorities entrenched in their system for most of their history.

Most european countries require some sort of government ID before voting. I don't see what the big deal is.

They also provide ID for free. A lot of these countries have some form of government-sponsored health care, for which people already have ID by default.

Not all European states provide free IDs, and some US states which require IDs provide them for free.

Can you give me examples of European countries where there are no forms of ID that are free and accepted at the polls?

In Germany the ID card costs 37 EUR and is valid for 10 years, reduced to 22.80 EUR and 6 years of validity if you're under 24. A passport is even more expensive. No other forms of identification are accepted, but it's also not really necessary since you're required to get an ID card anyways.

> you're required to get an ID card anyways

The US doesn't require citizens to have ID to exist. That's part of "freedom" in America (I mean this genuinely).

So it is an additional step if you want to vote. Cynical state governments have tried to shape who can vote for them by making IDs mandatory and strategically closing ID offices in certain areas, reducing office hours (among other barriers). It's not a hypothetical situation.

In Spain, the national ID (DNI) costs 12 euros. They wave the cost under certain conditions.

Is DNI the only acceptable form of ID for voting? Are there no free IDs that are also accepted? How long does it take to get a DNI? How convenient is it?

Voter ID laws in the US are weaponized to reduce turnout. Make ID compulsory, then make getting ID really cumbersome (reduce office hours, increase wait times, increase costs).

DNI, passport or drivers license. All of these IDs cost money. DNI is compulsory after 16.

> DNI is compulsory after 16.

The US doesn't require citizens to have an ID just to exist. That's part of the "freedom" Americans like to talk about. It sounds like every citizen in Spain already has a DNI so they should be able to vote without additional hassle.

It's the additional hassle to vote that opponents of voter ID laws cite as the crux of the issue. If you pair mandatory voter ID laws with strategic ID office closures (among other barriers), you can influence who can vote. This has already happened; it isn't hypothetical.

Not American, but from what I understand you would need an ID for e.g. foods stamps and unemployment benefits (searched via Google). I think the same is true when you are hired for a new job as well(?). These are just examples. Can you really live a normal life in the US without a passport, driver's license or State ID?

I have read many times that requiring an ID card to vote in the US is seen by many as undemocratic as certain demographics are hindered from voting. To me this is absurd. To create trust that elections are held without fraud, IDs are an essential building block.

> requiring an ID card to vote in the US

Requiring an ID card without taking steps to ensure those IDs are available easily and for cheap. There are almost no "election security by voter ID" bills that provide the latter. On the other hand, making voter ID mandatory has been accompanied by closure of offices or reduction of hours, increasing wait times and so on. It's clearly a dirty trick.

IDs are essential. It works in other countries. Fix it.

The ACLU cites a 2006 study which says that 25% of African-American eligible voters lack government-issued photo ID, and 8% of white eligible voters. Those are pretty huge numbers, not to mention the conspicuous ethnic disparity.

Where exactly? I had to pay for all my government IDs.

Unlike many countries, US doesn't have a national required ID card, so voter ID schemes must resort to other kinds of identification. Republican-controlled states have often restricted forms of identification to those sorts that many democrats may not have in an attempt to discourage them from voting.

>So far, there doesn't seem to be much evidence that it does. So, what is the rationale for introducing additional ID requirements, beyond what already exists via voter registration, matching at the polls, etc.?

Right, as any good security engineer will tell you, the best time to fix a hole is after its already been exploited.

I've done security engineering work at both large and small companies, as well as for the US Navy.

What's the threat model you're concerned about here?

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