> refuse to accept college IDs as valid for voting, even those issued by the state government because it's a state school
I mean, yeah, you don't have to be a resident of the state or even a citizen to go to a university in the US.
I mean, yeah, you don't have to be a resident of the state or even a citizen to go to a university in the US.
Doesn't matter if you're a resident of the state. https://help.vote.org/article/17-i-am-a-college-student-shou...
> The choice is legally yours. You have dual residency, so you can register back home or on campus as long as you don't register to vote in both states. You can use our Voter Registration Tool to register to vote in less than 2 minutes.
This is the exact reason that issuing indistinguishable driver's licenses to non-citizens was controversial.
> Doesn't matter if you're a resident of the state.
The point is that maybe it should. It's reasonable to say that people should vote in the place where they're a permanent resident and not somewhere they're likely not going to reside by the end of the term of office for the election in question.
It's not as if they can't vote, they can vote where they're actually from. Or demonstrate the intent to move to the state where they want to vote by getting a state ID there.
I don't think it's ever been controversial to permit permanent residents to have drivers' licenses.
No, it wasn't.
Because nondistinguishable licenses for immigrants had been issued for generations when the controversy, which was about licenses issued to people without valid immigration status, erupted.
A lot more US citizens have a driver's license than a passport. It's the most common form of identification and if it doesn't specify citizenship then there will be millions of people who don't have any picture ID that can prove their citizenship status.
That problem could easily be solved by specifying whether you're a citizen on your driver's license. It's a poor excuse to extend the problem to other forms of ID that don't prove citizenship status.
No, I don't. Because there is no reasonable on topic argument you could be getting at.
> A lot more US citizens have a driver's license than a passport. It's the most common form of identification and if it doesn't specify citizenship then there will be millions of people who don't have any picture ID that can prove their citizenship status.
Which is fine in the context of voter ID, because presenting ID to vote is notionally to confirm that the person presenting to vote is the person registered (authentication), not that the person registered is allowed to vote (authorization).
Authorization of registered voters and removal/disqualification of unauthorized voters is, even in Voter ID systems and proposals, handled separately from voter ID, typically by the same kind of processes used without voter ID.
That doesn't really have anything to do with voter ID at the polls, because the point of voter ID at the polls is not to prove that you are eligible to vote. Proof of eligibility should be taken care of when you register to vote.
The point of ID at the polls is to show that you are the person who you claim to be, so that the poll workers can check to see if you are on the registered voter list.
A driver's license proves state residency (one of the requirements needed to vote), a student ID does not.
Neither a school ID nor a drivers’ license says anything about citizenship. They’re the same in that regard.
That's not what that says. Students can proclaim residency in the state they are attending school, yes. That also means in Texas you have 30 days to register your car, 90 days to change over to a Texas driver's license, etc.
>Neither a school ID nor a drivers’ license says anything about citizenship. They’re the same in that regard.
We're not talking about citizenship, we're talking about residency. A student ID does not prove state residency, so it does not past muster whatsoever. Texas has legal explanation covering this specific scenario: https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/elo/gsc1.pdf
I'll state it again: a student ID does not prove residency.
The comment upthread I initially replied to stated student IDs aren't appropriate because they don't demonstrate citizenship; I pointed out neither does a drivers' license.
The appropriate time to look at residency/citizenship is at the voter registration step. This is already done!
Except student IDs don't even do that. They prove your student status, not state resident identity. That's why you can't use student IDs to buy alcohol, board a plane, or purchase a firearm. Voting and buying guns are both constitutionally guaranteed rights. Are you OK with people buying guns with student IDs? If you are, at least you're being consistent.
Many student IDs are not even issued by the states (private schools). Also, there are hundreds of schools per state, being a student at Piney Woods Community College isn't easily verifiable if it's even in the state.
>The comment upthread I initially replied to stated student IDs aren't appropriate because they don't demonstrate citizenship
Nor do they demonstrate residency, nor are they valid for a number of other rights and privileges so it holds that they're not accepted.
>I pointed out neither does a drivers' license.
Which is true, but not what I stated above.
>The appropriate time to look at residency/citizenship is at the voter registration step. This is already done!
Some states have same day registration so it is not already done. Nonetheless, a student ID is a poor ID for exercising a person's right to vote.
I can hear leftists screeching from here over this proposal. That's exactly what Republicans want... Now student IDs can't be issued to illegal immigrants, need the same verifications required for DLs, which is White supremacy or something.
> school in most cases already knows this information because they need it to verify the tuition rate for which a student qualifies.
Which is hilariously inaccurate. I knew many students who feigned residency to save themselves tens of thousands.
>But GOP-run state legislatures didn’t do this and the reason why seems obvious given the public intonations coming from these individuals.
Because it was shot down by Democrats. Republicans just want to bring the US to the 21st century and match what the rest of the first-world countries are doing. Anything else is regressive.
Nonetheless, as far as Texas is concerned, students can get a free voter ID that qualifies, so the student ID point is moot.
I am a leftist. I see nothing wrong with this proposal (I mean, I proposed it, right?). Illegal immigrants going to CC wishing to pay resident rates will have to prove their residency just like everyone else, as is the current situation. I don't see an issue with that. Do you? It seems to me maybe you have a caricature of leftists in your mind if you think this proposal would have leftists screeching.
> I knew many students who feigned residency to save themselves tens of thousands.
Which is fraud and can be detected and caught easily. If legislatures wanted to fortify the requirements to make them more uniform across counties they could have. They didn't. And it's telling.
> Because it was shot down by Democrats.
Shot down? The bills that were passed were written and supported by Republican legislatures and signed into law by Republican governors. Democrats didn't have a say over anything. Republicans could have passed anything they wanted and Democrats were and are powerless to "shoot" anything down. Not sure how it's cogent to bring up minority opposition here.
> Nonetheless, as far as Texas is concerned, students can get a free voter ID that qualifies, so the student ID point is moot.
You mean free as long as their time is worthless, right? Because they already have an ID that should qualify, but doesn't because of "reasons". Where those reasons are vague and unsupported by fact and evidence. After all, we have no evidence so far to support the idea that students are committing widespread voter fraud. Republicans can't seem prove such a thing is happening despite decades of searching for it (gee, maybe because it's not happening).
We know.
>I see nothing wrong with this proposal (I mean, I proposed it, right?).
No problem with denying illegal immigrants student IDs because they have to be at the same standards required for other voting IDs? Awesome, glad we agree.
>Illegal immigrants going to CC wishing to pay resident rates will have to prove their residency just like everyone else, as is the current situation.
Correct, except now they'll have to prove lawful presence, and residency if they are to be the same standard as other voter IDs. They can't prove lawful presence because they immigrated illegally, so my point stands.
>I don't see an issue with that. Do you?
Not at all! Tax money for citizens and legal immigrants should absolutely not go to illegal immigrants. No issues here, glad we agree.
>Which is fraud and can be detected and caught easily.
Apparently not. There are hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants defrauding the government by using other's social security numbers, etc. and it's been tough to stop it.
>If legislatures wanted to fortify the requirements to make them more uniform across counties they could have. They didn't. And it's telling.
They did... What are you talking about? This is a state standard that is the same across all counties. It's telling that you have absolutely no clue here.
>Shot down?
Yes, national IDs, voter ID laws are continuously shot down by Democrats, or are tampered in committees etc.
>You mean free as long as their time is worthless, right?
Just like voting, buying a gun, etc. It's not 100% free in time to exercise your rights.
>Because they already have an ID that should qualify,
Except they don't, as I have laid out above. Student IDs are not valid practically anywhere for identification such as airplanes, bars, buying alcohol, purchasing firearms, etc.
>but doesn't because of "reasons"
Yes, "reasons", also known as "uncomfortable facts that go against the narrative."
>Where those reasons are vague and unsupported by fact and evidence.
Those reasons are well defined and support by facts, logic, and evidence.
>After all, we have no evidence so far to support the idea that students are committing widespread voter fraud.
Thankfully because they're not allowed to use their student IDs, glad we're treating them like normal citizens.
>Republicans can't seem prove such a thing is happening despite decades of searching for it (gee, maybe because it's not happening).
Cool, same how there haven't been illegal weapons purchases with student IDs because they're not allowed for that either. Glad the Republicans are being consistent.
34 states require a birth certificate or proof of legal residency.
16 states do not require the above, but that does not mean that no identification at all is required.
The state already knows John Jones, born 1st January 1970, is eligible to vote - I merely have to prove that I am John Jones, born 1st January 1970.
It actually does not know this. This is a very hard problem to solve in the US. There can be positive evidence of this (John Jones has been a resident of California since birth, has a birth certificate (state document) and a Social Security (federal) number reflecting that), but John Jones may have been born in PA with no Social Security number or birth certificate at all and be a current resident of California, having moved there last year, and a perfectly legitimate US citizen eligible to vote in California for local, state, and federal offices.
There is no national US citizen registry, mostly for historical reasons, and making one is a total political nonstarter. Further, states are individually responsible for determining if someone is probably an eligible voter, and so there’s different processes and checks in place depending on the state.
For most taxpayers, that's the SSN, and its widely used for other purposes.
Republicans mostly seem to have a problem when people point out that their incompetence is causing them to leak publicly, e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28867562
[1] https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/taxp...
Here are the voter registration requirements in New Hampshire, to pick a state out at random, for example: https://sos.nh.gov/media/nbhlz4bt/registering-to-vote-in-new...
You can literal simply pinky swear and sign a document in front of an election official at your voting place and time that you are an eligible voter to register, and then go vote. They have no practical way of truly verifying what you say in most cases. There are legitimate edge cases that need this, so that’s why things work this way.
It's more fundamental than that: states are individually responsible for determining who the eligible voters are. There are variations from state to state as to the terms of residency in the state, whether felons or people who have been declared mentally incapacitated [0].
That, among other things, causes a substantial difficulty in attempts to (say) conform presidential elections to the national popular vote outcome; one of the functions of the electoral college is to (mostly in a very nonlinear binary fashion) normalize the results by state to the total population rather than simply the enfranchised population (hence the 3/5ths rule being a compromise between "count the slaves" and "don't count the slaves" in the weighting process).
You go to vote. They check ID to determine whether the person standing there is who they claim to be. Then they check the voter registration rolls to see if that person is eligible to vote.