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Comment by drno123 | Hacker News Reader

I am amazed about low level od voter authentication in the USA. Living in Europe, we get national ID card when we turn 18. Everyone gets it. It is not hard to get it, it does not cost anything, even mentally challenged people get it. When there is an election, you need to show up with your ID card on voting place close to your residence - you cannot show in any voting place but one assigned to you. There they have a printed list with names of all eligible voters in the area, they check your ID card and you vote. When the votes are counted, any ordinary citizen can be present and verify the counts, providing he has registered in advance to be present at vote counting. Empty ballots are counted and verified against number od people that did not show up. American elections seem like a joke.

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Your country is likely a unitary state where you vote in national elections with your national ID.

The dynamic is different in the US. The US doesn't have national elections. All elections are run by each individually federated state. The national government of the US does not have the authority to override this.

Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela (when you could actually vote) are also federations (and not the only ones). Brazil's population is 210M and Mexico 126M. They all have national identity cards which can be used for voting like the parent comment says.

If there was will in the US for a national ID, Congress and the powers that be could achieve this within a few years if they wanted.

I am not saying that the US being a federation is the underlying reason for our lack of a national ID card used for voting. It's just part of the context that makes changing the situation difficult.

The reason is the combination of:

1. The power to run elections was delegated to the states

2. States don't want to give up that power

3. The only way to change that would be for the states to vote to give up those powers

Yes, as you point out, not all federations are this way. Many others are missing #1 or #3 above. I pointed out that the US was a federation simply for legal context. As of course, local governments don't really have much power against the central government in a unitary state.

that's great, republicans should hop on issuing a national identity card that can be used to vote in elections, instead of using state-level restrictions as a way to suppress voting.

Democrats would be onboard with a free federally administered voting ID. Republicans wouldn't, though, because it's not about fraud, it's about making it more difficult to vote, because they lose when more people vote, and they literally said as much to the supreme court as a justification for their voter restrictions laws.

(they see it as "political party is not a protected class, so there is no legal prohibition from creating voter laws which are designed to disadvantage their political opponents")

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/supreme-court-gop...

>you cannot show in any voting place but one assigned to you

There have been examples of this being gamed in the US. Gerrymander the county then force your political opponents into the least convenient polling place in the county.

> Everyone gets it.

This is the problem. In the US, there is no equivalent universal ID. Voter ID laws keep people out by requiring forms of ID that certain people tend not to have, e.g. requiring a driver's license, which immigrants and inner city residents might not have.

Exactly!

My dad who is a unicersity prof does not drive a car and does not have a driving license. Using driving license as a voter ID seems crazy to me.

In general the US is much more incompetently and inefficiently administered than many European countries. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the authorities are incapable of setting up a system like the one you describe.

It's a feature, not a bug. The US system is built to be inefficient with the checks of power.

Checks and balances of power is naturally inefficient, and tends to result in a more stable system.

This, of course, depends on where you are. Not every country in Europe has a national ID. Countries which do have one often charge for issuing them. In some cases it is sufficient just to bring your ballot paper to the polling station.

I think UK is the only one without an ID.

It’s not. Denmark, Iceland and Ireland (though they have “passport cards”)

Americans do everything possible to prevent universal, forced identification. I think this is a good thing. It sucks that the GOP are tricking their base into supporting it.

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