Why are people honestly against ID requirements for voting?
Pretty much every democracy in the world has this. Europeans need to show ID to vote.
Pretty much every democracy in the world has this. Europeans need to show ID to vote.
I have yet to meet anyone advocating for ID to vote who actually wants to address these by both making said ID free for all Americans and paying for the programs necessary to ensure that every American has easy access to get one. This means everything from busing programs to opening new offices in areas that don't have one to putting people on the street to collect the necessary forms and make sure the homeless get them. Then also making sure you find a way to ensure that the disabled, elderly, or just people who can't kill two hours standing in line have an easy way to vote.
Most instead seem to treat that disenfranchisement as acceptable even desired. Truly address the issue of not everyone having an ID and universal access to easy voting (I'm not aware of any lawmakers proposing Voter ID laws attempting to do so) and my objections go away.
Then you'll only have to deal with the folks who are against requiring everyone have ID because they worry about turning us into a "Papers Please" kind of society.
Solution: Make the USA passport card free and compulsory.
https://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1214&con...
Great! All that's left is addressing all the challenges I brought up around making obtaining one simple for everyone (no, drive 40 minutes to your nearest post-office doesn't count), and making voting universally easily accessible to everyone and you have my support!
Given that as far as I know not a single lawmaker who has been pushing Voter ID has backed your suggestion, much less put any effort into addressing my other concerns, I don't think I'll be supporting Voter ID anytime soon.
That would be the ultimate solution, and, as it was mentioned, something that has been proven effective in a very large chunk of the developed world.
But having spent the last five years in the US, I think this will trigger the opposition of most conservative pundits, politicians, and attorneys across the country. Ironically, these are the same people who advocate for stringent voter ID laws.
As many have mentioned the USPS could serve as the backbone with ID cards being printed in kiosks on the spot. The USPS already provides the means for obtaining your passport.
It's not clear to me why anyone falls for the rhetoric of ID's suppressing or disenfranchising voters, it's a lot of partisan nonsense. "Someone think of the homeless and disabled elderly, how will they vote" when we all know the reality is they don't.
The integrity of our vote includes ensuring every eligible voter is able to do so without obstacles. As far as I can tell this is currently the primary threat to the integrity of the vote we are facing.
> Every issue you have against a national ID can be solved easily.
Great let's solve it then! As mentioned actually solve those issues instead of hand waving them away and I'll be pro-voter ID. But as far as I can tell no one is trying to solve them, especially not the people currently pushing voter ID.
> As many have mentioned the USPS could serve as the backbone
Not everyone has a USPS nearby. Not everyone has a car to drive there. I don't accept denying these people the vote.
> "Someone think of the homeless and disabled elderly, how will they vote" when we all know the reality is they don't.
Your reality is news to me, and I don't accept that it's okay to make it hard for anyone to vote just because you don't think they want to.
Voting ID's are free in all states they are required.
> or does not have the means to get to an office.
This could be said for anything...it is funny that the liberal American solution to lack of access to ID offices is to get rid of ID's...not, you know, improve access to said offices (subsidized Ubers that link into an ID appointment, maybe only available every year/whenever you need to renew).
It's funny that the conservative American solution to lack of access to ID offices is just deny them a vote... not, you know, improve access to said offices.
Seriously, what do you think the conservative reaction to giving a tech darling like Uber taxpayer money to cart the poor around? I can hardly imagine the backlash.
Also why assume I'm a liberal? Not requiring an ID has long big a conservative principal. It's only recently that requiring one has become a republican one. Turns out the world isn't as simple as conservatives vs liberals.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/21/democrats...
I've seen the opposite, not a single person who wants voter ID is against making it freely available to those who can't afford it. In fact, voter ID is already required in a number of states, and not only are there free options available in those states (because it would be a poll tax otherwise), but voter ID's in those states have not shown to decrease minority turnout in elections.
It's a completely fake issue.
I have. I've met plenty of people who say if you aren't willing to spend $25 on your ID you don't deserve to vote. But that's really besides the point given that it only addresses one cherry picked issue out of a number I brought up. Doesn't matter if the ID is free if you have to spend 3 hours bussing to and from, waiting in line, and bussing back from getting it. Or if there is no public transit available. Doesn't matter if the ID is free if there is an hour long line because there aren't enough polling places in your area and we've banned mail-in and drop off ballots. Or if you are simply too infirm to make it to said polling place. Or aren't willing to wait in a large crowd of a hundred of your closest strangers I'm the middle of a pandemic.
How many of those pushing for voter ID are prepared to spend tax dollars on those issues? Texas certainly isn't.
> but voter ID's in those states have not shown to decrease minority turnout in elections.
Depends on what studies your looking at https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-14-634
I suspect you are referring to this one which a number of conservative outlets have been circulating recently: https://www.nber.org/papers/w25522
They conviently never mentioned that it also found that voter ID had no impact on fraud either.
> It's a completely fake issue.
Voter ID to prevent election fraud is a fake issue by the same metric. Yet I assume you are genuine. Why can't you extend the same courtesy to me?
But as serious as people take elections, it's absurd to think people wouldn't do things they shouldn't when their favorite (or least favorite) candidate is on the ballot. You think everyone just plays by the rules?
Of course not! Whoever claimed this? I don't think anyone has claimed that there are no instances of fraud, to do so would be asinine, we have caught confirmed cases of fraud.
> Well the problem with having no laws requiring voter ID is that you literally can't catch fraud
The people currently in jail for it would beg to differ. This gentleman perhaps: https://news.yahoo.com/trump-supporter-charged-voter-fraud-0... Or perhaps this instance of ballot harvesting: https://www.canyon-news.com/georgia-whistle-blower-admits-to...
The reason there is so little voter fraud is the reward is so little and the risk is so great. I cast my grandmas ballot and risk 5 years in a federal prison for what? That vote has a lower chance of swaying the election that I'd have of winning the lottery with a lottery ticket. To perform fraud on the scale required to sway an election you need to coordinate a large group of people (for a Presidential election across multiple states) and all it takes is one defector to bring it all down. Frankly, if your going to attempt this scale, your not doing to attack the system anywhere that Voter ID helps. If I send people to cast ballots that's hundreds of events where I risk getting caught, no you'd want to inject ballots after they've been collected. Or some other scheme that avoids having to cast hundreds or thousands of illegal ballots individually.
In fact the reason that this is important and that people take this seriously is exactly why one should be suspicious of any politician looking to change the rules, especially when there is zero evidence to support said rule change. Who has more incentive to sway the election than the politicians in office? And there is absolutely zero legal risk in proposing a law that just so happens to help you get re-elected, unlike the individual commit voter fraud. SO politicians have all the incentive and none of the risk.
And we know they aren't afraid to use it. While specific instances are debated, no one denies gerrymandering exists. So yes, when I look at Voter ID, I don't just look at it by itself, I look at what's included in these "election security" bills that include stricter Voter ID. It's never opening more polling placing, allowing voting on multiple days, or any other measure designed to make it easier to vote. Instead it's always closing drive up voting, mail in voting, disallowing votes not cast on election days, and limiting the number of polling places in high population areas.
Then when I oppose this bill I must be "pro voter fraud" because otherwise why would I be against Voter ID? Nevermind those other measures in the bill.
Now you just have to convince everyone else pushing for voter ID to actually put in the work (and spend the money) to get that done, and we can get this thing rolling!
Good luck!
It's mostly a fake issue to cast the administration as pro-democracy and the opposition as anti-democracy. There's no doubt that poor people sometimes find it very tough to obtain ID, and that voter ID laws benefit Republicans by a few percentage points, but Republican positions on voter ID are less to get those points than to paint themselves as the guardians of democracy against an imaginary secret cabal who are secretly manipulating elections with armies of minorities and illegal immigrants.
They're both playing the same game to different voter bases.
If Democrats seriously cared, they could simply create facilities with the stroke of a pen that would reach out to every voter and help them to obtain ID. Instead they're loudly pushing bills they don't have the votes to pass as a campaign tactic.
It's astounding that under the same administration that is fighting for the right to vote without ID, facial recognition is going to be required to file your taxes. Taxes you only have to file because of Intuit lobbyists.
What else would you expect from a government that ran on being covid rationalists but has taken a year to figure out that they should be sending people masks and tests if they want people to be wearing masks and taking tests?
Perhaps this is the case, and perhaps not, but I'd like to examine this premise closer.
Has anybody provided even a single example of a US Citizen who was trying to figure out how to obtain some ID and couldn't figure out the process?
Not an US citizen, but a Texas resident.
It's not only that the process is painfully complex. For instance, homeless people who don't legally own a gun or can drive a car, are effectively excluded. Same goes for students whose bills are still attached to their families, would have a hard time proving their residence status.
If one can go pass this step, providing proof of identity is equally complicated [1]. It's amusing that some of the accepted documents are even harder and way more expensive to obtain, like a passport.
Not having a social security number makes the whole process almost impossible to complete.
Point is, this shouldn't be this complicated and time consuming. Someone with low income and working two or more jobs, would have a hard time going through the process.
[1] https://www.dps.texas.gov/section/driver-license/identificat...
Certainly with such interest in this topic, there's been a journalistic expose that went into the unfortunate story of even one US citizen who was wrongly prevented from getting some kind of ID? If I had even 1 name of somebody who was wrongly deprived of an ID, it would be a lot easier to understand that there's a real issue here.
Same could be said about "widespread voter ID fraud". Given that there are no such examples of this, why would anyone want to push for more stringent voter ID laws?
Anyhow, here's an example of why and how such laws target minorities and lower classes: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r...
I could make many comments here about the actual election system and how recounts are designed to be worthless, but my biggest argument that I think is completely unassailable is simple: credibility. Do you want to have a credible government or not?
Here's a poll from early in 2020 that says that about 59% of Americans distrust the election system. I'm sure you could find many other polls from before and after that show that a non-trivial percentage of Americans have doubts about the election system's honesty.
https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2020-02-13/ma...
Why wouldn't we want to take the concerns of a non-trivial group seriously and work to address them? The mere fact that there's such establishment resistance to enhancing the security of and ability to audit the election system only adds fuel to the fire that there's something that they want to hide.
> why would anyone want to push for more stringent voter ID laws?
As long as we're not preventing any valid voters from voting (a legitimate concern of course), what's the argument against making the election process even more credible and secure? Please help me understand that.
> Anyhow, here's an example of why and how such laws target minorities and lower classes: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r...
Let me start out by saying that this article did not meet my stated criteria of asking for a specific name of somebody who was unable to get an ID. I was very specific in asking for a name because even just one real verifiable example of a person can illustrate the issue.
Anyway, I agree that the article does highlight some theoretical issues with applying unnecessary hoops to people. I sincerely hope that all people in uncommon living situations (such as those with nonexistent addresses on an Indian Reservation or living out in the sticks somewhere) have the legal ability to vote.
To play Devil's Advocate and be a bit contrarian however, I have to point out this article was a one-sided polemic. The best anecdote from the article about the grandma showed that she was able to vote the same day once she got a little assistance. And the article made a big deal about the distances that poor folks had to travel in order to vote, but the phrase "absentee ballot" doesn't even appear in the article. The article does mention the difficulties with rural mail being slow, but doesn't give even one example where this prevented somebody from voting. I'm certainly going to keep an open mind about the struggles involved in getting ID and voting and I fully agree that any election system that exists should be easily accessible to all valid voters, but I'm not convinced from this article that there's 1 legal citizen out there who can't figure out how to ultimately acquire identification.
That's not at stake, again, unless you can prove that widespread election fraud is a thing. Which, so far, isn't.
> Here's a poll from early in 2020 that says that about 59% of Americans distrust the election system.
Out of curiosity, I went to check out the actual Gallup article and poll results [1]. What it actually says is that the drop is likely driven by allegations of foreign interference and cybersecurity issues, neither had anything to do with voter ID.
A more recent poll [2] increases confidence in the electoral process to 59%. Drop in confidence is driven by republican voters. Interestingly, the issue of eligible voters not being able to cast their vote ranks higher than non eligible people casting votes. So, voter suppression is perceived as more important than voter fraud.
Let me reiterate, there is no proof of widespread voter fraud.
The issue here is that voter IDs are, sometimes, quite difficult to obtain. If republicans were serious about this issue, they would make it universal, free, and compulsory. If every single person born in the US could have an ID card issued in a matter of minutes, which is something pretty common in most developed countries, this "problem" would automatically be solved.
But this is not what Republicans want. They don't want to make it easier or cheaper to obtain a voter ID, they want to keep the current model and make it harder to vote.
> Let me start out by saying that this article did not meet my stated criteria of asking for a specific name of somebody who was unable to get an ID.
Well, this is unfortunate.
Frankly, I find it a bit dishonest to peddle the narrative that people want harsher voter ID laws, since, as stated, they care more about suppression than they do about fraud. It's also not great that your argument revolves around that voter ID laws would make elections more "secure", when there is no proof that they weren't in the first place.
A poll is not proof of anything.
Public sentiment is just that, a sentiment.
The fact that most republican voters believe that voter fraud is widespread, does not mean that they would change their minds if what they ask for is granted. And I don't need to go back too far to prove my point, because the fraud narrative has been moving goalposts since the very beginning, as they went from illegal absentee votes, to votes arriving too late to be counted, to dead people voting, to foreign votes (?) being counted, to voting machines being hacked, and so on and so forth. None of these claims could be verified, yet here we are.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/285608/faith-elections-relative...
[2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/321665/confidence-accuracy-elec...
The Government's research shows that 2% of the UK population doesn't have any form of photo ID, and up to 9% of the population don't have a valid photo ID (i.e. one that would be recognised for voting purposes and has not expired). [0]
The idea that 9% of the population would need to go through additional processes and costs to retain the right to vote is concerning to many.
There's no ID card scheme in the UK, so people typically rely on a driving licence or passport in day to day life. These both have requirements people may not be able to meet (e.g. health conditions may prohibit a driving licence being obtained), and can be expensive.
Fortunately, the UK government has announced plans for a free voter ID card to be made available to anyone without another form of ID.
It then comes down to a cost/risk analysis. The UK government estimates it could cost something like £18 million per year to implement the photo ID requirement.
If the types of fraud that would be prevented by asking for ID are miniscule (33 allegations of voter impersonation were made in 2019 out of 50 million votes cast) and so many people don't have ID - is it worth that cost?
[0] - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
This is notably the origin of the term "grandfather clause", although its current meaning is subtly different from the original sense.
The 15th Amendment made it illegal for states to deny the right to vote directly on the basis of race, so instead they imposed new poll taxes and "literacy tests" (which were not designed as true tests, but rather as instruments to allow poll workers to arbitrarily "pass" and "fail" would-be voters), while exempting those whose grandfathers were eligible to vote before a specific date.
This way, you can strike down the arguments about the entire Democracy hinging on fake voting and "lost the election" BS. Give Republicans what they want. I don't see any issue with it.
Also Democrats need to calm down and realize that it is not that unreasonable to ask people for IDs to avoid duplicate voting. It is not anti-democratic and definitely not doing anything helpful by calling people that want IDs fascists. Election integrity should be so good that it shouldn't have gaping holes like not having a fricking ID.
While this is from 2015, this does not appear to be true.
Those who do have a free ID, require a time consuming waiver process.
Free needs to mean free, "not fill out this stack of paperwork and we'll send it off to the state capitol and see if it'll get approved"
Means testing is expensive and time consuming.
Until the voter ID proposals address these issues, they aren't "securing our elections", they are putting arbitrary barriers in place of American's inalienable right to vote. Many of us will never support disenfranchising anyone.
One of the 2 parties is more incentivized to discourage voting, and that's worthy of discussion.
I am strongly anti-partisan but am compelled to vote in alignment with what I consider to be the least-worst option.
It's beyond frustrating to try to discuss these issues without it becoming a tribal war, even here on HN where one would hope for a higher level of discourse.
That would be the 'logical' solution, but the party that wants voter ID is not trying to do something logical.
It wants to prevent people who don't currently have it from voting. So they demand ID, without making it possible/easier to get. (And when they do make it possible/easier to get, its only in their political strongholds - or they explicitly disqualify particular kinds of state-issued ID from being used to vote.)
Selective disenfranchisement is the whole point of the policy, not an unfortunate, unforeseen, unpredictable side effect. If you'd like to learn more about the history of this, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow are a good primer on the motivations behind it. Those motivations haven't gone anywhere, because the cultural struggle in question has never actually been resolved.
If the opposing party wanted to be logical, they would just make IDs free and easy. Especially while they are running the government.
2. Once in a blue moon, they do. But anything they build to enable this requires constant funding and maintenance. Their opponents either dismantle it when they take power, or retroactively disqualify existing IDs from being eligible for voting.
It's not, and has never been about IDs. It's about disenfranchisement.
However, voter ID itself is a completely reasonable thing. This issue will never go away. The most logical thing for Democrats to do is to enact voter ID the right way so as to remove this as a tool from the Republicans' arsenal.
"Republicans may implement voter ID improperly, so we must never ever verify that the people casting votes are doing so legally" is an insane position, honestly.
An obvious first step would be to make getting a passport easier and free, though I am not sure if the federal government can compel states to accept a passport as identification.
We already verify this, we just don't do it with the particular methods that they demand (and why they reject state-issued IDs that aren't used by their preferred demographics.)
Which is, of course, a game of goal-post shifting, that is impossible to win.
Wouldn't this be the responsibility of the government in power, and not require any participation from the opposition?
The DoD has had ID card production figured out for years. All it takes is a work station (for checking your entry in a database and confirming the data that goes onto the card), a specialized printer, and a few other peripherals (camera, fingerprint scanner, keypad). I can walk into a DoD ID card center and walk out with a new card in 15 minutes. You could easily stuff several of these workstations into the back of a van, and then drive around to neighborhoods, bringing ID services to the disadvantaged. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Access_Card
Great, have congress legislate laws to make it easier/free to obtain passports. Instead of requiring folks to travel to DMV/Post office/etc., why not have federal public servants visit them door-to-door and assist in issuing it? We do it for census, so what's preventing them from doing it for passports?
How much are we willing to spend on non-issues?
This is not my opinion however, as I think the US could do with a guaranteed, everyone has it, national ID card. Republicans however definitely don't want that, as it could be evidence that a government can actually do something right, and that's anathema to them, and also because a not-small group of evangelicals think that a government issued ID is a sign of the devil or something.
Voter ID laws are all over the place. Very wide deviations from one state to the next, and every state has different ideas about what counts as an acceptable form of identification (they don't always have to be government issued photo identification cards). Of the states that require ID for voting, the following also provide a method to get a free ID to use for voting (although it's possible I missed one or two):
Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.
I remember when Mitt Romney got blasted for being against Federal involvement in healthcare while having signed state level legislation for the same thing when he was Governor of Massachusetts. I saw that it was seen as controversial politician hypocrisy but I noticed that it matches my ability to compartmentalize topics. (note: I don't have an opinion on the actual issue of that event and don't care, only noticed I could just as easily look at the circumstances for one jurisdiction and like an outcome, while being against the same outcome in another jurisdiction)
That ability was tested when one time I was stopped by border police on a train into Germany or Austria. They just did a check scan of my passport. Some residents on the train thought it was embarrassing for their country that it could be "so unwelcoming" to foreigners, but myself and some other foreigners from different places were pretty enamored.
This doesn't translate to my stance on US checks based on appearance, or ID requirements in the US or political affiliation or anything.
Only reason I write it is because I wonder if there are other people like me, because I can't tell.
Whether this idea is accurate or not is up for the reader to judge, but there's a perception in America that one of the major parties (not naming names) needs to have as many mechanisms in place to be able to cheat as possible in order to win elections.
Personally, all I'd like to know at this time is if there's any legal citizens out there who who cannot find out how to procure identification.
Historically some governments have had such institutions to various extents.
It’s kinda the same answer to the question “why wouldn’t each side use unrestrained organized violence to attempt to hold and increase their power?”
The argument could be made that they are also intentionally making it easier to cheat during the election.
These complex issues are never black and white.
Because it would be a change in the system it's used as a wedge by politicians. Additionally they know that it's harder to get out of the vote among left leaning voters, so any extra requirement would be risky in swing states. Democrat strongholds (ie Delaware) already have voter ID.
I think a better question is why folks are against ID requirements but are for vaccine passports and photo ids to buy cigarettes, booze, get into rated R movies, drive, or fly.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_...
Driving requires a specific credential and is not relevant for this discussion.
Flying is another case, you do not need an ID to fly, there are provisions to fly without photo ID if you do not have one, they're just more time consuming and meant to be somewhat punitive.
Instead, conservatives focus on the ID mandate, ahead of fixing the inherent supply issues. Indeed, while I still have objections after this issue is fixed, they're largely irrelevant to the political mainstream.
Generally I'm opposed to anything that smacks of 'papers place', and the government has a higher bar to need to confirm and record identity than John Q. Public (also I'd note, the examples you cited, generally do not record anything, they just verify age of purchaser).
It all boils down to some form of absurd partisanship.
Or imagine if you saw Democrats proposing this?
The things that they do nothing on are "wedge" issues. The filibuster guarantees that those are the only things that can't get passed if Congress stays vaguely equally divided. Passing material improvements to average lives is no benefit to either side.
As a result, actually obtaining some form of ID that might be acceptable (the forms vary mostly depending on the political party that writes the rules) can present a significant challenge to some voters, and for some of us, that is an anathema (the right to vote being sacred, certainly compared with the right to drive for example).
Introduced a national ID that the government is OBLIGATED TO PROVIDE for every person, and many of the arguments against it would go away. Currently, no state in the US, nor the federal government, has such a form of ID.
I still think ID is good but it really needs to be paired with a robust improvement in making the system of getting ID work better. If we’re requiring it, the government should be required to provide it for free and meet a legal standard of proof for denial.
In nations that do in fact have a national ID, everyone gets one, with little or no effort (certainly no need to travel), and if you wanted to mark the card "non-voting" that wouldn't be a big step.
Your right to vote is established by the US Constitution. A state can't burden that right. If a state wants to add an ID requirement, that's fine, but getting the ID must present no burden to any voter.
In reality, the conundrum here is entirely of conservatives' own making. On the one hand, they (non-exclusively) are adamantly against automatically issued national or even state IDs. On the other, they want to require ID for voting (ascribe whatever reason to this you want). You can't fulfill both these desires without violating the constitutional right to vote.
If you are required to have documents and paperwork for a voter ID that you are not otherwise required to have, that is, IMO, an undue burden.
I have no problem with the state saying "you must have this document in order to vote" (it even makes a limited amount of sense, despite being a solution in search of a problem). I do have a problem with the state doing anything other than ensuring that every resident who should that document gets it with minimal effort (preferably zero).
If you live in a rural place, or are poor, getting an ID is hard, it costs money to get the underlying proof of identity, then costs time (which is money) to get the ID itself, because you often must travel vast distances to the office that issues photo ID's.
If we solved the issuance problem, so everyone could get a free copy birth certificate and made passports free (which can be obtained via an appointment at most post offices), then this problem would be easily solved, and my objections to voter ID would pretty much instantly fall away.
That said, as a former polling place worker, the amount of voter fraud is.. vastly overstated, its a basically non-existent problem, and is mostly an issue of people making good faith mistakes.
However, if it makes folks feel better, its a societal good to get everyone some form of free and easy photo ID, so for me its a two birds with one stone policy, I'll give on this issue, to get the other one solved.
The issue is conservatives seem hell bent on passing voter ID laws without doing enough (or sometimes anything) to solve the (ID) supply side of the equation.
I'm generally opposed to anything that smacks of 'papers please', thats my personal root of opposition, but its very weak, and if someone promised a policy that gave everyone a free passport but mandated voter ID requirements, I would gladly show up and vote for them.
I'm not aware of any such proposals, are you?
This is how it is used to disenfranchise people. Add a small clause to the rule that says "every county has 1 location" and it is zero burden for rural voters while urban voters are locked out of the process because no single government office can handle 10 million people. Then the legislators will blame the people in the urban counties for being "lazy" and not voting. We saw in 2020 that the voting rate discrepancies are almost entirely the effect of longstanding voter restrictions that just happened to not work that year, which is why so many state governments have worked overtime to double down on voting restrictions to avoid making the same mistake of allowing people to vote.
Why should those citizens be deprived their right to vote?