Always take time to understand why people push strongly for a solution to a problem that isn't occurring. And usually when you do, you'll find there are second order effects that cause that group to benefit.
Looking into that gets to the root of the issue and the reason why people are correctly labeling it as anti-voter rights.
1. https://www.businessinsider.com/timothy-snyder-fears-democra...
There is almost zero voter fraud in this country. And it has been that way for decades. Do you acknowledge this? You can look back at countless research for the elections for 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, 2004 ... As well as mid-terms.
Before discussing what we should do, we must estabilish the facts in common. This has been estabilished time and time and time again in the US over all 50 states, presidential, senatorial elections. There is absolutely miniscule voter fraud - and the very few instances over the past decades.
There have been on the order of only 50 fraudulent votes over the past two decades of elections. Yet hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters have been blocked from voting due to the new laws.
Then we get to the second question of why is ID being pushed so hard if there is no actual fraud it is preventing?
The reason is that it's being intentionally used make it easier and harder for different groups to vote. For example states have allowed gun licenses for voter id, but not college student ID. These two groups traditionally vote for different parties. Or the number of license stations and their are limited in areas that certain groups live to only being open once per month.
This is the reason for the push for the Voter ID. It provides a party with an advantage by trimming voter roles by raising the barries to get IDs specifically with groups that vote for one party over the other.
There have been less than 50 invalid votes over tens of elections over two decades, while VoterID laws have prevented hundreds of thousands of legitament people from voting. Why are we preventing hundreds of thousands of people with the right to vote from voting, to stop 50 people from voting illegally. It's not to improving election quality, becaues improving election quality would be ensuring those hundreds of thousands with the right to vote can. So blocking that many, to avoid a problem measured in the tens in not about election integrity. It's about favoring one political group over another. And the data strongly backs that up. [And if you have any data showing otherwise, please do share.]
Again, when you see a solution to a problem that isn't happening, dig in to see who benfits from that change. This rule applies to life in general.
https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-c...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/exhaustive-fact-check-find...
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/45/e2103619118
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/12/07/wiscons...
How is it different?
> There is almost zero voter fraud in this country.
How can you be sure of this, since successful voter fraud doesn't get detected?
> For example states have allowed gun licenses for voter id, but not college student ID. These two groups traditionally vote for different parties.
Isn't a more reasonable explanation for this that gun licenses are issued by the government, and college student IDs are not?
In almost all European Countries there is a mandatory ID card which is issued to all citizens. So to require this ID card when voting has no effect.
It sounds like to you "voter fraud" is a vote by any "undesirable" citizen. Wouldn't it be cool if black people couldn't vote, amirite guys?
In any case, the resistance isn't against voter ID itself, it's against the policies that are inevitably put in place to make those IDs harder to obtain for supporters of one party in comparison to another. If there weren't so many recent examples of states selectively closing down polling places[0][1] then maybe you could claim with a straight face that the ID requirements won't be abused, but there is no excuse for such naivety now.
[0] https://civilrights.org/democracy-diverted/
[1] https://texasyds.org/texas-republicans-plan-to-reduce-pollin...
In New York, isn't it mandatory to show your vaccine card to go into any building that isn't your house?
> it's against the policies that are inevitably put in place to make those IDs harder to obtain for supporters of one party in comparison to another.
Which policies are these?
That doesn't prevent you leaving your house, and are people really checking the vaccine passes of friends who visit their home? I suspect the rules are much less strict than the original comment suggested.
> Which policies are these?
By making the issuance (and renewal) of IDs require attending a government building, and limiting the locations of those buildings and the times they are open, it can be made disproportionately difficult for poor and working people to obtain those IDs, just like the removal of polling places. A state can also invent entirely new types of excuses, like "paper shortages".[0]
[0] https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/590213-texas-blames...
I think the difference between being allowed to leave your house and being allowed to go into buildings that aren't your house is minor enough that the analogy still works.
> are people really checking the vaccine passes of friends who visit their home?
If bad laws are okay just because some people will ignore them, then even if voter ID is a bad law, then let's just pass it anyway and let the pollworkers ignore it.
> A state can also invent entirely new types of excuses, like "paper shortages".
If you needed that paper form to register to vote, then I'd agree that's a problem. But you don't: https://vrapp.sos.state.tx.us/index.asp
The reason I asked if people are checking vaccine passes when their friends visit them is because I don't actually believe this law exists at all, not because I think people are breaking it. It's possible that New York does require this, but if it doesn't, I think "You're prevented from accessing some non-essential buildings" isn't fairly analogized to "You can't leave your house".
> If you needed that paper form to register to vote, then I'd agree that's a problem.
If people's right to vote is contingent on the availability and non-discrimination of a web service (which can and will change without the need for any further legislation to pass) then we've already lost the battle against disenfranchisement.
To be clear, just showing the vaccine card isn't good enough. You need to show a photo ID too, to prove that you're the person the vaccine card belongs to. And how much of society is it acceptable to lock people without IDs out of if we insist that it's necessary to let people vote without one?
> non-discrimination of a web service
How is a Web version of a form more subject to discrimination than a paper one is?
I'm sure it would be possible to "accidentally" introduce bugs where the fonts don't render on older platforms (owned by poorer people), for example, and there could be some geo-IP "caching" system that ends up slowing down requests for people in certain parts of the state.
In any case, the web version doesn't have to be more subject to discrimination, just as subject to discrimination as the (selectively available) paper form already is. Also, if the party in power found that their voters were more likely to register using the online form than the paper form, you can bet they would make the paper form harder to acquire (and vice versa).
This has to be viewed in context. In these other "more civilized" countries that require voter ID, how easy is it to get a national ID? In the US, getting valid ID is complicated, requires going somewhere in person (and often for people in rural areas a significant distance) and cost. In Switzerland on the other hand, one can order a valid national ID online and receive it in the mail for free.
Perhaps, instead of asking
> How can you order a valid national ID online and receive it in the mail, while making sure that someone who's not you can't do the same pretending to be you?
Ask "If many US states, and many, to quote GP 'more civilized' countries don't use such restrictive voter ID laws, but still have essentially no voter fraud, what is the point of such restrictions?"
Like, jumping back to the US for a moment, if I handed you my driver's license and we changed the photo and description on it so that it matched my own, what could you do with that? You don't have, and can't get my SSID with that, so you can't cause financial harm to me. You could buy alcohol I guess if you were underage, but there's just not a whole lot you can do.
The same applies to the crime of voter impersonation in general. If, like, we decriminalized it entirely, I don't really expect the rate would be that high, because there's just...really no value to voting two or three times. It's not going to change anything unless lots of people do it, in which case you'd need to assume that all the people doing it are voting in the same way which is unlikely. Right like you can barely convince people that their one vote matters. Do you really think going through more than 2x the effort to vote again is going to appeal to many people?
Yes, you can order an ID card online. But part of this "order" process is to make an appointment to visit a government office where your photo, signature and fingerprints will be taken.
This issue in particular is very interesting. I saw an article [1] which seems to indicate voter ID laws have little effect in either direction on fraud or turnout. Does that mean Democrats should "give it away" to the Republicans in exchange for something else? Or would that be dishonest?
Well, I guess this whole contest is about trading political blows, not anything to do with the real world. Even if a policy has no or positive effect, giving a win to your opponents is bad.
1: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/21/18230009/v...
> The lack of negative impact on voter turnout cannot be attributed to voters’ reaction against the laws, measured by campaign contributions and self-reported political engagement. However, the likelihood that non-white voters were contacted by a campaign increases by 4.7 percentage points, suggesting that parties’ mobilization might have offset modest effects of the laws on the participation of ethnic minorities.
Or in other words, the authors conclude that voting laws don't ultimately affect turnout, but that's confounded by a nearly 5% increase in GOTV efforts. While it's probably wrong to conclude that a 5% decrease in GOTV would reduce turnout by 5%, there's almost certainly some offsetting impact there.
The problem with voter ID laws is not that they require an ID to vote. It's that they do nothing at all to address the problem of getting IDs into the hands of voters. If those same laws made IDs free, easily accessible, and gave every eligible voter enough time to get their hands on one, there wouldn't by any problem with voter ID laws. Research shows that voter ID laws in today's conditions would prevent a large number of legal voters from being able to vote. The true goal of voter ID laws being proposed right now is voter suppression.
Hasn't this already been true for years? https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/penndot-offers-fr...
> easily accessible, and gave every eligible voter enough time to get their hands on one
Is there any voter ID requirement, or even a proposal for one, that doesn't accept drivers' licenses? You can get that at 16, and most people get it well before 18, the minimum voting age.
> Research shows that voter ID laws in today's conditions would prevent a large number of legal voters from being able to vote.
Can you link to this research? In particular, is it making the assumption that people who can get an ID would just choose not to for some reason? Because I can't think of anyone who's allowed to vote but not allowed any form of ID that would let them.
No, not every law has provisions for free IDs and even when "free" IDs are offered it still costs people money https://today.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Ful...
> Is there any voter ID requirement, or even a proposal for one, that doesn't accept drivers' licenses?
Millions of Americans don't have a drivers license or any form of government issued ID http://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/do...
This is pretty common in elderly and disabled people who can no longer drive. They often see no reason to keep renewing a state ID. If we had a national ID card that every citizen was required to have from the time they were children until the day that they died it wouldn't as big an issue, but that's not the case. Groups that help support the elderly and disabled have been dealing with the problem for many years.
see also: https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/government-elections/i...
> You can get that at 16, and most people get it well before 18, the minimum voting age.
Most people can get an ID, but doing that might be extremely difficult. It's getting better as local governments increasingly move services online but historically the US hasn't been so great about record keeping or making the needed documents easy to get. The first time I had to get a state ID I first had to travel across the country to the county in which I was born and hand over a stack of other documents I'd spend a bunch of money and effort to get my hands on and then still pay a fee on top of it once I got back to my own state.
> Can you link to this research? In particular, is it making the assumption that people who can get an ID would just choose not to for some reason? Because I can't think of anyone who's allowed to vote but not allowed any form of ID that would let them.
This isn't new news. There are literally years of research into the problems with voter ID laws in the US but I'll link to a few studies if you'd like more information. The fact is you don't have to make it "impossible" to get an ID to make it disproportionately difficult for certain people to get one. The GOP has spent decades working to make it harder for "the wrong people" to vote in order to gain an unfair advantage. Court rulings have often found that their attempts to prevent Americans from voting were discriminatory and placed an undue burden on various groups. Even concluding at times that this discrimination was intentional. see this one for example: http://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/20141009-TXID-...
I feel our democracy depends on us doing our best to ensure that every American citizen has equal access to the polls. The laws in Texas right now are having an impact on legitimate voters there, especially with disabled voters because communications hasn't been clear, voters are confused, and the deadline for requesting mail-in ballots is weeks away. The restrictions they put in place in Texas were not balanced by the burden it would place on the Americans least able to carry those burdens and now American citizens feel their right to vote is in jeopardy and they are correct. It's disgusting that such a fundamental right is being taken from people just because the GOP thinks it will win them more elections.
For what it's worth, I'm not against ID being required to vote. I just think we need to make sure that those laws also keep things fair. Whatever the barriers to voting are, they should be as equal as possible for every American citizen who is eligible to cast a vote no matter what their race, age, area code, or income level. Anything less than that is an attack on our democracy.
Research on the topic:
http://ippsr.msu.edu/research/voter-identification-laws-and-...
https://www.bakerinstitute.org/media/files/files/e0029eb8/Po...
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21565503.2020.1...
Is this a dog whistle?