Voting in France: Paper ballots, cast in person; no machines
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This is true at the municipal level too, which have more complicated ballots to vote for mayor, councillor and school board trustee. Still done on paper ballots, counted by hand.
Despite it being a manual process, the results are always available within a few hours of closing time. This is democracy, not rocket science. It does not and should not require technology to operate elections.
Was there a meeting where everyone agreed to make a confusing change to the spelling and no-one told me about it?
> Based has been appropriated by the alt-right online as a general term of praise, as if “un-woke.”
https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/based/
Well, TIL.
It has nothing at all to do with "biased".
EDIT: Other poster explained it maybe better as "being yourself and not caring what others think of you".
Well, that's at least one aspect of "being cool", so I still feel they are at least vaguely related.
I've read it as high quality, high character, or high value depending on the subject.
There is a bin to dispose of the other papers, or dispose of them elsewhere for complete anonymous. Most people just take the one they want, or the few they are still undecided before getting in the booth.
This has reminded me what happened on the other side of the Alps in the elections of 1929. People received two envelopes. One with the national flag on the inside and a white one. They left inside the booth the one they didn't like and gave the other one back to the scrutineers. The outside was almost the same but the color inside was visible from the outside [1] Guess the result. Hint: almost 99% to 1%.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Italian_general_election
[2] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elezioni_politiche_in_Italia_d... for more details and pictures of the cards inside out.
You actually have the obligation to take at least two of them. I'm not sure how strongly this is enforced, but most people take a few of them.
That would open hacks like "pick my card and my worst opponent one, vote for me and show me my opponent card. And pray that I get at least as many votes as the cards of my opponent that people bring to me."
I think a major difference is that in most places in Europe at least there is no "Other" option - the list of candidates is fixed by some legal date before the election. Doing anything other than choosing one of the official candidates simply means that your vote is invalid. Invalid votes are all counted together, not matter what made them invalid (a torn paper is counted the same as a paper where you wrote Mickey Mouse or spilled coffee on it); with the possible exception of blank votes, which are sometimes counted separately as "protest votes" (though I don't believe they have any legal significance, at best they may carry symbolic significance).
Even if that was possible, after the vote closes the ballots are counted and the amount must match the number of people who voted, so the result would be invalidated.
So an attacker could potentially invalidate hundreds (or thousands) of votes by stuffing a single fake ballot into the box? This seems like the illusion of security.
Invalidating a box could result in up to a thousand votes being discarded indeed, which is quite small though for a national election.
I don't know what are the typical margins of victory for French Elections. In the 2000 US Presidential Election, George W. Bush won the Presidency by a margin of 537 votes in Florida. If the US had implemented French style balloting, a single attack of this kind in a heavily Republican district of Florida could have easily swayed the election to Gore.
In Canada poll workers initial the ballots, and the ballots have serials numbers on them and a stub (which also has the S/N) that is torn off by poll worker:
> The election worker checks their initials and the assigned polling station number on the back of the ballot; compares the counterfoil number against the stub number in the booklet and makes sure they are the same; takes off the counterfoil and tears it up; and gives the ballot back to you to put in the ballot box. You slide your ballot into the ballot box where it is mixed in with other ballots. No one will know how you voted.
* https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=int/sa...
So there's a record of which ballots were put in via proper workflow.
If there's a discrepancy the non-proper ballots can be identified and removed.
From Elections Canada:
About 10 000 votes have been invalidated in total, which is an order of magnitude less than the smallest difference between two candidates, and 40 times less than the amount of votes which decided which candidates are going to be present for the 2nd turn.
Only one voting office reported a significant discrepancy between the amount of ballots and the amount of voters, resulting in 475 invalidated votes.
You have then to go to a place where you are hidden when you put your ballot inside the enveloppe
Once the election is over, when counting if one enveloppe has more than one ballot it is counted as "nul" (void ballot). Enveloppe number is checked against the number of voting people who showed up.
Regular citizen volunteers are doing the opening and counting. Candidates can designate people of their choice to monitor each counting table. Everyone can write a remark on things not done to rules in an official document.
The "Conseil Constitutionnel" will rule on the voting process and issue a detailed report.
https://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/les-decisions/type/PD...
But the important thing is that anybody with two eyes (or at least one) and some basic cognitive abilities can understand what is going on and make sure that there is nothing shady going on.
Basically any citizen can take a sandwich, a bottle of water and spend the day in his local voting place from beginning to end and have a reasonable certainty that the voting process was fair.
I think this is very important for democracy. It does not solve other problems (fair access to media...) but at least the voting part is reliable.
The way the vote works is:
1. Come in at the polling station you are alloted to, based on your address.
2. Show your ID, and have them verify you are indeed on the electoral lists for this polling station.
3. Receive the ballot papers. These are stamped by the election official before they are given to you. You receive one ballot paper for each election currently organized (e.g. one paper for choosing your mayor, one paper for choosing your president etc). You also receive an official stamp. You are responsible for checking that the ballot you received is valid (stamped in exactly one place by the election official, not torn or scuffed etc). You can ask any election official for help if you suspect something is wrong.
4. Go into a polling booth, and put the stamp on the box for the candidate you want. Fold the ballot so your choice is not immediately visible (producing evidence of who you voted for, such as taking a picture or showing your ballot to someone else is a crime, punishable with a fine or jail time).
5. Put the ballot in the ballot box. There may be a single ballot box for all ballots, or one ballot box per election.
That's it - normally takes ~5 minutes, unless there are lines, which can happen at certain hours in certain busy places. Still, the size of polling stations is set by law to be big enough for the electoral lists of the area they are close to.
Counting is then simple:
1. Once the election day is officially closed, the ballot boxes are opened. Officials from each participating party are present in each polling station, and they perform the following operations together.
2. All ballots are validated and sorted. Any ballot which is not valid (e.g. not the right paper, not stamped by the election official, stamped in multiple places by the voter, stamped outside the vote area, paper is torn etc) is discarded. The discarded ballots are still numbered and stored, in case of disputes.
3. All ballots are opened and counted. Results are tabulated, and signed by all election officials in the polling station. The counted and sorted ballots are stored in secured bags. Results are communicated electronically to regional and then national election commissions.
3.5 Ballot counts must exactly match voter counts for this station. If they don't, police are called and videos are reviewed to identify the cause. Stolen or stuffed ballots are crimes and carry heavy fines or prison.
4. Election officials start collecting the bags from each polling station and storing them with each regional election commission office. The polling station attendants are responsible for ensuring the ballots arrive safely at the destination regional election office.
5. The process repeats until everything is centralized at the national electoral comission.
Preliminary results are typically announced starting ~1 h after the polls close.
Final results are typically announced the day after, usually by the night time.
Disputes at any level are arbitrated by the electoral commissions, and can be raised all the way up to the courts.
Any citizen can register beforehand and volunteer to work as an electoral official in any polling place, and personally monitor the process. Journalists and NGOs regularly do this.
Each political party keeps a separate, unofficial running count of the results.
The whole things scales beautifully, and is very hard if not impossible to systematically defraud (unless political parties systematically collude against their own candidates, but if they are willing to do that, the results don't really matter anymore anyway).
I get not doing mail-in-voting but what's wrong with early voting? I remember there was a huge line in front of the french embassy here last elections because there's no exception to that rule for expats. For a city like Montreal with a lot of French immigrants it means a single vote office for thousands of people.
Compare that to the US where you can email your vote in a lot of states if you live overseas... and it becomes clear that access to vote is just not a priority for France.
>What is the DoD Fax Service? If you need to send your election materials to your election official by fax but do not have access to a fax machine you can email them to fax@fvap.gov and FVAP will fax your election materials for you.
https://www.democratsabroad.org/de_how_to_fax_your_ballot_by...
> Compare that to the US where you can email your vote in a lot of states if you live overseas... and it becomes clear that access to vote is just not a priority for France.
That's not true. As a former expat, the only annoying thing is establishing a proxy since it can only be done during "tournées consulaires" dedicated for it, that are of course very rare. I feel the election is fairer without possible easy way to hack-in votes.
By voters? Every investigation of postal ballots have shown it to be very rare. Most problems are simple mistakes.
By administrators? Postal balloting is neither more or less prone to cheating than the other electronic voting and tabulation systems. Meaning terrible.
Typically, the vulnerable parts are voter registration (eg caging, purges), signature verification, ballot scanning ahead of election day, and adjudication.
--
I opposed my state and county switching to all postal balloting.
My #1 concern was that it'd disenfranchise more people (eg USPS loses/misdelivers ~1% of all ballots, some ~40k voters have their signatures challenged every election), resulting in reduced turnout and long-term participation.
On this I was proven wrong. Turnout increased.
Another concern is that postal balloting enables ballot chasing. Which increases the cost of campaigning as well as leads to voter fatigue and alienation.
This appears to be true.
But as long as turnout remains higher, the tradeoff seems worthwhile.
Any investigation claiming to have a way to measure fraud is a fraud in itself because it is impossible to measure with any ounce of certainty something based on intent and made in secrecy. Also the norm to contest an election is not to show that there was enough fraud but merely to show that the number of irregular ballots is greater than the margin of victory, proving fraud is irrelevant.
The problem with mail-in voting and other early methods is that it greatly increases the attack surface and is impossible to verify the whole process by normal citizens.The fact that nearly half of the US electorate doubted the results is reason enough to never do that again.
> Any investigation claiming ...
Because there never was nor can be Truth? Then why even bother?
> The problem with mail-in voting...
Preaching to the choir.
> ...is impossible to verify the whole process by normal citizens.
Correct. But this Truth in no way minimizes the numerous other legitimate concerns with election administration in the USA.
> ... nearly half of the US electorate doubted
Everyone deserves confidence in our elections. We all have concerns. And democracy is not a team sport. We all lose when elections are not free and fair.
I'd be far more sympathetic to your concerns if I had any reason to believe they were sincere. Which you could begin to demonstrate by acknowledging, and perhaps even agreeing with, some of the other concerns.
As a citizen it's on my government to prove that the electoral process is transparent and fair, not the other way around. I know they are, in Canada, because I can see my vote in the box and I can see the people who will count them, which happen to be my neighbors, and I could also volunteer to count the vote and the parties can send their own people so supervise the counting (and plan to do the next election btw). With all of this I can verify and trust the process. The same can't said with mass mail-in voting.
> Because there never was nor can be Truth? Then why even bother?
Strawman, didn't say that
> Preaching to the choir.
Not an argument
> > ...is impossible to verify the whole process by normal citizens.
> Correct. But this Truth in no way minimizes the numerous other legitimate concerns with election administration in the USA.
I didn't say the other concerns were invalid, or even talked about them.
> Everyone deserves confidence in our elections. We all have concerns. And democracy is not a team sport. We all lose when elections are not free and fair.
Truism.
> I'd be far more sympathetic to your concerns if I had any reason to believe they were sincere.
Not an argument. Also you're on the Internet, you can only judge arguments on their face value.
> With all of this I can verify and trust the process.
Emphatic agreement.
Gold standard (for US's FPTP form of voting) remains Austalian Ballot using paper ballots, cast at poll sites, tabulated on-site the moment polls close.
Future upgrades will be approval voting for executive positions and proportional representation for assemblies.
Far future upgrades will be strategic use of participatory democracy. Like BC's citizen's assembly and Oregon citizen's juries. (Not to be confused with direct democracy, like our Progressive Era processes for initiatives and referendums.)
I assume that their "proxy" system addresses this problem sufficiently for internal voters. Also, the actual voting process is far more streamlined:
https://www.pret-a-voyager.com/2017/05/french-lessons-voting...
so the throughput at polling places is much better. The central mechanism of voter suppression in the United States is lines (ok, also felony disenfranchisement), and every reform the Democrats propose is trying to end-run that system so that the lines won't matter.
LOL. So when you see long voting lines in Atlanta, it’s because Fulton County (the entity responsible for polling places)—which is run by a Board that’s majority Democrat and majority Black—is engaged in “voter suppression” of Black Democrat voters?
But you're still going to have to convince me that such lines are a thing in Fulton, specifically. The article I cross-referenced suggests they opened a lot more polling places to address the problem in the last election cycle.
Edit: I forgot to post the article. It's been a hard month.
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/17/924527679/why-do-nonwhite-geo...
Fulton County isn't run by "the Democratic Party." It's run by a Board elected by the people of Fulton County. It is, moreover, a prosperous, urban area, with the highest median household income in the state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Georgia_(U.S._state)_l.... If it can't run its own elections properly, that's its own fault.
It's possible that the consulate of Montreal misjudged the amount of voters (the turnout in 2017 was higher than expected for the citizens living abroad, if I recall correctly) but more generally, citizens are expected to make the effort necessary to cast their vote.
This is laughable, the number one reason for the ridiculously low turnout in US elections is that elections are held on Tuesdays when people actually need to work.
That'd be easy to fix...
In France and most European countries, the electoral campaign is highly regulated and designed in principle so that citizens can make a rational decision, and no candidate can unduly influence the vote.
All (major, which is based on the latest parliamentary election) candidates must by law be given equal air time, election funds are limited and checked by the state, the campaign must start at a particular date and end the day before the vote, etc.
Early voting flies in the face of most of this: maybe on day X of the campaign some candidate makes a claim that convinces people to cast their votes then and there. On day X+2, some other candidate claims that the first one was lying. Now, even people who are convinced by the second candidate are unlikely to go and rectify their votes (if this is even allowed). So, early voting favors emotional campaigns and dirty tricks over a reasoned decision.
Of course, this is all in theory - but measuring the results in practice is probably much more difficult.
Throughout the USA, in many jurisdictions, voting is onerous for far too many people. Too few poll sites, not enough gear, hard to take time off work, hard to make trip, etc. So progressives have been pushing early voting, as already allowed for overseas, military, and disabled voters, to mitigate these failings.
The French strategy is better overall. But the USA isn't committed to such practicalities.
By French law, the envelopes are inserted into a transparent box that must be visible by any elector during the voting period. Having the box sit several nights without public scrutiny is not as safe.
Also, before dismissing the racism concerns around voter ID laws, it would be instructive to look at why this is so. The history of the US is steeped in race, and the concerns cannot be dismissed without understanding history.
If the US had a similar policy/attitude towards minorities & the historic prejudice they face, you probably wouldnt even have a debate around the racial implications of voting laws. The minority is expected to step up and do the effort even if it's unfair.
It is interesting that you said that history cannot be dismissed right after you basically dismissed the historical implications of French policies because... it's just the past and what happened before doesn't really matter?
This is straightforward when you have a national ID scheme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_document#United_State...
It has national ID standards for drivers licenses, but as far as I know it doesn't issue any kind of national-level ID document besides passports (and passport cards), and you can only get those as a citizen.
No. I kinda lost sight of the context.
Also, IIRC, passports are one of the harder and more expensive forms of ID to get.
Drivers licenses and equivalent ID are at the state level although there's now a fairly high level of standardization (if you get a REAL ID version--required for federal purposes like flying).
So basically government-issued photo ID is fairly readily available but it's (often) not free and can get tricky in cases where, for example, you don't have a permanent address. And, unless you have an existing chain of ID documents, you need your birth certificate at some point.)
A student id from a university might have a passport sized photo stapled to it.
Elections in France are on a Sunday, when almost everyone is off work.(in US it's always Tuesday?)
Photo IDs are low cost there and mandatory. Everyone has a photo ID.
Polling stations are not a "million miles away", you will not see regular multi hour lines in France.
And finally - you cannot win, unless you get at least 50% + 1 vote. In US and UK - a simple plurality of votes makes you a winner.
I know in Germany voting also happens on Sunday and everything but restaurants and gas stations used to be closed on Sundays.
Some small supermarket/stores are open sunday morning.
Some small stores (family managed) are open all sunday (I have one 100 meters from my home which is open 8am to 8pm all days).
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstention_%C3%A9lectorale_en_...
Technically it’s a bit weird because you can have more than one polling station in the same area, so it might be a bit confusing. But the procedure is such that you can’t put a ballot in the wrong box.
A big detail in France is that there is only one ballot at a time, in the US, my wife had 74 ballots simultaneously last time I checked. The US has an election every 2 years in November, and all the ballots are attached to this schedule. In France we have ballots at random date, when each term is finishing (and we elect far less people)
Early voting, including one or more Sundays, is available in the Republican states that people are complaining about, e.g. Texas and Georgia.
> Photo IDs are low cost there and mandatory. Everyone has a photo ID.
Georgia accepts one of six forms of photo ID, and if you don't have any of those, you can get a free ID at your county registrar's office: https://sos.ga.gov/page/georgia-voter-identification-require...
> Polling stations are not a "million miles away", you will not see regular multi hour lines in France.
Does this picture of Atlanta, Georgia, look like the polling places are a "million miles away?" https://gismaps.fultoncountyga.gov/portalpub/apps/webappview.... In the U.S., polling sites are typically run by the county or municipality. You see multi-hour lines in Democrat-run counties like Fulton (the county encompassing most of Atlanta), for the same reason you see long lines for other government services in these places.
But that is not when most polling stations are open. Only a small subset are... because everyone is expected to vote on a Tuesday.
> free ID at your county registrar's office
Yep. People that can't get to their DMV will surely have time to go to county registrar's office.
> In the U.S., polling sites are typically run by the county or municipality.
And I'm sure that financing does not affect availability of these sites, right?
This is HN, not Facebook, I'm sure most here are aware of how systems operate and and have heard of compounding effects.
Given how sparsely populated country was in 19th century, and how cumbersome travel was back then, do you think that democracy in the US in 19th century was impossible?
That aside, though: voting in the 19th century looked nothing like it does today. Most of what we think of as modern Democratic voting (the secret ballot, registration, etc) are Progressive Era reforms.
So, how is it? Is democracy only possible in heavily urbanized countries, so that the citizens never are in more than walking distance from a polling place? Or, hopefully, it is a more general political systems that can apply to more varied range of human societies?
That's a curious characterization given your original question is a gotcha question, someone just replied to it as if it wasn't.
Before I responded to your original comment, I did some poking around about 19th century voting practices. It's an interesting question. If you want to keep talking about it, can I ask first if you've taken the time to do the same thing? This is one of those discussions where we don't have to derive everything axiomatically.
I don't know what "this is HN, not Facebook" is supposed to mean, but I'm pretty sure the guidelines ask you not to write stuff like that.
Not true. Under the Georgia law, for example, counties are required to provide at least two Saturdays of early voting, and certain large urban counties are required to provide early voting in certain designated locations. Insofar as polling places are often schools and similar locations, obviously there will be fewer early voting polling locations. But in Atlanta, for example, there are typically dozens in key locations such as public libraries accessible by public transit.
> Yep. People that can't get to their DMV will surely have time to go to county registrar's office.
In France you have to apply for your national ID card in person as well. In Germany and most German-speaking countries, you’re required to show up in person to the municipality within 30 days of moving to a new location. People manage.
> And I'm sure that financing does not affect availability of these sites, right?
Yeah, and more affluent counties typically vote democrat. In Georgia, it’s certainly not the mostly white rural counties that have all the money.
> This is HN, not Facebook, I'm sure most here are aware of how systems operate and and have heard of compounding effects.
I think there are a lot of people who are willing to make assumptions and believe wild exaggerations about people on the other side of the political aisle.
It's not, you're just failing to correctly identify the problem. Elections must not only be secure as a matter of fact, but be perceived as secure. The security of an election must be apparent on its face, to different groups who have adverse interests and don't trust each other. Watch how people in Taiwan count votes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqKt-lPfJuw. They don't do it this way to address fraudulent elections in the past. They do it so that the vote counting is above question.
Election procedures where the integrity of the voting is established by after-the-fact studies or the results of litigation showing the absence of fraud are bad procedures that don't actually satisfy all the requirements for good elections. This is not a republican versus democrat thing. Election denial after 2020 undoubtedly has been especially bad--which in part shows that election procedures should be robust against demagoguery!--but more than a third of democrats believed that the 2004 election was stolen, and about the same percentage of republicans believed the same thing about the 2012 election: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/04/many-repu.... The numbers for the GOP right now are double that, but it's also worth observing that the 2004 and 2012 elections didn't occur against the backdrop of last-minute pandemic-related changes to voting procedures.
Either way, a system where an incumbent wins by multiple points (Bush won by 2.4 and Obama by 3.9) and still one out of three members of the losing party still think they cheated is dangerous to democracy.
You tell me this and then immediately confirm my statement. All polling stations are open on the voting tuesday, but a subset are open on early voting days.
> People manage.
Clearly they don't.
And clearly Voter ID laws are not at all useful in US, like they wouldn't be useful in UK.
Fulton County holds just 17% of the Atlanta metropolitan area population, and is the densest part at that. In other words, it's an outlier.
For example, you can't get an absentee ballot in Texas. Well, unless you are old and a likely Republican voter, then it's totally ok.
To get an ID in USA: - Hope you still are in possession of the only copy of your birth-certificate. - If not, hope that your church/city-hall, can provide you a copy. - Go to the DMV, birth-certificate, two proof of residences. - Wait couple of weeks to receive by mail.
Things are much simpler in France, cost nothing, and because it is mandatory to have an ID, it is never an issue to provide one.
Do you live in the U.S. or do you just read about it online? I live in a historically Republican county that is suburban/rural. I needed a replacement copy of my son's birth certificate the other day. I went over to my county records office (which is 5 minutes away) and they gave me a copy in 30 minutes.
Waiting six weeks to get an ID in France? In my state your drivers license is delivered in under 10 days, typically just 4-5.
And Driving Licenses are not the same thing as an ID outside of North America. In France we have an CNI (ID), Passport, and Driving Licence as separate documents.
This is one of my pet peeves in D.C. and Ontario, I can not have an ID card if I have a driving license.
Also are you completely not self aware?
"went over to my county records office" and "hope that your church/city-hall, can provide you a copy" - are literally the same thing. You just happen to live nearby the place where your birth certificate was recorded.
Let alone - low density areas, that are much more republican, also have easier access to government services.
OP was wrong about US birth certificates. They’re not recorded by “churches” they’re recorded by each state. My county office issues certified copies of Maryland birth certificates. (Yes you need to be born in the state, but most Americans live in the state they were born in, just like most Europeans live in the EU member country they were born in.)
It's literally the same process, you just get a card instead of a "book".
> They’re not recorded by “churches” they’re recorded by each state.
OP also used a slash.
In the US, I haven't had a social security card for decades (it was in a wallet that was stolen) and I honestly don't know if I could unearth my birth certificate from my files someplace. But I do have a valid passport and drivers license so it doesn't really matter.
Most of the noise about ID cards is very politicized. Most adults have government-issued photo IDs; lots of things are very hard without them. And, for those who don't, by and large, they'd have problems rounding up the documentation to get one issued in most places. At the same time, there is essentially no evidence that voter fraud is a significant outcome of ID not being required.
The US doesn't allow proxy voting in elections at all. Furthermore, it was banned to deliberately disenfranchise illiterate people in some cases:
>In Alabama, the Perry County Civic League's members' assisting illiterate voters by marking a ballot on their behalf was deemed "proxy voting" and "voting more than once" and thus held to be illegal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_voting#United_States
Talk about a false equivalence.
Getting an ID being an issue is the real problem.
Honestly, when I first heard how US handles voting I couldn't believe how open to abuse it is. In a way, I'm surprised that election integrity hasn't been questioned sooner.
Edit: To clarify, I don't believe the 2020 elections were affected by fraud, in fact they were proven not to be. Just that the process doesn't seem very trustworthy to me in general.
https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=ids&do...
You can also register on election night. I did this a couple years ago when there was a provincial election shortly after we moved.
And yet we don't have widespread electoral fraud.
Btw. there is really no registration in Czechia/Slovakia, you will get voting tickets automatically to your permanent residence address without any additional registration, registration is necessary only if you want vote via mail or you want voting pass to vote outside your permanent residence.
I'm surprised why voter ID has become such a partisan issue, specifically how intense the Democratic opposition to it has been. It's a sensible policy and it seems the concerns about "[X] not having ID" should be addressed by solving the problems preventing [X] from getting an ID. I mean it shouldn't be too hard: setup some government agency to help people with the bureaucratic labor around confirming identity and send people akin to census takers around to onboard people into the ID-getting process.
Which I tried to directly address in my comment (at least the busy part, and the too poor part can easily be addressed by having the agency I proposed pay the fees for the ID). It's a solvable problem, and solving it seems like it would be clearly in the public interest (for way more reasons than just voting).
I was imagining having an agency with people like a census-takers who would come to your home and handle whatever in-person stuff was necessary, which would make DMV locations a non-issue.
The goal isn't election integrity, but rather to shift the outcome marginally in one direction, based on the demographics of who does and does not have ID.
This cannot be a case of Require IDs first, deal with the repercussions later. These steps MUST be taken together or not at all.
It also becomes partisan when you look at the IDs that are considered acceptable in some places.
- Hunting license: Allowed - College Student ID: Not Allowed
Hmm, I wonder if the demographics of those populations might have affected that decision somehow...
And that would make sense. However the impression I get is that Democrats aren't doing that, instead they just oppose voter ID tooth and nail. It would make way more sense for them to support voter ID with the condition that the ID-access issue must be solved. That would even have political benefits for them because it would make it a lot harder for the Republicans to capitalize on the issue.
Given that any kind of ID requirement is likely to reduce the number of votes (some proportion will lose or forget their ID even if you literally issue IDs to every single eligible person) the ultimate question is this: how many valid votes are you prepared to lose in order to prevent each invalid one?
Voter ID, yeah; but lack of ID, no. My understanding is not having photo ID causes people way more problems than just difficulty voting. If you can solve a real issue through a non-issue, why not?
> Even in places like the UK (which have ID-free voting) personation is essentially a non-problem. Literally a handful of votes a year
That's not the whole problem, though. The other issue is perceptions. If people are no longer trusting and they perceive impersonation as an issue, all the assertions that impersonation isn't a problem aren't going to do any good to rebuild trust.
Now, there was a big drive to set up a compulsory photo ID here under the Blair government. The purpose was really to generate a single central government identity database rather than to help those without ID to lead easier lives, though. It sank years of political debate and a stack of money and was eventually cancelled after public protest. I don't think anyone's going to try again.
I do understand the importance of perception. But when the reality is that personation is essentially a non-problem and one political party is pushing a narrative that it is in order to change the rules to their electoral advantage, I'm not convinced that the best democratic solution is to let them do it. It's interesting that over here there has never been widespread public (as opposed to confected elite) concern about personation, but we did have some public discomfort (with somewhat more foundation) about extensions to postal voting in the 00s. That wasn't really treated as a partisan issue and some of the potential issues were dealt with with follow-up legislation.
That's true in the US too. You don't need it so much day to day, but it's required for many important processes [1] so it's a big handicap to not have one.
[1] e.g. opening a bank account (https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/banking/how-to-open-a-ban...), traveling on an airplane, and I think you also need one to get a job on the up-and-up (because of required work authorization checks).
One of the reasons the "Getting a photo ID is too hard" argument falls a bit flat in the US is that, at least for anyone participating normally in society, doing a lot of fairly routine things without a government-issued ID gets intensely inconvenient in a big hurry--even if you don't drive.
Most forms of travel including hotels though that may vary by locale. Picking up an order at a store or similar circumstances when a business wants to verify your identity. Opening a banking account. Certainly many of them are things that you can avoid and they're probably less of an issue if you're in a demographic that is less likely to have an ID. But, yes, in the US lots of people have to show ID on a fairly regular basis.
UK doesn't require photo ID to vote as well. No mail-in voting has provisions for photo ID, as well.
The primary issue is that the photo IDs are not easily accessible(time and money) in US. So Voter ID laws, without provisions to make them more accessible, are suppressive towards people who don't have resources to spare on the IDs.
If you don't trust elected officials a priori, you have no place in a voting booth.
You're not supposed to trust officials. That's why there are cameras and observers. Of course, mail voting implies a lot more trust, which is why some don't want it.
Isn't that pretty much a myth? The vast majority of people have a photo ID and many states which require one also give one for free. The only onerous impediment is that you have to go get one.
You have to decide how much you care about some people who have the right to vote not getting to vote, vs some people managing to vote illegitimately. Which side you come down on will probably depend a lot on how many people you think will be in each group.
The Conservative government is proposing to bring in voter ID in the UK [1]. But there's no evidence at all that voter fraud is a problem here. So this policy effectively disenfranchises millions of people for zero benefit.
But, of course, more Conservative voters have the required forms of ID (passport, driving licence). It will therefore help swing elections the government's way. It is absolutely corrupt.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/04/millions-in...
It's a partisan issue for three reasons.
1. The party that is enacting these voter ID laws in almost all cases is at the same time enacting changes to make it harder for those who do not already have a suitable ID to get one. If these laws also did as you suggest and addressed the problem of getting ID there would be much less objection.
Typical methods include reducing the number of places you can go to get IDs (with most of the reductions coming in areas that typically vote for the other party), reducing the number of days and the number of hours on those days that those places issue IDs so that to get an ID you have to come in on a work day during work hours, accepting many forms of ID carefully that happens to include things people who vote for them are more likely to have (i.e., state issued hunting licenses) and excluding ID that people who vote for the other party are more likely to have (i.e., state issue college ID).
I forgot which state it was, but in one if you took the list something like a dozen acceptable IDs and sorted it descending by the probability that a black person in that state already had that ID, all the acceptable ones were in the top of the list. The legislative committee that made the acceptable ID was known to have had that data when they made that list, which makes it rather hard to believe that it was not a coincidence that the ones black people were more likely to have did not make the cut.
2. These are almost always accompanied by non-ID voting changes that also make it harder to vote even if you have the correct ID, and these changes almost always massively disproportionately affect people who tend to vote for the other party.
E.g., restricting voting hours, in particular getting rid of early voting on the weekend before election day. Decreasing the number of places to vote or the number of places you can drop off ballots.
3. This is not addressing an actual problem. Every attempt to show that there is any non-trivial amount of incorrect voting has failed to find any.
#3 in itself is not bad. Just because it is not a problem now doesn't mean it can't become a problem in the future so getting ahead and getting it in place now could be sensible, but when combined with #1 and #2 it is clear that ID is being enacted not to increase election security but as a form of voter suppression.
To get a learner's permit, driver’s license, or Mass ID in Massachusetts, you’ll need to provide proof of citizenship or lawful presence, a Social Security number, and Massachusetts residency. Learn what documents you can use below.
https://www.mass.gov/guides/massachusetts-identification-id-...
No reasonable scheme is going to involve just going online, filling in an unverified name, uploading a picture, and getting a card in the mail a week later for free. (Or going into an office.)
Yeah, that's not a reasonable process. The one I envisioned was to have an agency 1) proactively make contact (perhaps like the census), 2) do the legwork of verifying identity (e.g. request birth certificates, checking against other official records), and 3) pay for the ID and any fees along the way.
That's why I was saying like the census. The idea is cover all individuals by canvassing all the places they could reasonably be living. All the collective levels of government certainly have near-complete records of that.
It would be sensible to have a national ID in the US and to use it in voting, but in practice, the voter ID issue is simply used by the Republican Party as another tactic to restrict voting. They know that Democratic voters are less likely to have ID, they intentionally include/exclude various forms of ID based on the voter demographics, and they are generally against measures that would ensure that every valid voter obtain ID.
So yes, in a vacuum, voter ID sounds obvious. However, when you see how the issue is actually used in American politics, it's actually pretty sinister.
From where I sit it's a win. Administrative work will be easier, all cases of fraud will be harder, and arguments of nutjobs weakened. Not to mention the fact that people would trust the election process more, with all the added benefits.
Really, voter IDs seem like a stupid hill to die on. Especially if you are already dealing with low trust in political system and cultural divides.
The debate over voter ID isn't a rational debate about how to make elections more secure. It's just another battleground in which the Republican Party sees an opportunity to shift election outcomes slightly in their own favor. They're not interested in a rational, balanced solution like you're proposing, because it might end up shifting election outcomes in the "wrong" direction.
When you look at the list of election measures the Republican Party supports/opposes, it becomes quite clear what their goal is. They're against early voting, automatic voter registration, absentee voting (except for the military) and making election day a holiday, but they're in favor of voter ID and they engage in very heavy gerrymandering (leading to a divergence between national vote shares and numbers of seats won).
Are you sure about this? I remember from past if election commission member knew you they could identify you even without any ID card or even if 2 other people could identify you it was sufficient to confirm your identity without any ID card. Was this option cancelled?
I know in presidential election it wasn't, and neither the last time during the parliamentary, presidential election or local referendum. I was commissioner for a couple of years so I should know.
If you don't believe me you can look up the election law Zákon č. 247/1995 Sb. and go for paragraph 18, or 19. I'm not completely sure which one it is.
Parties receive about 40k€/year for every elected representative and another ~1.40€/vote/year for every vote in these elections provided (!) you make more than 1% in at least 50 districts.
These amounts get reduced considerably if you do not respect gender-parity across your candidates.
More info on https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financement_des_partis_politiq...
>To do so, a voter must fill out a form ahead of time and bring it to a police station. A person can be the proxy of no more than one voter living in France — and potentially one additional person living abroad.
>Up to 7% of people voted by proxy in the last presidential election five years ago.
It's not that France isn't accounting for the people who can't make it to the polls on Election Day. It's just that they're doing it differently.
I've heard that in European elections, you tend to vote for one person at a time, where in the US, it's pretty routine to vote for three or more. (In presidential years, you vote for presidential electors, a representative, and 2/3 of the times a senator, and then beyond that there are state and local elections.)
I'm wonder how much of the difference comes from counting one versus multiple elections at the same time.
There are no voting machines.
And it, in general, works without problems.
(Mail in voting is possible but not used that much.)
And it depends, often elections don't coincide and the election process is just a few weeks long.
So it's not uncommon to have some of city mayor, city council, regional, state and federal and European elections fall onto the same date. I think the "worst" I've seen as a volunteer was 4 elections on the same day.
Counting process starts by splitting the ballots (if we have all of them in one urn), and then counting and tallying them one election at a time. The ballots are distinguished by different colored paper.
One voting district is usually around ~1000 voters, out of those, before Covid ~10-20% did mail-in-voting, during Covid it was ~40-50%. Then with a normal voter turnup of around 60-70% depending on the elections that are held, we end up with a few hundred ballots to count per election, with a staff of normally 8 people... Polling stations close at 6pm, and the latest I have left the voting station after counting was 8:30pm.
Still, it was all done on paper, and we got the results overnight. It's not rocket science, really.
We have gone in the opposite direction in the United States, and my gut tells me that mail in ballots to every mailbox (and in dumpsters and boxes left randomly by te side of the road) wasn’t a good thing for our nation, in the greater sweep of history.
The mass mail in voting thing was supposed to be due to a national health emergency, reasonable people were willing to temporarily reduce those guarantees in the name of public safety. How foolish of us! Now we can see the party in power has used it as a bait and switch to try to make these changes permanent. Why?
What destroys trust is not postal voting. It's a losing party actively spreading disinformation in an attempt to discredit an election result they don't like.
Now, in California, all mailboxes are flooded with blank ballots for all elections. It is insanity. The entire election process here has its integrity hinged upon a signature on an envelope. Which, by the way, is quickly separated from the ballot for counting, ensuring it is fundamentally impossible to do an audit. You’d have to be a fool to take seriously the idea close, highly contested elections in California are assured to be accurate results.
The primary goal of elections is to make the public feel confidence they have a fair representative government. In other words, if basic logic dictates that you shouldn’t trust the election system, you should expect large parts of the public will stop believing they live in a democracy and act as people always do in such situations.
The logic is that elections which do not have any secret ballots, do not have any ballots which go through a secure chain of custody, and cannot be audited are fundamentally election systems that are being run on an honor system. And democracy, of course, is fundamentally about the idea that you offset the adversarial nature of government with an objective, non-honor system based mechanism called voting. Taken together, this is a disaster.
https://www.multco.us/elections/brief-history-vote-mail-oreg...