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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

I meant brown people, but I expect you know that.

Give the FEC the power to issue photo ID for voting. Legislate that it is only valid for that purpose and any other use is illegal. Send out census-style teams to track down every citizen and issue them a card, free of charge.

Of course, there are all sorts of problems with this that are entirely self-inflicted. Someone will oppose a national ID, even if we already have that. Someone else will point out that the states legally get to make their own voting rules, and they're right. This isn't a problem anyone actually wants to solve. Democrats want to make it easier to vote, Republicans want to make it harder. It's like every other tribal issue, neither side will give an inch because they fear the other side will take a mile.

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As a card carrying “brown person” I’m confused by your argument. I’ve never seen anyone checking skin color at the door at the DMV.

I have seen your posts on HN, I don't buy that you're actually confused. Overt racism at the door to the DMV is not at all how you disenfranchise a group of citizens, especially in modern times. You make sure DMVs in predominantly black neighborhoods have short hours at times most inconvenient, you make sure polling places are understaffed and overbooked, things like that. It insulates you against direct evidence but still achieves your goal.

This comment would be much better without the first sentence.

> You make sure DMVs in predominantly black neighborhoods have short hours at times most inconvenient, you make sure polling places are understaffed and overbooked, things like that.

Wow, I didn’t know I live in a black neighborhood!

I notice you switched from “brown” to “black” here. Was the switch substantive? But the DMV thing sounds like a QAnon-style conspiracy theory.

In normal times, I would agree with the conspiracy-like-thinking concern. Sadly, these are not normal times.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-01/alabama-c...

When one considers action such as this in light of the GOP being caught red-handed attempting to shape the census questions to deprive states of Congressional representation (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/census-citizenship-que...), it becomes, at the very least, suspicious. For at least a short time (politically speaking, maybe half a generation), the GOP has lost the benefit of the doubt regarding its actions being race-neutral and some healthy skepticism is justified.

Please - we don’t need another single-purpose ID card. Why not just make a single ID card that all privileges that are recognized in all 50 states can be added to? Driver’s license classes, concealed carry, voting, security clearance, donor preferences, etc. everyone has to get a new one every 4 years, and there’s an electronic record for verification of basic info like photo and name when internet access is available.

because not enough americans seem to want it.

Because a narrowly focused voter ID card is more difficult for naysayers to rebut, because they are themselves claiming we need exactly that. I support a real national ID card myself.

I oppose Voter IDs because I don’t think we need them. I’m on the fence with a National ID because I’m concerned it would have the same problems as Voter ID.

Because this is not a power granted to the federal government, it is reserved for the states.

IANAL, but I believe that something like this would require a constitutional amendment, unless it could be squeezed in under the umbrella of the ICC like most other federal overreach laws.

> Because this is not a power granted to the federal government, it is reserved for the states.

If one agrees that this is true, that's not an answer to the question of why not do it; it does affect the mechanics—either a Constitutional Amendment (to do it federally) or a fifty-state compact (do it as a coordinated state-ID system for all state purposes, which is arguably closer to what was described) would be available mechanisms.

“The Constitution doesn't currently allow the federal government to do it” is not an answer to “why not do this in a centrally coordinated way”.

The problem I have with this is that we essentially already have a national ID system. Social Security numbers are ubiquitous despite their original intention to not be used for identification because there's no existing national alternative. Everybody knows how stupid this system is yet we've painted ourselves into a corner and I don't think we'll ever walk back our reliance on it as an ID unless there's legislation mandating it and publishing it for everyone that has one assigned.

Personally I think there is some constitutional justification for a national ID system. The commerce clause gets abused a lot IMHO but identity is at the core of just about any contract. You could argue that state identification and plain old name, address, signature are sufficient, but it's not like SSNs are ubiquitous for no reason. Even as dumb as it is to use a single number for someone that never changes, the benefits of a single static identifier that is the same across a person's lifetime and established by the government outweighs the horrific insecurity of it all. Fundamentally a government is the root authority of legal identity for all the citizens of that country. The government should provide a modern secure way of establishing identity for both public and private matters.

We already use drivers licenses for this.

Driver’s licenses are not your voter id in many states, and aren’t a federal license. Real ID is supposed to bring all licenses to the same standards, but it’s not everywhere yet.

Voter id laws have been shown to increase voter turn out in the United States. Most states give free IDs for voting. It is a federal law that you must show an ID to register. Stop with this misinformed nonsense that there is a crazy conspiracy to keep "brown" people from voting. Maybe once yes but not for awhile.

Related, this funny/sad video from 6 years ago about actually asking black people about getting IDs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JGmKHrWKMQ (4 minutes long)

Summary: They pretty much all responded "whoever thinks we don't have / can't get IDs is ignorant and probably a bit racist".

Just like white people are authoritative about other white people, if we ask black people for the truth they must be right. Or, you know, not.

- 13% of Blacks, 10% of Hispanics, but only 5 percent of Whites lack photographic identification.

- 12% of adults living in a household with less than $25,000 annual income lack photo ID, compared to just 2 percent in households with over $150,000 annual income.

- 15 percent of 17-20 year olds lack photo ID, and 11 percent of those ages 21-24 lack photo ID.

So yeah, ID requirements are not a half bad way to skew election results in your favor.

And consider for a moment just how strong an advantage Republicans have in the house of representatives these days compared to how weak their actual number of represented voters is. All the little efforts absolutely add up to real results.

How many of those 12-15% are actually unable to get an ID as opposed to "can't be bothered/don't need it"? An ID requirement would get some of those to get one - if they wanted to vote.

And how does the voter turnout look for those groups anyway? The only people who might be impacted negatively by ID requirement are those unable (for whatever reason? Why can't there be an easy way to get an ID in the first place?) and actually wanting to vote.

I don't know about those groups specifically, but overall turnout is typically around 60% for presidential elections and 40% for midterm elections, for every election since at least 2000.

http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/voter-turnout...

Photo ID is required in the United States in order to work (Form I-9), obtain housing, drive a car, buy alcohol or tobacco, enter age-restricted venues, purchase firearms, drive a car, go through airport security, and in general, to participate in society. And one of the things I’ve listed is an enumerated constitutional right. So I don’t think it’s an unreasonable requirement for voting. Someone who doesn’t participate in society to such a degree that they already don’t need ID is probably unlikely to be voting in the first place, and it’s somewhat dubious IMO to bend over backwards to specifically court such voters.

Yep only what 60% of Americans vote? I have a hard time believing any of the meth addicted homeless really care all that much about who's running for mayor.

I think almost every person interested in elections is someone with enough money to get an ID every 5 years. But hell give out a subsidy for the poor to get an ID card for free.

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