Not being American I always confused by a lack stronger identity check in voting but I guess it's not a really big issue specially for less important elections.
That being said, I think my country like others, would gain to improve voters access when they are temporarily away by allowing online voting with the already existing electronic ID cards like many EU countries have.
Voter ID initiatives are explicitly intended to make it harder to vote for lower-income people, because those people tend to vote for Democrats.
Weird!
Are you saying because there used to be laws suppressing a minority that minority is unable to meet voter ID requirements that every other countries voters can easily meet?
Structures remain in place that make it difficult for people to escape the inter-generational poverty that was enforced by LAW up until that time. The abolition of Jim Crow laws did not magically create socioeconomic equality, nor did the abolition of those laws mean things like redlining, preferential hiring, etc. didn't continue to happen (and, in many cases, still happen).
As I mentioned in my other comment, in many states the Republican party has sufficient power that they can (a) reduce polling places in poorer, black areas while also (b) close Department of Motor Vehicles offices in those same areas. This means it's harder to vote even if you have the ID, and also harder to get the ID.
So yes, that is exactly what I am saying. You would do well to do some reading on this before you embarrass yourself further, because it's clear you really have no idea what you're talking about.
In the US, there is no national ID card. The de facto ID is the driver's license, and those are issued by the individual states -- and for people who don't drive (which, in most places in the US, means "poor people") there's no reason to have one.
States DO issue a non-DL ID, but getting one involves a bunch of the same hassles that getting the driver's license involves -- paying a fee, taking time to go to the correct government office, taking time off work to do so (again, a large imposition for lower income non-drivers), etc.
The GOP is also infamous for reducing polling places in areas that tend to vote Democratic, and really only gets in trouble when they're super obvious about it. Now, with VoterID, many GOP-run states have also starting closing the driver's license issuing offices in poorer and blacker areas of the state (for example, Alabama). There, you get a snowballing effect: reduce polling places easily accessed by poorer people; require an ID to vote that many of them don't have; and then make it harder to GET the ID in order to vote.
This is the new American reality.
The blocker is actually checking those and thus reducing the cheating going on. And you can say the people who are for voting IDs are of a certain ideological bent, but that goes both ways, doesn't it?
https://www.npr.org/2012/02/01/146204308/why-millions-of-ame...
The solution is easy: require access to state ID to be free, and reverse budget cuts which mean that in some areas of the country you might need to drive for hours to get to a DMV or produce things like utility bills which not everyone has.
I will believe anyone talking about voter ID has a goal other than suppressing opposition votes when their bill includes a robust implementation of any of this.
It’s also worth remembering that the “cheating going on” is largely an urban legend. Every credible study has found it to be exceedingly rare, nowhere near the level of affecting election results.
"A SURVEY OF AMERICANS ’ POSSESSION OF DOCUMENTARY PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP AND PHOTO IDENTIFICATION" https://www.brennancenter.org/media/6697/download
In 2012 the same group said the number was only 500k. Also they mention "Legal precedent requires these states to provide free photo ID to eligible voters who do not have one." in the newer article.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/chal...
So in 6 years it went from over 3 million to half a million people without some form of ID that is valid for voting. Looking at it from a larger picture, that's approximately 0.217% of the entire US voting age population a decade ago that didn't have some form of legal ID that was valid for voting. That is a smaller percentage of people than were incarcerated in the entire US in 2012. What I am not able to determine is how people of that half million actually wanted to vote but were not able to for some reason? That missing number is the one I would care about putting the time and effort into making sure they had the opportunity to vote.
You can look at the yearly voter turnout in the US to easily see that a significant portion of the US simply didn't vote. And the freedom to choose to not vote is something I strongly support.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...
https://impactful.ninja/best-charities-for-voting-rights-in-...
Although I would strongly suggest you investigate any charity to see if they are spending the money donated to them for their stated goals. And double check their tax form 990 to see how much of that money is actually spent on “charitable work".
Charities in the US also have the added benefit of donations being tax deductible(to an extent) and a fairly direct way to make sure your taxable income is being spent on something you care about.
I'm not saying there wasn't plenty of allowed activities but that the concept of this being an unrestricted right goes back to roughly the second half of the previous century.
From a federal perspective this is laughably disingenuous. The strongest federal gun control is the GCA and NFA. In 1920 you could mail order a machine gun.
The bill of rights weren't even fully incorporated to apply to the states until later in the republic, such as when the 14th amendment was passed. So it's disingenuous to characterize 19th century restrictions as representations of statutes in compliance the 2nd, when the 2nd didn't even necessarily apply to local/state governments at that time.
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/new-york-gun-law-temp...
This was filed by the State. Search the word “negro” to find their justification for character references.
https://reason.com/volokh/2022/11/07/preliminary-injunction-...
For a summary and explanation.
If they wanted it to apply to people, unconnected to the militia they would have said "the right of the People to keep and bear arms."
Wait...
> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Constitutional protections to voting explicitly apply to "citizens." This is why American Samoans, non-citizen US Nationals born in the US, can own a gun but (usually) not vote in the mainland.
If voting applied to "people" instead of "citizens" then the ID would make no sense. It's pretty insane to compare determining if someone is a citizen to determining if they are a person.
I knew the exact (non)answer I’d get from the other poster based on their other comments.
The right for citizens to vote can only meaningfully be preserved by verifying votes are eligible, otherwise you could just bring in busloads of Mexicans or whatever and dilute the citizens votes to the point it was rendered a vote only in name. This is why it is harmful and deceptive to just frame this as a question about burden for citizens; if only citizens showed up to vote then obviously there needn't be any burden at all to verify citizenship. I reject your characterization as it being "nothing about non-citizens."
The 'burden' is there precisely to create an impassible, or at least fairly effective, impediment to NON-CITIZENS to stop them from voting. The question isn't what minimizes the burden of citizens (obviously not requiring any evidence would be least burdensome). It is what burden maximizes preservation of the right of the citizens to vote.
Again, this isn’t a barrier for most people but there’s a constitutional right to vote so I think it needs to be as easy as possible to meet the requirements.
https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_state
Most states also have some kind of hardship waivers to help people get a basic government Identification since it's kind of hard to do a lot of things without some form of ID. Some states even have a specific "Election Identification Certificate" process that can only be used for the purpose of voter identification and it's free to get.
Hardship Waivers for IDs in Pennsylvania[2015] http://sharedprosperityphila.org/documents/Revised-ID-Waiver...
As far as the time investment required to get an ID to vote; if a person isn't willing to spend some time to make sure they can legally vote, do you think they will spend the time to make an informed vote? It's a pipe dream but I would prefer that everyone who votes does so while making an informed decision about who/what they are voting for.
I also support voter ID just because it makes it a little bit harder for foreign agents(A US state vs State example: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/16/politics/beto-orourke-con...) to interfere with what should be an internal affair. Although with political action committees (PAC) being a thing and with how hard it is to know where the funds are coming from, it's basically a free pass to have unknown monetary funds being funneled to politicians with questionable moral integrity.
There’s a difference between being uninformed and not having time to potentially travel long distances without a personal car and stand in line for a while. We’re talking about a constitutional right so we can’t just say it’s no big deal because the alternative costs more - it has to work for people who are disabled, have childcare responsibilities, are too poor to own a car, etc.
I’m not opposed to a voter ID requirement but there’s no evidence that it would be more than a symbolic gesture. Even so, I’d go for it as long as we pony up the cash to do it fairly by making ID cards easy for anyone to get so the only people without ID would be the religious nuts who think it’s the mark of the beast.