4.6M Voter and Election Documents Exposed Online by Technology Contractor | Hacker News Reader

4.6M Voter and Election Documents Exposed Online by Technology Contractor

vpnmentor.com

61 pointshoward94195 comments

Requiring photo id to vote would at least remove the risk of voter fraud with this data breach.

I'm also surprised that the company responded accordingly to the breach with only a day turn around time.

"Voter ID" has become an issue for the political right in the US despite there being no evidence of a widespread voter fraud problem and the majority of offenders seem to vote Republican [1].

So you need to ask yourself when you see this: why would the Republicans push for Voter ID? Yes, it helps with the fabricated narrative about a "stolen election" but there's a deeper reason and it's not election integrity.

It's voter suppression.

As soon as you require a government-isseud ID to vote, you then get into the questions of which IDs qualify and how hard or expensive are they to get it.

Consider counties in Alabama where the DMV was only open one day a month [2]. Or that voter ID laws disproortionately impact Native Americans [3]. Or that student IDs are often excluded as valid voter IDs [4].

I would support broader election reform that includes:

1. IDs issued by the Federal government at no cost that are easy to get;

2. Expanded access to voting. This means early voting, universal access to voting by mail with no justification required whatsoever and (ideally) moving voting day to a weekend;

3. Mandatory voting. That doesn't mean you have to vote at all. It just means you have to put a ballot into a box, even if empty or spoiled, or to mail one in. This is essentially the system in Australia;

4. Ranked-choice voting;

5. Congressional seats decided by proportional representation rather than FPTP districts; and

6. Senate seats per state being decided in terms of population size, say 1-3 depending on size.

Then sure, let's have voter ID.

[1]: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/republicans-vote...

[2]: https://www.al.com/news/montgomery/2016/12/feds_alabama_to_e...

[3]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10624504/

[4]: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/free-speech/202...

We can have voter ID once we get a proper national ID to replaces Social insecurity numbers.

That would lead to the “mark of the beast” and anti-govt crowd never voting again, which would be fine, but hypocritical for any voting advocate.

I'm only vaguely familiar with the "mark of the beast" stuff from my catechism days as a kid. Isn't it supposed to be a tattoo or physical mark on the body? How would the proposed national ID differ from the social security number we already receive?

It's whatever these luddites dream up in their intelligence-stricken skulls. It also changes depending on the day of the week and the direction of the wind.

For example, our current credit system is much closer to "mark of the beast" level stuff than a society where everything is paid for with physical cash, but the same people who are afraid of the mark are fine with credit cards because it keeps undesirables away from them. The truly destitute are not going to have a credit card most of the time, and if they do it's because they're cashing checks through a payday lender who keeps 3% of their income plus a service fee in order to keep their account.

Elections are state-run. You shouldn’t need a national ID to vote in a state-run election. You should only need a state-issued ID.

The best thing to come out of Bush v Gore was the reinforcement of elections being state-run.

There are still plenty of living Americans who were born in Jim Crow places that refused to issue them birth certificates, who were born at home because their counties had White-only hospitals. Anyone who says that it is fair to demand documentary proof of citizenship is either unaware of American history, or arguing in bad faith for a regime that disenfranchises minorities.

Being born at home was fairly common in rural areas before the 1940s (cars and roads being more accessible). Even for white people.

I would be interested in the number of voters who have no birth certificate. Do you have sources?

The Brennan Center for Justice conducted a survey in 2006 that estimated that 7% of Americans didn't have the necessary documents to prove citizenship [1][2]

The ABA quotes the US Census estimating as many as 10,000 babies are born every day without a birth certificate [3].

[1]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/mill...

[2]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citi...

[3]: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/publicat...

"readily available" is not "unavailable"-- did you purposely misconstrue the findings?

Based on your ludicrous assertion that the ABA "quotes the US Census" estimate that almost every baby born in the United States is without a birth certificate I'm assuming so.

Yes, it is true that many rural people never had birth certificates, all races taken together. This does not trouble people who want to suppress minority votes because as long as something disproportionately impacts the black voter then the collateral impact on some white voters is acceptable.

So those people drove cars and got medical care and bank accounts all this time, many decades, without ever having to show ID? Are any of them collecting social security, disability, welfare? How the heck did they pull that off without ID?

You're overestimating the fraction of the electorate who drive and have bank accounts. It's that simple.

As soon as you require a government-isseud ID to vote, you then get into the questions of which IDs qualify and how hard or expensive are they to get it.

You’re slippery sloping. Nobody has advocated for anything beyond a government-issued ID and nobody has suggested discriminating based on “which IDs”.

> nobody has suggested discriminating based on “which IDs”.

This is a phenomenal achievement in ignorance. Multiple states have had controversies where their Trump-oriented legislatures tried to enact restrictive ID requirements that excluded one group or another, and their state courts or federal courts struck them down based on their nakedly discriminator intent. This includes North Dakota where they tried to disenfranchise tribes (struck down by state supreme court), Texas were they tried to get rid of almost a million black voters (stayed by federal courts), and North Carolina where a state court stayed the enactment of an ID law because reactionaries had "undeniably implemented this legislation to maintain its power by targeting voters of color". There have been controversies about which IDs are valid for voting in every state that tried it.

The fact that restrictive voter ID laws are coextensive with the Confederacy should be all the evidence you need.

You’re only strengthening my argument. Nobody wants these state-wise Voter ID kludges in the same way nobody wants Social Security cards to be de facto ID cards. We want state-issued IDs to function as voter IDs. These voter ID cards that we have now only exist because of opposition to using state-issued IDs.

>We want state-issued IDs to function as voter IDs

The groups who advocate such things also work to make it incredibly difficult to obtain state-issued IDs in communities who don't vote for their party, be they minority communities, university towns, etc.

I know plenty of people who claim that voter ID should be obvious and trivial. These people live in white suburbs where voting never takes more than 15 minutes, the DMV is open every day and you never have to wait more than an hour, and they're all well off enough to own reliable vehicles.

All of them are utterly incapable of understanding (you could argue willfully ignorant) that that is not the reality for plenty of people. That in many communities both places to get ID and places to vote are restricted in number and hours, making it impossible or deeply impractical for people there.

> university towns

Indeed, one of the key disenfranchisement tactics used by Texas and some other states is to make it virtually impossible for college students to vote. They require 2 printed proofs of residency, which are things like leases or utility bills that name the subject and are addressed to their residence, but university undergraduates don't receive mail at their residences, they have post office boxes, and they don't have leases or utility bills, either. If you look at the list of documents for establishing "residency" in Texas, you can see how impractical it would be for a teenage college student especially one who moved from another state.

This is not "slippery sloping". This is analyzing what the proponents of said policies want to achieve, and have achieved in the past. Maybe it's not a conscious decision, but many of these proposed voting laws, or ones that are implemented seemingly effect specific demographics.

Factually and statically, these demographics don't vote in favor of the ones proposing these policies. Said demographics are often of lower income, working longer hours in physical labor jobs.

> ... nobody has suggested discriminating based on which IDs.

From this link https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/voter-identif...

"Missouri state Rep. John Simmons, a Republican who sponsored legislation requiring a state-issued photo ID, said that election fraud cases are low priority for prosecutors and that requirement is a “commonsense” way to prevent such cases."

I understand your wording wasn't precise, but requiring a photo ID is specifying "which" type of ID is required. Yes, it is still a vague category but it is narrowing what type is acceptable.

To tie it back to the demographic I mentioned, it may pose a more difficult challenge to acquire a photo id than one would imagine; from my understanding these photos must be taken at an approved institution like the post office. In many of these low income communities, a post office will not be nearby, and due to a lack of transportation it may be quite difficult to get to the place to take the photo.

Ontop of this, the jobs these people are working are far less forgiving with freetime, or taking breaks to do anything not work related when compared to a "cushy" engineering job; for these people, getting time off may be difficult (though I was under the impression that's illegal in many states, I thought an employer is required to), and the money they lose out on could mean not being to afford an important commodity/bill.

How can you allow voting by mail and also requiring id? If you mail in your ballot you can't show an id?

If you don't want voter id then having a national id is not important?

Everything you could want to know is here [1].

Basically, you request a mail-in ballot. You are checked to see if you're registered to vote. If you are, one is sent to you. You fill it in and mail it back by the required date.

You sign a declaration on that mail-in ballot. When the votes are counted, your details and your signature are physically checked. If they're accepted, your ballot is added to the pile, basically.

So your ballot isn't associated with your name but the envelope it came in is.

There are lots of checks on integrity for this sort of thing. Monitors from the major parties who can object to whether a signature matches that which is on file and so on.

[1]: https://whenweallvote.org/voting101/votebymail/

This does not address any of the issues that people complain about? How do you stop somebody other than the person who is supposed to vote from voting using the person's ballot and faking the signature? Or a person could sign the envelope and give their ballot and envelope to somebody else to vote.

The point of voting with an id is to look at the picture and compare with the person to confirm they are the actual person.

edit: before you say they check the signature. It is not reliable. I know people who have had to confirm their signature despite it looking close. I've scribbled my name not even close to what I had recorded and it worked fine.

I've lost over 150 pounds from the time I last had a photo id taken, mostly due to illness. I've grown facial hair to hide some of the lines in my face so that I don't look as sickly, and it is incredibly hard for me to get around. Should I be denied the right to vote because I don't look like the fat man in the picture?

No, but that is a different issue... Signatures are not reliably checked so the claim that it prevents voter fraud is incorrect.

>Signatures are not reliably checked

What leads you to believe this?

I draw smiley faces, little sail boats, and other faces on retail receipts. No one has ever challenged me.

The verification on retail transactions and on ballots have nothing in common. Signatures on ballots are validated by humans, usually with multiple observers who can object to any specific signature.

Because I have just scribbled and it was counted.

Are we pretending that a society that does everything digitally is going to have consistent signatures worthy of detecting fraudulent activity?

> So your ballot isn't associated with your name but the envelope it came in is.

Is this accurate?

My absentee ballot has a unique barcode, and I assumed it matches the barcode on the envelope, which are all tied to my name at the township office.

Ballots do not, and must not, have any ties to the voter. Secret ballot is essential to prevent coercion.

Ohhh right. Had not thought about that.

The signature part is problematic. Many (most?) of us don’t have a need to use handwriting in our day-to-day lives. I rarely even need to endorse checks. And my official signature on either my license or SSN card are from years ago.

While my signature is fairly consistent with key parts looking similar, I almost never end up with duplicate looking signatures. An expert could probably identify them as being from the same person. A layman could almost certainly challenge the signature and win.

This happens. I was challenged in person on my signature by a layman despite having matching photo ID (drivers license). There's no training on how to frank signatures, not in Florida anyway. I won.

If I have to sign a receipt I now just draw fun pictures.

I worry that making voting a holiday or putting it on the weekend would lead to LESS turnout. If you give vacation-starved Americans an extra day off, many of them will just take a day off instead of using it for its intended purpose. Also: it’s not like all businesses would close- the white collar folks would get a day off, but all the retail/service people would still need to work.

A better solution is to expand and require early voting periods. Give people 1-2 weeks to stop by and vote. It gives maximum flexibility and keeps lines short.

The big advantage to having in-person voting on a weekend is you greatly expand where you can have polling places. In Australia, for example, voting is on a Saturday and your local polling place is very likely to be a school.

Not everyone has the luxury of being able to take time off work. This is worse on a weekday. White collar workers may have that flexibility more often but if, say, you're a health professional, you're required to be there for your shift and that shift could be 24 hours or more. So you're going to have this problem regardless but it is worse on weekdays.

Likewise, it'll be easier to find people to man polling places on weekends.

Anyway, weekend voting is part of a comprehensive voting accessibility strategy, not the sole solution.

Why not both? California is actually pretty good about this. We have early voting at select stations, and legal time off on Election Day. A full day off is unnecessary IMO, but a federal legal mandate for 2 hours PTO on Election Day would be great policy.

A full day off might be necessary depending on how busy polling places are. I had to stand in line for 5 hours to vote in ‘08

Most services in the US require some proof of identification. It requires 2 forms of government ID to fill out a W2 and we are all more or less fine with this. I really don't see why voting should require less proof of citizenship than having a minimum wage job. Having a clear and public way to standardize and audit elections is a good idea plain and simple.

I would be happy to support whatever infrastructure is needed to make it easy for citizens to assert and validate their legal rights. The government should work well and provide the core civic services that people need. Government IDs are pretty cheap, but it feels like good policy to make them free. I would also be happy with day of registration and multiple days of voting, however doing so should also require a mechanism to prevent double voting (i.e. a serial number, which a standardized ID scheme would enable). There are plenty of solutions that would help standardize and secure elections (mandatory voting like Australia does is my preferred solution, but that should also come with policies to attenuate the burden of voting). Framing this as a rightwing conspiracy passes up the opportunity to engage in a constructive way to improve our government infrastructure.

Would you trust Facebook to let anyone log-in based just based on your claims of owning an account?

The supreme court just backed Arizona in reinstating voter-id proof. Clearly fraud is a concern on all sides - just ask the losing party (-> 2016).

As long as anyone with a driver's license and an SSN can register to vote, the process is just bound to be faulty no matter how many recounts you do. The prerequisites apply to many non-Americans with interests and incentives to go abuse the system. So to me, it seems rather moot to deny voter-verification because a DMV is only open once a month and costs something? So in a car-country like the US you're not going to drive with a valid license because of that?

The problem is likely much lower with in-person voting than with mail-in if you look at all the video-documented ballot stuffing cases - Even if they're just isolated, it shows that some nefarious efforts are being made to influence elections. Securing them should become a non-partisan effort.

> ... despite there being no evidence of a widespread voter fraud problem ....

The courts say otherwise. When it comes to local votes, I believe, a handful of votes can decide the outcome. A quick search returns the following:

Texas: Crystal Mason was sentenced to five years in prison for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election while on supervised release for a federal conviction. Her case has drawn significant attention and debate regarding the severity of the punishment.

North Carolina: In 2018, Leslie McCrae Dowless was charged with multiple counts of voter fraud related to absentee ballots in a congressional race, which led to a new election being called.

Pennsylvania: In 2020, several cases were reported where individuals were convicted of illegal voting, including double voting and voting on behalf of deceased individuals.

Florida: In 2020, a man was arrested and charged with voter fraud for changing the address of Gov. Ron DeSantis in the voter database without his permission.

Maryland: In 2016, an individual named Gladys Canales was convicted of voting twice in the same election. She cast ballots in both Maryland and Virginia during the 2016 presidential election. This case resulted in a conviction and highlighted concerns about cross-state voting

New York: In 2018, a New York City Board of Elections employee, Valerie Vasquez-Rivera, was involved in a case where fraudulent absentee ballots were submitted during a City Council race. The case led to a plea deal and underscored vulnerabilities in absentee ballot processes

California: In 2020, a case emerged in California involving a man named Robert Richard Lynn, who was convicted of casting ballots on behalf of his deceased mother in three elections. This case resulted in a criminal conviction, demonstrating the risks of voting on behalf of deceased individuals.

The comment you're responding to is in the context of whether a government issued ID should be required _because that would cut down voter fraud_. Additionally, the context is that's it's being pushed by Republicans - that it would prevent Democrat voter fraud.

1 - Texas: Crystal Mason. Her conviction overturned. So, this is a bad case to quote. And, ID was irrelevant here. She wasn't pretending to be someone else.

2- North Carolina: Leslie McCrae Dowless. He's Republican committing voter fraud. Also, Dowless was charged with multiple counts related to illegal ballot handling - seemingly not something Voter ID would have helped with.

3- Pennsylvania: 2020 - via https://www.ydr.com/in-depth/news/politics/elections/2022/08...

a) Bruce Bartman... serving five years on probation after he illegally voted for Trump

b) Melissa Ann Fisher of Bucks County recently was sentenced ... signed a mail ballot for her deceased mother: mail in issue AND public deaths should be remove you from the voting rolls. Not directly a voter ID issue.

c) Ralph Holloway Thurman of Chester County pleaded guilty... is a Republican

d) Robert Richard Lynn of Luzerne County pleaded guilty last year to completing an absentee ballot application and signing his deceased mother's name... Also absentee for deceased.

I'm not going to continue looking them up. Maryland is about voting in two states, so voter ID won't help that either. More about absentee ballots and more about absentee on behalf of deceased individuals. Voter ID on in-person voting is irrelevant to those cases.

It's republicans comitting fraud or cases where Voter ID won't directly help. That's part of that comment's point.

What country allows voting with out ID, can people traveling also vote? There is no logical reason to not require ID, this is not really a party issue.

There are multiple comments in this thread explaining why it is a very real issue. It is a party issue because one party relies on de facto voter suppression to win.

Each party has its own reasons to prefer one policy or the other. But admit it. We should not let people vote without ID because it makes fraud possible. Why doesn't the anti-ID party say instead that they agree with fighting fraud and they want to ensure that people can easily get an ID if they are legitimate? I think we can infer that their fighting basic ID requirements is evidence of their proclivity for fraud.

Imagine saying the same thing about license plates lol. "We want to provide economic opportunity for people disenfranchised by the bureaucracy of the DMV!" But do you want to live in a world where unregistered/uninsured cars on the road are acceptable? The same applies to voting without ID. Getting an ID is one of the simplest things an adult can do, and modern life de facto requires having one.

Driving is a privilege, voting is a right. You need to do some reading and reflection before commenting.

No, voting in the US is a right for US citizens only. I think you need to do some reflection yourself on why you think fraud or perception of fraud is not important. It seems like there are ways to solve these problems without resorting to nonsense policies like "anyone can vote without id."

Voters in the US are already registered and identified by mail to their address. Voter fraud instances are extremely low.

This comports with your understanding of the word widespread?

You think 7 instances over 4 years and hundreds of millions of votes is a "widespread voter fraud problem"?

A better question would be why you wouldn't require a voter id. The voter suppression claim is nonsense. You need an ID to practically do anything in this country. There is no burden. 60% of Democrats support the requirement of a voting id.

> The voter suppression claim is nonsense. You need an ID to practically do anything in this country. There is no burden.

But there is a burden, because obtaining an ID can require driving, waiting for hours at the DMV, paying money to apply, or a combination, all of which can be burdens for low-income households and rural households [1][2]. Homeless people face additional obstacles to getting an ID, including having to fill in a residential address [3]. If you're transgender or gender non-binary, updating an ID you becomes a burden [4].

> A better question would be why you wouldn't require a voter id.

A question that isn't for you in particular to answer is, in the current day and age, would the number of fraudulent ballots prevented by a new strict voter ID requirement be greater than the number of valid votes prevented by such a requirement? The current legal framework of obtaining government-issued IDs makes strict voter ID laws de facto voter suppression. 30 million people lacked a driver's license as of 2022 [2], and I'd be willing to bet that at least 1 million of them are US citizens of voting age. Let's assume that 25% of them would vote if they had the option to do so from their homes (a arbitrary but conservative hypothetical percentage in light of actual voter turnout percentages [5]). There's been no national election with 250000 fraudulent ballots. Any new voter ID bill that doesn't take this into account will almost certainly be voter suppression. The problem isn't the principle of requiring a voter ID. It's that the laws around getting an ID need to change prior to or simultaneously with laws that make ID a requirement for voting.

[1] https://www.mapresearch.org/file/ID-info-low-income-communit...

[2] https://www.mapresearch.org/id-documents-report

[3] https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105435

[4] https://www.mapresearch.org/file/ID-info-transgender-nonbina...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...

Voter suppression is not "nonsense", it is real.

It's a convenient scapegoat if you ask me. Does it happen? Maybe. Does voter fraud happen too? Maybe.

But both of those properties are conveniently paraded to distract each respective side from the real and "pretty normal" suggestion of having voter ID. Just because documentation means some people don't get to vote, doesn't mean it's not a good ideal for us to work towards whilst also fixing the fact that circumstance and difficulty prevent some people from having said documents.

I'm really surprised at the pushback for Voter ID stuff here of all places. To make a loose/wonky analogy: I can not for the life of me figure out why people want to have "records" of their national population in a database table with no PK and no deduplication effort. And when you get API requests on a "/user/vote" endpoint you do some sort of weird fuzzy matching to get a record that may or may not exist, or is in a separate table called "registered voter" which has no FK to the first and was also filled in with some API request that never definitively links to the first record. And then after all of this, hoping and double-ing down on the claim that the final record count is exact, true and there was no shenanigans that happened in gathering said count. It baffles the mind, and the older and more cynical I get, the more I'm thinking this is done consciously and on-purpose and we're all being gaslight to think that it's normal and that any attempts to fix this are actually just one side trying to push their agenda to suppress the other.

As soon as you make both voting and getting id free and paid timeoff or holiday, great.

But thats never how voter id laws in america aee proposed, and as such, they are the same as antivoter laws.

As far as I can tell, every state that has voter id also provides free IDs. They don't have PTO or holidays though.

Can't speak to the other 49 states, but California does have a legal requirement for taking time off to vote on Election Day. We also have polling stations that are open in the days before the election so I was able to simply vote on a Saturday morning in the last election which feels like a solid policy.

California also has a requirement that ID for any traffic violation, including non-vehicular ones must be shown. Which makes ID ownership and carrying one at all the time a de facto requirement in CA.

With the REAL ID Act of 2005, most of the State ID cards (not just driver's licenses) are REAL ID-compliant, meaning they can be used for any state and Federal identification.

Some fees:

New York: $9.00 - $13.00 (varies based on age and duration of the card). For individuals under 62, the standard fee is $13.00 for an 8-year ID. Those 62 or older with Supplemental Security Income (SSI) can get it for $6.50.

Texas: $16.00. The ID card is valid for six years. Reduced fees are available for individuals aged 60 or older and those who are disables.

Florida: $25.00. This is the standard fee for a Florida ID card. The card is valid for eight years. The state offers free ID cards to individuals who are homeless or are 100% disabled vets

California: $38.00. The fee for a regular ID card in California is $38.00. However, the state offers free ID cards to low-income individuals, seniors, and those who are homeless under specific programs

voting is a right. driving is a privilege.

Voting in US elections is for US citizens only.

The costs for the ID themselves isn't the only difficulty.

For example, someone who is homeless, either newly or chronically. The event that leads to homelessness often coincides with losing most of their possessions. It isn't uncommon for people to lose identifying documents, such as birth certificates, social security cards, etc.

If they made it into homelessness without losing those items, they're still a stone's throw away from losing them. Theft, vandalism, or even encampment cleanouts can leave someone with nothing.

So now instead of it being the cost for the id, it's the cost for the ID, for the copy of the birth certificate, social security card, etc. To get these things often requires a maze of bureaucracy, and very often a stable address.

Now there are services that will provide an address and assist, but one wrong move can throw that out the window. At the end of the day, there's many moving parts and you need to get them all to align at once to be issued an ID.

The ID requirement can easily be considered an anti-voter policy.

I don't want to be that guy, but... Is someone who lives on the street really the best person to ask about who should be running the country? Where exactly do you consider a person like that to be a resident, given that they don't have a residence? With no ID, can't they vote in many different areas, or are you going to fingerprint them to ensure that they don't vote again and again?

Given that an ID has no monetary value, I think it would be relatively easy for a homeless person to hang on to it. They ought to carry it at all times separate from the rest of their stuff, because it's so essential. Then once they get fingerprinted and register in a central database, they can pick a location to reside and vote there in person.

I'm not trying to say that the problems you've mentioned are completely insignificant, but they are relatively rare problems that affect a tiny percentage of the population. Those problems also affect people who live out of vans and travel all around the country. We have much bigger issues than these to worry about.

> Is someone who lives on the street really the best person to ask about who should be running the country?

What? Are you saying the person who has least benefited from the current system should also have the least say in how the country is ran?

>What? Are you saying the person who has least benefited from the current system should also have the least say in how the country is ran?

As much sympathy as I have for the homeless (more than average probably), I'm sticking with that. Just because someone is in a bad position today does not mean that they have benefited the least! Lots of things can make a person homeless, including a deliberate decision to live like that. But let's just say that broadly speaking, and notwithstanding some very awful possibilities of disenfranchisement that are pure fantasy, someone who cannot manage their own life properly should not be telling us how to run ours or how much we owe them out of our pay. The law is the law and this homeless voting issue does not concern me enough to actually fight it. But let's just say I don't care what the homeless think of who should be elected. Before you argue more, just know that I know you don't respect my opinion about how the government should be run either, and neither of us is homeless or a criminal (I assume).

That view of mine is completely aside the point that we need to ensure that only authorized people vote and one person gets one vote. There are lots of people I would rather didn't vote, and whom I would not trust to do anything for me. But that's a separate issue from ensuring the integrity of the election for people we deem fit to vote.

Has anyone ever been arrested or fined for failing to provide time off for voting? Do we think compliance is 100%?

> As far as I can tell, every state that has voter id also provides free IDs.

Are you sure of that? I've never heard of a free state ID, and certainly never gotten one. I've only had ID from five or six states, though.

Every state that implemented voter id in the last couple years have also created a free id program. They do not advertise it and since most people get drivers licenses not a state id you won't get it for free.

It's long overdue, there's no reason that voting should be on a workday and difficult, and Democrats should propose voter ID laws that make it easier for people to show up at the polls. They don't seem to, though, or even to argue for the concept.

They seem to spend most of their time trying to stop people from voting, trying to stop people from running, trying to keep people off the ballot, trying to keep people from talking about their candidates, and harassing minority groups that threaten the firmness of their key constituencies. A lot like Labour in the UK.

They spend far more time trying to weaken everyone's right to vote for the candidate of their choice than on anything resembling the opposite, notwithstanding them mentioning John Lewis every five minutes, and erecting statues to him.

What are you talking about? Efforts to make it more difficult to vote are almost exclusively right wing. Just look at the list of cases tracked by Democracy Docket: https://www.democracydocket.com/cases/

“ Thirty-six states have laws requesting or requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls. The remaining 14 states and Washington, D.C., use other methods to verify the identity of voters. Most frequently, other identifying information provided at the polling place, such as a signature, is checked against information on file.”

[1] https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/voter-id

Most jurisdictions have early voting and/or mail in voting. I understand the time off argument, but in most cases early voting seems like a reasonable solution.

Mail out ballots then require an ID when you turn it in. Make it easier to get an ID if that's a problem. It seems pretty simple to me. Not sure why anyone would be against this.

We're against it because allowing ten thousand unelected petty bureaucrats to adjudicate whether a voter is or is not allowed to cast their ballot on election day isn't a good system.

to anyone wondering what this looks like in practice... google "hanging chad"

> Not sure why anyone would be against this.

Because of all the edge cases. Some people do not have ID. Some have ID but it doesn't match their current address. Some people have ID but the same name+address as a dead person (not uncommon when people inherit houses from dead parents). Most people would be fine with ID requirements if they could trust that these edge cases will not be leveraged by some local volunteer with an agenda. In the never-ending 50-50 split of US politics, edge cases are too often the decider. See Florida 2000, where those who couldn't properly punch a hole in a piece of paper ended up deciding the presidency.

> Make it easier to get an ID if that's a problem. ... Not sure why anyone would be against this.

Because the same people trying to make IDs required also want them to be harder to get, not easier.

I have never heard of anyone pushing to make IDs harder to get.

Not specifically trying to make it easier, but passing legislation without or in spite of the impact. If they want to require voter ID then getting ID should not be a bureaucratic nightmare and it should be able to be done for free.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/chal...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a...

Due to previous rulings on poll taxes, any place where ID is required to vote, ID is also required to be obtainable for free.

The people repeating this myth are smart enough to know better so one must assume they intend to have people who can't obtain ID via legal means, voting.

Citation needed, and also this argument is not really made in good faith. I live in Texas. These are the requirements to obtain an ID: https://www.dps.texas.gov/section/driver-license/how-apply-t...

As you can see there is a fee associated with it.

Technically you do not have to present ID in Texas[1], but the requirements to not present an ID are so onerous you would easily be able to afford an ID before you could meet them. Because not only do you have to provide one of these documents, you also have to prove you cannot reasonably obtain an id... But the requirements are such that if you have the ability to provide one of these documents, you almost certainly have the ability to obtain an id. So the state will say "Well, you're able to obtain this document, why can't you get an ID?" and invalidate your vote. So the de-facto result is that you need an ID.

And this argument handwaves away, as the above links demonstrate, the significant amount of hurdles required to get an ID in Texas, which is not only paying a fee.

1: https://www.votetexas.gov/mobile/id-faqs.htm

I'm sorry but if you can't afford $30 every 8 years there is something very wrong with you. I would not be opposed to a poverty exemption for the fee, but the fee is so low that nobody realistically needs it. I don't know of a state with no fees for documents like ID.

There are identication requirements to get an ID, but that goes for any state. You have to have that to prevent identity theft. If you move to a new state you can usually turn in your old ID with like one other thing to get a new one in that state.

> it is impossible to live a normal life without ID as it is

> if you can't afford $30 every 8 years there is something very wrong with you.

I don’t think it should be a requirement to be normal or “right” to be able to vote, from whatever perspective it is you’ve got on the world.

You are entitled to your opinion. But if you want to know my perspective: We have numerous obligations as members of society, such as wearing clothes. ID is such a fundamental thing to a government that it must be issued and used for government functions. If someone refuses to get an ID or can't manage to hang on to one, that is unfortunate but not the government's problem. If the issuance process takes too long, I would be OK with trying to fix that. I would not be entirely opposed to making ID free for people in poverty. But I still think even the poorest people can afford to keep an ID.

The only way to reliably ensure one person gets only one vote without requiring ID is to use biometrics or something. I would not be opposed to having that option either, because it would put this debate to rest. So, either provide an ID or verify your fingerprints, your choice.

Citation needed for all your assumptions after your correct statement: "Technically you do not have to present ID in Texas"

From your link:

Here is a list of the supporting forms of ID that can be presented if the voter does not possess one of the forms of acceptable photo ID and cannot reasonably obtain one:

copy or original of a government document that shows the voter’s name and an address, including the voter’s voter registration certificate; copy of or original current utility bill; copy of or original bank statement; copy of or original government check; copy of or original paycheck; or copy of or original of (a) a certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes the voter’s identity (which may include a foreign birth document).

Find a state where you have to pay for ID and you require ID to vote if it's such a problem.

Those "free" IDs are often only free in the sense that the issuer of the ID does not charge for it. But there may be fees to obtain the documents necessary to get that "free" ID.

Issuing ID is a fixable problem and you can fight about ID issuance without upsetting anyone. It's not acceptable to respond to perceived inefficiency in ID issuance by letting people vote without ID. Realistically, it is impossible to live a normal life without ID as it is. The only people I expect to have trouble getting ID are the very elderly and disabled who have no transportation at all. That too can be fixed.

Fix issuance first, then we can talk about making it a requirement. What isn't acceptable is to deny even a single person their right to vote because they couldn't get a valid ID.

>Fix issuance first, then we can talk about making it a requirement. What isn't acceptable is to deny even a single person their right to vote because they couldn't get a valid ID.

Here's a list of things that require government ID right now, off the top of my head:

  * Getting a job
  * Accepting free food from a food drive
  * Getting a bank account or loan
  * Buying alcohol or cigarettes
  * Buying a gun
  * Getting a tattoo
  * Picking up a package
  * Driving a car
  * Buying a plane or train ticket
  * Viewing an apartment or house to lease/buy
  * Forwarding your mail or setting up a PO box
  * Joining a gym
  * Setting up your gas/electricity/cable/internet
  * Getting a phone with service
  * Entering a nightclub

I'm all about giving people their rights, but making ID a requirement needs to be done. If the feds want to push it, then they can insist on criteria for acceptable issuance of ID. But I don't agree with waiting to do this anywhere it is possible to do it sooner. No other country (that I know of) is stupid enough to allow voting without ID. Perhaps the irrationality of this policy is an indictment of our government's dysfunction.

>Mail out ballots then require an ID when you turn it in. Make it easier to get an ID if that's a problem. It seems pretty simple to me. Not sure why anyone would be against this.

There needs to be accountability when it comes to voting. Mail is not acceptable for voting, especially if you make it as inconvenient as voting in person.

What I would like is to make voting day a holiday. Then we can put all these absurd arguments about how people can't get to the polls with valid ID to rest. Let the people who must work on election day vote early. Vote on paper, none of this unaccountable and glitchy electronic garbage. We have more tech than ever and our elections take longer to count than those in countries that use paper.

Did the researcher notify any of the state attorneys general?

What a shame! This may stain Illinois otherwise spotless record of voting integrity through the decades.

Why does it seem that voting cybersecurity is so poor?

Anything government related takes an ungodly amount of time to do any small thing. It is part of how we keep checks and balances. Defcon no doubt found exploits on some voting machine or sattelite provider, but due to how complex the government is it will take time to fix these issues.

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