Hacker News Reader

Comment by TaylorAlexander | Hacker News Reader

The discussion around voter ID laws never actually revolves around expanding access to ID cards. Instead it is about restricting access to legal voters who don’t have ID, under the guise of avoiding voter fraud, a thing that is so rare as to be generally insignificant.

https://gspp.berkeley.edu/research-and-impact/policy-initiat...

View on HN

> The discussion around voter ID laws never actually revolves around expanding access to ID cards.

That’s what the studies linked seem to focus on? About half of them are inconclusive. The first one had data errors.

That’s why issuing free cards should solve the problem. India with a much larger population with more disadvantaged people solved it but here we are still arguing about it.

What problem? Not fraud, if there's no statistically significant amount of fraud happening. [1] The only people who want to argue about it are doing it to sow doubt in a remarkably robust system.

The problem they're trying to solve is ballot access by people who won't vote with them. Here in Texas, the AG is suing any organization who's trying to register voters in liberal areas. [2]

[1] https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/ with context by https://www.brookings.edu/articles/widespread-election-fraud... [2] https://www.texastribune.org/2024/09/06/texas-ken-paxton-tra...

I agree, it's cheap and easy enough to solve the issue, and if the Republican talking point bothers you so much, it shouldn't be too hard to prove it's not a problem by introducing mandatory free ID for all.

Everytime I go vote, they take my ID and give me a ballot. Pretty sure voting identification is already working. This is a fake issue.

It depends on the state. Here in NC ID is not required to vote, and when they tried to pass a law requiring it, there was a huge backlash.

Sounds like it’s too unpopular for national let alone state policy.

So which is it, a fake issue (ID already required to vote), or ID isn’t actually required, but requiring ID is too unpopular so it shouldn’t be done?

Not sure how you think they are mutually exclusive in any way. It's all three: A) a fake issue that our current ID is not sufficient, because B) a new source of ID isn't actually required as studies show, and C) requiring a new source of ID is too unpopular.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com