Hacker News Reader

Comment by beAbU | Hacker News Reader

How do you determine voter eligibility without ID?

The name is on the list, so the person can vote. Why would you need them to show an id for that? You would need to establish the identity first (which everybody would have anyways, should the US not be a bunch of third world countries in a trench coat), but not eligibility.

So all you need to do is know somebody's name for that voting station. And since we're not checking IDs, when the "right" person shows up, how do we know they're the right person?

I have to show ID to get into my local zoo, but not to vote someone onto the board in charge of the zoo. That doesn't make sense.

> when the "right" person shows up, how do we know they're the right person?

That prompts an investigation. The “right” person casts an affidavit ballot and the police and courts investigate. If the count is close, the loser usually sure to recount and verify, and any of these incidents then become political kindling. It doesn’t happen because it isn’t worth it individually and difficult to coördinate en masse.

As someone who has lived outside of United States, I find it incredibly baffling, alongside the lack of national ID. Lack of such simple verification makes the potential investigations much more harder than they have to be.

It's a trade-off that many USA states make willingly. Citizens have the right to vote, period^. It's not a "right to vote but only if you have an ID." Requiring an ID to vote, to me, is as ridiculous as requiring an ID to speak or practice a religion.

[^] except for the case of felony disenfranchisement laws, which I personally believe are a travesty

And this was hard won. US history is riddled with examples where the bureaucracy of voting was explicitly used to disenfranchise rightful voters by governmental officials that wanted to keep their power over the marginalized. The skepticism is earned.

> Lack of such simple verification makes the potential investigations much more harder than they have to be

This can be argued for any hindrance to bureaucracy. On the balance you get a much more robust system, with fewer centralized fail-safes.

You register to vote, are assigned a polling place where your name will appear on a list of registered voters, and you go to that polling place and tell them your name.

If you're trying to fake it, you need to know what address and name someone else is registered at, what polling place they were assigned, and you have to hope they don't show up to vote too.

All of these uncertainties mean it's pretty difficult for an individual to do any serious (if any!) voter fraud.

Remember we had voting for a long time before magnetic strips and plastic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com