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Comment by thephyber | Hacker News Reader

Ah yes, a facetious jab at legitimate criticisms of Voter ID laws.

It's worth pointing out that the point of contact for state IDs is the DMV, which is the butt of every government inefficiency complaint. If, instead, it was done at USPS offices or even by postal workers on their routes, no one would complain.

It's entirely about whether the burden is placed on the citizen to maintain their Constitutionally guaranteed rights or whether political agents can use the state to selectively burden neighborhoods, especially ones with no / badly performing DMV offices.

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Voter ID laws aren't about fraud. The amount of fraudulent voters required to sway an election would be a massive operation that could not be kept secret. But it's a distraction from the real issue: vote fraud by improperly denying people access to the ballot box.

Sure, you can get an ID cheap. Most of the time. But if all of your ID is lost (which can easily happen to the victim of a purse snatching) it's going to take time and money to fix the problem. And voter registrations are not supposed to be permitted to be challenged too close to the election. Not supposed to be doesn't mean it doesn't happen repeatedly, though. This scales much, much better than sending in fraudulent ballots. We find a handful of fraudulent ballots, often by Republicans trying to prove fraud is easy. 2016 and 2024 both had more people denied access by ID laws, challenges and the like than the margin of victory. And those missing votes would have skewed heavily Democrat.

Almost forgot: SAVE puts a very onerous paper trail on divorced women. They'll need copies of the paperwork changing back to their maiden name--something an awful lot of them don't have. I've already seen a variation on this with RealID. A mistake was made at my wife's naturalization, a hyphen crept into her name that didn't belong, went unnoticed for years. Even when it was discovered it was a so-what. Social security had an errant hyphen, everything else was as intended. No problem. Then RealID came along--and she had to do a legal name change in order to change her name to what her ID and passport said. Weeks and hundreds of dollars.

Denying legitimate voters is just as much fraud as permitting fraudulent ones. A system in which the the former happens at least 10,000x as often as the latter is not a good system.

> which is the butt of every government inefficiency complaint

I always find DMV (or whatever your state's equivalent) inefficiency arguments to be hilarious. They're run extremely efficiently for the government. They suck use because of that (long wait times, most important stuff gets shipped by mail weeks later).

I live in Misissippi. The last time I had to go in-person for a license renewal I was in and out in less than 10 minutes because they had automated kiosks. Then again, Mississippi is a progressive state.

Given the voter suppression history I’m curious if that experience is consistent across location and racial dimensions.

Yes, I'm sure every person in Mississippi has the same super expedient interaction as a HNer when they have to visit to get their ID documents. I bet you even live next door to the DMV so your travel time was negligible.

The point of the government doing it is that it has to be able to service those people who live maximally far from a DMV (say 60 minutes each way by car), who can't drive there, who have to weigh losing pay to take the time to travel there, who have below average intelligence, who are functionally illiterate (because Mississippi created A LOT of those before their recent education reforms), who "can't use technology", who forgot to bring whatever specific document qualifies for Real ID, etc.

The idea that people are unable to get IDs is an absolute myth. You need it to for basically everything a normal adult does.

You are just repeating the same meme that every Republican says.

There is a huge difference between a guaranteed Constitutional right that this country fought a Civil War for... and a privilege such as getting on a plane or driving a car.

Assume that I know everything you know about this topic and still arrived at a different conclusion.

> I always find DMV (or whatever your state's equivalent) inefficiency arguments to be hilarious. They're run extremely efficiently for the government.

It's real funny until they pass a law that says you need an ID to vote and then immediately close the only DMV anywhere near where you live specifically because they want to keep you and your neighbors from voting (https://www.yahoo.com/news/feds-called-investigate-alabama-d...)

Ah yes, the good 'ol "link to an article as proof of my claims, the article then contains multiple links to proof of the article's claims, and the multiple links, when followed, all end up leading to 404 pages with no content." Well, that convinces me.

If you were looking for how the investigation ended here's the press release from the USDOT https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/us-department-t...

I've found that the speed of the DMV seems to vary wildly by state, and possibly even city and location, based on anecdotes.

Earlier this year, my license was expiring and I decided to get a Real ID. I was able to create an appointment on the Oregon DMV website. It was set for 10 AM. I got there at 9:50 and checked in. My name was called up at only a couple minutes after my appointment time. I gave my documents and paid, then was instructed to wait by the camera area for my picture. I had barely sat down when my name was called. They took my picture, and I was all set. I was out the door by 10:15. Pretty sure my ID then came in the mail only about a week later.

So when people talk about long waits, I don't know what they're talking about. Maybe their state just sucks.

It can also depend on where you are within the state.

When I lived in Colorado the smart move in Denver was to start lining up about an hour before the DMV opened (for driver licenses, car registration never had much of a line). Out in the mountains, I was able to just walk in just about anytime. The longest wait I had in the small mountain town I lived in was when the one lady working there was doing a driving test, and I had to wait 10 minutes for her to get back.

Living in Washington, they allow private businesses to register vehicles, so transferring a car was normally a 5 minute job. Never did bother to switch my DL, so can't comment on that.

Now I'm up in BC where vehicle and driver licensing is handled by the state owned insurance monopoly. Any agent, private or public, can register your car. You can get the licensing done at public insurance offices, or at provincial service centres that handle all sorts of business by appointment or walk in. It all works pretty well.

When was this? I lived in Denver 2015-2021 and the DMV was always quick when I went.

This was mid-late 2000s. Probably also dependent on which office.

When I got my license they told me that if I had time it would be faster to drive down to the springs than to wait at the Denver office.

In Oregon the DMV is state run with all the benefits that go with it. the DMV is quiet, calm, smooth, and moves quickly even during lunch hour. When I moved back the DMV had an easy process (that staff helped me complete) to update my info and register everything + get a photo ID. I was in an out over lunch (with lunch still included) and everything was mailed in a week.

In Washington the DMV is split between licensing people and licensing cars/etc (2 locations), plus separate emissions testing locations. It's all contracted out with private companies providing staff and services. Last cycle, it took me over 3 hours to update my ID and registration.

Later, one of these places overcharged me on registration of a new car bought out of state. One near my last apartment in Seattle was running a credit card fraud scheme. Some may not have staff when you need them.

Turns out that when you support and fund the program, the government can do a pretty good job. You can, in fact, pay someone to care.

> They're run extremely efficiently for the government. They suck use because of that (long wait times, most important stuff gets shipped by mail weeks later).

The government is efficient without qualification.

People just like to complain and Reagan was charismatic so we’re cursed with this government inefficiency meme. We’re programmed to repeat it even when providing counter examples.

The overwhelming majority of the waiting I do in life is at the hands of private organizations who are unwilling to invest in proper staffing.

There will no doubt be replies to the contrary but to them I say they have identified corruption, not inefficiency. When the government doesn’t work it is by choice.

People also confuse that government programs have to prioritize many things over and above cost in ways that businesses don't.

The government has to (and should have to) provide the same service to everyone, everywhere. Businesses would never bother putting a DMV office in a small remote county because of cost, even if it was unfair and inconvenient to people living there. Government does do that, and it doesn't look great on a balance sheet.

All the more reason to decouple DMV from ID verification.

Like I said, the USPS is in a much better position to be able to scale identity to the national scale.

USPS already handle passport applications no? It’s where I went for my kids and they verify all the documents or whatever.

> They're run extremely efficiently for the government.

That's because ours are all done by third party companies on contracts :P

This has to be a joke right? The USPS is the group that cut down my mailbox, then left it a blank slab for 6 months. After replacing it, I had an employee state that under no circumstance would they be able to provide me a key to my mailbox.

> If, instead, it was done at USPS offices or even by postal workers on their routes, no one would complain.

You must have had better luck with post offices than I have. Having lived in a dozen states and used many different post offices, the vast majority is an utter nightmare. Between the rudeness and the apathy, I would much prefer the DMV (depending on the state)

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