Could non-citizens decide the November election?
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Demanding photo ID is ineffective, because many non-citizens nonetheless do have a valid photo ID.
A better way to prevent them from voting, the researchers suggest, is to merely let everyone know as they present themselves for voting that you have to be a U.S. citizen to vote. (It appears that less-educated non-citizens are more likely to have cast a vote, possibly because they didn't realize they weren't allowed to.)
People are genuinely uncomfortable about challenging your residency status. In a number of situations, it's illegal to do so, and this seems to lend discomfort to situations where it's acceptable, or even expected.
I lived in the US (legally) for 5 years. In that time I held three jobs, opened a bank account, got a loan for a car, etc. The topic of my residency only came up once - at the airport on the day I arrived.
When I got my 2-year card renewed for a further 10, I made a point of letting my employer know ('mom & pop' shop, so I had some feel for their concerns). He looked genuinely uncomfortable - like he wasn't sure if he should even look at it. I had to tell him; don't worry man, you didn't ask.
So I can quite easily imagine that on both sides (I've read that, eg, first-generation cubans tend towards democrat, and second-generation tend towards republican - this isn't unique to one side), when trying to make sure that all-important minority vote are all registered and savvy, this topic may not come up. They may not feel entitled to ask, or be afraid of offending, etc. When you're going door to door trying to squeeze every vote you can out of them, you don't want to be that guy that comes off as "are you meant to be in my country?" Trust me - we really don't like that guy.
I guess what I'm getting at is that you can have a perfectly innocent scenario where someone they can assume to know what they're talking about, has come to their door and reminded them to register - and then we try to fault them for not knowing better.
All in all, it is clear as mud. I'm not sure I'd even say "less-educated", as I don't obviously consider myself in that category - but I was never clear on which elections I was, and wasn't (local/state/national?) allowed to vote in. I gather I'm allowed to vote for the county sherif, but not for the president. And everything in between is just one big grey area.
You didn't have to fill out a W-9 and/or I-9?
I'd been working there a while, when my greencard happened to come up in conversation. It did happen from time to time, mostly because I found it (and still do) to be a complete novelty. It's an interesting bit of kit, with a whole bunch of different things in one big kinda hologram on the back. From one angle you can see my face, from another angle, madame Liberty, etc.
(It also came up when a gas station wouldn't accept it as proof of age for smokes. They wanted An American ID. How do you argue with that?)
At the end of said conversation, my boss turned around and said .. well I guess you'll have to pay tax then. It seems they'd just assumed up until that point.
That was an interested realization that the world of "under the table" labour is a whole lot less clandestine than you might like to think. Which kinda goes back to my original point - That was not an intentional act on my part. The way other people approach the subject has a huge impact.
(The forms you mentioned, I took a google - I don't recognise the I-9 at all. The W-9 looks familiar, but that might be because of its striking resemblance to my stack of W-2's, which I dragged back to europe with me for some unknown reason. This isn't to say no to either of them, just that this was 10 years back - I remember human interactions much better than paperwork.)
I'd rather that the friction here lead to people killing the voter id laws, rather than universal ids being issued.
A strange state of affairs, indicative of our car-dependent society.
Do voter ID laws disenfranchise more legitimate votes than illegitimate ones?
Almost certainly.
Remember that voter ID laws only tackle one type of potential fraud: I go to the polls and impersonate someone else. That's it. Absentee overvoting, over-registration, ballot stuffing - these aren't addressed by requiring an ID.
So now, some numbers: in a paper put together by Justin Levitt, a con-law professor, he was able to find 31 instances of in-person vote fraud that would've been prevented by requiring ID at the polls.[1] Even if we assume we're undercounting dramatically, there's still no real evidence to indicate that requiring an ID would make a real impact.
DOJ estimates are that between 600,000-700,000 registered voters in Texas alone lack an ID[2].
So yeah, there's no real evidence that indicates requiring a registered voter to have a photo ID does anything but "place a burden on lots of registered voters that don't have IDs".
--
[1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/06/a...
[2]: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/how-vote...
More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010.
The number of non-citizens in the US is about 30 million - ~12m legal permanent residents, ~12 million who have immigrated illegally, and ~6m on various non-permanent visas. So you're looking at ~600k who voted illegally in 2010 and maybe ~1.7m who did so in 2008. That's a hell of a lot of people.
Now, I agree that overall this is less than the number of citizens who don't have ID, although I have serious doubts about the genuine political engagement or desire to vote of anyone who is entitled to a US ID and doesn't get one. So numerically it's less of an issue. But it's a problem because it corrupts the political process in 2 ways; it bring results into question, and it allows people who don't like a result to cast aspersions on it by appealing tot he general principle, even in places where the numbers don't support a claim of being swung by illegal voters.
It's also a problem for the people who vote illegally (who are likely to be less educated, as the article points out); voting illegally is treated as a major federal crime and can lead to permanent, no-appeal and no-expiration deportation, and even retroactive cancellation of US citizenship if a naturalized citizen is later discovered to have voted illegally, with no statute of limitations as far as I can recall.
I agree.
FTA: "We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted."
Just because "X is a genuine problem", which I agree we should regard more likely in light of this study, doesn't mean "Y, which supposedly addresses X" is a good idea. In this case, we seem to need better matching of voter registration to citizenship or suffrage for resident aliens - neither of which has anything to do with producing an ID at the polls.
I see how your comment may not have been advocating voter id, but then I don't see what you were actually objecting to. I apologize for reading more into your comment than was there, but I'd welcome clarification.
In passing (which I should have mentioned earlier) Remember that voter ID laws only tackle one type of potential fraud: I go to the polls and impersonate someone else. is incorrect. It can also act as proof that someone who registered without being entitled to vote did in fact vote. Registering to vote when you're not entitled to do so is a federal offense, as is actually voting, but obviously only the latter affects the outcome of elections (which is why it's such a political football). Well, registering indirectly affects elections insofar as it affects the way congressional districts are organized, but the marginal impact of illegal registration is much lower than the marginal impact of illegal voting.
Your second paragraph is more interesting, and does in fact address owenmarshall's original comment. You're asserting that requiring id serves an evidentiary purpose and therefore allows stricter enforcement? It is an interesting theory, but I am skeptical that it is either necessary or sufficient - sending someone to jail because a poll worker says they saw their ID is scary (ID could have been forged, poll worker could be in error, &c). It could still possibly be a component of something more useful, but clearly the concerns about legitimate voters who lack ID should be addressed somehow.
You accused him of "ignoring the results of this new study", acting "disingenuous at best", when what he said was well in line with both the new study and the old article. That is what I was objecting to. If both the new study and the old article and his thinking share an error - which possibility is suggested by your latest point - then raising that is interesting and useful. But it is not indicative of his being disingenuous or "ignoring data [he doesn't] like". (Arguably his latest comment is doing a little bit of that last, though being sure you catch everything gets harder when one feels unjustly attacked).
I do think it's disingenuous and self-defeating to cite a story like that without addressing the new information, even though he cited it for a different purpose (pointing to the much higher # of people without an ID). The whole premise of the story is that the possibility for disenfranchisement is massively worse than the possibility of fraud, since the ratio of people without suitable ID to fraudulent voters is ~10,000:1. ISTM to that when one has new information which appears to significantly undermine that premise, it's very important to qualify the citation.
It's true my tone was a bit hostile, but as someone inclined to support Democratic policies I'm extremely frustrated by democrats' seeming inability to hold a rational discussion of the topic, in the same way that moderate Republicans must often feel frustrated with some of the tropes that prevail on the right wing of their party and which cost votes at election time.
That shouldn't be "in passing" - that's the whole thrust of your argument!
It's also a bit odd, because once again, voter ID plays a negligible part in it. If I, owenmarshall, was born in Notamericastan and am not a citizen, yet I register and vote in an election, the act of me actually voting is sufficient proof that I, a citizen of Notamericastan, committed voter fraud.
How does requiring an ID provide any additional proof that the person voted? The fact that I signed my name and received a ballot is prima facie sufficient to demonstrate that.
> But this new evidence suggests that the incidence of illegal voting is several orders of magnitude greater than previously thought.
It demonstrates that requiring photo ID to vote is ineffective:
"Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted."
(from the article we are literally discussing now.)
> The previous conventional wisdom was that the known instances of illegal voting were in the mere dozens, which is negligible compared to the hundreds of thousands known to lack ID who might be unjustly disenfranchised by ID requirements.
It's also important to note this isn't the case: the conventional wisdom has always been that the known instances of illegal voting which could be reasonably addressed through voter ID requirements were in the mere dozens, negligible compared to the much larger body of legal voters who risk disenfranchisement.
--
So conventional wisdom indicates illegal voting of a form that can be addressed by requiring photo ID is incredibly rare. This research indicates that requiring photo IDs is not a sufficient barrier to prevent illegal voters from voting - illegal voters apparently have a photo ID anyway. And the number of voters who risk disenfranchisement from photo ID requirements is still very high.
So we agree that photo ID requirements are useless, right? ;-)
No it isn't. IT's a completely separate observation. With all due respect, you don't get to decide what my argument is.
It's also a bit odd, because once again, voter ID plays a negligible part in it. If I, owenmarshall, was born in Notamericastan and am not a citizen, yet I register and vote in an election, the act of me actually voting is sufficient proof that I, a citizen of Notamericastan, committed voter fraud.
No it isn't. If challenged about this, in many states where the registration requirements are quite loose you could reasonably say 'some other person registered to vote using my name,' and it's difficult to prove otherwise. As you can see, registration requirements aren't consisitent from state to state and it's questionable how good of a job states do at verifying the citizenship status of registrants: http://www.eac.gov/assets/1/Documents/Federal%20Voter%20Regi...
How does requiring an ID provide any additional proof that the person voted? The fact that I signed my name and received a ballot is prima facie sufficient to demonstrate that.
Depends on how distinctive your signature is.
It's also important to note this isn't the case: the conventional wisdom has always been that the known instances of illegal voting which could be reasonably addressed through voter ID requirements were in the mere dozens, negligible compared to the much larger body of legal voters who risk disenfranchisement.
That's not true. You're rewriting the historical argument in order to avoid addressing new information. The conventional wisdom has been that known instances were in the mere dozens. Adding 'which could reasonably be addressed through voter ID requirements' is a misrepresentation of the anti-voter-ID position.
So we agree that photo ID requirements are useless, right? ;-)
No we don't, and I don't find your rhetorical contortions funny. While I don't think photo ID requirements are a remedy for the problem of illegal voting (for the reasons laid out in the article, with the primary problem being that many illegal voters aren't aware they're breaking the law and may even think they're doing the wright thing, the reason I'm arguing for consideration of voter ID is that it addresses the obviates the argument of people who argue that the electoral process is deliberately corrupted.
I'm getting tired explaining this so I'm going to stop now. As I said earlier, Democrats would save themselves an awful lot of political capital if they stopped trying to rationalize the abundant flaws of the electoral registration system and instead focused their efforts on ensuring that disadvantaged citizens who lack valid photo ID were provided with it, which would bring disenfranchised people many significant benefits beyond that of exercising their electoral franchise.
Democrats argue that people who are poor, elderly, or disenfranchised are the least likely to have ID, which is true enough - for someone who doesn't have current ID renewing it can be a major inconvenience. But if they spent half the effort they put into complaining about voter ID requirements into actually assisting people to get ID, then the problem would go away.
I generally lean towards the Democrats but on this issue I consider them to be massively hypocritical and self-serving. So are the Republicans, after their own fashion, but at least they have a clear guiding principle (although as the article points out, it's mainly honored in the breach).
But I think there _is_ a principle at work here, even if it's far removed from the actual discussion.
> Democrats argue that people who are poor, elderly, or disenfranchised are the least likely to have ID, which is true enough - for someone who doesn't have current ID renewing it can be a major inconvenience. But if they spent half the effort they put into complaining about voter ID requirements into actually assisting people to get ID, then the problem would go away.
So, in the US we've historically had MAJOR issues with using voting prerequisite laws to disenfranchise people. Personally, I think having illiterate people decide who runs the country doesn't make the system work better -- but a system that uses that criterion to functionally deny people the vote... isn't great. I (personally, and I do NOT speak for all Americans) would not support a literacy test, despite it making object level sense, even if was accompanied by a program to boost literacy rates.
This is why
> But if they spent half the effort they put into complaining about voter ID requirements into actually assisting people to get ID, then the problem would go away.
wouldn't end the discussion, even if it were true (turns out it's hard to actually round up a lot of the working poor, they're busy and in this specific case, the government doesn't know their address because they lack, wait for it, government issued ID).
My basic point is that if the Democrats committed to ensuring that eligible voters had valid identification they would a) be doing many of the disenfranchised people a big favor that would have a positive impact on their lives in other contexts besides voting, and b) depriving the Republican party of an easy slur that they trot out every single electoral cycle, ie that Democrats are the party of electoral corruption.
Photo ID requirements are not the most rational solution to the problem of illegal voting, but politics isn't a rational business.
It would be quite a nice consequence of all this if it meant we found people an incentive to help their fellow citizen get their papers in order. It's a bit disheartening we have papers that need to be in order, but I'm not convinced it's meaningfully avoidable. I'm a bit worried that the incentives might wind up weird, though, in some way we're not anticipating.
It's a bit disheartening we have papers that need to be in order
Agreed, and I don't think you should have to carry ID if you're not voting/driving/engaged in something which can materially impact others. But in a complex modern economy, government-as-ID-provider is about the nearest thing we have to a neutral honest broker, so I also agree it's unavoidable as a practical issue.
For example, getting a photo ID requires some proof of identity or else we end up in a chicken/egg situation. Typically this is an official birth certificate. Those are typically well over ~$60.
Additionally, the type of person poor/old/infirm/... enough to not have a photo ID doesn't have a car (or they'd have a drivers license!), and often has significant difficulty just getting to the ID center.
If they secure transportation, the next challenge is getting time off work to get to the ID center. Ask any person in poverty about getting time off work and you'll see that's no easy feat.
Beyond that, the hours of the center that provides identification can be even more challenging: one notable example came out of the Wisconsin voter ID lawsuit. Wisconsin left the voter ID distribution up to the DMV. There was exactly one service center in the state open on Saturday, none on Sunday. And the ones open during the week had unpredictable hours. One DMV was located in Fort Atkinson, WI - its hours were 8:15 - 4:15, the second and fourth Tuesday of every month. The other options were 20 miles away at least.
So for a hypothetical poor person in Fort Atkinson, WI - or any small town like it - the local Democratic party could need to pony up $70 for a replacement birth certificate, and drive him miles away to a DMV that has sane hours for him to get his photo ID.
I think the problem here is that you're approaching this problem the wrong way: you're coming to it with the impression that getting a photo ID is a low bar. The problem is that, for whatever reason (budget cuts? malice?) photo IDs are _difficult_ to get for the same people that need them.
The argument I'm making (and which people keep missing) is not that Democrats should be paying for people's birth certificates out of party funds, but that Democrats should be saying 'Yes, we support voter ID' and then using that position as political leverage to obtain funding for/make administrative changes to/launch lawsuits over deliberate barriers placed in the path of people who are being hindered from getting the ID they're entitled to have.
Have you noticed how the mainstream Republicans manage to play both ends of the immigration issue? They say they want reform, but that the border has to be secured first. Democrats should be saying 'we want voter ID law, but we need to fix the state's administration system first so people can get their ID.' Instead they say 'oh no voter ID is evil' and give the Republicans (and the Tea Party in particular) a free hand to say that Democrats want to commit electoral fraud, because the Democrats are too previous to pay lip service to people who are worried about voter fraud.
This is an extremely stupid position to take. Refusing to even pay lip service to the idea of voter ID provides bomb-throwers like the Tea Party with the perfect opportunity to delegitimize any Democratic electoral victory, and has made it harder for complaints about things like voting machine integrity to gain traction. There seems to be substantial majority in favor of voter ID laws (70-80%, looking at major polling organizations), yet Democrats continue to cling to what is obviously a losing strategy instead of trying to own the solution. This translates into lost votes from people who don't trust them - I wouldn't be surprised if it consistently loses them 1-3% every election.
For example, take a look at this McClatchy/Marist poll from last year: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/07/25/197687/marist-poll-for...
There is no demographic that does not have strong majority support for photo ID laws. Even Democrats, even non-whites, even the elderly, even the less well off - all have strong majorities in favor of photo ID requirements to vote. The same demographics that think discrimination in voting is a significant problem also express strong support for voter ID requirements. It's not the most rational position for voters to hold, but that's never stopped them before.
It's time for the Democratic party to recognize that it already lost this argument several years ago. Its current position is the political equivalent of punching itself in the face, every damn election.
I think the problem here is that you're approaching this problem the wrong way: you're coming to it with the impression that getting a photo ID is a low bar. The problem is that, for whatever reason (budget cuts? malice?) photo IDs are _difficult_ to get for the same people that need them.
I'm an illegal alien. I don't need you to tell me about how difficult photo ID is to get.
We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted.
A majority of non-citizens in Voter ID states self-report that they were required to show photo ID (which they could not have had) and subsequently voted successfully? I don't think Voter ID is very effective, but that statistic just doesn't make any sense.
The study is based on self-reporting from only about 500 non-citizens, from a larger pool of about 30,000 voters, by the way.
EDIT: My point is a bit unclear, but I am not suggesting that non-citizens cannot have any sort of photo ID, only that the photo ID would not correspond with an existing citizen's voter registration.
A majority of non-citizens in Voter ID states
self-report that they were required to show photo ID
(which they could not have had)
(Genuine question; I realise such matters very wildly from state to state, and my experience is limited to Michigan - which didn't have this requirement, and I don't believe issues any ID other than drivers licence, or a 'state ID' - a voluntary substitute for the drivers licence where the licence isn't held)
A passport, but a drivers license is acceptable for voting.
A passport could prove citizenship (assuming the passport office checks properly before issuing it), but not everyone has a passport.
[citation needed]
Everything I've seen listed a drivers license as acceptable.
EDIT: The terminology with Voter ID can be imprecise and confusing, and I admit I used "voter id" where I meant the registration and voting procedure.
Looking at the requirements for Texas (since they've been screaming about it quite loudly) you are required to provide the following documents for voter registration:
On the application, you must provide:
Your TX driver’s license number.
A personal identification number from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS).
OR
Your Social Security number.
If you DO NOT have one of these numbers, you will be required to show proof of identification at the polls. They then go on to list the appropriate documents -
Texas driver license issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS)
Texas Election Identification Certificate issued by DPS
Texas personal identification card issued by DPS
Texas concealed handgun license issued by DPS
United States military identification card containing the person’s photograph
United States citizenship certificate containing the person’s photograph
United States passport
The list of "appropriate documents" are in-person (Voter ID) requirements, which would have required registering with the SSN or driver's license, as you mentioned.
As far as I can see, all I would need to do would be show up on polling day, show my Idaho drivers license, fill out the registration form, and vote.
The only proof of US citizenship required is that I would tick a box that says that I'm a US citizen.
I can very easily see that being fraudulently exploited, or just plain misunderstood by new immigrants.
I grew up in Australia, where voting is mandatory and has been for nearly a century. The system seems solid, and there is very rarely talk of vote fraud. The history of voting in the US is so full of change and diversity that I'm hardly surprised there are opportunities for exploits like this.
Particularly when you're getting letters in the mail urging you to vote and telling you how. I've been getting a lot of those recently.
The reason conservatives want voter ID is to prevent voting under other peoples' identity. Without ID there's no way you can even know that's happening. Which, we suspect, is why the Democrats are fighting so hard against it.
It's less of an issue in Australia because you have far fewer illegal immigrants and the system is set up such that the people who do immigrate to Australia tend to be more highly educated. In the US prior to 2008 we had something on the order of a million illegal immigrants per year stretching back almost twenty years.
Actually, having mandatory voting would be one way to know that's happening.
Is there any evidence this is a widespread problem? You might try taking Democrats at their word that the reason they oppose voter ID laws is that they disproportionately affect the poor and minorities who may not have a driver's license, for instance, and for whom obtaining an ID might be a hassle and expense.
Of course not. Because the system is set up such that such evidence can't be gathered. Periodically someone will get stupid and talk out of school. Then what we hear is "Well, there's no evidence this is a widespread problem." We have no idea how widespread the problem is, and Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to prevent us from finding out.
>You might try taking Democrats at their word that the reason they oppose voter ID laws is that they disproportionately affect the poor and minorities who may not have a driver's license, for instance, and for whom obtaining an ID might be a hassle and expense.
I don't buy it. If Democrats really thought this was the problem they'd put their efforts into making sure poor and minority voters have ID instead of making sure just anyone can vote.
If Republicans are so concerned about the integrity of our democratic system, their efforts would be much better spent fighting the outrageous gerrymandering[1] that so often benefits them.
Or why don't they put THEIR efforts into making sure poor and minority voters have IDs?
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/15/a...
Like Nixon and his deleted tapes, it's pretty clear to everyone what's going on here. The evidence is Democrats have deliberately blocked any attempt to determine how much fraud is happening.
It's not clear to everyone. You believe it's clear because you've stopped listening to anyone who disagrees.
In any case, I hope we can all agree to expect each party to act mainly in promotion of its own electoral success.
I'd encourage you and anyone else who is technologically inclined and concerned about the integrity of the electoral process to focus on spreading awareness of the dangers of unauditable black box electronic voting machines.
Oh, I'm listening. I just think people on the other side are being deliberately obtuse because it benefits them politically.
The reason Republicans want voter ID is because the mathematical models show that Voter ID swings the vote Republican. The rest is speculation and post-hoc rationalization.
Care to enumerate the Republican proposals to make sure every legal voter in USA actually has a valid ID handy on election day, and arrives at the polls to cast a vote? Or is this a case of "market forces will incentivize the desired outcome, somehow"?
Untrue. If you have voter rolls and a system that records the identities used in voting so that only one person can vote under a given identity, and go further and make those lists public so that everyone can know which identities voted in any given election, its quite possible to identify cases of people voting under other people's identities without voter ID requirements. In fact, unless you have IDs that can never be forged or stolen by people who can pass for the identified person, you still need all those features to catch people trying to vote under someone else's identity even with voter ID.
I mention that because the status quo system in all US jurisdictions I am familiar with already has these features.
The particular problem that "voter ID" is supposed to address is (1) a problem that the status quo is set up to detect, (2) a problem for which there is no evidence that it exists in any significant way in the status quo, and (3) a problem for which voter ID is not much of a solution even if it did exist.
How? How do you know when someone has voted under someone else's name?
I'm not sure they are tracking that documentation anywhere, but it would at least provide the opportunity to reject your ballot. For the most part, it would be an easy bit of information to quietly encode in the DL number (but again, don't know if such things are done).
Non-citizen (and never will be) but I sure as hell have a drivers license, and like one held by any citizen it has a bad picture of me on it.
I'm not sure how it works if you vote by mail or do early voting.
Where I live we dump all state drivers license and state ID card records into a pool and thats about 99% of the population right there. Volunteer octogenarians at the public elementary school your kids would attend, ask you your address and then name and then tag you in the records as having voted, then hand out "scantron" ballots and pencils which are optically scanned and reported to central control hourly or so and the ballots are later spot checked. Every task takes at least two octogenarians, we have a one party system in the USA with two competing P.R. firms and each firm provides one overseer for each job.
Never in my life have I had to provide ID to vote. There is a policy no one really knows to handle people who recently move or refuse to obtain a free ID card or a relatively cheap drivers license.
Note that we give out "free" state ID cards upon demand, but obtaining the prerequisite certified birth certificate is no picnic and costs something like $95, if you don't already have one. Identity theft is quite trivial but the punishment is somewhat severe once you're caught.
Nor do I remember how I registered to vote here, but I think it probably was at the Department of Motor Vehicles when I got my DC driver's license. In Maryland, I think that I mailed in a form one time; in Colorado, long ago, I drove to the county courthouse and registered with the county clerk.
There is no single effective record of citizenship in the United States, nor is there any kind of national ID program. Social Security numbers are frequently used as proof of identity but it is possible not to have one. They are not proof of citizenship.
To give you an idea of what this looks like, to get an official photo ID from the State of Oregon you need to provide proof of state residency (generally this takes the form of a utility bill, bank correspondence, etc. with your name and an in-state address on it), identity (a social security card, another state ID, a passport), and legal presence in the US -- which either means legal residency or citizenship.
In the case of naturalized citizens, this is simple: you're issued paperwork when you gain citizenship. Proof of natural citizenship is more complicated[1], because there's a lot of ways to be born a US citizen, some of which don't automatically result in documents being filed.
People who drive will get a state driver's license, which generally has the same requirements in addition to a driving test and the like. State ID cards are frequently just driver's licenses with an indication added that they aren't actually a license to drive!
That all leads to the actual answer to your question: every state handles voting differently. Some require you to register in advance, others don't; some require photo ID, others don't. My state and a few others conduct voting by mail. Eligibility standards are also allowed to vary by state, with a few constitutional limitations introduced by amendment. That's a whole topic in itself, but the brief summary is that there is no constitutionally defined positive right to vote in the US, only a set of criteria that states are not allowed to use to exclude voters (age if older than 18, sex, race).
Any major reform of this system would require a constitutional amendment, which is a very high bar to jump in the US.
[1]: http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/DMV/pages/driverid/idproof.aspx#l...
We have pretty much a single voter's list: We have a federal organization responsible for maintaining the federal list, and it shares information with its provincial counterparts, and vice versa, and they each cross-check their information for integrity purposes.
When you file your income tax, which is done exclusively federally, except for in Quebec, you can check a box to share your name and address info with Elections Canada for purposes of maintaining the federal list. The provincial agencies use all available provincial and municipal sources of information to cross-check their lists with data obtained from the federal agency. Door-to-door enrollment is pretty much never done, except when there are major changes in an area that have yet to be reflected in the various sources of information.
That same independent federal agency sets federal riding boundaries based on population; it was created about 50 years ago to prevent jerrymandering and works pretty darned well: The government does not get any say in setting riding boundaries (we have a pretty transparent auditing system, which helps).
In fact, in Southern Ontario, the provincial ridings are aligned with the federal boundaries, so the independent federal agency is scrutinized by the government of the most populous province, as well as by the federal auditing arm.
Several weeks before an election, each registered voter gets a card in the mail with their polling place and, in the case of municipal elections, at least in Ontario, their ballot colour (we have four independent school systems, don't ask, sigh, and the ballot ensures you get the correct school board candidates).
You arrive at a poll with your card (optional, really, if you know what you are doing, they have all the same info) and a piece of photo ID and you are checked against the published list. If you aren't on it, you can register at the time, but I don't know the details, never had to do it.
This morning as my name was being crossed off the list by the volunteer at my table, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the names of my wife (out of the city today, voted early) and my daughter (in school downtown all day, voted early) were crossed off in the actual printout provided to the polling place, not crossed off by hand.
Oh, and in Ontario, at least, we pretty much use the same ballot and tabulation system for all elections. No hanging chad, no arms to pull, no electronic screens. A piece of paper, a marker, and a "privacy screen": you mark your ballot, slide it into the screen, take it to the returning officer who inserts the open end from which the ballot protrudes into a scanner, which pulls in the ballot, scans it, tabulates it, and slides the ballot into a locked box, available for hand recounting afterwards.
Nice and simple and effective and completely non-controversial. The Bush-Gore election honest-to-god boggled our minds.
This has nothing whatsoever with economic circumstance or political party. The vast majority of US citizens can more than afford whatever might be required to confirm their citizenship.
Everyone is walking around with cellphones, iPhones, watching satellite and cable TV, using DSL at home, etc. Those who truly don't have the means ought to get help from the rest of us.
If you have a cellphone, cable TV and DSL at home you can damn well spend $150 or so every ten years to obtain voting documentation. We can even make that expense tax deductible.
You want to vote? Prove that you are entitled to doing so. Present a valid US passport. Simple as that.
Don't have the money to pay for a US passport? There's an app for that:
http://www.uscis.gov/feewaiver
So, there, those without the means or those experiencing hardship can get a US passport for free. I'm confused. What's the problem?
Second, you can't just wave your hands and say "those who truly don't have the means ought to get help from the rest of us" as if saying it makes it so. If you suggest a policy change that will disenfranchise the poor unless some other public assistance program is established, you are de facto suggesting disenfranchisement.
Creating an explicit financial disincentive to vote is not quite as bad as making it impossible to vote at all, but it's close.
Know any legally blind people? How easy is it for them to find a birth certificate to get a passport?
Also many states have attempted to change voting requirements close to elections. That's one of the many reasons the Justice Department has gotten involved.
You can also look at the rules for tribal IDs for native americans.
Plus even if every requirement is free, that doesn't necessarily mean that the person is savvy enough and committed to know how to navigate the system. Free doesn't mean easy, it doesn't mean that it doesn't take time. Remember, it's a lot easier to take time off to get passport photos taken, or go down to the DMV, or request a fee waiver if you aren't working two jobs and taking care of kids on your own.
Go ask five friends if they know about the fee waiver, and then ask yourself, is a poor person more or less likely to have the education and cultural literacy that your friends have?
Or you can just trust people when they tell you there is a problem.
I'm legitimately curious about this because it strikes me as an odd pairing. For a legally blind person, is "finding a birth certificate" or "getting a passport" significantly more difficult than finding/getting anything else in life?
But regardless, since you bring it up, the majority opinion in Citizens United rests on the idea that corporations are protected by the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendments.
It is simplistic and naive to treat corporations as just "an association of people", or even that their political interests align with their shareholders'. The vast majority of shareholders are simply looking at their return on the dollar, with little understanding of or the time and resources to look into a corporations political financing and lobbying activities, much less have access to the behind the scenes of what is really going on. A corporation takes on a will and "conscience" of its own, not necessarily in sync with its shareholders or even employees.
The other basis of the ruling, that monetary contributions are protected as "free speech", is a problem because money is not anywhere near evenly distributed, and so overwhelmingly undermines the idea of "one-person, one vote". This problem would still exist without corporations having "money as free speech" rights, but it is even worse if corporations have it.
I agree with Justice Stevens that "A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold."
This is false. Go read the ruling yourself. It says nothing about corporate personhood. Not a single word. The entire ruling rests purely on the fact that the government is expressly prohibited from infringing on speech. The subject of speech is completely irrelevant. If rocks and trees suddenly started speaking, the government could not infringe on that speech, not because the right of speech for trees and rocks is protected by the first amendment, but because the first amendment denies the government the power to infringe upon speech, period.
It is absolutely astonishing how much fuss has been generated over such a widespread ignorance of basic legal fact.