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Comment by danpat | Hacker News Reader

I've just moved to the US, and I was curious as to what the process was. I'm not eligible to vote. I'm in Idaho where photo ID is required at the polling place.

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.

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I've had to do proof of citizenship to obtain my last two drivers licenses (in two different states, in 2013 and 2014; a legal immigrant would have to provide documentation of their status to obtain those licenses). That's in addition to proof of residence.

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).

The theory is if you use your ID even though you're allowed to cast a vote your vote could be invalidated later. Technically you could be jailed as well.

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.

> Without ID there's no way you can even know that's happening.

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.

> 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.

How? How do you know when someone has voted under someone else's name?

> 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.

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"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression

I will say this. If I were black or poor I'd be terribly insulted by this nonsense. Don't you think it's a little bit racist to believe blacks are too stupid to do what they need to do to vote? We're not talking about solving simultaneous differential equations here.

In my experience, dealing with the DMV has been way harder than solving simultaneous differential equations. And I'm pretty privileged.

> 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.

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.

>Is there any evidence this is a widespread problem?

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.

Ah yes, as with any good conspiracy theory the lack of evidence is itself evidence.

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...

>Ah yes, as with any good conspiracy theory the lack of evidence is itself evidence.

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 pretty clear to everyone what's going on here

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.

>It's not clear to everyone. You believe it's clear because you've stopped listening to anyone who disagrees.

Oh, I'm listening. I just think people on the other side are being deliberately obtuse because it benefits them politically.

> I can very easily see that being fraudulently exploited, or just plain misunderstood by new immigrants.

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.

Same thing. Voting, jury-duty, etc. The road to the centralization of government data is long (especially since it goes against the interests of fraudsters).

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