Where I’m from, we are required to bring any form of legal identification (gov. id, driver’s license, passport, etc.), and scans us through the government database to make sure we are eligable to vote.
Does the US not have smiliar infrastructures, or are IDs not readily available for every adult citizen? Or does it have to do with profiling historically being used to bar individuals from voting (learned this littlr factoid in US history class)?
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One side sees Voter ID laws being necessary to preserve the integrity of the voting process.
The other side sees Voter ID laws as barriers of entry which prohibits those who are eligible to vote from voting.
Many voter ID laws are specifically targeted to only accept IDs that certain political affiliations are less likely to have. I know in North Carolina, our state Republican party (which is one of the most blatantly corrupt ones in the country, and courts have found their activities to be explicitly racist) explicitly looked at a list of all government-issued IDs and looked at the ones that young people and black people were most likely to have and said “these ones don’t count, you need something else.” They also have closed DMVs and government offices in areas with large minority populations, to make it harder to get valid IDs.
There is no “national ID card” in the US so you can’t just say “use that.” If there was a freely issued national government ID card that was sent to everyone and didn’t require going somewhere potentially far away (with all the needing to take time off work or whatever that entails), it wouldn’t be a problem, but that does not exist and none of the actors trying to pass voter ID laws are recommending to do that, which tells you something.
Historically and more recently getting a driver’s license or ID card was prohibitively “expensive” not just in cost but in bureaucratic hoops to jump through that disproportionately affected minority communities. That has changed as information has moved online and various state administrations and departments have modernized and changed policy. It’s still the case in some areas though that getting an ID for minority community members can be harder than it is for others.
Politically one party the Democratic Party has had in it’s voting pool minority communities, while the Republican Party counted more on richer white voters, so for political expediency the latter party sought to make a voting requirement of having a state issued ID and couched it as a way to prevent fraud when it was actually a way to bar minorities from voting altogether.
IDs are difficult to get for low income individuals as you have to pay for them. you also have to be able to get to a government office during open hours which is nearly impossible for a lot of the working class as they’d have to use one of their off days.
People born in certain counties were born at home and only got home birth certificates. Those born in a hospital got state birth certificates.
50 years later, only state certificates are valid to get the state I’d card.
Who is left out? Those not allowed to give birth in the hospital. That would be black people.
So the id laws exclude black people Older than me.
The issue is that since IDs aren’t just given out automatically, some people don’t have them and it would be an extra burden for them to go through to vote. The process for obtaining one isn’t exactly quick and easy either.
IMO everybody should just be given an ID when they register to vote and some form of ID should be required to vote. While voter fraud isn’t anywhere near as big of an issue as it’s made out to be by some, symbolically requiring a photo ID would help reduce fears of fraud among the public and increase trust in the electoral process. So long as everyone is given an ID before it wont interfere with people’s civil liberties either.
Voter Id has been used for voter suppression and could be used as such again
My state closed all of the local ID offices and created mega-centers. These are deliberately not near public transportation. You must book an appointment online weeks or months in advance. This makes it very difficult for low income or shift workers to get a proper ID. It’s de facto voter suppression.
If you are going to require a specific ID, it needs to be easy to obtain. My state’s process is anything but easy. After you finally have your appointment and they process your paperwork, you will receive your ID in the mail 3 weeks later.
In my old state, they made the licenses on the spot and it was in your hand when you left. They even had renewal kiosks in the mall for convenience.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/403052/eight-americans-favor-early-voting-photo-laws.aspx
It’s not particularly controversial; 79% of Americans support voter ID requirements. It’s just that the 21% is fairly vocal and has considerable influence within the Democratic party.
Despite what some will tell you, our federal elections are very secure. There is quite simply never been fraud that could come even close to swinging an election. Even the last loser’s own Attorney General & much of his staff insisted upon this. But since that man & his political party have been floating the lie for 4 years now that he only lost due to “fraud like you’ve never seen before”, they need to take this act all the way. At worst it’s a means of voter suppression, at best it’s political theater to keep the lie fresh in some voters’ minds.
Just one of many reasons why a lot of Americans are dreading this election.
Not everyone has easy access to ID’s oddly enough though it has been presented as a race issue. It’s actually poor white people who generally have a hard time getting ID’s. If you live in very rural America the DMV to get ID’s is a truck that shows up once a month and everyone is trying to get off work that day to deal with the multiple issues like registering a car and not everyone can get off work at the same time. It can actually take months to deal with whatever. Elderly people can also be effected if they have a hard time getting around.
Because the US has a nasty history of trying to prevent people from voting. Even when they were finally given the right to vote, black folks were subjected to all sorts of hurdles to dissuade them from wanting to vote. Voter ID laws look like an onerous fix to a problem that doesn’t really exist.
It’s not a requirement to have an ID in the US. How are you going to require something not required to partake in a natural right?
(Cue all the people responding with all the things a person needs an ID for. I’m talking about there is no legal statute, voted by a legislative body, that says every person must carry an ID).
Each state gets to create it’s own voting procedure and laws. Some states like to play games and make it harder for certain sectors to vote, one of those ways is through restricting what IDs are valid. The example I always use is that North Dakota changed the rules before an election to target native Americans and disqualifying tribal ID cards, which had been fine previously.
>The dispute began in 2013 when the North Dakota state legislature passed a law requiring that all voters have a valid identification card with a home address. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University found that 23% of voting-eligible Native Americans in North Dakota do not have such an ID card, compared with 12% of non-Native Americans. In fact, Campbell said, about half of all Native Americans lack the documents to obtain such an ID card.
>Even if they had the documents, Campbell said, many Native Americans live in remote, isolated areas that are far from state motor vehicle office where they could get ID cards.
If they are remote enough that obtaining an ID is a major time investment, I wonder how close their polling stations are?
Basically – I don’t trust states to not fuck with the laws to skew it in their favor. I’d prefer to have IDs, but I also get that stupid games are played with them because each state gets to make it’s own rules.
So a couple things. There’s no voter infrastructure in the US. Everything is volunteer run. This is supposed to decrease political interference in the process of counting votes, but this means there’s no way to “check” IDs such as scanning them in many cases.
Second thing is there’s no such thing as a central government database. State and federal databases are completely separate. Also there are many local governments which don’t possess any kind of database at all. So there’s nothing scan to.
Third thing is yes, there has been heavy voter discrimination in the US. Laws which make it harder to vote in the US continue to proliferate despite efforts to stop them.
Lastly having to show ID eliminates the concept of an anonymous vote. This danger is never more ever present in the age of AI, since it could be used to match your ID to you ballot with simple math.
Getting an ID means when ID requirements change — so does how possible it is to vote.
For instance, the real ID.
If I don’t have a credit card (many people don’t) or a car (many people don’t and don’t drive), to get a real ID it would probably cost me a few days off and a few hundred dollars. I have to go get a social security card, but before I do I have to get my birth cert, my marriage cert (my name changed) and then get a new social security card. My town doesn’t have a bus or even taxi and uber.
Birth cert —
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|Online or by phone|$54|for first copy|
It’s a huge hassle, especially for the poor and vulnerable.
Old people often don’t have the internet. Poor people don’t have the time.
Many, many people (especially in cities) don’t have drivers licenses. Many have let old IDs lapse due to time and cost.
The wait time at DMV(to get an ID) on a Sat can be 5 hours. When you look at “average wait time” it’s averages with times like a Tues morning. I’ve waited in line, just to get the rule book to learn to drive, 3 hours and then gave up.
There are definitely hurdles to getting an ID and NO question lots of people won’t vote if you need one.
Now imagine a party WANTS to stop voting. So they cut funding to DMVs, make IDs more expensive, make it so you have to renew every year… .
Getting an ID means when ID requirements change — so does how possible it is to vote.
For instance, the real ID.
If I don’t have a credit card (many people don’t) or a car (many people don’t and don’t drive), to get a real ID it would probably cost me a few days off and a few hundred dollars. I have to go get a social security card, but before I do I have to get my birth cert, my marriage cert (my name changed) and then get a new social security card. My town doesn’t have a bus or even taxi and uber.
Birth cert —
||
||
|Online or by phone|$54|for first copy|
It’s a huge hassle, especially for the poor and vulnerable.
Old people often don’t have the internet. Poor people don’t have the time.
Many, many people (especially in cities) don’t have drivers licenses. Many have let old IDs lapse due to time and cost.
The wait time at DMV(to get an ID) on a Sat can be 5 hours. When you look at “average wait time” it’s averages with times like a Tues morning. I’ve waited in line, just to get the rule book to learn to drive, 3 hours and then gave up.
There are definitely hurdles to getting an ID and NO question lots of people won’t vote if you need one.
Now imagine a party WANTS to stop voting. So they cut funding to DMVs, make IDs more expensive, make it so you have to renew every year… .
It’s partisanship and an easy way to influence who votes. If folks cared about voter id for the sake of electoral integrity there’d be national ids that were easy to get or automatic.
In conservative areas they’ll allow gun licenses but not college ids, in liberal areas they’ll do the opposite. There’s like no argument that isn’t political. Someone in the thread mentioned this is like a 70/30 issue. And an estimated 80-90% of adult Americans drive… but 80-90% is not 100% and driving is not a prerequisite to vote.
The issue seems simple or cut and dry, it isn’t.
Democrats.
Because they’re used to selectively disenfranchised minorities.
Not “could be used hypothetically”. ARE used.
So when NC Republican Party started writing a voter Id law, they requested a racial breakdown of who has what kinds of ID and they got a listing of types of photo ID by race and started going down the list allowing or banning various types of photo ID based on what racial groups have them the most.
Drivers license? Allowed. College ID? Not allowed. State employee ID? Not allowed. Military ID? Allowed. Expired drivers license? Not allowed. Expired military ID? Allowed. Etc. etc. which is why the laws have spent a decade in court battles.
In the USA, there is no such thing as a national ID and state-issued IDs are pay-to-play. In attention to this, many southern/mid-western states make it difficult for poor, rural people to even have access to the ID infrastructure.
In Alabama or Mississippi for instance you may be required to drive several towns away to even apply for an ID. This places an undue burden on the poor and elderly. Ironically, the Republicans who demand “voter ID” oppose anyway to make ID possession fair and equitable.
The problem is the implementation. It would be one thing if these Voter ID laws were done out general concern for election safety, made a centerpiece of individual politician’s campaigns, the execution was well researched to ensure it would be as smoothly and easily implemented as possible, and was done with a large notice period so people in the area could get their documents in order so they can vote.
But that is rarely how it works in practice. Instead, in the lead-up to elections there tends to be fearmongering about the wrong type of people voting (for the wrong party). Then, they attempt to jam half-baked and poorly focused laws through the legislature six months before the the election itself, to be implemented for that upcoming election. This leads to massive amounts of confusion regarding what documents are needed to vote, whether or not people have the right identification, and whether the infrastructure of the state can handle all of the people who suddenly need new identification putting in requests effectively simultaneously.
There are also problems that the forms identification allow a person to get these voter IDs tend to be framed such that certain populations have a harder time getting the voter IDs. There’s a reason why it’s easy to get a voter ID if you have a gun license, but it’s not so easy if you have a student ID/college enrollment.
The most common argument I’ve heard is that Minorites can’t figure out how to acquire or afford an ID even if it was given out for free.
Because you get people making laws specific to disenfranchise some subset of voters. For example: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/court-north-carolina-voter-id-law-targeted-black-voters/
> The court said that in crafting the law, the Republican-controlled general assembly requested and received data on voters’ use of various voting practices by race. It found that African American voters in North Carolina are more likely to vote early, use same-day voter registration and straight-ticket voting. They were also disproportionately less likely to have an ID, more likely to cast a provisional ballot and take advantage of pre-registration.
> Then, the court, said, lawmakers restricted all of these voting options, and further narrowed the list of acceptable voter IDs. “… [W]ith race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans. As amended, the bill retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess.”
> The state offered little justification for the law, the court said. Those who defended the law said they were doing so to prevent voter fraud. “Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist,” the court said.
There’s a racist history with it and also we already have voter registration.