[olliej]

The concern for the GOP isn’t that democrats favor voting by mail, it’s that the GOP has worked hard to make it as hard as possible to vote in person in targeted (eg non Republican) communities.

Widespread vote from mail defeats that as it means that their selective polling closures, and arbitrary barriers to voting in person, go away

[xzlzx]

This is a great point. That makes a lot of sense.

[bobsoap]

Out of curiosity, what are those barriers?

[jeffbee]

The simplest one is just selectively closing polling places, or the related practice of requiring local jurisdictions to fund their own elections, which selectively impacts poorer cities or counties. Next comes voter identification laws which selectively target people who are less likely to have government identification cards (black voters are four times more likely to lack both a drivers license and a US passport compared to white voters). Finally you simply throw ballots from the disfavored precincts directly in the trash. County officials can do this in several ways, by not delivering working machines or official ballots to certain precincts, by forcing precincts to vote on provisional ballots that officials have the authority to ignore, and by subjectively discarding mailed ballots because the signature "doesn't match" according to a non-reproducible process.

[ethanbond]

Photo ID laws is a big one.

Closing polling stations in minority communities.

[_-david-_]

Can you name a first world county that doesn't have voter id laws?

[ethanbond]

How about this: if Republicans were pushing voter ID laws plus a comprehensive plan to get IDs to every American who wishes to vote, I suspect no one would have any problem with such a proposal.

As it stands now, there are large groups of Americans for whom getting a photo ID is a non-trivial task. People without birth records, people who can’t take time off work to go to the DMV, people who don’t know that they go to the DMV to get an ID, people who live hours from the nearest DMV, so on and so forth.

Let’s make sure they all get a chance to vote. Any proposal that aims to do that, I believe, would not have the support of the Republican Party, because the Republican Party is uninterested in increasing voter turnout.

[andrekandre]

> Finally you simply throw ballots from the disfavored precincts directly in the trash.

cant this be done, arguably even easier with mail-in voting?

[sangnoir]

Provisional ballots avail a lot more leeway for election officials to legally discard ballots compared to mail-in ballots. Its not legally easier to do so with mail-in ballots

[_-david-_]

Just to be clear I am in favor of providing free IDs and allowing the use of said ID, a driver's license, passport, etc for voting.

You say that no one would have an issue with such a proposal but then list the argument I have heard from multiple people of why this won't work.

How is someone supposed to get an id without going to the DMV or some other government office? The government doesn't have a picture of everyone so people would be required to go into an office to get one. Some people are unable to go in due to the reasons you list.

[chrisseaton]

In the US why is identity linked to driving - why does the DMV do it? What do people who can’t drive due for proof of identity?

[dane-pgp]

Australia and (most of) the UK:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_Identification_laws#Exam...