[lsiebert]

Yeah individual voter fraud, per all the vote security experts, basically isn't a thing, IE the rare instances never change election outcomes. Voting ID laws are at best security theater for non existent threats.

At worst it's a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise minority voters, for example the NC voting law, where the legislature requested info on racial differences in how people vote before creating their bill.

https://news.yahoo.com/north-carolina-court-rejects-republic...

Of course this suggests that efforts to GOTV helped mitigate the voter ID requirements, which is part of why GOTV efforts and other support for people voting is being targeted now in many states.

[areyousure]

> the rare instances never change election outcomes

https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article322208/Missouri...

[Beldin]

It also puts an extra barrier for re-enfranchising already disenfranchised voters.

A way around such shenanigans could be some legislation where the government is required to give everyone an id card for free - and to put the onus on govt for achieving that.

From my perspective, it's genuinely weird that requiring voter id would be disenfranchising... but I know that is how things are in the States. So either stop voter ID laws, or defang them by making IDs trivially available.

[KennyBlanken]

But then we need to be careful to make sure the requirements for getting an ID aren't too onerous.

Trying to get a "RealID" for a family member was a nightmare because apparently her ORIGINAL birth certificate from 70 years ago was not acceptable to the asshole behind the desk at the DMV. So we had to get a certified copy from the county this person was born in that bore some seal or stamp the clerk wanted.

Guess who had lost decades worth of birth records, thus requiring us to pay for a special search process that took weeks?

An expensive, time-consuming nightmare start to finish.

There are people out there who have no idea where they were born because their parents didn't tell them, people whose parents held their birth certificates hostage for whatever reason, etc. Lots of people who rent and share an apartment might not have a single utility bill in their name. "Just give us a bank bill" someone says. Welllll in getting all frothy about terrorism we now demand banks verify the identity of their customers using...a government issued ID. The whole thing gets cyclical very quickly.

[lsiebert]

As bad as that is, some folks never got a birth certificate

https://sclegal.org/living-without-a-birth-certificate/

[pirate787]

States issue non-driver IDs they are already very low cost and easy to obtain.

[lsiebert]

Don't worry, they thought of that.

https://archive.thinkprogress.org/after-alabama-enforces-vot...

[Ancapistani]

> Yeah individual voter fraud, per all the vote security experts, basically isn't a thing

While I would allow the possibility of it being a real issue, that’s not really what I meant. I’m most surprised that TFA claims that strict voter ID requirements have no impact on perceived fraud.