[supperburg]

The weak point of this article is that they never explain in depth what the laws would do. The liberals do this all the time saying that conservative bills are “anti voter rights” when in reality they just require ID to vote which is standard in many places that are more civilized than the US.

[BoiledCabbage]

Do you ever wonder why the conservative party in the US is pushing so strongly for Voter IDs and arguing them being mandatory when voter fraud is virtually non- existent?

Always take time to understand why people push strongly for a solution to a problem that isn't occurring. And usually when you do, you'll find there are second order effects that cause that group to benefit.

Looking into that gets to the root of the issue and the reason why people are correctly labeling it as anti-voter rights.

[_-david-_]

Do you believe European countries who keep voter id laws are trying to suppress voters or is it just the US that you have an issue with?

[jonp888]

The situation in Europe is entirely different.

In almost all European Countries there is a mandatory ID card which is issued to all citizens. So to require this ID card when voting has no effect.

[_-david-_]

As far as I know every state that has a voter id requirement provides a free id so it doesn't seem that different.

[seanmcdirmid]

Did you ever wonder why conservatives are so against the compulsory national ID systems that make those requirements feasible? If everyone had easy access to an ID, they wouldn't be able to make some people second class citizens so easily.

[_-david-_]

Every state that has a voter ID requirement offers free ids. This includes Republican states.

[seanmcdirmid]

They offer free IDs at some office far away with restricted hours ( what Texas did when they started requiring IDs, and just coincidentally closing up a bunch of D!V offices and restricting hours). They have experience from when they did the same things during Jim Crow, they know what they are doing.

[BoiledCabbage]

Again your missing or avoiding the point. Voter ID in Europe, is entirely different from what is being pushed in the US. The key question is Why is a group pushing for a solution to a problem that isn't happening?

There is almost zero voter fraud in this country. And it has been that way for decades. Do you acknowledge this? You can look back at countless research for the elections for 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, 2004 ... As well as mid-terms.

Before discussing what we should do, we must estabilish the facts in common. This has been estabilished time and time and time again in the US over all 50 states, presidential, senatorial elections. There is absolutely miniscule voter fraud - and the very few instances over the past decades.

There have been on the order of only 50 fraudulent votes over the past two decades of elections. Yet hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters have been blocked from voting due to the new laws.

Then we get to the second question of why is ID being pushed so hard if there is no actual fraud it is preventing?

The reason is that it's being intentionally used make it easier and harder for different groups to vote. For example states have allowed gun licenses for voter id, but not college student ID. These two groups traditionally vote for different parties. Or the number of license stations and their are limited in areas that certain groups live to only being open once per month.

This is the reason for the push for the Voter ID. It provides a party with an advantage by trimming voter roles by raising the barries to get IDs specifically with groups that vote for one party over the other.

There have been less than 50 invalid votes over tens of elections over two decades, while VoterID laws have prevented hundreds of thousands of legitament people from voting. Why are we preventing hundreds of thousands of people with the right to vote from voting, to stop 50 people from voting illegally. It's not to improving election quality, becaues improving election quality would be ensuring those hundreds of thousands with the right to vote can. So blocking that many, to avoid a problem measured in the tens in not about election integrity. It's about favoring one political group over another. And the data strongly backs that up. [And if you have any data showing otherwise, please do share.]

Again, when you see a solution to a problem that isn't happening, dig in to see who benfits from that change. This rule applies to life in general.

https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-c...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/exhaustive-fact-check-find...

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/45/e2103619118

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/12/07/wiscons...

[josephcsible]

> Voter ID in Europe, is entirely different from what is being pushed in the US.

How is it different?

> There is almost zero voter fraud in this country.

How can you be sure of this, since successful voter fraud doesn't get detected?

> For example states have allowed gun licenses for voter id, but not college student ID. These two groups traditionally vote for different parties.

Isn't a more reasonable explanation for this that gun licenses are issued by the government, and college student IDs are not?

[mrtesthah]

You missed the point of his comment, which is that political context matters. Most european countries aren’t dealing with an authoritarian movement which is trying to subvert democracy itself[1].

1. https://www.businessinsider.com/timothy-snyder-fears-democra...

[mrtesthah]

Ah, I see, downvoted because unfortunately many european countries are dealing with authoritarian movements of their own, sadly.

[Grakel]

Need a vaccine card to leave the house, but no ID to elect the government, it would be hilarious if it weren't literally destroying the country.

[dane-pgp]

Where do you need a vaccine card to leave the house? There may be private business premises that you can't enter without a vaccine card, but entering those premises isn't a constitutional right, whereas voting is, so restricting one but not the other makes sense.

In any case, the resistance isn't against voter ID itself, it's against the policies that are inevitably put in place to make those IDs harder to obtain for supporters of one party in comparison to another. If there weren't so many recent examples of states selectively closing down polling places[0][1] then maybe you could claim with a straight face that the ID requirements won't be abused, but there is no excuse for such naivety now.

[0] https://civilrights.org/democracy-diverted/

[1] https://texasyds.org/texas-republicans-plan-to-reduce-pollin...

[josephcsible]

> Where do you need a vaccine card to leave the house?

In New York, isn't it mandatory to show your vaccine card to go into any building that isn't your house?

> it's against the policies that are inevitably put in place to make those IDs harder to obtain for supporters of one party in comparison to another.

Which policies are these?

[dane-pgp]

> In New York, isn't it mandatory to show your vaccine card to go into any building that isn't your house?

That doesn't prevent you leaving your house, and are people really checking the vaccine passes of friends who visit their home? I suspect the rules are much less strict than the original comment suggested.

> Which policies are these?

By making the issuance (and renewal) of IDs require attending a government building, and limiting the locations of those buildings and the times they are open, it can be made disproportionately difficult for poor and working people to obtain those IDs, just like the removal of polling places. A state can also invent entirely new types of excuses, like "paper shortages".[0]

[0] https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/590213-texas-blames...

[josephcsible]

> That doesn't prevent you leaving your house

I think the difference between being allowed to leave your house and being allowed to go into buildings that aren't your house is minor enough that the analogy still works.

> are people really checking the vaccine passes of friends who visit their home?

If bad laws are okay just because some people will ignore them, then even if voter ID is a bad law, then let's just pass it anyway and let the pollworkers ignore it.

> A state can also invent entirely new types of excuses, like "paper shortages".

If you needed that paper form to register to vote, then I'd agree that's a problem. But you don't: https://vrapp.sos.state.tx.us/index.asp

[random314]

There are a gazillion lawsuits all trying very hard to find any instance of voter fraud. They found one instance of voter fraud by a Republican.

It sounds like to you "voter fraud" is a vote by any "undesirable" citizen. Wouldn't it be cool if black people couldn't vote, amirite guys?

[joshuamorton]

> “anti voter rights” when in reality they just require ID to vote which is standard in many places that are more civilized than the US.

This has to be viewed in context. In these other "more civilized" countries that require voter ID, how easy is it to get a national ID? In the US, getting valid ID is complicated, requires going somewhere in person (and often for people in rural areas a significant distance) and cost. In Switzerland on the other hand, one can order a valid national ID online and receive it in the mail for free.

[josephcsible]

How can you order a valid national ID online and receive it in the mail, while making sure that someone who's not you can't do the same pretending to be you?

[jonp888]

You can't, the information above is either deliberately or unintentionally misleading.

Yes, you can order an ID card online. But part of this "order" process is to make an appointment to visit a government office where your photo, signature and fingerprints will be taken.

[joshuamorton]

Right, so you don't just want national ID laws like other countries, you want significantly more restrictive ones.

Perhaps, instead of asking

> How can you order a valid national ID online and receive it in the mail, while making sure that someone who's not you can't do the same pretending to be you?

Ask "If many US states, and many, to quote GP 'more civilized' countries don't use such restrictive voter ID laws, but still have essentially no voter fraud, what is the point of such restrictions?"

[josephcsible]

Let me try my question again: if Switzerland really makes it as easy to get an ID card as you claim they do, then why don't they have a rampant identity theft problem, even for things unrelated to voting?

[joshuamorton]

I'll reply with a question: why would they? What does having an ID card (that notably isn't a passport so doesn't allow you to travel) get you? People don't commit crimes for fun, they usually have some goal in mind. How does someone profit from having a national ID with someone else's name on it?

Like, jumping back to the US for a moment, if I handed you my driver's license and we changed the photo and description on it so that it matched my own, what could you do with that? You don't have, and can't get my SSID with that, so you can't cause financial harm to me. You could buy alcohol I guess if you were underage, but there's just not a whole lot you can do.

The same applies to the crime of voter impersonation in general. If, like, we decriminalized it entirely, I don't really expect the rate would be that high, because there's just...really no value to voting two or three times. It's not going to change anything unless lots of people do it, in which case you'd need to assume that all the people doing it are voting in the same way which is unlikely. Right like you can barely convince people that their one vote matters. Do you really think going through more than 2x the effort to vote again is going to appeal to many people?

[jonp888]

This is not true. The "ordering" includes making an appointment to visit a government office where your photo, signature and fingerprints will be taken.

[kaashif]

> The liberals do this all the time saying that conservative bills are “anti voter rights” when in reality they just require ID to vote which is standard in many places that are more civilized than the US.

This issue in particular is very interesting. I saw an article [1] which seems to indicate voter ID laws have little effect in either direction on fraud or turnout. Does that mean Democrats should "give it away" to the Republicans in exchange for something else? Or would that be dishonest?

Well, I guess this whole contest is about trading political blows, not anything to do with the real world. Even if a policy has no or positive effect, giving a win to your opponents is bad.

1: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/21/18230009/v...

[joshuamorton]

It's worth reading the abstract of the paper you indirectly cite:

> The lack of negative impact on voter turnout cannot be attributed to voters’ reaction against the laws, measured by campaign contributions and self-reported political engagement. However, the likelihood that non-white voters were contacted by a campaign increases by 4.7 percentage points, suggesting that parties’ mobilization might have offset modest effects of the laws on the participation of ethnic minorities.

Or in other words, the authors conclude that voting laws don't ultimately affect turnout, but that's confounded by a nearly 5% increase in GOTV efforts. While it's probably wrong to conclude that a 5% decrease in GOTV would reduce turnout by 5%, there's almost certainly some offsetting impact there.

[autoexec]

> The liberals do this all the time saying that conservative bills are “anti voter rights” when in reality they just require ID to vote

The problem with voter ID laws is not that they require an ID to vote. It's that they do nothing at all to address the problem of getting IDs into the hands of voters. If those same laws made IDs free, easily accessible, and gave every eligible voter enough time to get their hands on one, there wouldn't by any problem with voter ID laws. Research shows that voter ID laws in today's conditions would prevent a large number of legal voters from being able to vote. The true goal of voter ID laws being proposed right now is voter suppression.

[josephcsible]

> If those same laws made IDs free

Hasn't this already been true for years? https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/penndot-offers-fr...

> easily accessible, and gave every eligible voter enough time to get their hands on one

Is there any voter ID requirement, or even a proposal for one, that doesn't accept drivers' licenses? You can get that at 16, and most people get it well before 18, the minimum voting age.

> Research shows that voter ID laws in today's conditions would prevent a large number of legal voters from being able to vote.

Can you link to this research? In particular, is it making the assumption that people who can get an ID would just choose not to for some reason? Because I can't think of anyone who's allowed to vote but not allowed any form of ID that would let them.

[autoexec]

> Hasn't this already been true for years?

No, not every law has provisions for free IDs and even when "free" IDs are offered it still costs people money https://today.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Ful...

> Is there any voter ID requirement, or even a proposal for one, that doesn't accept drivers' licenses?

Millions of Americans don't have a drivers license or any form of government issued ID http://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/do...

This is pretty common in elderly and disabled people who can no longer drive. They often see no reason to keep renewing a state ID. If we had a national ID card that every citizen was required to have from the time they were children until the day that they died it wouldn't as big an issue, but that's not the case. Groups that help support the elderly and disabled have been dealing with the problem for many years.

see also: https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/government-elections/i...

> You can get that at 16, and most people get it well before 18, the minimum voting age.

Most people can get an ID, but doing that might be extremely difficult. It's getting better as local governments increasingly move services online but historically the US hasn't been so great about record keeping or making the needed documents easy to get. The first time I had to get a state ID I first had to travel across the country to the county in which I was born and hand over a stack of other documents I'd spend a bunch of money and effort to get my hands on and then still pay a fee on top of it once I got back to my own state.

> Can you link to this research? In particular, is it making the assumption that people who can get an ID would just choose not to for some reason? Because I can't think of anyone who's allowed to vote but not allowed any form of ID that would let them.

This isn't new news. There are literally years of research into the problems with voter ID laws in the US but I'll link to a few studies if you'd like more information. The fact is you don't have to make it "impossible" to get an ID to make it disproportionately difficult for certain people to get one. The GOP has spent decades working to make it harder for "the wrong people" to vote in order to gain an unfair advantage. Court rulings have often found that their attempts to prevent Americans from voting were discriminatory and placed an undue burden on various groups. Even concluding at times that this discrimination was intentional. see this one for example: http://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/20141009-TXID-...

I feel our democracy depends on us doing our best to ensure that every American citizen has equal access to the polls. The laws in Texas right now are having an impact on legitimate voters there, especially with disabled voters because communications hasn't been clear, voters are confused, and the deadline for requesting mail-in ballots is weeks away. The restrictions they put in place in Texas were not balanced by the burden it would place on the Americans least able to carry those burdens and now American citizens feel their right to vote is in jeopardy and they are correct. It's disgusting that such a fundamental right is being taken from people just because the GOP thinks it will win them more elections.

For what it's worth, I'm not against ID being required to vote. I just think we need to make sure that those laws also keep things fair. Whatever the barriers to voting are, they should be as equal as possible for every American citizen who is eligible to cast a vote no matter what their race, age, area code, or income level. Anything less than that is an attack on our democracy.

Research on the topic:

http://ippsr.msu.edu/research/voter-identification-laws-and-...

https://www.bakerinstitute.org/media/files/files/e0029eb8/Po...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21565503.2020.1...

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/716282

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1532673X18810012

[random314]

> more civilized

Is this a dog whistle?