[more_corn]

Real ID’s sole purpose is to punitively restrict travel for non citizens, particularly undocumented workers.

If you value liberty you should oppose it. It’s the best example of a specific step in the slide to a restrictive police state.

In no way does it improve security. I encourage everyone to speak out against it.

[thrwawy74]

More information here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_identification_laws_in_t...

[UncleEntity]

> Real ID’s sole purpose is to punitively restrict travel for non citizens, particularly undocumented workers.

You mean like the inland border patrol checkpoints that are literally designed to restrict travel for non-citizens?

That goat’s already out to pasture…

[rolenthedeep]

Huh, I had just assumed it was a voter suppression measure

[esyir]

Or a form of identification, like most other countries have.

[rolenthedeep]

Sure, right up until it's implemented and immediately becomes the only form of acceptable ID for voter registration. Or, they require the new ID, AND your old state ID AND your birth certificate AND solid proof of address.

Then it becomes voter suppression, and it happens entirely too frequently here.

Does the US need a national ID system? Yes, definitely. But it needs to be implemented carefully to not fuck over the citizens, and our government doesn't understand how to not be a festering sack of dicks so it's not likely to happen soon.

[adamrezich]

what is wrong with "suppressing" votes of non-citizens?

[nerdbert]

It's about suppressing votes of marginalized citizens who have limited access to government bureaucratic procedures due to time, location, language, or other constraints, many of which have been constructed deliberately or with knowing negligence.

[chrisco255]

This is a neat narrative, but there are tens of thousands of DMV locations all over the country. Appointments can be booked ahead of time to minimize time impact. It only needs to be done once every few years. Documentation is available in English and Spanish. That being said, to participate in civics in the U.S. you need to know some English. It's part of the citizenship test, and the laws are written in English.

[kelseyfrog]

The reality is that ID card holding rates correlate with race, income, and age[1][2][3] in a way that those advocating for ID requirements benefit from. When the consequences of such a system result in race, age, and income disparities, the purpose of such a system is, functionally, to disenfranchise on race, age, and income.

The fact is that there are millions[4] more, black, brown, hispanic, young, and poor people without than there are white, old, and rich people. Claiming that people can get IDs is a far step from realizing the logistical implications of such a claim. And why would someone? The point is that they won't, that in elections where tens or hundreds of thousands of votes decide the outcome, millions of people won't be able to vote and their inability will be individualized and trivialized into, "If it was important for them to vote, then they would have gotten IDs," while disavowing the discussion we're having right now - the one where the consequences of such system-building is being laid out.

It sounds like what you want to say is that you think it's more fair that people with IDs should play a greater role in elections than those who don't because they have more skin in the game, they've done more things right, and they contribute more to society, but you know that isn't exactly ok to say.

1. https://www.projectvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/AMERI...

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

3. https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/d...

4. in raw numbers as well as disproportionatly

[adamrezich]

why is it that, in discussions like these, nobody ever wants to try to solve any able-to-get-ID disparities that may or may not exist, instead choosing to always assume it's an inherent, intractable issue?

[subharmonicon]

You don't seem to be considering a variety of important factors here:

- Unhoused individuals who have the right to vote are unable to afford to pay for ID

- Contrary to what you're saying, in some places it's multiple hours drive to find a DMV that's open on a weekend (which might be required for someone working a 9-5 job)

- Even if you can go on a weekday, in some places you have to go across multiple counties to get to a DMV. If you don't have a car and need to take a bus, that can mean spending most of the day on the bus to get to the DMV, which may mean you cannot get back home the same day. This is a reality for some people, and those people won't necessarily be able to rely on a friend to drive them (see the above about people working 9-5), and don't have money to spend on a Taxi/Uber/Lyft.

- Some people lack documentation required to get a state ID or driver's license. This can happen for a variety of reasons, but previous homelessness is one. It can be expensive and time consuming to fix that issue in some cases.

Thus far I've not seen any politician pushing for strict voter ID laws also willing to fund ensuring that everyone who is entitled to vote is provided with a proper ID if needed, and until that changes you're going to see people pushing back on those laws.

[chrisco255]

> Unhoused individuals who have the right to vote are unable to afford to pay for ID

It sounds like you should be arguing for free IDs for the homeless. That being said, I spent $12 on my most recent visit to the DMV to get a new license. It is not an expensive endeavor. This is not an argument against voter ids.

> Contrary to what you're saying, in some places it's multiple hours drive to find a DMV that's open on a weekend (which might be required for someone working a 9-5 job)

You can go to the DMV on your lunch break. You can also let your employer know you need a new id and they will let you go. People regularly take brief moments and breaks off work to tend to chores, children, doctor appointments, etc. This is a really bad argument.

Actually, to even be legally employed with a e-verify, you need an ID to prove your status.

Again, a poor argument.

> Some people lack documentation required to get a state ID or driver's license. This can happen for a variety of reasons, but previous homelessness is one. It can be expensive and time consuming to fix that issue in some cases.

There are programs to assist the homeless with this very thing. The homeless are < 0.1% of the population. It's great to be thinking about them. Programs should exist. But you can't possibly argue that such exceptions are an argument against voter id. The opportunity for abuse and manipulation in the absence of id is too great. Everyone is disenfranchised when voting rules are lax and ID is not verified.

[rolenthedeep]

It's not about non-citizens, as they generally don't have the right to vote in federal elections simply because they are not citizens.

It's about disenfranchising poor and non-white people. In the Jim Crow era they used reading tests or guessing the number of buttons in a jar, now they're implementing strict ID requirements that are expensive or time consuming to meet.

I'm no expert on this topic, but the general gist is that poor people generally have a harder time getting free time off work when the county clerk is open, transport is often difficult because there are only so many locations, and the documents themselves can be expensive. If you don't have all the supporting documentation they require, you can't get the ID card even if you have other legal identification.

The goal is to make it much more difficult to vote so that people trapped in poverty can't afford the time or cost to get the papers required to vote.

Making it harder to vote causes overall voter numbers to drop. Less-polarized people will tend to be apathetic and think voting isn't worth the extra effort, while polarized fox News nuts will do anything they can to vote out the other guy.

Which is all to say our electoral system is broken, first past the post voting is objectively bad, and we desperately need broad voting reform to eliminate the two party system. I doubt it'll happen in my lifetime though.

[cnelsenmilt]

That's not what the comment you're replying to said.

[thatguy0900]

I'm not really convinced doing something about illegal immigrants is a step towards a police state. Is this US only rhetoric? Do other countries regularly just allow people to immigrate illegaly and are not interested in doing anything about it? Like I can't imagine just boating to some random coast in Norway and expect to just live a new life there unimpeded by the law.

[prmph]

What is wrong with that? By what natural law is moving across cities at will OK, but moving across borders not OK? Legal restriction of movement across borders makes no sense.

I mean, wherever you are, you should follow the law. If I'm a criminal, I should be dealt with wherever I find myself. If I don't commit crimes, I should be free to live where I want to live, provided I pay taxes and can pay to stay there.

[km3r]

The same reason I can't just walk into your house and make myself lunch out of your fridge. The people of this country have the same right as the owner of a house to control who can come in and to ask for some requirements as to do so. If you want to loosen the requirements, feel free to get a majority of the owners of the country (we, the people) to agree.

[prmph]

This is a false a equivalence. Immigrants do not not use private resources that belong personally to citizens. They consume public resources, paid for by taxes. So long as they also pay taxes, they are entitled to the use of those resources.

[km3r]

So I can walk into your house as long as I start chipping in for rent and buy some of the groceries myself?

[prmph]

Your house belongs to you. The earth, or portions thereof, does not exclusively belong to a group of people just because they happened to live there currently.

In any case, in many of these countries ( including the US) where people are rabidly advocating for curbs on movement, the majority of the population brutally displaced people who had lived there for thousands of years. By your own logic they have been breaking the law for a long time.

[uberman]

You realize that an illegal immigrant with a valid passport does not need a realid to fly right?

[thatguy0900]

How many illegal immigrants have their passports and are willing to risk flying with them? I'm more talking about the mindset of illegally entering a country and then having the expectation that I can do anything there, anyway. Like in my Norway example, I can't imagine just walking to an airport and expecting everything to work out when I just boated into a random part of the country illegally. Is this a US idea that that should be expected to work? I don't have the perspective to know, so I'm asking.

[nerdbert]

Living in the Netherlands, I haven't had to show ID to any government agent when flying to another country in the Schengen area in at least ten years (and I fly quite often). If I don't check in online then I am sometime asked to show it at check-in. And sometimes I have to show it at the gate, but the people there are only eyeballing it to make sure the name matches the boarding pass.

Note that I do often have to show ID on the return flight. Each country (and probably airport) has its own procedures.