[IX-103]

No other country is quite as heterogeneous as the US. And there is a significant history in the US of using restrictions around voting to disenfranchise certain ethnicities. That makes any restriction around voting a sensitive topic in the US.

Proponents of voter ID claim it is needed to prevent fraud, while opponents point out that there's not enough fraud for it to be worth the cost.

Note that countries such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand also didn't require voter ID. First-world countries that do require ID to vote have systems in place to ensure that getting that ID is easy even for poorer people - such as automatically sending the ID to the voter by mail if the government requires you to report your residence or filing out the necessary forms once, before turning 18.

[dirasieb]

> No other country is quite as heterogeneous as the US.

there's no scientific link between race and the ability to go to a DMV once every 10 years

[dataflow]

> there's no scientific link between race and the ability to go to a DMV once every 10 years

That form of ID is neither accepted per the proposed legislation [1] nor does it last 10 years (more like 4-5 years from what I've seen). Please go look at what's actually required per the SAVE Act.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safeguard_American_Voter_Eligi...

[Muromec]

If you have to go to a specific DMV at a specific time, it's a link to a ZIP code and economical situation (i.e. having enough time during work hours just for that). That's a good enough proxy for race. Bonus points if you can also make a specific DMV for a specific ZIP code shittier experience on purpose. Nobody would ever try to do that in a-country, right.

[dataflow]

FWIW, I don't think you're really addressing their point. What they're really saying is that they find it implausible that any significant fraction of the population is genuinely unable to go to the DMV once every 10 years. You're not really providing a counterargument, but rather just arguing that going to the DMV is more difficult for some people than others. Sure, but that's true for pretty much everything -- even just putting food on the table is harder when you're poor, yet people still find ways to do it.

[Muromec]

I think of it as another step in a leaky conversion pipeline, but instead of minimizing the dropoff the pipeline is optimized for maximizing. It's not that people are unable to fill 10 field form that sometimes randomly loses all your input, but more people will complete the form if it doesn't.

Another thing is when the id requirement is not just there, but added right before the election, so it's not "going to dmv once every 10 years", but "going to dmv this year especially so you can vote.

If I would be optimizing for the minimal dropoff, the policy would look like "passing the law that takes effect in 5 years from now, tasking the blah blah agency with increasing the id coverage and putting reminders how important it is to get an id and vote everywhere you look at, increased funding for the dmv and whatever". But no, it's has to be done with the urgency and framed as threat.

So the actual argument is not that there is link between race and going to dmv once in 10 years, but that the intent behind passing such laws is not increasing integrity, but favoring a specific party. Even if doesn't actually work, it's still one of the worst things a party in a democratic system can do.

[dataflow]

I had a much longer comment here but I ended up scrapping it since it would make for too long of a discussion. I'll just quickly address a few specific things:

> added right before the election

I feel like it's not hard to counter-argue that the writing has been on the wall for decades and it's not a genuine surprise at this point.

> So the actual argument is not that there is link between race and going to dmv once in 10 years

IMO, it's probably better to make the the actual argument.

> DMV

This entire discussion appears to be over a red herring. You may be interested in my comment on the sibling thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47345614