[jmward01]

The red haring is that voting is hacked or illegals are voting, etc etc etc. The -real- story is disenfranchising voters by making it hard for them or out-right steaming their votes in the courts. We don't have an election fraud issue in the us. We have an election legitimacy issue.

[rayiner]

So do you only secure your computer networks after they’ve been hacked? We should have transparent, verifiable election infrastructure, like Taiwan: https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo.

[tzs]

The problem is implementing that in a way that doesn't disenfranchise a lot of people. Most or all countries that have the kind of robust national ID system for such a system also make sure it is easy for every citizen to get the necessary ID.

Such a system could be added to the US without too much disruption if we did it gradually, say making it only apply to people born after 2030 so there is time to get all the support infrastructure in place.

Doing it quickly, and making it apply who grew up in a US without anything like that, would be a big and probably expensive effort. None of the proposals I've seen Congress talk about, or seen states talk about or that states have passed, have addressed this.

They say it is actually easy to get the required ID, but when you dig into the documents needed to get it if you don't already have a government issued photo ID it is a lot harder.

A certified copy of your birth certification is usually good enough...but most states require government issued photo ID to issue a certified copy of your birth certificate. Oops.

Also, for many older people, it can be hard to find where to go to get a birth certificate. That's all handled by the states, not the feds, and at the time many older people were born many states just recorded those records at the county level.

There are alternatives that allow can work around the lack of a certified copy of your birth certificate, or that can work around needing a government photo ID to get the birth certificate. They involve secondary documents, such as school records. Those don't usually have difficult ID requirements to get, but are even less likely to be centralized. You might have to go to the school district to get the records. For an older person trying to dig up old elementary or middle school records to bootstrap getting an idea that will often be difficult, even if that school district is still around and somehow the records haven't been lost.

The current system does in fact work well. It should be replaced with a stronger that could stand up against larger and more well organized adversaries than it has had to face before, but it is not urgent, and we have the time to do it right.

[rayiner]

It's not any easier to get a national ID in say Germany if you don't already have one. E.g. https://www.personalausweisportal.de/SharedDocs/faqs/Webs/PA...

"In order to be issued a national ID card, you need to be able to establish your identity and your German citizenship. If at the time of your application you are not able to provide any documentation of your identity, such as an expired national ID card or a birth certificate or other identity-establishing document, the issuing authority will check your identity by other suitable means (see no. 6.3.1 of the Administrative Regulation on Passports (Passverwaltungsvorschrift, PassVwV))."

If you read through administrative regulation 6.3.1, it provides for the issuing authority to look at various documents to establish identity and citizenship. If all else fails, affidavits from witnesses can be used.

U.S. states operate the same way. I'll use Georgia as an example since I've lived there: https://sos.ga.gov/page/proof-citizenship. There's twenty different ways to prove citizenship, including affidavits from third parties if all else fails.

[preg_match]

The undeniable reality is that these measures do, in fact, constitute barriers to voting and the barriers are not evenly applied. Less privileged Americans are less likely to have ID, and that’s just a statistical fact.

If the opposition cannot be trusted to even so much as acknowledge reality and fact, we must reject all notions of voter ID, with no exceptions. One begins to wonder why the right is so unbelievably hamstrung on ignoring the issue of ID availability.

Could it be, perhaps, because their goal is not righteous as they claim, but is rather a thinly-veiled attempt at voter suppression? Based off their actions, I would say any reasonable person would have no choice but to see it that way.

There are solutions to these problems. The people you’re championing would rather die than even consider them. Sit back and ponder why.

[tzs]

Georgia accepts these documents.

• Birth certificate issued by a US state

• Passport

• Certificate of Citizenship

• Naturalization Certificate

• A Report of Birth Abroad of a US Citizen

• Birth Certificate issued by the Department of State

• A US Citizen card

• An American Indian Card issued by the Department of Homeland Security with the classification code "KIC" (Issued by DHS to identify U.S. citizen members of the Texas Band of Kickapoos living near the U.S./Mexican border)

• Final adoption decree showing the child's name and U.S. birthplace

• Evidence of civil service employment by the U.S. government before June 1976

• An official U.S. military record of service showing a U.S. place of birth

• A Northern Mariana Identification Card (Issued by the INS to a collectively naturalized citizen of the U.S. who was born in the Northern Mariana Islands before November 4, 1986)

• Extract of U.S. hospital record of birth established at the time of the person's birth indicating a U.S. place of birth

• Life or health or other insurance record which indicates a U.S. place of birth and which is dated at least 5 years before the initial application date

• Federal or State census record which indicates U.S. citizenship or a U.S. place of birth

• Institutional admission papers from a nursing home, skilled nursing care facility or other institution which indicates a U.S. place of birth

• Medical (clinical, doctor, or hospital) record which indicates a U.S. place of birth and which is dated at least 5 years before the application date.

• A driver’s license or identification card issued by an agency of a U.S. state if that agency indicates on the driver’s license or identification card that the applicant has provided satisfactory evidence of United States citizenship to the agency

• One of the following if created at least 5 years before use to prove citizenship and if showing a U.S. place of birth: Seneca Indian tribal census record; Bureau of Indian Affairs tribal census records of the Navaho Indians; U.S. State Vital Statistics official notification of birth registration; an amended or delayed U.S. public birth record that is amended more than 5 years after the person's birth; or statement signed by the physician or midwife who was in attendance at the time of birth

• If other forms of documentation cannot be obtained, documentation may be provided by a written affidavit, signed under penalty of perjury, from two citizens, one of whom cannot be related to the person in question, who have specific knowledge of event(s) establishing the person in question's citizenship status. The person in question or another knowledgeable individual must also submit an affidavit stating why the documents are not available. Affidavits are only expected to be used in rare circumstances

Most of those are only going to be useful to to a small fraction of adult Georgians who don't already have proof of citizenship. The affidavit at first seems like no big deal but it probably is because it as asking for affidavits from people who have specific knowledge of events that establish your citizenship.

[Timon3]

You're omitting fundamental differences between these systems, for example that Germans are required by law to own a government ID, so only a tiny fraction of the population has to use this process. As far as I have seen this appears to be around 2-3%, and I haven't come across any studies showing that historically disadvantaged groups are more likely not to have an ID. Compare that to ~10% of Americans without proof of identification, and it just so happens that minorities make up a disproportionately big part of this group.

Second, in Germany there exist exactly 2 ID cards accepted for e.g. voting: your national ID card, and your passport. There are no per-state ID cards, there are no ID cards that are completely fine to use in all government interactions except for voting. Meanwhile the US has 50 different ID card systems, and the people who are making arbitrary decisions on which of these ID cards are acceptable are the same people who can electorally benefit from strategically banning/allowing certain kinds of IDs.

So no, rayiner, these situations aren't remotely comparable. They could be if the US government introduced a uniform national ID card, and if citizens had plenty of time to get one. For example I'd have no issues with voter ID if it were introduced only once >95% of the population owns this hypothetical national ID over a 5-year period.

The funny/sad part in all this: if conservatives actually cared about election security, all they'd have to do is listen to the arguments against voter ID and remove these roadblocks over a few years, maybe a decade. But for some reason their only approach seems to be to demand Voter ID be introduced right now, no time to prepare, no efforts made to solve any of the issues. I wonder why?

[skinfaxi]

Only US citizens are allowed to vote. How do you control for that without ID of some sort?

[tzs]

There are checks such as when registering to vote. They are not rigorous checks because rigorous proof of citizenship has not been needed by most US citizens for most the country's existence, and there is no way to rapidly switch to a rigorous system without disenfranchising a large number of older citizens and poorer citizens.

Registrations of individual registrants can be challenged and then a more detailed examination is done. Both Republican and Democrat local or state parties keep an eye on registrations and challenge any the think are bogus.

Extensive statistical checks after elections by numerous statisticians (and by most major political parties) shows that this system is working fine, so there is no justification for rushing a transition to a more rigorous system. There is time to design a system that will work for all citizens.

We could get a long way there by just grandfathering in everyone who voted in the last 10 years, and making sure there is extensive help going forward for anyone who cannot afford the cost of getting the necessary documents to get the new ID or who cannot get those documents.

[alphager]

The check for citizenship is not done at the polling place; it's done at the time of voter registration with plenty of accepted IDs.

[Timon3]

How did the US solve this issue during every election until now?

[skinfaxi]

Has it been solved?

[Timon3]

What does it mean to solve?

[therealpygon]

Every one of the excuses about how (and the need) to obtain ID are the red herring of this conversation, intended to distract from the fact that states have been verifying identities and holding their elections for 250 years and that Republicans are involved in the election process at every single level that are apparently complicit in these supposed “massive frauds”. They would have people believe the issue is ID and illegal voting, rather than the fact this is an attempt to take control of elections and influence them. They have already started doing shady things, like demanding access to the actual votes despite the entire system being run electronically and re-verified locally under bi-partisan oversight, and that those same states who had US cyber intelligence to assist them in securing their elections prior to Trump reducing that access in order to further his election fraud claims. It doesn’t look good when your own agencies assisted on securing the very thing they are claiming is a fraud.

This is exactly what every despot who nationalized election security did right before their Party magically started winning in every election by “overwhelming popular demand”. What a shock that they are trying to use the same playbook.

It is the responsibility of the state to enact THEIR OWN elections, as was made clear in our constitution. States oversee their elections, primarily away from federal influence. Republicans passed their own laws that they are now using to say requires them to interfere in the state election process; they created the excuse they are using and have, to date, failed to show a single shred of evidence of any real systemic issue outside of a potentially 0.001% who MIGHT have voted illegally (based on the few cases they tried to use, often paperwork errors). If fact, the most obvious acts of election interference have been consistently Republicans. They are the ones who put out fake ballot boxes in states. They were the ones caught trying to tamper in order to “prove there was fraud”. They have been inside the house the whole time, so to speak.

Claiming this is a need to identify voters, which literally every state does, is just the BS people try to use to ignore the truth; that there is nothing wrong with the elections they are trying to steal. All of the ways people claim that can be used to get an ID … are LITERALLY the ways states verify voters when they don’t have an ID…

Republicans just haven’t understood yet that his claims mean THEY are complicit and have been supporting fraud — an accusation I think they would probably take issue with if they understood the real claim. Instead, they listen to news from organizations that literally argue that their news is “entertainment” and therefore not intended to be “truthful”. The party has become a disgraced shell of itself, co-opted by the Tea Party-incarnate MAGA who for years have left Conservative values behind in their attempt to remake the constitution in their own view in order to exclude dissenting voices.

[tennfown]

> So do you only secure your computer networks after they’ve been hacked?

Idk seems to be an industry standard.

[1shooner]

https://web.cec.gov.tw/english/article/23550

>Taiwan has a comprehensive household registration system. The compilation of the voter list/electoral register is handled by the Household Registration Offices 20 days prior to the Election Day. Hence, citizens do not have to actively register to vote, with the exception of citizens residing overseas during the Presidential and Vice Presidential election.

I don't think the Trump administration would be interested in pursuing this degree of vote access.

[rayiner]

Taiwan’s system is like voter ID on steroids. The key part of your quote is that voter lists are compiled by “Household Registration Offices.” In Taiwan, everyone has to register with a household registration office within 30 days of moving. You have to show up to the office in person with your national ID card, household certificate, and proof of address. So it’s actually more stringent than voting registration in the US.

This is a fairly common system. Many countries don’t have voter registration as such because they already have a mandatory system household registration they use to track exactly where everyone is and verify citizenship and ID. For example, Germany: https://handbookgermany.de/en/registration

[collabs]

It is also worth noting that these mandatory registration schemes are free of cost or I guess free of cost at the point of service. I think if we require a voter ID / national ID card scheme, it has to be free of cost at the point of service as well. These services should be at least AT MINIMUM as ubiquitous as a post office and / or at least TWO full time locations with extended hours for every county / parish / etc.

The funding for this has to come from somewhere and it MUST be the federal government because my state / local government doesn't have money to even build a small sidewalk so it definitely does not have money for all this nonsense.

[rayiner]

Taiwan's isn't free. Conversely, voter ID cards in the U.S. are free for people that don't have other ID. Texas and Georgia have offered free voter ID cards for more than a decade. All this infrastructure already exists.

[afavour]

I think the point OP is making is that the Trump administration would never propose a system like that. They don’t want to replace voter registration with a mandatory system all citizens use as an essential part of their lives. They want to keep voter registration optional and want to gatekeep it in ways that make it difficult for undesirable voters (i.e. the ones they don’t think will vote for them) to register.

[jpkw]

Red Herring* - it's a fish, not a rabbit

[jmward01]

Well, on the bright side, you can tell I didn't have AI write the comment for me! Thanks for the correction.

[pinkmuffinere]

You’re right, but that’s a distraction from the bigger misconception — it’s actually “Read Herring”. The idea is that the herring has already been documented (and “read” back), no longer deserving of additional discussion.

[blacksmith_tb]

I have never heard that suggestion... if you can document it, the wiki entry would need an update[1]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring#History

[pinkmuffinere]

I can’t tell if you’re serious, but my definition was certainly not, lol. My claim was that correcting “red haring” to “red herring” distracts from a bigger misunderstanding (thus making the correction itself a red herring! Please laugh.) I completely made up my claim about the true meaning. For better or worse, my brain finds that humorous.

Edit: i am honored that you found my origin story believable enough for serious consideration.

[dfee]

where am i?

[exe34]

In Internet Misinformation 101, as am I.

[rurban]

Well, you have all three issues. Voting is trivially hackable, illegals are voting, and voting is made too hard.

Any civilized nation made voting secure, easy and fast. Yet still the US of A's still insist on computerized voting. Because then the government in-power can easily block voting surprises.