Doesn’t most of the world already work like this? I have to identify myself to vote in my country, it’s the obvious way to prevent people from voting more than one time.
I live in a country where every citizen automatically receives a government id at the age of 12. We have to bring that id when we go to vote, but even if I were to lose the card at the worst possible time, there are contingency measures to allow me to still cast my vote. The idea is to get as many people as possible to vote, the id card greatly facilitates this process, but it’s not used as a tool to keep people from voting.
In the usa (and the uk, and maybe other countries as well), citizens are not automatically granted an id card. Instead they have to acquire + maintain some accepted means of identifying themselves if they want to vote. And there some Americans saw a great opportunity: what if they made it so that certain minority groups would have a statistically harder time acquiring and maintaining identification that was deemed acceptable? And what if the state government could arbitrarily purge voter lists based on data mined information? The voter id requirements are used not only for facilitating the voting process, but also for suppressing undesired votes.
They’ll raise the bar until only ids most people (they don’t like) don’t have and they have already destroyed the public service so getting one will ve very very hard and/or expensive
Interestingly, it may backfire on them. For example they cite Real Id or passport.
So passport only people who travel internationally bother to get. The rural MAGAs are less likely to get this.
For Real Id, it’s more likely since that can be done with your license, however most people I know who do not fly have not bothered, because it’s a hassle, they have to find DMV acceptable materials for a feature they don’t even need (if you aren’t flying, you still won’t need real id for much of anything).
I can 100% guarantee that implementation will be left up to the states, and there will be a discretionary level of federal oversight. Rural Louisiana officials will be given leeway to allow votes for people who seem genuine. Meanwhile every single signature will be audited in New Orleans, and a computer glitch will accidentally purge a lot of people. Every town of 350 people will have 4 registration offices, and every large college town will have one office open 10am to 1pm with a 2 hour break for lunch. Registered Republicans will get mail, emails and calls reminding them to register to vote. Democratic party members will get one flyer that gets lost in the mail.
If you think these rules will be applied fairly to all, you’re a sucker.
There are other methods. In NZ every enrolled voter’s name gets printed into a physical book, and then crossed off by poll workers when they arrive to vote. An “easy vote” card is also mailed out to everyone, which is basically in index card to make it easier to look you up in the book.
As part of the vote counting process, all these books are checked against each other, to identify if a person has cast a vote at multiple polling places. With any duplicates investigated by the electoral commission.
Effectively the only way to manipulate the vote count would be to spend election week driving around the country, voting once per polling station under the name of a person you knew was enrolled to vote, but would not be voting themselves.
There were ~150 cases of attempted/apparent vote fraud in the last election, out of ~2M votes cast. That seems like a fairly low number to me, and I would not support any attempts to restrict voting to prevent it.
Yeah I don’t get it either. Every election I voted in I’ve had to have id. It’s been like this for a long time and it hasn’t shifted so that we need proof of ethnicity or some other bs people here are suggesting will happen next.
I’m currently trying to get my newborn son a passport, as the offices that handle this - SSA, Post Office, etc - are rapidly being dismantled by DOGE. I have no idea how we’ll be able to maintain or renew our documentation in coming years, given that there’s simply not going to be anyone to stamp the forms and mail me renewed papers at this rate.
it hasn’t shifted so that we need proof of ethnicity or some other bs
It specifically has for transgender people. We’ve seen both state and national rules changes that no longer recognize change of gender identity on forms. So a person who shows up to vote with a form that shows “Man” when presenting as a Woman is prime target for disenfranchisement.
We’re also increasingly seeing Hispanic and Arab people targeted for arrest and imprisonment, purely on an individual not currently carrying ID (and - in many cases - despite this fact). It isn’t hard to imagine this persecution continuing into the next election cycle, with DHS agents grabbing people at polling stations.
Thank you for your insight. I hadn’t realized how obtaining an id could be an issue. We just use our driver’s licence (issued by the police) which most of us have already at hand. Wish you and the family all the best.
Doesn’t most of the world already work like this? I have to identify myself to vote in my country, it’s the obvious way to prevent people from voting more than one time.
I live in a country where every citizen automatically receives a government id at the age of 12. We have to bring that id when we go to vote, but even if I were to lose the card at the worst possible time, there are contingency measures to allow me to still cast my vote. The idea is to get as many people as possible to vote, the id card greatly facilitates this process, but it’s not used as a tool to keep people from voting.
In the usa (and the uk, and maybe other countries as well), citizens are not automatically granted an id card. Instead they have to acquire + maintain some accepted means of identifying themselves if they want to vote. And there some Americans saw a great opportunity: what if they made it so that certain minority groups would have a statistically harder time acquiring and maintaining identification that was deemed acceptable? And what if the state government could arbitrarily purge voter lists based on data mined information? The voter id requirements are used not only for facilitating the voting process, but also for suppressing undesired votes.
If you want some examples of usa voter suppression: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States
The key is what id would be acceptable.
They’ll raise the bar until only ids most people (they don’t like) don’t have and they have already destroyed the public service so getting one will ve very very hard and/or expensive
Interestingly, it may backfire on them. For example they cite Real Id or passport.
So passport only people who travel internationally bother to get. The rural MAGAs are less likely to get this.
For Real Id, it’s more likely since that can be done with your license, however most people I know who do not fly have not bothered, because it’s a hassle, they have to find DMV acceptable materials for a feature they don’t even need (if you aren’t flying, you still won’t need real id for much of anything).
I can 100% guarantee that implementation will be left up to the states, and there will be a discretionary level of federal oversight. Rural Louisiana officials will be given leeway to allow votes for people who seem genuine. Meanwhile every single signature will be audited in New Orleans, and a computer glitch will accidentally purge a lot of people. Every town of 350 people will have 4 registration offices, and every large college town will have one office open 10am to 1pm with a 2 hour break for lunch. Registered Republicans will get mail, emails and calls reminding them to register to vote. Democratic party members will get one flyer that gets lost in the mail.
If you think these rules will be applied fairly to all, you’re a sucker.
There are other methods. In NZ every enrolled voter’s name gets printed into a physical book, and then crossed off by poll workers when they arrive to vote. An “easy vote” card is also mailed out to everyone, which is basically in index card to make it easier to look you up in the book.
As part of the vote counting process, all these books are checked against each other, to identify if a person has cast a vote at multiple polling places. With any duplicates investigated by the electoral commission.
Effectively the only way to manipulate the vote count would be to spend election week driving around the country, voting once per polling station under the name of a person you knew was enrolled to vote, but would not be voting themselves.
There were ~150 cases of attempted/apparent vote fraud in the last election, out of ~2M votes cast. That seems like a fairly low number to me, and I would not support any attempts to restrict voting to prevent it.
Yeah I don’t get it either. Every election I voted in I’ve had to have id. It’s been like this for a long time and it hasn’t shifted so that we need proof of ethnicity or some other bs people here are suggesting will happen next.
I’m currently trying to get my newborn son a passport, as the offices that handle this - SSA, Post Office, etc - are rapidly being dismantled by DOGE. I have no idea how we’ll be able to maintain or renew our documentation in coming years, given that there’s simply not going to be anyone to stamp the forms and mail me renewed papers at this rate.
It specifically has for transgender people. We’ve seen both state and national rules changes that no longer recognize change of gender identity on forms. So a person who shows up to vote with a form that shows “Man” when presenting as a Woman is prime target for disenfranchisement.
We’re also increasingly seeing Hispanic and Arab people targeted for arrest and imprisonment, purely on an individual not currently carrying ID (and - in many cases - despite this fact). It isn’t hard to imagine this persecution continuing into the next election cycle, with DHS agents grabbing people at polling stations.
Thank you for your insight. I hadn’t realized how obtaining an id could be an issue. We just use our driver’s licence (issued by the police) which most of us have already at hand. Wish you and the family all the best.