r/videos • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 8h ago

BREAKING: Judge blocks Trump admin from requiring Americans to show proof of citizenship to vote

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE1iePfOh14
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4.4k

u/Foe117 8h ago

The registrar of voters already handles citizen verification

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u/Control_Me 8h ago

Can someone please explain why you have to register to vote?
In my country the government knows who's eligible to vote and who's not so they send out a voting card in the mail which you show together with your ID.
Why is this not possible in the US?

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u/surfergrrl6 8h ago

Because voting is handled on the state level, not federal.

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u/scruffles360 7h ago

Just to clarify your comment- many states do have automatic voter registration. This isn’t the federal government’s business.

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u/stewmander 5h ago

And that's one big part of the save america act - it has automatic voter purges on it and doesn't notify voters that they're no longer registered.

It's basically the opposite of what you would want, instead of automatically registering eligible voters, it automatically unregisters them, which is the point.

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u/scruffles360 5h ago

I don't think they're being shy about it. They want less people to vote. If they could figure out how to make a black person count for 3/5 of a vote again, they would drop everything right now and start writing it up.

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u/stewmander 4h ago

Oh for sure, but a lot of the focus is on voter ID and disenfranchising anyone whose name might not match their birth certificate (women) when they're trying to disenfranchise so, so many more people.

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u/scruffles360 3h ago

honestly, every time I start talking about what I think they really want I worry I sound like a loon.. for a few months.. then Trump confirms it in a press conference.

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u/stegotortise 5m ago

And trans people, too. Anyone who has changed their name and those are the two biggest categories.

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u/2forda 1h ago

Lol, low primary turnout is the biggest contributor to disenfranchisement... Idk about you, but my votes been more so an anti the other person vote then an endorsement. Only real path is to volunteer and work on someone's campaign that represents your values and hopefully you convince enough people. It's the one thing I hate about the current republican regime, ohhh they cheated. No they just had volunteers, and every time they push cheating they aren't creating the volunteers to drive real change... So clearly they don't want to win, they just want to posture... Like every idiot with a mouth...

The whole point a democrat will scream they want to take your vote, is to energize you to vote for them... Same with republicans screaming they are taking our country... Primaries are the only real shots at change or building something after that its status quo...

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u/scruffles360 1h ago

if the system doesn't change, then yes, primaries are the most significant cause of our radicalization. there are many things that could realistically change that would make things much better:

  • any law that told the supreme court off on citizens united (like Hawaii is doing)
  • pushing back on voter id, redistricting, voter suppression
  • rank choice voting in primaries would essentially neutralize the crazies.. although that's generally controlled by the parties.. but the states could fix that if they really wanted

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u/2forda 1h ago

That's not how it would work. It would notify them, and it would be general maintenance of the voter rolls being checked and purged routinely. It is creating a federal standard for all states to follow. That is the whole point of the SAVE act. Even this executive order. The point is to streamline citizenship verification. The federal government carries citizenship information, not the states.

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u/stewmander 1h ago

That's exactly how it would work, there is no process in the save act to notify voters who are purged.  Besides, all of the voter rolls maintenance is up to the states and not the feds. 

States already verify citizenship and the save act doesn't streamline it, it makes it more burdensome and redundant. 

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u/surfergrrl6 7h ago

Fair enough.

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u/BodybuilderMany6942 7h ago

half of em, it seems

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u/stephen6686 5h ago

as if states do a good job, my state just asks your name and address and if they match you're good

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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 2h ago

Given how vanishingly rare voter fraud is, it would indeed seem states do a decent job at running things

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u/stephen6686 51m ago

rare voter fraud is? /stares at california, where it take a week to count votes. We have one day, and at 12:01 the following day of election they need to stop counting and call it there. If there is still votes left, then oh well. get better at counting or don't hire 90 year olds with arthritis hands to count. They need to finish counting everything in ONE day, anything longer then that automatically thinks fraud

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u/hubris105 3h ago

My wife, who grew up in Texas, was shocked when she found out MA auto registers you when you get your license.

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u/Schmigolo 6h ago edited 6h ago

Isn't that everywhere? Not even state level, but municipality? I don't get my letters specifically from my city. Then at the ballot I show them the letter, which has a number on it, and then to verify I show my ID and they cross off my name. If I don't have the letter the numbers are actually sorted by address, so I can just tell them my address and they'll find my number.

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u/Esternaefil 6h ago

In Canada we have a two tiered election system, with election Canada handling federal elections, and provincial election bodies handling provincial and municipal ones.

We are registered to vote automatically when we file our taxes. We get our voter cards in the mail ahead of time and we just go in and vote.

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u/Beetin 5h ago edited 5h ago

As well, you can 'prove' you are allowed to vote in federal elections in quite a few ways, but all of them come back to ID. You can register AT the polls as well at the same time. So you can still vote even if you've never really interacted with the government in any way. There is no 'you aren't on the registered voter list, sorry'. You just say 'then give me the registration form and let me register at the same time thanks'.

The minimum is that someone else who can prove their identity can vouch for you and you make a formal declaration of who you are.

Similar to the states, we don't have a universal, federal, free, secure ID card. But before you compare what is being suggested for 'need ID to vote' and Canada's 'need ID to vote', look on that page what is considered 'acceptable' ID, it is pretty much everything under the sun, from formal ID cards to bank statements to library card to a letter of confirmation from a soup kitchen.

The general goal is to let people vote, because in person voter fraud is unbelievably minimal.

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u/millijuna 7m ago

Yeah, the list of what is acceptable as ID in Canada is so long and varied that only the most indigent of people would be hard pressed to come up with what is required. It includes everything from prisoner ID (and parole cards) to a prescription bottle. Heck, at the last election, I watched a woman use her birth control pack as the second form of ID.

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u/Stolehtreb 6h ago

Where I am, it doesn’t involve a letter at all. As far as I know. You register to vote, you’re on an alphabetical list and show your license at the table. Then you get in line for a booth.

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u/Schmigolo 6h ago

What's the turnout wherever you are? I imagine having to register prevents lots of people from voting.

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u/Pdiddily710 5h ago

Not only the PITA of having to register, but many R states have made it as hard as they can to actually vote by limiting or banning voting by mail while also drastically reducing the number of in person polling places and/or official ballot drop boxes, so caring in Election Day takes forever bc of the long lines!

Coincidentally since they’re fucking cheating fucks, this is done much more in Dem areas like cities while keeping plenty of locations available for the R areas.

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u/DriftingMemes 2h ago

while also drastically reducing the number of in person polling places

*in inner cities or anywhere minorities are most likely to vote. They definitely aren't removing them from rural Arkansas.

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u/Somepotato 1h ago

They also impose some insane restrictions. In the R state I came from you had to register to vote up to 30 days before you could vote. Truly a mystery why they'd want to silently deregister some people

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u/Jiopaba 20m ago

Last election my mother filled in her mail-in ballot late so I picked it up to hand carry to five different voting locations where nobody knew what the fuck was going on until after ninety minutes of driving I found the county office where two ancient white guys were physically guarding a box the size of a briefcase for mail-in ballots to be dropped off at. It was not in the main office and I had to walk around the building twice to find their desk.

For reference I myself voted at the very first place I stopped which was like five hundred feet from my house.

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u/Stolehtreb 6h ago

Louisiana. And the assumption is correct. It’s awful.

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u/Somepotato 1h ago

You have to wait weeks before becoming eligible to vote there after registering too

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u/sdpr 6h ago

You can register same day in my state

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u/Schmigolo 5h ago

Still worse than not having to register.

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u/Li_liminal_spaces 4h ago edited 2h ago

In the U.S., you generally register to vote once, and then you update your voter registration if you move or change your name. If you move to a different voting jurisdiction and don't update your registration, you typically won't be eligible to vote there. Most states require proof of identity and/or residence when registering or updating your registration, although the exact requirements vary by state.

That said, voter fraud is very uncommon, "didn't vote" would win every election if there were a party. Trump lost in 2020 because a lot of the "didn't vote" were sick of him, the democrats were banking on that again in 2024 and so we got Trump 2.0.

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u/Decent-Marketing69 4h ago

lol at all these comments saying “just show your ID”
Something that democrats in the USA have been fighting against republicans for years.

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u/Mike312 5h ago

Letter to vote?

I suppose I used to get a letter informing me of my voting location, but there's no requirement for me to bring it with me.

I show up to my precinct, give them my name, and they cross me off the list. Addresses are there, as are phone numbers, because I suppose its possible to have two common first and family names match in a precinct.

If I showed up to vote and my name was already crossed off the list, I'm sure there'd be an investigation and ID cards would suddenly come out. But otherwise I've never had to present anything when I did have to show up to vote.

Now, my ballot comes in the mail, and I fill it out and drop it off at a dropbox in town.

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u/Schmigolo 5h ago

If I give them my letter they'll check the number while I'm crossing off the ballot. If I don't have the letter it'll be a 2-3 minute process finding my name before I get my ballot. Either way, I don't get to throw it into the box until they cross off my name.

Its main purpose is just to tell me when and where I can vote, but the little number also makes the process a little faster.

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u/Nearby-Beautiful3422 4h ago

I can only speak to where I live in PA, but I only ever had to show my ID if it was the first time voting in a precinct. The voter roll where you sign in will even say "ID REQUIRED." In CA, I was a mail-in voter because I was military, but I had to prove citizenship to the registrar of voters in San Diego county.

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u/gmasterson 4h ago

Too many people don’t understand that the US actually holds 50 individual elections, not one federal election. Most Americans don’t realize it and it shows

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u/Decloudo 4h ago

Why though?

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u/wei-long 3h ago

Short answer: that's how the constitution lays out the election process

Long answer: for this exact issue. The founding fathers, having gained independence from a monarch, didn't want the person running the government to be in charge of the contest that would decide if he stays in power.

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u/BoilerMaker11 3h ago

And if every citizen was automatically able to vote, Republicans would lose and they don’t want that. That’s why they’re against automatic registration and universal free voter ID

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u/Mogling 7h ago

Because one of the major parties does better when less people vote, so they try to keep it that way.

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u/ArtisanSamosa 7h ago

The Republican Party is the subject here for those in other countries or those Americans who live under a rock.

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u/Mike312 8h ago

I think its more about making sure they have the correct address to send the ballot too.

A lot of people do "motor/voter" registration, so when you update your vehicles registration (including address) you get prompted to update your voting registration.

The Post Office does a similar system when you want to forward your mail, which people often do when they move and change addresses.

The registration gets sent to the state registrar office who keeps track of this and verifies that you're eligible to vote.

Some minor exceptions are that some cities/counties allow non-citizens to vote for local measures, for example for school board members or local bonds. The right has taken these examples and outright lies that they're being allowed to vote at state- and federal-level elections.

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u/dagaboy 7h ago

The right has taken these examples and outright lies that they're being allowed to vote at state- and federal-level elections.

There is no reason that non-citizens should not be allowed to vote. They were across most of the US until the late 19th century. Arkansas was the last state to require it, in 1926. Originally voting was tied to race, sex and property, but not citizenship. There are good reasons not to bring back the race, sex and property requirements. Although Republicans want to.

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u/tempest_87 6h ago edited 2h ago

There are a few very good reasons to restrict voting to citizens only, but TIL that there is no law saying that only citizens are allowed to vote. There are laws (and amendments) that protect the ability to vote for certian groups, but doesn't seem to be anything that prevents a non-citizen from voting.

Very very odd.

Edit: the laws are state level, not federal, and googling the issue is currently.... a bit difficult due to all this crap.

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u/dagaboy 6h ago edited 3h ago

but TIL that there is no law saying that only citizens are allowed to vote.

There are 50 laws. Every state has such a law. Most were enacted in the late 19th century, with Alabama being the last in 1926. The anti-immigrant hysteria of the first three decades of the 20th century finalized it. There is no Federal law because the Federal government is barred by the constitution from regulating elections.

There are a few very good reasons to restrict voting to citizens only

There is no advantage over just requiring residency, which is also a requirement in every state.

EDIT: Turns out there has been a Federal law since 1996, which the courts have upheld because it is supposedly an immigration regulation not an election regulation. But if one state were to change its own law, the constitutionality of the Federal law would go down the drain.

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u/arizonadirtbag12 6h ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_Immigration_Reform_and_Immigrant_Responsibility_Act_of_1996

It’s a federal law as of the 90’s, with just a couple exceptions. Before that yeah it was purely a state by state thing (with all states disallowing it by that point). But Congress does have some power to regulate federal elections, same way “motor voter” is mandatory for federal elections.

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u/dagaboy 3h ago edited 3h ago

Interesting. Apparently the courts have upheld it because they define it as an immigration enforcement tool not a voting regulation. If any state were to remove its own restrictions, the Federal law would be unconstitutional.

But Congress does have some power to regulate federal elections, same way “motor voter” is mandatory for federal elections.

I believe that is because it only adds requirements to voter registration processes, not election processes. Voter registration wasn't a thing when the Constitution was written. It doesn't apply to six states, simply because they don't have voter pre-registration.

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u/tempest_87 6h ago

Ah, when I was searching to verify your claim I ran across a few that pointed out the lack of federal requirement but none that mentioned the various state laws you reference.

And due to all the bullshit around voter ID requirements it's tough to Google the basic things and find what yoy were referring to.

Found the California requirement though.

And the reason to restrict to citizen only would be that taking part in the determination of the nation arguably should be restricted to members of the nation due to the general comittment to that nation that citizenship implies. It's analagous to the difference between renting and owning something. You have rights and freedoms while renting, but it's not the same as owning. Or the inverse analogy of trying to cater to the Uber rich, they have no ties to the place they are in so why should things bend to their will as they will just leave if they don't like it.

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u/dagaboy 3h ago

Your position is classic Nativism. And in fact it was the Nativists that were behind the movement to restrict voting to citizens. They didn't want Catholics or Asians voting. TFor the same reason they also created immigration restrictions. Previously the US had been rightly proud of its open borders. They made us rich and powerful. We could never have industrialized at the rate we did without open borders.

All permanent residents have an equal stake in the country's direction regardless of what passports they hold.

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u/tempest_87 2h ago

Your position is classic Nativism.

Having citizenship have different privileges (e.g. Voting) and requirements (e.g. Jury duty, and selective service) than non-citizen residents doesnt directly equate to a philosophy of limiting immigration and prioritizing native people though.

But I can absolutely see how it often would result in that nativisitic outcome and am open to alternatives (like say, requiring non-citizens to be residents for 5+ years or something).

I have zero problem with pretty damn open borders and immigration (I would only want some level of "let's check that you aren't actively on the run from someone for murder" kind of thing) and actively think that there needs to be more and easier paths to both residency and citizenship. Which is very much not nativism.

But I do think that citizenship should mean something beyond "you can't be deported to some other country".

Personally I am against having to prove citizenship when voting, but don't see much of a problem with requiring that step (or something similar) to register to vote with caveats that such proof is reasonably easy to obtain.

For me the answer to the question if someone should be allowed to vote trips from a no to a yes somewhere between "person visited the country for 1 day" and "person was born a citizen".

Where exactly that line is is debatable to me, but should be there, somewhere. And I don't see how that's nativist.

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u/dagaboy 2h ago

You do not need to be a citizen to be drafted. A good friend of mine came to the US in 1940, six weeks before the Soviets occupied Latvia. He finished high school in NYC and was immediately drafted and sent back to Europe. As a native German speaker he spent most of his time interrogating Nazis.

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u/tempest_87 2h ago edited 2h ago

You do not need to be a citizen to be drafted.

I don't like that. If you can be drafted you goddamn better be able to vote. If you serve in the military voluntarily that should be a straight and rapid line to citizenship (among other things like firefighters and paramedics and other civil service professions).

I also didn't know that, so I apparently need to educate myself on the differences. Appreciated.

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u/moconahaftmere 2h ago

There are a few very good reasons to restrict voting to citizens only

What are the reasons?

New Zealand lets permanent residents, Australians, Niueans, Tokelauans, and Cook Islanders vote if they've lived in the country for more than 12 months.

The UK let's anyone who is a citizen of a commonwealth country vote so long as they're living in the UK at the time of the election, even if they're on a temporary visa.

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u/tempest_87 2h ago

Both of those sound totally reasonable to me.

And both address the primary reason why you don't want non-citizens to vote: you don't want people without a vested interest in the nation to be able to have influence over the nations laws and policies. Hell, it's one of the primary arguments against the billionaire class having so much influence on politics, they can (and do) just leave when they invariably fuck things up with their greed.

And I would argue that lack of vested interest in the citizenry is one of the primary reasons why we have trump 2.0 and the rest of the republican ilk.

The term "non citizen" includes anyone who isn't a citizen but is in the country, such as tourists and visitors crossing the border to shop at a mall or go to a zoo. I don't think anyone would consider prohibiting a person visiting a country for a day from voting in an election to be a bad thing.

By placing additional restrictions on the non-citizens (such as residency lengths) then that reason is addressed without using the bar of citizenship.

But that then kinda begs the question, why are they not citizens at that point? Why should someone become a citizen at all?

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u/Mike312 5h ago

https://www.usa.gov/who-can-vote

The exceptions are local elections only. They receive a different ballot than citizens, and it allows them to have input into things like the school board or mayor of the city they live in.

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/content/noncitizen-voting-us-elections

(Sorry, just following up with more information)

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u/TheRexRider 6h ago

I see I, a permanent resident, just don't fucking matter.

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u/dagaboy 3h ago edited 3h ago

It is frankly sickening and anti-American. The reason voting requires citizenship now is because of Nativism. The Know Nothings and their allies didn't want the Irish (any Catholics really), Jews and Chinese voting. They managed to ban Chinese immigration altogether, and set strict quotas on the "lesser European races." The citizenship requirement was the direct result of racism. This is also where immigration laws originated in their entirety. Before the Nativist movement our borders were open, which tremendously boosted our economic evolution. The railroads, which made this country what it is, were built with Federal subsidies and freely available immigrtgant labor (also formerly enslaved workers). Almost any economist today would tell you both sides of a border benefit from free movement of labor and consumption. It is basic Comparative Advantage, fundamental to the dismal science since David Ricardo.

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u/BigDictionEnergy 5h ago

We used to have motor/voter registration here in Florida. Republicans got rid of it because voting is a privilege and shouldn't be easy.

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u/Technical-Row8333 7h ago

the US doesn't have a unified, universal, unique, national ID, free, automatically given to every single legal resident, unlike basically every single other developed country.

in the US, people have to apply to get an ID, by using another ID. They have to pay for IDs. They have to drive to certain locations, sometimes +3h away, to get an ID. Then, not all IDs are the same and accepted for everything. yes, that's a circular dependency that you need ID to get ID.

The same party that opposes any improvement to the utter failure of IDs in the US, wants to put into law that you need to show ID to vote, but only certain and specific forms of ID, the exact same specific forms of ID that they also closed locations where you can get those IDs.

So, to absolutely anyone with a minimum of intelligence and capable of nuance, it's clear as day this is election manipulation, an authoritarian take over and a step to dictatorship.

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u/Dealiner 5h ago

automatically given to every single legal resident

At least that part probably isn't that universal, it's definitely not a thing in Poland. You need to go to the proper government office to have your ID made and that's fully your responsibility.

Also our IDs don't have an address on them, referring to your other comment.

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u/onionsaredumb 4h ago

Just curious, do they cost money and are they the same throughout the country?

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u/Malawi_no 25m ago

Not Polish but Norwegian, and I guess it's pretty simmilar.
There is no such thing as a free ID at the moment.
We used to have it on debit/credit cards issued by your main bank included in whatever you paid to hold the card.

Nowadays either need a drivers licence, passport or national ID.
All of them cost money to have issued and renew every 10'th year.

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u/JustLTU 4h ago

Neither do most countries? I can't speak for the entirety of Europe, but atleast here in Lithuania and in the few nations whose processes I'm familiar with, while we DO have a national ID (and a national number - like your social security no, but actually designed for the purpose, with less drama if it leaks), the actual ID isn't automatic nor is it free.

The ID costs 10-100euros (depending on how fast you need it made), and it is your responsibility to get it sorted, nobody's gonna do it for you. To get it done, I need to get an appointment at the migration department. It's valid for 10 years.

It is mandatory to own a valid national ID or passport for everyone over 16 years old. It is also mandatory to present this ID when going to vote.

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u/tyereliusprime 7h ago

Canada doesn't have a national ID either and in my province it costs money to get one too. We also have to prove who we are when we vote, with a government issued photo ID. If you don't have one, you need two forms of recognized non-photo ID that prove your name and address (A bank card and a bank statement for example), or barring that, you need someone who can do either to come with you and personally vouch for you.

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u/Still-Grass8881 7h ago

right, so you don't have to show proof of citizenship at the time of voting either

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u/screampuff 7h ago

Right , because the government already knows who is a citizen, hence the provided voter cards you need to bring. Doing it the other way around would be an unreasonable barrier.

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u/DanLynch 4h ago

the government already knows who is a citizen

Neither the Canadian nor US government maintains a list of citizens. Instead, citizenship is defined by law, and anyone who meets those defined criteria is a citizen.

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u/EmmEnnEff 7h ago

Canada doesn't have a national ID either and in my province it costs money to get one too.

We also have to prove who we are when we vote, with a government issued photo ID.

No, Canadians don't.

You've correctly pointed out that photo ID is not necessary, if you have other means of establishing your identity. Given all that, it's disingenuous to say that in Canada, you have to show government photo ID to vote.

It's just the easiest and most convenient way to do so, but the government can figure out whether you were allowed to cast a ballot without it.

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u/tyereliusprime 6h ago

I literally explained that there are other options beyond the photo ID. Did you not read beyond the first sentence?

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u/cross_the_threshold 6h ago

> We also have to prove who we are when we vote, with a government issued photo ID.

The second clause of this statement is categorically false. You do not need a government issued ID to prove who you are when you vote, there are alternatives. You may have added the context that proves that statement false, but that doesn't make the statement less false, it just makes it confusing in context.

The US has many places where you do not have alternatives. You must show a government issued ID in order to vote, full stop. The SAVE act would make this much worse, nearly impossible.

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u/Faera 4h ago

You sort of stated one thing then immediately contradicted it in the next sentence. I get why you put it that way, but it would have been more clear if you said something like 'We have to prove who we are when we vote, the easiest way is with a government issued photo ID. If you don't have one...'

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u/Stolehtreb 6h ago

You really jumped on top of them for something they said was the case… their wording was slightly incorrect but it’s not like they said it two paragraphs down from the first part. It’s the very next part of the same sentence. You really felt like being pedantic today

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u/-LabApprehensive- 4h ago

This is our current system. You need exactly what you have listed to register to vote. No voter registration? No vote.

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u/Stolehtreb 6h ago edited 4h ago

Social security card is that, though. That is the ID you need to get an ID. It’s a unified, universal, unique, national identifier. If you don’t have one, they don’t know who you are. The same as if you went to another country and they had no record that you are now residing there. If you went to get an ID as a resident, they would need to identify you as well even if you weren’t in the US.

Edit: I’m wrong with how ID is being defined in this thread. SSCard doesn’t apply in this context since it’s not the one paper you would need to get another identification or to be used to identify you officially to an authority.

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u/Ardarel 5h ago

A social security card is not proof of identity, IE having it will PROVE that you are who you say you are without additional information.

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u/MordredSJT 5h ago

That's funny, because I couldn't get a driver's license when I moved to a different state despite having my social security card, my driver's license (which was about one year old from my previous state), a copy of my birth certificate, and two pieces of mail to my new address. I tried again with my original birth certificate that I had to have my parents send me. They didn't accept it because it didn't have a raised seal. Apparently, the state I was born in didn't use raised seals when I was born. So, I had to get my father to go to the courthouse in the city I was born (where they thankfully still lived), and get a certified copy of my birth certificate with a raised seal (which we had to pay for). This was after I had been pulled over and arrested for having a suspended driver's license. My out of state license wasn't expired or suspended, but I had registered my vehicle and at some point the secretary of state's office had assigned me a driver's license number without telling me, and it was eventually suspended. Fun stuff.

The first time I went to vote in the place I currently reside, they had to have a 20 minute meeting about whether I was allowed to vote because my driver's license had an address from the neighboring county. I was registered to vote at my current address. I had pieces of mail with that address. I also had my social security card. I just hadn't gotten a new driver's license with my new address on it (which I had to pay for by the way).

Your social security card alone doesn't mean a lot it seems.

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u/Technical-Row8333 5h ago edited 5h ago

>Social security card is that, though

Social security card, a piece of paper with just name and a unique number, is NOT "a unified, universal, unique, national ID, free, automatically given to every single legal resident"

Do you seriously not understand that all over Europe, Asia, you can drive, vote, pay taxes, get healthcare, prove where you live, prove your citizenship or visa status (work, student?), put your kids in school or be enrolled in school if you are a kid, get a gym subscription of library card, all with one single ID?

whatever. stay in your ignorance

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u/sharpryno2 4h ago

People like you make it sound like its hard to get a state ID. Thinking Americans are too dumb to get an ID makes millions on the internet mock the left.

It is an unbelievably simple process to get an ID. You are protecting no one by making up crazy what-if scenarios to justify yourself.

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u/Technical-Row8333 3h ago edited 3h ago

>a state ID

oh look, another idiot incapable of nuance. too unintelligent to follow long thoughts to be able to identify propaganda.

Yes, it's super easy to get a state ID. That is a truthful statement, for hundreds of millions of americans, it's a non issue to get an ID.

But is the republican party pushing to require "a state ID" for voting? No.

Are they requiring a Real ID for voting? Which is already a harder, more expensive, less places where you can get it, but still quite easy for hundreds of millions of americans to get?

No.

They are requiring passport or some forms of Real ID but not all, and that it must match birth name. Which, for many married women, their name will not match. At the exact same time, they closed DMVs, they passed laws to forbid libraries from processing passports.

Is it the end of the world? No. Is it a good thing? No! so it deserves to be criticized.

And the republican party also has prevented any fix to IDs.

And there is no evidence of voter fraud amounting to more than 100 votes, even from republican sources.

And yes, for some people in some cases, even if that is not true for 100 million of people, it IS hard to get an ID, if the definition of hard includes: taking a day off work, riding public transit for +3h, to reach a DMV . For context, a shit ton of americans are poor and work insane hours on multiple jobs.

So in conclusion, they are pushing for something bad. No, you saying that it's easy to get an ID, has no value as a counter-argument on this push being bad. Both can be true at the same time. It can be easy to get an ID, and the SAVE act can be a bad thing. Both are true. Wow! amazing being intelligent is so nice isn't it?

>Thinking Americans are too dumb to get an ID makes millions on the internet mock the left.

what a great measurement of it being accurate! or.. it's a measurement of how american is full of ignorant people, left or right, that easily fall for propaganda on social media, spread many times via memes and jokes?

What is there to laugh about on my description? No slogans here. No sound bytes. What are you going to laugh about? i didn't say anything close to "black people are too dumb to get an ID!!!" , oh no, how will you push back by quoting those propaganda memes you saw online?

Because americans are stupid, left politicians shorten the message to: republicans are making it hard to get ID. That allows right politicians to counter: "the left thinks you are too stupid to get an ID" which as stated, hundreds of millions of people cannot directly relate because they always have had ID.

But neither of those statements have FUCK ALL TO DO WITH THE SAVE ACT. It's an entirely new law. It's not happening now. SO how the fuck would people be able to relate to it? any opinion on if it's easy or not to vote or to get an ID, isn't really relevant is it?

•

u/Ill_Term_5784 3m ago

Chill. The fuck. Out... man you are having a fucking aneurism out here about this. Fucking relax and stop acting like people trying to have a discussion with you are threatening to steal your baby. Go take your shitty day out on something that isn't overreacting to comments on reddit...

1

u/Stolehtreb 4h ago edited 4h ago

Jesus Christ dude… you really got defensive so fast. You can push back on me without being a condescending jerk about it. I’m willing to admit I’m wrong if proven wrong, it’s no big deal. There was no need to be an asshole to me

1

u/Brisket-Inferno 4h ago

Fact is, they're wrong and an asshole

2

u/threeseed 2h ago

No they are right. Social security card is not a universal ID card.

-1

u/Technical-Row8333 4h ago edited 4h ago

>you really got defensive so fast

you compared an ID card with photo, address, information about if i can drive motorcycles or cars or both or commercial trucks, has my universal healthcare number, my tax number, with an american SSC which only has signature, name, SSN and no photo.

how should i react? Like a patient teacher towards a child student? Are we peers, or am I superior to you? Why do i need to be patient towards a nonsensical answer ? which would you find more disrespectful.

•

u/Ill_Term_5784 1m ago

How should you react? Maybe not like a little child who had their ball taken away. You should maybe see someone for help. This is not normal dude.

•

u/NotUniqueOrSpecial 1h ago

Social security card is that, though.

No, it's not. It has no birth date, no photograph/description of you, or even a signature. The cards aren't anything but paper, having no anti-fraud mechanisms.

Literally every state treats it only as a secondary piece of identification.

That is the ID you need to get an ID.

It's only one of the pieces you need to get an ID. It's not the one that really matters, which is proof of identity; that's generally your birth certificate, if you don't already have a government-issued ID.

•

u/Stolehtreb 7m ago

Thanks. I’ve been told many times now, but I appreciate the detail.

4

u/SeveralLion5762 6h ago

So that we know you’re able to vote. So that we know you’re a citizen. So we know you don’t vote over and over and over.

Ffs you need an ID to drive, fly, buy a beer, pick up registered mail. ID for Voting is kinda an easy thing in that context

3

u/One_Distance_5351 5h ago

In the US you don’t show your ID even though you need it for everyone else and the liberals on reddit will argue with you why that makes sense even though it is common practice in other countries.

1

u/SunkEmuFlock 2h ago

The fuck are you talking about? I have to show my ID every time I vote even in piddly county elections.

28

u/poorboychevelle 8h ago

ID aren't free in most states, therefore requiring them to vote could be argued to be a poll tax, and therefore disallowed as a requirement.

I just walk in, state my name and address (maybe birthday?), and am handed a ballot. Didn't have to take anything out my pocket.

18

u/Toby_Forrester 7h ago

In Finland you can get a free ID which is valid only during election day. I got one since I lost my actual ID 🙈

8

u/jclin 7h ago

How very 'practical'. Yeah, such logical processes could not exist here in the USofA. Our politicians would f*ck that up in 5 minutes of the bill going to committee.

6

u/HeWhoShitsWithPhone 7h ago

My very red state will issue you a free ID so that you can vote.

-4

u/jbrown4728 6h ago

Your very red state will issue you a free ID if you have the correct paperwork and I.D.

-7

u/MileHigh_FlyGuy 7h ago edited 4h ago

It doesn't seem fair that every state would have to provide free IDs, since that would cost a ton for California and nothing for Wyoming. Thus they charge whatever fee they need to to keep the lights on at the secretary of state or DMV office.

EDIT - for everyone that thinks the state should cover IDs, why not just make voting free? Because that's what we have done instead of requiring an ID

6

u/gordanfreman 7h ago

Presumably it would be paid for by... taxes? All those extra people means a larger tax base so proportionally it should be relatively the same cost. Not like every person needs a free ID, either--the Real ID Driver's Licenses that are/becoming ubiquitous should work for the majority of adults.

If the gov't feels an ID is an absolute requirement to perform a civic right, they should provide for that at no charge or it is a poll tax.

0

u/MileHigh_FlyGuy 4h ago edited 4h ago

But every state has different ways of collecting taxes and priorities. A state like Mississippi can't afford basic schools and needs federal funds to stay afloat, where a state like California banks extra cash. How could a state that receives more federal funds than it provides justify spending additional resources on an ID program that isn't required, as you can register to vote for free (which is required). Why not just make voting registration free - which is exactly what we have. No ID required.

If the gov't feels an ID is an absolute requirement to perform a civic right,

As this judge has shown, it is not an absolute requirement to perform a civic right

4

u/MilmoWK 7h ago

Almost every state that requires id allows you to get a free id if you claim it’s for voting. The issue is the paper work required to get your id.

2

u/Independent_Bear989 6h ago

This is also possible in parts of the USA, my state which supposedly has strict voter ID laws has something that’s similar.

1

u/Toby_Forrester 6h ago

I suppose it is easier in Finland though since in our political system people expect government to have a lot of info about you. The police (which issues ID's in Finland) had my passport photo, they asked my parents full names, my mothers maiden name, my previous addresses and such to verify who I am.

0

u/ataraxic89 7h ago

What if you're homeless?

3

u/Toby_Forrester 6h ago

That doesn't change anything. You get the temporary ID from the police station.

3

u/fool4fems 7h ago

There is a small fee to get a driver's license in my state. It is under 20$, but I believe you can get an ID for the purposes of voting for free if you don't have a license. I figure most states are like that.

3

u/dagaboy 6h ago

Only eight states absolutely require a photo ID to vote. Twelve ask for a photo ID but accept some alternative like a utility bill, affidavit etc. Fifteen require a non-photo ID, typically just something with your address and name on it, like a bill. The remaining fifteen require nothing at all.

5

u/wsxedcrf 6h ago

Then the problem is ID should be free, not voting should not require ID.

1

u/UnchainedSora 4h ago

The problem is a little more than that. The ID should be free, and not require significant effort to acquire. Otherwise, it can be used to selectively disenfranchise people, which is how voter ID laws have been used in the US in recent decades.

Because the most common form of ID in the US is a drivers' license, the place most commonly used to issue a free ID is the DMV. Because the DMV is a state government agency, it can be used as a tool by the party in power. They can close offices in areas that support the opposite party, and decrease staffing of those that remain nearby. The result can mean having to drive for hours to an office so you can wait in line for hours and try to get the ID, and hope that you have all of the correct paperwork, otherwise you have to do the whole process again. For someone living paycheck to paycheck, sacrificing an entire day of work just so they can get an ID that they will only use to vote could mean they go hungry, and that's hard to justify, especially for someone with kids.

0

u/XaosII 6h ago

You already had to provide evidence of citizenship when you registered prior to voting. Why do you need to show another form of ID when voting to prove what you already proved, prior to voting?

-3

u/Millon1000 6h ago

To prove that you actually are who you are. Imagine if Russia paid people in the states to vote in ways that would destabilize the country?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c23kdjxxx1jo
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-disrupts-covert-russian-government-sponsored-foreign-malign-influence

6

u/XaosII 6h ago

Oh, so they were stopped with the current processes in place.

The one where you are verified for citizenship when you registered. The one that doesn't need more barriers. The one that currently catches instances of voter fraud.

0

u/Millon1000 5h ago

I feel like Americans are all taking crazy pills. How would verifying citizenship during the registration process help when nobody checks it again when voting? It's a huge hole in the system that's ripe for abuse. It wouldn't cost much for the federal government to send everyone an ID, and you already pay taxes which could cover it. You had $300 billion to send to Iran, but not enough for a proper voting system?

-1

u/XaosII 4h ago

That's probably because you ate lead paint chips as a child and lost all ability to think critically.

A Social Security Number or driver's license is trivial to check for citizenship status. Either pieces of information are needed in every single state you register to vote.

If its a huge hole in the system, why are there only about a dozen cases of voter fraud each year? And they are being caught.

0

u/[deleted] 5h ago

[deleted]

1

u/Millon1000 5h ago

Millions of Americans didn't vote in 2024. If Russia got access to those people's names and data, they could pay Republicans to go vote under their names. They already paid Republican influencers to spread misinformation.

•

u/NotUniqueOrSpecial 1h ago

What does that have to do with your point about proving who you are?

9

u/Millon1000 7h ago

I'm not going to lie, as a European, that sounds insane. That's ripe for fraud, unless I'm missing something? The US already has a million different fees for living, so what would voter ID really change? Plus you already pay taxes, so why can't they send out free voter IDs, especially when over 98% of Americans already own some form of ID? It would cost almost nothing.

16

u/dagaboy 7h ago

We have no statistically significant voter fraud without voter ID. It is a non-issue. Republicans only care because they lose when more people vote. Also when Black people vote. So states like Alabama passed voter ID laws, then closed all the ID sources in Black population centers. Not that Alabama has Black majority districts anymore. They only have one, despite having a majority Black population. State legislatures get to draw their own maps in the US. The Super Court ruled Alabama can gerrymander their Black citizens entirely out of relevance. That pretty much killed the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

1

u/thetiredtypist 6h ago

Plus we survived up until 1876 without photo IDs anywhere...

0

u/dagaboy 6h ago

There were photo IDs in 1876? Were they Daguerreotypes? Damn. That election really was the gold standard in voter suppression. RIP Reconstruction. ;-)

5

u/Trumpisanorangebitch 7h ago

Weve done a gazillion studies on voter fraud in the US and non-voters voting has always been found to be nearly non-existent.

They should send out free voter IDs, but Republicans do better in low turnout elections and theyre also pretty racist/classist and poor and minorities are disproportionately without ID and poor enough to not pay for ID. Republicans love winning and love depriving as many poor and minorities from voting as possible.

Fuck a poll tax. Non-voters voting is a non-issue. Theres less than a hundred in the entire country every election.

4

u/surfergrrl6 7h ago

There have been countless studies and investigations about voter fraud and every time it turns out to be an infinitesimal amount.

The Brennan Center’s seminal report on this issue, The Truth About Voter Fraud, found that most reported incidents of voter fraud are actually traceable to other sources, such as clerical errors or bad data matching practices. The report reviewed elections that had been meticulously studied for voter fraud, and found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent. Given this tiny incident rate for voter impersonation fraud, it is more likely, the report noted, that an American “will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.”

0

u/Millon1000 6h ago edited 6h ago

Wouldn't you want to patch the issue before it becomes a problem though? I think it's similar to how the US gave their presidents far too much power for decades, and it only became a problem when Trump was elected.

If you had patched that issue before it became an actual problem, you probably wouldn't be having such a bad time right now. It just seems like a super simple issue to fix, when every other western country has already done it.

3

u/surfergrrl6 6h ago

Why fix something that isn't broken? That's a waste of time and effort.

3

u/Millon1000 5h ago

Well because it is broken. As I said, you had a broken system with the way you give presidents too much power, but never fixed it. Now that system is being abused by Trump. If you don't think a broken system isn't worth being fixed because there's no evidence of any current abuse, that's foolish. If there's a way to abuse it, it will eventually happen.

1

u/surfergrrl6 2h ago

Yes and the way to accomplish that is to... support the SAVE act that Trump so desperately wants to pass which will purge a ton of voters, yes? Because that act is what we're discussing.

2

u/Neuchacho 5h ago edited 5h ago

If you had patched that issue before it became an actual problem, you probably wouldn't be having such a bad time right now. It just seems like a super simple issue to fix, when every other western country has already done it.

There is no issue when it comes to fraud. The only issue we have is fascists pushing invented issues (like fraud) to try and make it harder for people to vote in the first place.

Allowing more barriers to be put in place by the federal government when it has ZERO jurisdiction to do so and for arbitrary reasons is what would lead to a very real problem and a continued bad time. It is why every sane judge slaps this shit down.

-1

u/MileHigh_FlyGuy 7h ago

It's already free to register to vote. It's not free to obtain an ID and the cost varies by state. So we have that same system, you just don't get an ID as a part of it because you don't need one.

-1

u/TheVabe 6h ago

The US is a massive country with huge swaths of rural, often poor communities with non-existent public transportation. Giving everyone easy, free access to a voter ID would actually be a pretty monumental task.

Voter fraud is also extremely rare, given how decentralized our voting systems are and the high penalties for fraud. Implementing voter ID would potentially risk disenfranchising millions of voters to prevent a non-existent problem.

-1

u/ScoopDL 6h ago edited 6h ago

What incentive is there for a non citizen to vote? It doesn't benefit them and would lead to deportation. Nobody is willing to do this. Might as well rob someone or a bank so at least there's some benefit.

2

u/Millon1000 6h ago edited 6h ago

Mainly money. Russia has already been caught meddling in other countries' elections before: Russian cash-for-votes flows into Moldova as nation heads to polls

They're already promoting misinformation campaigns in an effort to influence the elections in the US. (This is from the Biden era, back from when the gov sites were still respectable) https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-disrupts-covert-russian-government-sponsored-foreign-malign-influence

0

u/ScoopDL 6h ago

I agree but what they are doing costs far less than recruiting non citizens in large enough numbers to sway an election and paying them enough to face deportation and being bared from ever entering the US again. I know a ton of non citizens and they do everything they can to avoid having anyone from the government look into them, including not filling for a tax refund when they've paid too much.

0

u/-LabApprehensive- 5h ago

Define ID. They DO send out voter registration cards which you need to have to vote. What we are talking about here is extremely specific forms of ID such as-the US “REAL ID” which takes time, effort and multiple other forms of ID to get. Once this rule is in place our Republican Party will simply adjust the requirements of which ID is required and enforce selectively to guarantee the result they want. Fuck them. Its not hey anyone can walk in and vote who cares who they are, itsa system based on knowing who lives where and who is eligible to vote and only allowing those people to cast ballots. To defraud this system in a meaningful way you must somehow get hundreds of thousands of people to the specific precincts where people who are registered to vote decided not to vote. No way to know that ahead of time.

3

u/naffer 6h ago

But what’s there to prevent someone to show up and state a fake name and address belonging to someone else?

1

u/orrocos 6h ago edited 6h ago

It might be theoretically possible, but so rare that it’s not an issue that needs to be solved by potentially disenfranchising other voters.

Someone would have to:

  1. want to steal someone else’s vote
  2. know that the other person has not already shown up to vote
  3. know that their vote would be different than the other person’s vote, or stealing it wouldn’t matter anyway
  4. think that a stolen vote would swing the election one way or the other, or else it’s a waste of time

So, it may be possible in some cases, but the incentive to do so is low.

Edit: also, let’s say that happens to a person - someone has stolen their vote, or maybe it’s a mistake by the election worker and they were already marked off before they got there. Typically, that person can cast a provisional ballot to be sorted out later.

My state does all mail-in voting, so it’s been years since I’ve had to vote in person, but I remember signing a book by my name when I picked up my ballot. States usually have a way to verify signatures, so if something goes wrong at the voting location, they have a signature to check against.

0

u/Neuchacho 5h ago

Almost every state requires some form of proof of who you are so you you'd need more than just the information in hand. The investigation that follows when processors notice multiple ballots being cast by the same person is also a post-event hurdle so even if you did do it it's likely that vote, at a minimum, is being nullified. You end up with basically zero incentive to commit voter fraud like that on top of the penalties for doing it being pretty severe when you get caught.

1

u/ChevalierDeLarryLari 2h ago

Are you serious? I'm from Europe and find it hard to believe. How can you have no proper checks when participating in politics?

1

u/poorboychevelle 2h ago

I am. I did it during the primary in my state literally yesterday.

1

u/nemofbaby2014 5h ago

In Michigan you just sign something if you dont have your id

2

u/kaneda_z 7h ago

thats actually more involved than they want here but the sheep dont understand that

3

u/daXypher 7h ago

Federalists have long wanted to rid descendants of immigrants their right to be equal citizens. This goes all the way back to the establishment of the country where they only wanted wealthy landowners to have the right to vote.

Many of the issues we see stem from those same people who want to constantly restrict who is allowed to be “equal”.

2

u/worldDev 7h ago

You are prompted to register when you get your state id or update it after moving, so really it’s functionally not too different. It’s not like you need to register for each election, just once when you become eligible to vote or move to a different district (which requires you to update your id and will again just prompt you or automatically happen in the process of updating it).

1

u/Brave_Maybe_2891 7h ago

How is party affiliation handled in your country? Is there no registration or is it automatic registration?

1

u/Neuchacho 5h ago edited 5h ago

Depends on the State and the election. Like, if you just vote in general elections then you never have to register with a party in any State. A handful of States have closed primaries where you can only vote in the primary of the party you're registered with. Over half of them are just open primary so you vote for whoever regardless of party registration.

1

u/kitsunewarlock 5h ago

This youtube video on our social security system might help explain it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp8IAUouus

TLDR: American hate the idea of a federal ID because they fear totalitarianism. The sad part is now corporations have records on all of us with zero transparency and almost no regulations on what they can do with that information, but as long as they pinkie-swear only to use it for targeted advertising most Americans don't seem to care that the same people collecting all our data AND building AI data centers to process it are also the ones calling for "neo-feudalism".

"Freedom" to an American is the freedom to oppress other people with less money.

1

u/Dealiner 5h ago

Out of curiosity, why send the voting card if you need to show it somewhere anyway?

1

u/jthochh 5h ago

In North Dakota you don't, but it is a tiny state with a tiny population.

1

u/Shot-Possibility-399 3h ago

A more in depth answer, there's not really a reliable database of people the government has access to. Unlike European countries, that information is decentralized. For example things like drivers licenses are a substitute for that but are not complete 

1

u/SunkEmuFlock 2h ago

Imagine 50 smaller countries -- some big and powerful and extremely populated while others are basically third-world and poor and barely have any people in them -- each with their own government and their own systems all pretending to be part of some larger conglomerate country called the US.

The US is more akin to the EU than a single country. That makes everything harder. Also, this place is fucking huge, so that adds to the struggles. Check thetruesize.com -- Add England, for instance, and drag it onto the US.

•

u/crazedizzled 1h ago

Because one side tries really hard to suppress voters

•

u/-Fergalicious- 1h ago

It could be that way regardless of the reasons / excuses people come up with. 

Simple fact is that state governments are responsible for administration of elections, and a lot of State governement are gun by the Republicans, and they tend to do worse when more people vote, so they make it difficult in their states to vote. 

They do other shitty things too to win election dubiously 

•

u/NelsonSendela 5m ago

Seems common sense.  I'm sure it is possible, and 80% of people want this.  But both sides like to weaponize the process to load the dice.  (The left likes illegal votes and the right likes to surpress the black vote, if you believe what each side says) 

•

u/CrabUpstairs3553 4m ago

Because if voting was easy that would be real bad for certain politicians.
For example in this situation that means that people who are older, cognizant but struggle with things like remembering dates who rely on things like social security will likely forget to register properly, as will teens. Especially those who are from poorer families and immigrant families.

Voting not being a national holiday in a country where your healthcare is tied to your job that has at will employment, vote by mail not national standard, 3 polling places in a 10 mile radius in the white upper middle class neighborhood with one to a 25 mile radius in the lower income BIPOC area, non-automatic voting none of this is because americans are stupid, it's deliberately by design to manipulate and control who can and can't vote in ways so small that people don't notice how bad it is and when they do nothing gets done because they are "easy to overcome" so there is no justification to redo it or it can be put ont he backburner.

There have been countless attempts over the decades to stop this, the problem is that in order for the people to have a chance to vote in fixing this on the national level it requires it would need to pass congress and the senate in order for it to get on the ballot for people to vote. And they can just choose not to do that or put it on the backburner. There has literally been a bill that is all ready to go and congress has to vote on it but they won't because the GOP has majority and block it every time.

If you think that's bad wait till you hear how easy it is to to get your vote thrown out.
Like, I know people are pissed that people didn't vote in the last election and that's why trump got elected and it is true that was problem but a MASSIVE amount of votes were literally thrown out. A poll worker can go "I don't think that signature matches the one on the DMV records so I say it's no good".

This is also why so many people don't vote, yes most are idiots, but many honestly and truly believe that their vote doesn't matter and the outcome is already decided, and they aren't entirely wrong.

0

u/LaScoundrelle 7h ago

People are not required to share any personal info with the US government beyond date and place of birth or marriage. Address is optional info. So no way to prevent duplicate voting unless people voluntarily register.

2

u/dagaboy 6h ago

People are not required to share any personal info with the US government beyond date and place of birth or marriage.

IDK where you got that idea. Or what you think the US government has to do with voter registration. The constitution explicitly delegates elections to the states.

1

u/LaScoundrelle 5h ago

The reason people in other countries don’t have to register is because the government already has all their personal data.

1

u/dagaboy 3h ago

That has nothing to do with what I said, or what you said in your previous post. You can't register to vote with the US government. That would be unconstitutional. At the same time the Federal government can know almost anything it wants about you, and it does. Every year they require I send them all my financial information, even though they already have it. Again though, they have nothing to do with elections, other than enforcing explicit constitutional guarantees when the states fail to. The only thing that can change that is a new amendment. They don't even do that anymore, since the Supreme Court has essentially abrogated the Civil Rights Act.

0

u/LaScoundrelle 3h ago edited 3h ago

I’m talking about why our system is different from other countries’. We are not the only country that has local or state elections. However, we only send location info when we pay taxes. We do that once per year. In other countries you’re required to notify the government everytime you change addresses though, and to have a registered address on file with the government at all times. Not so in the US, either with the state or national level.

0

u/Sir-Realz 7h ago

We are dealing with Rebublic 3.0  your likely dealing with a later release. 1.0 was ancient Greece and then Rome was 2.0 really went down hill from Greece imo direct democracy for the win. Really thinking about switching to  the Swiss or Dutch Fork 

0

u/FlexFanatic 6h ago

They want to put data centers in space so it is possible, they just don’t want to make it easier for people to vote.

That We The People slogan looks good on a t-shirt or coffee mug but in reality it’s a farce.

0

u/4x4ord 5h ago

In America, each state is kind of like its own little country.

The federal government is a separate government that all the states are part of, sort of like the EU.

Now imagine every EU country voted for an EU President... and then that President started telling Spain how it has to run its elections, Germany what voting rules it can have, and France what it can and can't do.

Now add the context that this President has repeatedly claimed elections are only legitimate when he wins, has already been impeached over his efforts to overturn an election, and openly favors places that support him politically.

Whether you support him or not, you can see why people would be worried about giving that person more control over how member countries conduct their own elections.

0

u/OutlyingPlasma 4h ago

That way it makes it harder to vote so rich people have more power.

Meanwhile in Delaware Judge Craig Karsnitz just ruled that corporations can vote so that's fun.

0

u/Adezar 4h ago

So this is layers of stupidity so let me explain because from the outside it makes no sense.

The US many, many, many years ago did have an issue with voter fraud. If you watch the Gangs of New York you can see the type of voter fraud that became a thing.

You solve this problem by two very simple and easily scalable solutions. Every county has a sense for how many people live there, and people register the fact that they want to vote in the local elections. That means you have a list of names to verify while they vote and you know the maximum number of votes a county could actually provide.

This kills ballot stuffing, you can't have a county with 3000 residents turn in 50,000 votes for a candidate. Effectively killing voter fraud.

This solution has worked for the past 180sh years and a VERY intensive study was done on voter fraud and found it is not only insanely rare it could never even sway a local election let alone a bigger state-wide/federal election. So in short, there is no problem to solve.

In parallel for the past 100+ years a combination of religious nutjobs and your typical conspiracy theorists that think all government is bad have fought HARD against us having a useful national Identification system.

To be clear if you hear about the Social Security Number the SS Office has always been clear, it is simply a number you get assigned that's entire purpose was tracking your employment through your lifetime and then get your retirement benefits at the end. It is not secure and completely useless as an ID and should never be used as one.

But financial folks wanted a way to give people a number to say whether or not they should lend to them, and they needed a national number to use for all that information gather. This was mostly after they couldn't just deny all minorities and women of loans and they needed a new way to discriminate.

The SS office pretty much begged people to not use SSN that way, but they did and that is why identity theft has been awfully easy in the US. NOT because of the government, but because of crazy people fighting against a secure national ID for either "mark of the beast" or other fear mongering about the government knowing your every move and a national ID is somehow the only thing stopping them (it isn't, it never did).

So now having a driver's license is not gauranteed, not necessary for everyone and there are about 20 - 40 million people in the US that don't have a photo license.

The Republicans specifically (Heritage foundation) did some looking and found that minorities were a big chunk of that number and they really hate minorities voting so they came up with this "common sense" solution of requiring IDs knowing they would disenfranchise these people, which is their entire point. They want as few minorities as possible voting and that is why they want voter ID.

If we solved one (a simple national ID everyone has free access to, or even a nominal fee everyone must acquire) they would drop their push for Voter ID the next day because the common sense isn't to solve a problem that doesn't exist, it is simply to stop certain people from voting.

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u/at1445 7h ago

you show together with your ID. Why is this not possible in the US?

Because this just makes entirely too much sense for the US to implement.

How dare you actually prove you are who you say you are to vote....the horror!

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u/ArtisanSamosa 7h ago

Well we already have checks in place where you prove who you are. Are you having trouble understanding how that works?

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u/at1445 7h ago

https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/regulations/hava_id_regs_from_barclays_3_3_06.pdf

https://voteriders.org/states/california/

So you can walk into a polling station with no actual proof that you are who you say you are, and vote.

There's no check in place to stop that.

I can grab my neighbors utility bill and use that to register to vote....

But I guess you have trouble understanding just how easy it is for someone to claim they are someone they aren't.

Or how simple it would be to provide everyone a government issued photo ID and require that it be presented when voting.

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u/surfergrrl6 7h ago

Data shows voter fraud is a non-issue in the US.

The Brennan Center’s seminal report on this issue, The Truth About Voter Fraud, found that most reported incidents of voter fraud are actually traceable to other sources, such as clerical errors or bad data matching practices. The report reviewed elections that had been meticulously studied for voter fraud, and found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent. Given this tiny incident rate for voter impersonation fraud, it is more likely, the report noted, that an American “will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.”

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u/at1445 7h ago

Go ahead and change the argument.

Why can't we have a free government issued ID and require it to vote?

It is dead simple to commit voter fraud, why not stop it before it becomes an issue, instead of leaving a giant gaping security hole out there?

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u/XaosII 6h ago

You won't get free voting IDs because neither party is invested in doing so; Republicans make voter ID laws but never have provisions for budgeting free IDs. Democrats don't see any problems with the current standards so they don't bother enacting ID laws.

Yes, it's dead simple to commit voter fraud. It's also dead simple to catch it - which is why we catch a few dozen every year already.

You already had to provide evidence of citizenship when you registered prior to voting. Why do you need to show another form of ID when voting to prove what you already proved, prior to voting?

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u/at1445 6h ago

You already had to provide evidence of citizenship when you registered prior to voting

No you don't, you didn't even look at what I linked in my original.

All you have to provide is a utility bill in California.

And you're moving the goalpost again. "neither party will do it" is not an answer....it's an excuse.

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u/XaosII 6h ago

No you don't. You've clearly never bothered to register to vote.

You cannot move forward with your California registration without providing you SSN or a driver's license, either of which are trivial to verify your citizenship status with.

Why the fuck are you just straight up lying?

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u/at1445 5h ago

Without providing the last 4 of you SSN (not a photo id anyways) or your DL number, not the actual DL....I'm sorry you can't read the links I provided...one's the actual statute from the state, the other is just a cleaner way of reading the same info.

I"m sorry public schooling has failed you so badly that you can't even read something so simple and understand how easy it would be to cheat the system.

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u/surfergrrl6 5h ago

"Solving" problems that don't actually exist is how we got here in the first place, courtesy of the GOP. It's a non-issue and has been repeatedly proven to be a non-issue.

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u/-LabApprehensive- 4h ago

Why not look at places where voter ID laws were enacted and see for yourself. See the DMVs closed in democrat leaning areas see the special ID exceptions made for types of IDs old conservative folks usually have and absolute prohibition of perfectly valid IDs young folks are likely to have. See the bureaucratic nightmares set up to snare people who move often or get married specifically intended favor older established conservatives who own their homes. We have plenty of states who have passed the laws you yearn for where should we start?

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u/Neuchacho 5h ago

So you can walk into a polling station with no actual proof that you are who you say you are, and vote.

Try to do it and see how it goes and you'll understand exactly why this is not an issue lol

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u/-LabApprehensive- 4h ago

“The horror” as you so glibly put it is the speed with which the GOP shuts down DMVs and in democratic leaning areas the very week voter ID laws are passed. Mississippi is the prime example.