Trump signs order seeking to overhaul US elections, including requiring proof of citizenship
Trump signs order seeking to overhaul US elections, including requiring proof of citizenship
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.
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.
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
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.
Are people really not aware of the issues with voter ID laws? Do we really need to go over this basic shit again?
What are these issues? Every other country in the world ids voters.
I'm not Trump fan by any means but it's hard to argue against voter ID. Americans in general seem to live in 3rd world when it comes to IDs with your social security number shit etc.
We had a whole civil rights movement about it. Jim Crow. MLK Jr. The laws are specifically intended to apply selective enforcement. That is their entire purpose. Why do you think these laws are always proposed by Republicans?
I'm sorry but not implementing ID cards is literally the dumbest way to address this 🙄
And y'all say Americans are dumb. Clearly stupidity is universal.
@drmoose @prole The UK only just brought it in a few years ago, against the advice of the Elec Commission as we don't really have any fraud and we don't have universal ID cards so it's complicated to know what you'd need to bring. Mostly it's passports or driving licences which relies on people having the cash to drive or travel, and their name matching the voter roll. If someone is turned away for not having ID they might not come back.
Maybe its time to join the 21st century and issue citizen ids?
No wonder identity theft and scams are so rampant in the US.
We have citizen IDs. If you really don't understand the issue. Open a history book. I'll even give you a starting point. Read about Jim Crow laws.
Nah that's not a justification. Just fix your country instead of running away from your problems. Seriously americans are spineless as fuck.
@drmoose it was discussed in the 00s (in the UK!) but was massively polarising and got dropped. People didn't like the idea of having to carry something that proved who they are.
That's just crazy to me. How can society function when people are afraid to identify themselves to officials they should be trusting and relying on.
@drmoose dunno, we have a strong tradition of petty bureaucratic jobsworths who take rule-following too far, and also a nasty history of over-policing protests.
In person voter fraud is so statistically inconsequential that it might as well not exist. The idea that this is meant to prevent voter fraud is preposterous. It's just pretense.
All this does is create more hurdles for people who already have difficulty voting from decades of disenfranchisement. It's the goal of these laws, and Republican politicians have literally admitted it.
How do you get an ID if you don't have an address? They can't win with policy, and high voter turnout always means the results skew left, so they focus on stopping people of certain demographics from voting altogether.
It's not about voting fraud but your entire culture being so crippled by fear that you avoid basic societal structures that are accepted as a net positive literally everywhere else. Maybe it's time to stand up for yourself?
Yeah you're right, I should have realized and done something about that sooner. Thank God you were here to tell me.
It really depends on what the purpose of voter ID is.
If it's to ensure that everyone that is entitled to vote votes once and only once, you'll see some key properties. It'll be free and easy to get. Applying for it is as simple as applying to vote (which itself will be easy to do), and it'll be virtually automatic that you get it. In many cases, it'll arrive unannounced as the Government already knows everything it needs to get you this card, and you won't have to do anything but show up at the polls election day with the card they gave you.
If it's to ensure that only 'desirable' voters can vote, it'll have other key properties. Getting it will be as easy as the above if you're the preferred class. But if you're the undesirable class of voter, getting it will have more hassles than its worth. It'll cost money. It'll have onerous requirements. It'll take you lots of time, and require transportation. It'll be designed to discourage you from voting. Because that's the goal. Onerous enough that you give up and let your betters rule you like God intended.
Can you guess what the United States' goal with voter ID is? Here's a hint. We have a long history of treating certain groups of people like crap, and despite 1865's end of the Civil War, there are STILL people who would rather see Black people in chains and treated like animals.
Every election I voted in I’ve had to have id.
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.