In my home state of Minnesota, voter ID has been a recent point of contention.
I have to honestly admit that I do not understand how/why there is debate against the issue, so I'm hoping that some of you opposed to it (either locally, or on a national scale, or both) could give me a breakdown of why you disagree.
For those of you too lazy to Google:
Wiki summary
State breakdown of current Voter ID laws
The only argument I heard against it (besides the typical government is putting us all on lists to execute when the revolution comes) is that it disenfranchises poor people and illegals. Illegals shouldn't be voting in the first place, and I'm betting the hobo with a litany of mental disorders doesn't care about it. Seems pretty sensible to me, I don't know who you can live today without some form of ID.
I think it should be mandatory in every state and I'm generally libertarian in my views.
I'm a bit uninformed about other states though, Florida has me register to vote and even gives me a voter ID card (no photo) when I do.
Last edited by spasm; July 25 2012 at 08:53:08 PM.
My understanding is that the sensible objections take the form of:
Requiring ID to vote is fine. Changing the requirements in the runup to an election is not.
Objectors would also claim that this debate always arises in the runup to major elctions, and goes quiet the year after when the impact on voters of any change would be minimised. This suggests the motives behind those wanting to change the ID requirements is not entirely about concern for the legitimacy of the democratic process. I have no idea whether that claim is accurate or fair, though.
I don't anyone would claim that requiring ID to vote is, in and of itself, wrong. However, introducing the requirement in teh runup to an election when it could have been brought in months/years earlier raises suspicions over motives.
I think it should be mandatory in the sense that "you only get one vote".
It should be anonymous in that "no one knows who you voted for".
It should not cost someone money or make it difficult to get or by some other means make some people over others more likely to have it.
As long as that is followed, I not only "don't care", I support it. In theory, it could, with relevant safe guards in place, cut down on fraud.
The issue I have with it (which doesn't really matter in the UK, since it'd never be this way... on account of us being "socialist", I guess) is making it cost money... perhaps $25 or $50... basically the individual paying for it, rather than "the tax payer" (i.e. it's spread out over time) and making people jump through loop holes. Those who do not have money / live on the breadline / poverty, cannot then afford one. Not to be partisan about it, but let's face it, MOST of those will vote democrat (if we pick the USA) if they had the choice between the two... ergo introducing it makes it "harder" for democrat "supporters" to vote for their representative. Whilst overly simplistic, that's one argument against it and it's one I understand.
Last edited by Ralara; July 25 2012 at 09:03:16 PM.
Hello? Oh, hello! I'm sorry it's a very bad line. No, no no... but that's not possible, she was sealed in to the Seventh Obelisk after the prayer meeting. Well, no, I get that it's important... an Egyptian Goddess loose on the Orient Express. In Space. Give us a mo....
... don't worry about a thing, your Majesty; we're on our way.
Originally Posted by pratell
This would be my only opposition, every time such concerns are raising there are calls for purging voter registration rolls. This is patently unacceptable and to me are blatant attempts to manipulate turnout and/or discard otherwise legitimate votes.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...ws-charts-maps
Proponents of voter ID laws are just using voter fraud justification to restrict voters who vote for the opposing party.Between 2000 and 2010, there were:
649 million votes cast in general elections
47,000 UFO sightings
441 Americans killed by lightning
13 credible cases of in-person voter impersonation
::ignorance: Do you guys in the US have to take any papers at all to register your vote?
This, essentially. It disenfranchises tens or hundreds of thousands of voters while its positive impact is (to put it generously) negligible. I don't see how this is good legislative policy in any context.
Consider this in another context. What if a bill was introduced that said anyone who has had a speeding ticket would have their licenses revoked for 6 months, because 0.1% of that demographic caused fatal accidents? They'd be laughed out of the chamber.
Status of Babby: 100% Formed
When I went to my first polling place a couple cycles back, I was told I needed something like, and I quote, "A cell phone bill with your name and address on it. If you do ebilling, just print it off". Not even a bill that had been mailed to me, a printed copy. I was blown away.
Where I live, in California, they registered me to vote at my citizenship ceremony. You prove your status as a U.S. citizen (obviously easy when you get the certificate freshly minted) and that registrar records your information, address and your party choice.
Once the (my only experience is in the last primary in June) election comes around, they send a non-valid ballot to you by mail. It contains the ballot sheet, and the polling location on voting day. You also have the option to record your vote then and mail it in. According to some of the election officials I spoke to when I actually went to the polling location (a community hall), most people just do this anyway.
Anyway, I went to the polling location, because, well, first time voting in the U.S. and all, and I hand in the fake ballot with my name and address on it. They find my name on the roll, I sign it and they gave me a real ballot. At no point was I asked for ID, but I did have to sign beside my name, so I don't think there is any possibility of extra votes. I guess I could have claimed to be someone else, but all in all, it didn't seem like voter fraud is a big issue to me anyway. Every vote is tallied, and has to correspond with a registered voter.
meh
I am always asked for a photo ID even though in my county of <8000 people, the people who run the polls where I vote know me by name. They look at my ID, find me on their computer list, check me off, and send me on to the guy who is the gatekeeper of the digital voting machine keycard. It's no big deal, usually takes about five minutes to vote because in 14 years here, I have only had to wait in line behind one other person once. Usually there is no one else in front of me and no delay.
The biggest problem with the ID requirement, especially coming so last minute, is that people tend to work in the same timeslot that you can go to %GOVT_OFFICE% and get an ID card. This normally isn't a problem, unless you are a poor family that needs to work every day to keep food on the table, and would have to spend money on gas taking the only family car for a day. And some states even charge you for the ID!
Funnily enough, poor people vote disproportionately Democrat, and the biggest pushers for voter ID are Republican.
Some quotes (emphasis mine)
The voter ID law passed by the GOP-controlled legislature in Pennsylvania could keep nearly half of registered voters in heavily Democratic Philadelphia from casting a ballot, according to new state data.
About 437,237 registered voters in Philly either lack a state-issued ID or have one that has expired before Nov. 6 of last year, which would make it invalid in the upcoming elections under Pennsylvania’s new law, according to state data obtained by the AFL-CIO. As first reported by Philadelphia City Paper, that number represents 43 percent of registered voters in the city, the highest in any county statewide.yetPennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R) said that the voter ID law passed by the legislature would help deliver the state for Mitt Romney in November.
“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation - abortion facility regulations - in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done,” Turzai said at this weekend’s Republican State Committee meeting , according to PoliticsPA.com.
A spokesman for Turzai confirmed the accuracy of the quote for TPM but argued that people were reading too much into it.
“The fact is that while Pennsylvania Democrats don’t like it to be talked about, there is election fraud,” Turzai spokesman Stephen Miskin told TPM. “Protecting the integrity of an individual vote is the purpose of any election reform."
and on the subject of these new laws in general:The state signed a stipulation agreement with lawyers for the plaintiffs which acknowledges there “have been no investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania; and the parties do not have direct personal knowledge of any such investigations or prosecutions in other states.”
Which sounds a bit rich at first, but:Attorney General Eric Holder deviated from his prepared remarks during a speech before the NAACP on Tuesday and called voter ID laws “poll taxes.” (video)
“Under the proposed law, concealed handgun licenses would be acceptable forms of photo ID, but student IDs would not,” Holder said, referring specifically to the voter ID law passed in Texas. “Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them, and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them. We call those poll taxes.”
That last line was not part of Holder’s prepared remarks released to the press.
since those taxes were declared unconstitutional, there's a case to be made that voter ID laws with non-free options are also unconstitutional.[poor] voters may be particularly affected by the significant costs of the documentation required to obtain a photo ID. Birth certificates can cost between $8 and $25. Marriage licenses, required for married women whose birth certificates include a maiden name, can cost between $8 and $20. By comparison, the notorious poll tax — outlawed during the civil rights era — cost $10.64 in current dollars.
Personally, though, I think the worst thing about the voting franchise in the US is that elections are held on a week day.
Last edited by Sponk; July 26 2012 at 01:57:29 AM.
Contract stuff to Seraphina Amaranth.
"You give me the awful impression - I hate to have to say - of someone who hasn't read any of the arguments against your position. Ever."
Living in a 'socialist' country, we have to ID before we can vote. I can see why. You want, after all, to make sure the people who vote are:
- Of an age to do so;
- Are citizens (which is not necessarily the same as holding the Dutch nationality, depends on election);
- Are allowed to vote
- Have not garnered unlimited votes from unsuspecting people
Before you explode @ nr 3 - there are some people who have a curator. These people might not be able to vote (think severely limited faculties). There is also the technical possibility that a judge has stripped someone of passive and/or active voting rights. This happened to a few Nazi sympathizers who had held office during the 2nd World War. Pretty rare all in all.
As for nr 4, you can 'deputize' someone to vote for you. A person cannot vote for more than 2 other people and the vote has to be cast at the same time as their own. This is to prevent certain people from just going into a caring facility for senior citizens and rounding up 200 votes. Once you're marked on the roster you can't come in with 2 new votes as your own has already been cast.
The process is much like Mynxee describes. We have 'kieskringen' - something like a small district. If you apply in time you can vote outside the district (administrative process), although you obviously can't vote in the neighbouring town if the election is for the local council. As long as there is nothing to connect you to your particular vote - and that is strictly part of the law - I don't see a problem. What is wrong with having an ID? It's pretty much mandatory here anyway (ask me about that some other time) and everyone has either a passport or ID card. The voting stations are manned by volunteers, not representatives of the government. The physical votes are kept and sometimes recounted to make sure no mistakes were made. (Voting computers are now mostly discarded due to mostly theoretical problems with them having been exposed).
I do see how it is terribly wrong to change a law like that in a period leading up to elections, leaving people (perhaps?) unable to get their identification sorted in time. Don't be too hasty to discard notions of election fraud; it happens in the USA too.
This seems pretty simple: voter ID is fine on paper, but this is the money quote (along with the matching one from Sponk up there):
If you're passing laws in the runup to an election which have the practical effect of disenfranchising votors and which solve a problem that doesn't exist then it's obvious what you're really doing.In 2007, a report prepared by the staff of the federal Election Assistance Commission found that, among experts, "there is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud".[21] The report was based on research conducted by a Republican elections lawyer and another expert with liberal leanings.[21]
(related side note: Doonesbury has just this week kicked off a series of comics on "Jim Crow laws")
Domination.
Vote Lark for CSM
the content of the graphic is actually a very important argument.http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...ws-charts-maps
Proponents of voter ID laws are just using voter fraud justification to restrict voters who vote for the opposing party.Between 2000 and 2010, there were:
649 million votes cast in general elections
47,000 UFO sightings
441 Americans killed by lightning
13 credible cases of in-person voter impersonation
from my (european) point of view voter ID is a non-problem, as it's very rare to not have a photo ID available (drivers license, passport, personal ID or similar) as in the context of a welfare state you regularly need these IDs anyway.
but looking at the US there seems to be no such tradition in regards to administration and interaction between state and citizens. considering that cost associated with photo IDs (even in europe it costs 50-100+ € to get such an ID) and the minimal benefit for everyday purposes (who needs a photo ID if never asked for it?) i certainly can see how it will exclude specific socio-economic groups of people.
add to this an increased frustration with representative democracy and it becomes even more questionable that people would spend a hundred $ just to take part in a political staging*, making elections as a fundamental process of representative democracy (even more) a farce.
*while "staging" has a negative undertone, symbolic acts are actually quite an important part of politics. e.g. the whole idea behind a parliamant is the idea to subvert antagonism inherent in a society and the associated tendency to violent outburst, into the peaceful ceremony of parliamentary practice of debating and casting votes. the same goes for elections - if it's not celebrated as an democratic practice, it becomes just another opinion poll without any ties to a concept of democracy.
On a side note I find it weird that so few americans have IDs. Pretty much anyone over the age of 15 got one here in Sweden.
Coming soon(tm).
<3 Entrox.
I find it a very real problem, maybe even bigger than the voting issue. If a large portion of your population effectively has no access to ID, you seem to be quite close to a present and real proletariate... bad.
From a German perspective, the whole U.S. voting system seems terribly complicated and therefore prone to errors (intentional and not). Let me quick describe the German system:
- Mandatory ID
You're even required to carry your ID card with you all the time to prove your identity (to authorities) if necessary. Sounds Orwellian to most of you, I guess, but in reality it's anon-issue. I'm 43 years old and in that time I needed to show my ID 2-3 times "outside of the norm" like at the airport for traveling and such. One occasion I remember was when a terror bombing (later reveal as initiated by the IRA) occurred nearby, where the victim was an officer of the British Rhine Army, and the police set up checkpoints and controlled every car which passed by. I guess we can all agree that it's reasonable to be asked for your ID in such cases. The other cases were similar.
- Mandatory registration
In Germany, you have to register with local authorities. You move somewhere -> you visit the town hall there and tell them where you live. That's mainly for two purposes: taxes and voting registration
- Automatic voting registration/notification
With the above, you're automatically registered as a voter (or not, depending of your citizenship). Each time an election takes place where you're eligible to vote, the city sends you an official voting card, where the type of election is pointed out and where your voting booth is located and its opening ours (typically 09:00-18:00, elections are alwaysheld on sundays in Germany). If you can't take part there at that time, because you're somewhere else, you might request either voting via mail or voting in a different district/city.
This very much resembles the fact that as a citizen you have the right (some even say duty) to vote. Under normal circumstances, there's nothing you need to do in order for you to be able to execute your perhaps most fundamental citizen right. On election day, you grab your voters invitation, wander to the voting booth and vote. Done!
So having described our process, the whole debate about Voter ID sounds very strange. And knowing the fact that in the U.S. there's non such thing like mandatory registration/ID, it seems the U.S. made a thing that should be very simple and accessible to every citizen overly complicated. Which then also opens up the opportunity for all sides to try to spin the system in their favor.
In the free world they just ask our name when we vote and tick it off the list and trust us to tell the truth since we are trustworthy.
Also voluntary suffrage is doing it wrong, you either make everyone vote or you only take the votes of those that deserve it. Voluntary voting only gets the extremes of either side voting, the "typical man in the street" doesn't bother.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks