And still this never happened in any other democratic country doing paper ballots. Simple reason: If there are more votes in the ballot box then registered voters (ideally this means everyone above voting and eligible to vote) you know someone tempered the ballot box. And having more than one (where I live I'm always puzzled how they find the hundreds of people to monitor the dozens of polling places since we have at least four people per polling station) person monitoring the handing out of ballots. having dozens polling stations, with a limited number of voters, means any ballot stuffing has close to no impact on results, doesn't scale and easy to catch. same goes for properly set up mail in ballots and voting, I know for a fact that all that works without any signatures and other things, a central registry of residents goes a looong way in solving this.
You find a bunch of people that can't or wouldn't vote and collect their automatically mailed ballots, fill them out and have them dropped off in boxes.
That's one way to illegally harvest votes. One that almost certainly occurred in nursing homes around the country in the last election.
See, that's why ballots are only sent out when people explicitly ask for them. otherwise you get a single-use invitation that is changed against a ballot at the polling station. Showing up with an ID but without invitation gets you struck from the voter list for that polling station, and it gets you a ballot.
So that leaves people that are coerced into asking for mail-in ballots and are then forced to vote a certain way. Without being caught doing it at a scale enough to tip an election. good luck doing that in a system that isn't gerrymandered to the point that one district in, e.g. Florida, can decide a presidential election with only a handful of votes. In a normal system not election is ever close enough that this small scale tempering has any impact on results. Which is exactly why it happens so rarely, and is almost always detected.
> See, that's why ballots are only sent out when people explicitly ask for them. otherwise you get a single-use invitation that is changed against a ballot at the polling station.
All over this thread I shared details from other Democracies that shiw that paper based, save, secret election cam, and do, work at scale. I'm inclined to consider this to be helpful as it provides additional perspective and context.
Obviously you should only be able to get a mail-in ballot if you request it. But I live in California, and ballots are mailed out to all registered voters. While convenient, it's bonkers to do it at all, let alone in any state that, unlike California, has close elections.
I still fail to understand why the US has such a hard time figuring out the simolest of things: elections, healthcare, gun control... I mean almost all developed countries did figure those out ages ago.
EDIT: Thinking of it, I'll add policing to the list. Made worse by the fact that even dictatorships solved it better then the US, totalitarian regimes tend to have better rules and control over law enforcement resulting in targeted brutality, and not the random variety, inflicted by badly trained and scared officers, the US seems to have.
Yet, it's weird how the U.S. is doing pretty well overall.
Maybe it's luck?
Or maybe something to do with the prescience of several men who laid out a framework for federalism and distributed power with clear checks and balances, ensuring resilience and the longest running constitutional democracy in the world [1], understanding that reasonable people can disagree and that the most effective form of governance is a non-centralized distributed system that serves the needs of state citizens first.
No, every other country outside the US is the best at everything. That's why every American is desperate to make a better life for themselves in the EU, Australia, New Zealand and Canada while the reverse almost never happens.
Seemed like a tongue-in-cheek quip to demonstrate that there are a lot more folks in the world who are trying to come to the U.S. than the opposite, which as far as I know is pretty true.
"According to a Gallup poll from January 2019, 16% of Americans, including 40% of women under the age of 30, would like to leave the United States."
In my experience of talking to said Americans, that many can't is largely a case of restrictive immigration policies in most places Americans would like to move to.
“ Though relatively average by global standards, the 16% of Americans overall who said in 2017 and again in 2018 that they would like to permanently move to another country -- if they could -- is higher than the average levels during either the George W. Bush (11%) or Barack Obama administration (10%).”
So usually America has lower than average citizens wanting to emigrate. Trump made Trump haters want to leave, bringing it up to global averages.
That’s a significant jump, but being globally average does not fit the narrative you’re trying to portray.
It’s possible. But it’s certainly more likely that if every other developed western country agrees on how we should approach those topics, and the US disagrees, that the US is the one who’s wrong here.
But there’s no way to really know either way, can’t really do blind testing of this can we!
And yet they are all a lot closer to one another than they are to the US wrt. healthcare approach and gun access. The US's much more laissez-faire free-market approach to healthcare and gun control is a difference of kind, not of degree, compared to say Canada and Australia.
In the case of elections, it's because one party has decided that making it as easy to vote as possible helps them win elections and so insists that election fraud does not exist and any protective measures are an attack on democracy itself. And they have the support of most of the media and organisations like the ACLU, so those claims are part of the mainstream beliefs in the USA and other countries' experiences with stuff like vote-by-mail fraud are ignored. At least, that's the kindest explanation I can give, given that one of their former congressmen just got caught rigging a bunch of elections...
You may have noticed that between 2016 and 2020 there were a bunch of media articles about voting security and how poor it was despite this. That's because the US media has no problem concluding that the voting system can't be trusted when the wrong party wins something important, like the presidential election. I'm not even exaggerating here, whether (say) voting machine security is portrayed as a non-issue that's impossible to exploit or a gaping hole that throws into question the entire results aligns exactly with who's winning.
Other countries have NOT figured out gun control, as the recent fall of Hong Kong and imprisonment of the entire continent of Australia have illustrated.
The solution is not a simple one as you imply, otherwise it would have been solved already. Give people some credit!
> Other countries have NOT figured out gun control, as the recent fall of Hong Kong and imprisonment of the entire continent of Australia have illustrated.
Australia, imprisoned? Because of our gun laws?
I have access to four different shooting ranges within twenty minutes travel, and my friends go hunting every other weekend. How exactly are we imprisoned?
Yes, although to the grand-parent it's not clear how guns would have "helped" had you wanted to leave.
I mean, who exactly would you shoot? And after shooting them how would the outcome improve?
If you go to the airport how do you find a plane big enough to take you somewhere? Or enough people to prepare it to fly? And when you get to where you are going, how do you avoid getting arrested?
Ditto a boat. And a boat to where exactly?
Having a gun would literally have made zero difference on anything. Oh, wait, you meant that enough gun owners would get together, and perform some coup-like action to replace the government? Sure. That seems likely to turn out really well.
You seem to underestimate the intelligence of government officials. They would not put themselves in harm's way to stop thousands of armed people from doing what they wish to do. No shots need be fired by anyone.
No Australian government agent is going to shoot fellow Australians, or be shot by fellow Australians, to enforce such an absurd prohibition on free and peaceful movement.
Such unilateral authoritarian nonsense can only occur when the majority of the population is disarmed first.
You'll note that the same thing happened in New York City during the 2004 RNC, during Bush's term and Bush's invasion of Iraq. There were unlawful mass arrests by NYPD of thousands of peaceful protesters, who were kettled and housed with limited food and water for 24-48h in large high-density camps along the river. Most were released without charges several days later (when the RNC was over) which, years later, resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money being paid out as settlement for the illegal actions of the police. This never would have happened if the protest were not approximately 0% armed; the police would not have attempted to kettle a crowd where even a few dozen were able to defend themselves from police violence.
This is why Hong Kong no longer has a free press, fair elections, or due process. They were forced to "fight" well-armed authoritarians with nothing more than umbrellas and laser pointers. Such a battle simply would not have happened in the first place were the population sufficiently armed. Police are not stupid; they will only engage with violence where they are nearly certain not to lose or be harmed (as we observed recently in Texas).
A well-armed population keeps the state from overstepping its bounds without a single shot being fired.
Ehat exactly do you think would have happened in Hong Kong if the protesters were carrying AR-15s? Eould the Chinese just have said "sorry, never mind, clearly it's our fault", or woupd they have cracked down really hard?
Not that this whole "armed people against the government" thing works in the US, after all the Jan 6th insurrection wasn't an armed mob storming the capitol. Despite being from groups that are peretty well armed.
No unorganised group of people will ever beat state actors just by being armed. Another counter point that often brought up is the rose of the Nazis and how the Nazis took away the guns first. Wrong, because there loads of illegal militias equipped with military grade weaponry around that time. It was exactly those grouos that enabled the Nazis rise to power and formed the core of the SA. The Nazis took the guns awau from the SA, a long with the leadership and the whole organisation, once they were firmly in power.
>> No Australian government agent is going to shoot fellow Australians, or be shot by fellow Australians, to enforce such an absurd prohibition on free and peaceful movement.
So then if Australians wanted to mass-disobey the stay-at-home order they could. As you say "No Australian government agent is going to shoot fellow Australians." So guns or no guns, if there was sufficient demand citizens who wanted to could simply have moved around. (Lacking planes and boats travel out of Australia would likely still be restricted.)
By your own point, it's not lack of guns that caused the population to follow the guidelines. It was rather a respect for authority, and the rule of law, that kept the masses at home. Sure a few would reject those guidelines, and be arrested, but that is literally the "few" - not the majority.
>> Such unilateral authoritarian nonsense can only occur when the majority of the population is disarmed first.
I'm not sure I agree. There is plenty of unilateral authority in places where people have guns.
>> You'll note that the same thing happened in New York City during the 2004 RNC, during Bush's term and Bush's invasion of Iraq. There were unlawful mass arrests by NYPD of thousands of peaceful protesters, who were kettled and housed with limited food and water for 24-48h in large high-density camps along the river. Most were released without charges several days later (when the RNC was over) which, years later, resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money being paid out as settlement for the illegal actions of the police.
Indeed the police committed illegal actions, and have paid out well for it. Perhaps they will learn from that, perhaps not.
>> This never would have happened if the protest were not approximately 0% armed; the police would not have attempted to kettle a crowd where even a few dozen were able to defend themselves from police violence.
um. So you're saying they were reasonably sure that out of thousands of protesters there weren't "a few dozen" who were armed? I agree that sounds reasonable. but if there had been say 100 armed those 100 would have opened fire on the police, and everyone would just have gone home? Given the follow up from another incident (Jan 6) I suspect anyone who fired would have been speedily prosecuted. Anyone who even brandished a gun would have been prosecuted. A bunch of people (likely from both sides) would be dead - and that's somehow a _better_ outcome?
On the other hand it doesn't really matter if the protesters were armed or not - ultimately it was the _perception_ that they were not which allowed them to corral the protest?
>> This is why Hong Kong no longer has a free press, fair elections, or due process. They were forced to "fight" well-armed authoritarians with nothing more than umbrellas and laser pointers. Such a battle simply would not have happened in the first place were the population sufficiently armed. Police are not stupid; they will only engage with violence where they are nearly certain not to lose or be harmed (as we observed recently in Texas).
I think you perhaps are miss-conflating local police in a small Texas town, to the discipline and willingness of well trained armed forces of authoritarian regimes. I don't think hand-guns in Hong Kong would have made the slightest bit of difference to the Chinese authorities in Hong Kong.
>> A well-armed population keeps the state from overstepping its bounds without a single shot being fired.
That's certainly a point of view, and it's obviously a very popular view with a lot of US citizens. I respect that you have that point of view, and respect your right to have that point of view. Personally I don't see that your view is accurate to the reality in the US, much less anywhere else.
It's widely reported that at least 40% of Americans believe the election was rigged. Whether they are correct or not is irrelevant. If 40% of a population _believe_ that democracy has been usurped, and are armed to the teeth, and yet clearly there has not been an (armed) uprising then I'm wondering what has to happen for said armed population to actually take action? Even the Jan 6 incident is laughable for how small, unarmed, and ineffective it was. Apparently there were lots of conspirators, much planning behind the scenes, all sorts of machinations in play, and yet all we got was some folk wandering around a building, then going home. If the outcome of the 2nd amendment is Jan 6, well that seems like a wasted effort.
> It's widely reported that at least 40% of Americans believe the election was rigged. Whether they are correct or not is irrelevant. If 40% of a population _believe_ that democracy has been usurped, and are armed to the teeth, and yet clearly there has not been an (armed) uprising then I'm wondering what has to happen for said armed population to actually take action?
I don't think we're in the final inning yet. The only thing I know for sure is that I don't intend to be in North America for any day in January 2025, and that I will have full and complete backups of all my irreplaceable data on my person whilst traveling.
The type of populace that willingly disarms themselves is the same populace that willingly accepts totalitarian lockdowns.
In America, if the government had tried anything near that, there'd have been riots immediately. And yes, rioters with guns are a lot less likely to be stopped.
Well for one thing there's 50 states. But also people are VERY individualistic and simply lookout for themselves and their interest at all costs. Why would a state send out ballots to everyone, because they know it works to get the people they want elected. It doesn't matter if it's fraud as long as they win. Why would a state delete 100,000s of thousands of active voters a few days before elections. Exact same reason.
Everything in the US is the way it is because it's best for SOMEONE, but rarely everyone.
because it's a physically massive Republic of 50 independent States, with lots and lots of disagreement over whether the State or Federal government should have more power.
How come the same things - healthcare, gun control, elections, police work in Switzerland, but not in US nowadays? Maybe because ~15% of population are not “angry getto”/“kill whites” people and illegal immigrants get deported ?
We know it’s not an issue because if people were returning mailed ballots without the knowledge of the intended recipient, there would be a ton of people who would be logged as voting twice (once the mail in ballot and once in person or after requesting and submitting a replacement mail in ballot).
This was one of the issues in 2020. If a person voted in person, but a mail in ballot was received that mail in ballot was just rejected. Lots of politicians from one party were adamant about telling people who voted by mail to show up in person as well because the mail in ballots may not arrive in time. So there were millions of people with double votes where the mail in was auto-rejected. When analyst tried to nail down exact numbers or to audit specific instance it turns out the rejections we're not logged. The best they could do was determine, in some states, the number of people who requested absentee, but voted in person.
When contacting these people many claimed they did not request or receive the mail in ballot.
In states like California where everyone was mailed a ballot, a voters who mailed a ballot but weren’t sure if it was counted were asked to vote in person using a provisional ballot.
It's interesting how many errors people make when the topic of discussion is a ~"culture war" issue - and this topic is hardware/software/process related, which is right in the wheelhouse of most HN folks.
Has anyone ever read any studies into this phenomenon, or anything closely related?
California has lots of close elections, even if it's aggregate of state level and federal elections don't tend to be close between the two major national parties.
And doing that on any kind of scale will undoubtedly end with the perpetrator in jail for voter fraud. It's easy to speculate about how, it's a lot harder to do it in a way that gets away with it without leaving a trail that eventually catches up with them.
Yes and no. I would argue that if enough people are doing this on a small scale then there's potential for significant impact.
All that is required is the belief that it is imperative your team wins. The ideology that you can be dishonest if you do it for the right reasons grants considerable latitude for these types of corrections.
In the case you present, one bad actor is somehow able to manipulate the system en mass. That is certainly likely to draw attention, as you've pointed out.
And if the fraud is big enough the election in that polling station will be repeated. The more polling stations you have, the harder it is that a single station can impact overall results.
My state is exclusively postal voting, and checks signatures. If the deviation is too great, the reject the ballot. Has happened to my wife. Inconvenient, but it's a non-trivial hurdle.
For the sake of integrity, signature checking should be mandatory for every ballot. It would/could be entirely automated anyway. There is no burden on the states to perform the check.
Nothing would make me more convinced of an election outcome than having my ballot rejected due to signature comparison and getting the opportunity to cast it again
All told those cases total less than 200 votes. No one (edit: to be clear - no reasonable folk) claims fraud doesn't happen. Just not on the scale that has been claimed at times, and not enough to tip an election with millions of votes. Could a coordinated attack swing a local race, maybe. But as seen by the links you provided, there are people watching for these kinds of fraud, and people get caught all the time, even when it's just a single extra vote, much less enough to actually make a difference.
In the 2020 election one House of Representatives race was won by 6 votes. Another by about 120.
In the 2000 Washington gubernatorial race the number of votes counted exceeded the number of registered voters and the margin of victory was less than the number of excess votes.
And even if it is just a local school board seat or dog catcher, it’s still a violation of people’s civil rights. What’s more is local elections usually have way more direct impact on people’s lives than federal elections.
The Wikipedia page, as well as the cited sources, are a fun read. The final decision by a judge in the case was that 1678 illegal votes were to be removed from the total number of votes cast. However, they were not apportioned to either candidate. The final margin of victory was 133 votes.
False. I've encountered easily thousands of people who make such claims on the internet.
You might then say "No officials make such claims" - here you're technically correct, but somewhat misinformative: the people in such situations have public relations professionals at their disposal, and also tend to have years of experience (or at least observation) of how to do PR.
When election fraud is discussed, they choose their words carefully, opting to discuss not election fraud, but massive election fraud.
If the topic was other than this one (if "the shoe was on the other foot" so to speak), I don't think these things would be hard to notice...but, human psychology is what it is, so here we are.
> But as seen by the links you provided, there are people watching for these kinds of fraud, and people get caught all the time, even when it's just a single extra vote, much less enough to actually make a difference.
This is speculation, stated in the form of a fact - this, combined with the topic, may cause readers to form a belief that it is necessarily factual.
Yes, individuals just as mistaken as those who claim fraud is rampant claim there is not fraud. People make those kinds of mistaken statements all the time. How about "most reasonable people who understand the process and have spent a little bit of time examining how it works"? I thought that was closer to the standard in discussions on HN, not "some rando on Twitter spouting off", but I guess not.
It is not speculation that there are people who look for election fraud (and then prosecute it when found). And folks do get caught/prosecuted for just about every election cycle, so "all the time". And the links demonstrate that. I may have expounded on that a bit but the language is not speculative except maybe the portion about whether or not there is enough to make a difference. That is my opinion, but heavily based on the reading on this topic I have done, checking claims from a wide variety of sources, parties, etc. I make no claims to expertise but I do believe the information I have shared is accurate to the best of my ability and folks can do with that what they will (hopefully spend their own time actually making sure they are not misled).
I think the centre of the point of contention (and we can work outward from there) can be isolated like so: have there been zero authoritative personnel that have claimed or implied that fraud sufficient to change the outcome of an election is impossible?
And while contemplating this idea, remember that we are dealing with human beings.
Nothing is impossible. But the chance of the being sufficient fraud to change say the presidential election is extremely unlikely, especially given the evidence that we have.
> But the chance of the being sufficient fraud to change say the presidential election is extremely unlikely....
Technically, the likelihood is not known. Humans are welcome to state estimates of the likelihood, and believe those estimates to be true (and rebroadcast them, seeding the "fact" into other minds), but base reality is where the truth lies. We can (and do!) pretend that our estimated reality is factual but this is a collective cultural delusion, and a harmful one at that (which sometimes people can see clearly (in the behavior of our outgroups), and other times not (in their own and ingroup behavior)). Pick any culture war topic thread on HN, and observe how people describe "reality" - the phenomenon is not really hiding as much as we aren't able to see it (similar to how we couldn't see certain things until we developed techniques, like using lenses to see into different realms of reality).
> ...especially given the evidence that we have.
Our discovery of evidence has no influence on that which preceded it, it only has influence on our beliefs of that which preceded it. Unfortunately, we often tend to not form a distinction between the two.
I don't think the number has to be zero in your hypothetical. (Yes, I'm aware I said "no one", and I'll admit that probably should have been "the vast majority ...")
I use zero as a technique to attempt to "shock" minds into a higher plane of rationality. It's hard to tell how effective this technique is, under various scenarios. It doesn't work great in settings where there are ~no rules, like internet forums. It typically works excellently when debugging tricky software bugs, which is quite analogous to the functioning of the human mind imho, so I think it has promise.
Nobody likes to get down to the details of actual fraud events, really. Neither side. Democrats because they don't believe it happens often. Republicans because when it does happen, 9 times out of 10 the perp turns out to be a Republican. This has been the amusing reality for years now.
I personally think that fraud of a significant scale in a country with thousands of different voting systems is basically impossible to hide, and a lot of people are looking for it. We take many steps to reduce that risk. And when we catch someone trying, we should slap them down hard as an example to others.
> 9 times out of 10 the perp turns out to be a Republican. This has been the amusing reality for years now.
Citation? This article shows 2 out of 2 as Democrats.
This article shows a guilty plea from a Democrat who for years rigged votes with a Judge of Elections and Democrat Ward Leader, Domenick J. DeMuro. Demuro pled guilty in 2020.
The ABA keeps a list of current litigation on election law. [1] Election law cases almost invariably come down to nobody wanting or being able to take responsibility. People are aware of issues, but the court cases take too long and the courts rule there is no remedy after the election, the plaintiffs suing have no standing, there is no remedy in law, since the legislature should oversee not the courts, etc. Yet, the legislatures do nothing but talk. Saying there isn't elections fraud all around is incorrect.
If you're going to mock someone for not googling, you better come up with the goods: real evidence of substantial fraud in a quantity that would make a difference.
Otherwise, keep the sarcastic BS to yourself. Please.
> You find a bunch of people that can't or wouldn't vote and collect their automatically mailed ballots, fill them out and have them dropped off in boxes.
>That's one way to illegally harvest votes. One that almost certainly occurred in nursing homes around the country in the last election.
thenewwazoo replied:
> Citation, please.
This isn't about substantial fraud. It is about a very specific source of fraud that upsidesinclude said was likely to have happened.
The first step to processing mail ballots is checking that the signature matches the voter's known signature (usually submitted at the time of voter registration). Are you proposing a conspiracy where crooks are somehow forging hundreds (if not thousands) of signatures? And there's no paper trail of communications or money changing hands to coordinate it all?
No signatures where I live, what's next analysis of hand writing? You only get one mail in ballot, which is returned absolutely anonymous. Once you order one, you are struck from the on-site ballot list. You can exchange your mail-in ballot, I think, for a normal paper ballot. if you return the mail-in one. So your solution would mean manually following up every single mail-in ballot and steal it. Assuming you find out who ordered one.
using the "left-over" ballots of people not voting, sure, all you have o do is to convince the other 3 to 4 people present at the polling station to go along. and since we have literally thousands of those stations you have to repeat that a lot. And as soon as the participation exceeds the other places, people will investigate. The provisional count done on-site is redone before it is official, so again deviations will be found. And if they are not, congrats, you managed to stuff maybe a dozen ballots, if you are lucky.
Signatures are, frankly, a bad way to determine if a ballot is valid or not. People's signatures change all the time and there's not exactly a science in determining whether or not two are the same. It's ultimately up to the counter to make that determination.
Otherwise, I agree with your point. The reason ballot harvesting is much less of an issue than made out is because there's a vast paper trail with each mail in ballot cast.
That is quite a statement. Especially considering signatures are the primary way ballots are certified.
I don't believe 'signatures change' is reasonable or valid. By the time someone reaches adulthood and has an ID, their mark is likely to be quite distinct. Check your grandmother's signature sometime. My point being, that dismissal is not evidence or fact based, but likely aligns with your opinion.
>ultimately up to the counter
There's absolutely no reason to do that. Digital files already exist of all signatures and the envelope is coded to each voter. The comparison can be done trivially by image processing.
> I don't believe 'signatures change' is reasonable or valid. By the time someone reaches adulthood and has an ID, their mark is likely to be quite distinct. Check your grandmother's signature sometime.
I have my own signature that I can check and I KNOW it has changed significantly over time. Why? Because I don't sign a lot of things! Hell, I hardly write anything down.
There are many, MANY, reasons a signature can change, for example, injury. But beyond that, there's just general drift in the way people write things. [1]
> The comparison can be done trivially by image processing.
No, it can't, because the signature is not exact, even in the best of cases. The software HAS to make allowances in differences and once that happens, we are in the territory of "what is this actually proving?"
Further, signature forgery is a thing. There's a reason banks and CCs no longer even check the signature. It's a relic that proves nothing.
But beyond all this conversation, the current process for states doing signature validation isn't to reach out to the person that cast the vote to verify their ballot, no, instead they mark the ballot as invalid and move on. [2]
Indeed, if the concern was voter fraud, why WOULDN'T you want to reach out to the absentee ballot caster to find out if they actually cast the ballot? Why would "throw it away" ever be the right move?
the only country I know that uses signatures is the US, Germany definitely doesn't. And I don't have to check my grandma's signature, mine is enough which is basically a different person compared to the one I had two passport ago (give or take 10 years). Plus there are proven ways without signatures and other shenanigans.
> a central registry of residents goes a long way in solving this.
Many US problems could be solved if Americans could get over our irrational fears about comprehensive databases. The boogeyman is already real. Let's be tracked in one auditable location instead of 36+ incomplete and contradictory databases where the contradictions can be used as "evidence" of fraud. The downsides are already here, let's acknowledge reality and then build systems to give us a chance at enjoying the benefits of centralized intelligence.
If the US would stop using photo IDs as a bludgeon to keep "the wrong people" from voting, everyone could get on board with requiring it. That has always been the real blocker.
I do like postal mail. I've yet to see a convincing argument that the coercion risk is substantial enough to offset the other benefits. Voting slowly at my living room table is awesome.
Give the FEC the power to issue photo ID for voting. Legislate that it is only valid for that purpose and any other use is illegal. Send out census-style teams to track down every citizen and issue them a card, free of charge.
Of course, there are all sorts of problems with this that are entirely self-inflicted. Someone will oppose a national ID, even if we already have that. Someone else will point out that the states legally get to make their own voting rules, and they're right. This isn't a problem anyone actually wants to solve. Democrats want to make it easier to vote, Republicans want to make it harder. It's like every other tribal issue, neither side will give an inch because they fear the other side will take a mile.
I have seen your posts on HN, I don't buy that you're actually confused. Overt racism at the door to the DMV is not at all how you disenfranchise a group of citizens, especially in modern times. You make sure DMVs in predominantly black neighborhoods have short hours at times most inconvenient, you make sure polling places are understaffed and overbooked, things like that. It insulates you against direct evidence but still achieves your goal.
> You make sure DMVs in predominantly black neighborhoods have short hours at times most inconvenient, you make sure polling places are understaffed and overbooked, things like that.
Wow, I didn’t know I live in a black neighborhood!
When one considers action such as this in light of the GOP being caught red-handed attempting to shape the census questions to deprive states of Congressional representation (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/census-citizenship-que...), it becomes, at the very least, suspicious. For at least a short time (politically speaking, maybe half a generation), the GOP has lost the benefit of the doubt regarding its actions being race-neutral and some healthy skepticism is justified.
Please - we don’t need another single-purpose ID card. Why not just make a single ID card that all privileges that are recognized in all 50 states can be added to? Driver’s license classes, concealed carry, voting, security clearance, donor preferences, etc. everyone has to get a new one every 4 years, and there’s an electronic record for verification of basic info like photo and name when internet access is available.
Because a narrowly focused voter ID card is more difficult for naysayers to rebut, because they are themselves claiming we need exactly that. I support a real national ID card myself.
I oppose Voter IDs because I don’t think we need them. I’m on the fence with a National ID because I’m concerned it would have the same problems as Voter ID.
Because this is not a power granted to the federal government, it is reserved for the states.
IANAL, but I believe that something like this would require a constitutional amendment, unless it could be squeezed in under the umbrella of the ICC like most other federal overreach laws.
> Because this is not a power granted to the federal government, it is reserved for the states.
If one agrees that this is true, that's not an answer to the question of why not do it; it does affect the mechanics—either a Constitutional Amendment (to do it federally) or a fifty-state compact (do it as a coordinated state-ID system for all state purposes, which is arguably closer to what was described) would be available mechanisms.
“The Constitution doesn't currently allow the federal government to do it” is not an answer to “why not do this in a centrally coordinated way”.
The problem I have with this is that we essentially already have a national ID system. Social Security numbers are ubiquitous despite their original intention to not be used for identification because there's no existing national alternative. Everybody knows how stupid this system is yet we've painted ourselves into a corner and I don't think we'll ever walk back our reliance on it as an ID unless there's legislation mandating it and publishing it for everyone that has one assigned.
Personally I think there is some constitutional justification for a national ID system. The commerce clause gets abused a lot IMHO but identity is at the core of just about any contract. You could argue that state identification and plain old name, address, signature are sufficient, but it's not like SSNs are ubiquitous for no reason. Even as dumb as it is to use a single number for someone that never changes, the benefits of a single static identifier that is the same across a person's lifetime and established by the government outweighs the horrific insecurity of it all. Fundamentally a government is the root authority of legal identity for all the citizens of that country. The government should provide a modern secure way of establishing identity for both public and private matters.
Driver’s licenses are not your voter id in many states, and aren’t a federal license. Real ID is supposed to bring all licenses to the same standards, but it’s not everywhere yet.
Voter id laws have been shown to increase voter turn out in the United States. Most states give free IDs for voting. It is a federal law that you must show an ID to register. Stop with this misinformed nonsense that there is a crazy conspiracy to keep "brown" people from voting. Maybe once yes but not for awhile.
Just like white people are authoritative about other white people, if we ask black people for the truth they must be right. Or, you know, not.
- 13% of Blacks, 10% of Hispanics, but only 5 percent
of Whites lack photographic identification.
- 12% of adults living in a household with less than $25,000 annual
income lack photo ID, compared to just 2 percent in households with
over $150,000 annual income.
- 15 percent of 17-20 year olds lack photo ID, and 11 percent of those ages 21-24 lack photo ID.
So yeah, ID requirements are not a half bad way to skew election results in your favor.
And consider for a moment just how strong an advantage Republicans have in the house of representatives these days compared to how weak their actual number of represented voters is. All the little efforts absolutely add up to real results.
How many of those 12-15% are actually unable to get an ID as opposed to "can't be bothered/don't need it"?
An ID requirement would get some of those to get one - if they wanted to vote.
And how does the voter turnout look for those groups anyway?
The only people who might be impacted negatively by ID requirement are those unable (for whatever reason? Why can't there be an easy way to get an ID in the first place?) and actually wanting to vote.
I don't know about those groups specifically, but overall turnout is typically around 60% for presidential elections and 40% for midterm elections, for every election since at least 2000.
Photo ID is required in the United States in order to work (Form I-9), obtain housing, drive a car, buy alcohol or tobacco, enter age-restricted venues, purchase firearms, drive a car, go through airport security, and in general, to participate in society. And one of the things I’ve listed is an enumerated constitutional right. So I don’t think it’s an unreasonable requirement for voting. Someone who doesn’t participate in society to such a degree that they already don’t need ID is probably unlikely to be voting in the first place, and it’s somewhat dubious IMO to bend over backwards to specifically court such voters.
Yep only what 60% of Americans vote? I have a hard time believing any of the meth addicted homeless really care all that much about who's running for mayor.
I think almost every person interested in elections is someone with enough money to get an ID every 5 years.
But hell give out a subsidy for the poor to get an ID card for free.
Some courts seem to disagree, wasn't there a verdict in a federal (?) court calling voter ID requirements in some state to target with "surgical precision" a certain demographic?
Germany has pretty liberal mail im voting, we had a bunch electuons during Covid with obvious increases of mail in voting. And we don't need IDs. We do have automatic and central "voter registration" (as basis to get the mandatory ID among other things).
Saying that Germany doesn’t have voter IDs is technically true but a bit misleading. In the US, registering to vote is super easy and can be done online in most states. In Germany, the residency registration that’s also used for voting requires showing up in person within a month of moving.
The German system would be much more onerous if implemented in America than one tied to driver’s licenses that virtually everyone in America has already.
Don't you also have to update your driver's license when moving? Then what is more onerous about it?
> requires showing up in person within a month of moving
Not during covid by the way. I moved in 2020 and could simply send in the documents by email. Then some time later I had to briefly drop by to get a stamp for my ID, but that was like 5 minutes.
> registering to vote is super easy and can be done online in most states
That is nice, but not having to register at all is even easier.
Partially. You can fill out and send all documents online or by mail -- at least in the city I moved to. Then once everything is done you need to make an appointment to stop by and pick up your address sticker and certificate.
Having some in person part for ID things seems unavoidable, but nothing onerous.
In America, people would call that process racist voter disenfranchisement. “Black and brown people” don’t have Internet access or stamps, they would assert, and can’t take time off from working three jobs to show up to a citizenship office.
Unless you change your primary residency you don't have to do anything in Germany. And registering a secondary residency has tax implications but none regarding voting.
And why do think your German ID card won't work anymore if the address on it is wrong?
> Anyone who moves into a residence in Germany must register within two weeks of moving in. To register, you have to go to the registration authority of your municipality and present a valid ID card, passport or passport substitute document and a certificate issued by the person providing the residence.
> Persons moving abroad must deregister with the registration authority of their municipality, while those moving within Germany only have to register their new residence. It is not necessary to deregister the former residence.
> Both Germans and foreigners are required to register. Violations of the registration re-quirement are subject to fines.
I didn’t say the German ID card would stop working. But as I understand it, voting is based on your registered address, which must be current to vote, and that residency registration requires showing up in person.
The point is that voting in Germany requires showing up to a registration office with documents every time you move, which is more onerous than presenting an ID to vote in the US. Both voter registration and renewing a driver’s license or changing your address on your license can be done completely online in most states. I’ve only gone in person to deal with my driver’s license twice in my life (I’m almost 40), despite moving almost a dozen times. Once when I got my license as a teenager, and once when I changed my residency permanently from Virginia to Maryland.
I vote but I don’t vote in every single election that I can due to other obligations.
Their fraud used the voter information of real people who they expect to simply not come to the polling station. It’s hard to catch. If you notice double voting from when the person actually votes then they simply throw out both votes (legitimate and illegitimate).
This seems like a tactic that would work well in a place like the USA which has low voter turn out.
As stated above, by increasing the number of polling places the impact of any of these can be reduced enough to not matter. Using government ID cards or voting invitations sent by authorities before handing out the ballot helps as well, anything short of stealing the invitation wont work. And even if you steal the invitation the real person has to not show up. Because if they do, without invitation but with an ID, your fraudulent vote (singular, as in one vote) is immediately identified.
And I am describing just one way of how paper ballots work save, anonymous and at scale. You need some truly mind blowing organizational fuck up (look up the last election in Berlin) for it to not work. An even then it affected one single (?) voting district (as in polling places, not candidate districts if i remember correctly), was instantly identified and investigated and almost impossible to use to temper with the results (it was found out immediately).
I guess it would be fun then to drive around and issue duplicate votes for anyone who who has a sign in their yard that disagrees with me, thereby getting their vote thrown out.
The number of people who actually vote is often nowhere near the number registered, meaning you have lots of padding with which to work. This idea doesn't pan out whatsoever.
