[HN Gopher] Strict Id Laws Don't Stop Voters: Evidence from a U....
___________________________________________________________________
Strict Id Laws Don't Stop Voters: Evidence from a U.S. Nationwide
Panel
Author : johntfella
Score : 116 points
Date : 2021-10-14 20:12 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (academic.oup.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (academic.oup.com)
| cletus wrote:
| We can only see the abstract, sadly, so it's hard to say what
| it's actually found. But, I disagree with the headline, for
| several reasons.
|
| 1. Requiring ID to vote requires definition. The various laws
| hastily passed in the wake of the 2020 election are not all the
| same. For example, Texas allows you to use a gun club membership
| as ID but not a student ID [1]. Other states have different
| requirements for allowed IDs;
|
| 2. There's absolutely no evidence this is even necessary.
| Example: less than two dozen cases of voter fraud from 2020 [2].
| Different states have different numbers but over the years we're
| talking about possibly hundreds of cases;
|
| 3. Strict ID requirements are merely one aspect of an overall and
| coordinated effort of voter suppression by GOP-led state
| governments aimed at people who tend to vote Democrat.
|
| 4. Voter suppression is endemic within the GOP. Example: the
| Ballot Security Task Force [3] that resulted in a consent decree
| with the Federal government to try and curb voter suppression.
| There is a long history, particularly in the southern states in
| the post-slavery era of denying the right to vote to African
| Americans through requirements such as owning property or
| literacy tests not required by white voters;
|
| 5. The GOP is by far the biggest source of voter suppression but
| it doesn't have a monopoly. Example: efforts by the Gore campaign
| in Florida in 2000 to invalidate military ballots [4]. Note that
| such efforts are generally wildly unpopular even in the Demoratic
| voter base.
|
| 6. Margins of error in the effects of voter suppression being
| well less than 1% doesn't mean they aren't significant. That can
| swing elections.
|
| 7. The rush by GOP-led state houses to pass voter suppression
| bills under the guise of election integrity should be taken as
| evidence of the effectiveness of the measures;
|
| 8. The intangible part of these voter suppression efforts is to
| deter minority voters from going to the polls and also as virtue
| signaling to the Republican base;
|
| 9. Even though state IDs themselves can be free the supporting
| documentation might not be. There are a significant number of
| Americans who don't, say, have a valid birth certificate. Getting
| such documents if you were born, say, on a Native American
| reservation can be extremely difficult. Even if you can get all
| that, it's often painful to even get various forms of IDs. You
| might have to travel far out of your way and spend half a day or
| more to get such ID. Some people have the flexibility with work.
| Some do not; and
|
| 9. Poll access isn't universal. Certain areas may have limited
| polling places that mean queueing for hours whereas others might
| allow you to vote within minutes.
|
| All of this is why mandatory voting is so important. It
| fundamentally undermines democracies if the election process
| itself is politicized. You see this as some states have given the
| authority to overturn election results by a political figure (eg
| the Secretary of State).
|
| Denying the right to vote to convicted felons is an example of
| something that sounds noble but is nothing more than a form of
| legal voter suppression.
|
| In Australia, elections are organized by a quasi-government body,
| the Australian Electoral Commission ("AEC"). You vote on a
| Saturday so polling places are easy to find (ie schools). In your
| registered district your name will be in a book and when you show
| up they just cross off your name. Voting out of district doesn't
| require any special procedure. You simply fill out your details
| and these are consolidated later to ensure you didn't vote twice.
|
| It's worth repeating that Democrats aren't necessarily against
| any form of voter ID as this straw man argument is used a lot.
| There are degrees of voter ID and allowing a gun club membership
| card while disallowing a university student ID is clearly
| intended to target Democratic-leaning voters so it should be
| exposed for what it is.
|
| [1]: https://www.statesman.com/news/20160923/politifact-take-
| gun-...
|
| [2]:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/04/despite-g...
|
| [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force
|
| [4]: https://www.cnn.com/2015/11/02/politics/bush-gore-
| military-b...
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| Point of order, but a Texas concealed handgun license (CHL) is
| a state-issued photo ID card. It is very much not a "gun club
| membership." I'm pretty much on board with many of your points,
| but not that one: a CHL is a state-issued ID, while a student
| ID is not. Texas's law is internally consistent, if not
| particularly helpful.
| bmh100 wrote:
| If the student ID is from a public university, is that not
| state-issued?
| zwieback wrote:
| Voter ID laws don't deter voters and vote suppression schemes can
| hurt the constituency of whoever is doing the suppressing. That
| makes me wonder what endgame current proponents of tightening
| laws and auditing results have in mind.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The goal is to poke holes in the 15th and 24th amendments,
| which they can wallow out over time.
|
| The SC is more than happy to put limits and exceptions on
| Constitutional protections. The hardest part is getting that
| first exception in place. Once it's there, you can slowly bring
| forth more cases that expand that exception ever more.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Not really. People think the Constitution says things about
| voiting that is does not say. For example, states could pass
| laws that people between the ages of 25 and 35 could not vote
| for President. That is constitutional. I'm not saying it
| would be accepted, but don't say things are unconstitutional
| just because you disagree.
| mmarq wrote:
| We already knew that: everywhere in the West, bar English
| speaking countries, you must show an ID to vote.
| davidw wrote:
| If people wanted to _encourage_ voting, it 's hard to beat
| Oregon's system in the US. There is very little fraud.
| cowpig wrote:
| There is no evidence that there is significant voter fraud
| anywhere in the US
| umanwizard wrote:
| Is there evidence that there _isn't_ ? How would you tell?
|
| (Anecdotally, from talking to my friends and acquaintances
| from Arizona, I think at least one type of voter fraud is
| extremely widespread: remaining registered there even after
| you've moved away, because you want your vote to be in a
| purple state and therefore count more. Most people don't even
| think of this as fraud.)
| jayd16 wrote:
| It would need to be incredibly good. So good that we never
| see failed wide spread fraud.
| umanwizard wrote:
| For the example I mentioned, there is nobody really
| bothering to enforce the requirement, AFAICT.
| varelse wrote:
| Already got forbidden from the URL.
| [deleted]
| tonfreed wrote:
| Honestly, that's not even the biggest problem.
|
| Here in Australia, there are so many checks and balances when it
| comes to counting votes that it actually disgusted me when I
| heard some of the games various entities were playing in your
| last presidential election. The fact that the number of votes
| cast wasn't released until results were tallied and they kept
| "finding" more to count was perplexing. That partisan orgs like
| unions were given the contract to do the counting was also a
| really strange thing to do. And that scrutineers were kicked out
| in places was a disgusting act, here they by law must be allowed
| to watch everything regardless of political affiliation.
|
| We also do not let counters out of the room until everything has
| been counted and accounted for and have multiple checks along the
| way to make sure nothing has been lost or added. Seems
| statistically unlikely to me that individual fraud would make any
| difference in US elections given how decentralised it is, if
| anything was happening it'd be powerful players controlling who
| is counting and how they are deciding which votes count and which
| don't.
| abrazame wrote:
| As someone who has worked multiple elections for the Australian
| Electoral Commission, this is an incredibly rosy view of
| Australian elections.
|
| You're thinking of the preliminary count in a polling place. On
| election night, basically the only thing that's being counted
| (estimated) is which of the two (expected) main parties in a
| seat has the lead. It's the only thing scrutineers pay
| attention to - no one watches the preliminary Senate count.
| Declaration votes (out of area) and below the line Senate votes
| (complex preferences) aren't counted /at all/ on election
| night. No one has ever stopped me from leaving the polling
| place during a count.
|
| Once the preliminary count is done, the ballots are driven off
| by the Officer in Charge into the night in his or her personal
| car for the real count. It's not hard to be an OIC - it was
| offered to me while I was still at uni. There's no particular
| ethical or vetting requirements to be one, and they're often
| older folk who don't bother reading the rules and requirements,
| and I've seen them do things that are brazenly illegal. Entire
| boxes of votes have gone missing in the past. We have had to
| re-run an entire election recently because of it:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Australian_Senate_speci...
|
| It's one thing to be critical of shoddy election practises and
| I support your indignation, but let's not fall into tired
| "America bad" tropes. Elections are hard. We muck 'em up too.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > We also do not let counters out of the room until everything
| has been counted...
|
| "Under the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918, the cut-off for
| receipt of mailed postal votes is 13 days after election day."
| - https://www.aec.gov.au/media/media-releases/2019/05-17b.htm
|
| That sounds like an unpleasant experience for the counters.
|
| (The same happens in the States. Provisional ballots. Mail-ins.
| Ballots that wouldn't feed properly and need hand examination.)
| adrianmonk wrote:
| > _And that scrutineers were kicked out in places was a
| disgusting act_
|
| I'm not aware of that actually happening. Here are some details
| on some allegations that were made, but the gist is that
| nothing improper actually did happen:
|
| https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/nov/12/donald-tru...
| ravel-bar-foo wrote:
| In context it seems like that paragraph may be referring to
| Australia.
| not2b wrote:
| This will be true provided that states make an effort to assure
| that all can obtain the required ID, for free (any fee to vote
| would violate the 24th Amendment) and don't play games to try to
| make it harder for some groups than others.
|
| Examples of ways to put your thumb on the scale:
|
| * refuse to accept college IDs as valid for voting, even those
| issued by the state government because it's a state school
| (college students are more likely to vote for the "wrong" party).
| Hunting licenses? Cool (people with hunting licenses are more
| likely to vote for the "right" party).
|
| * prevent college students who live most of the year in-state,
| and can prove it, but have an out-of-state driver's license, from
| voting.
|
| * place extra hoops on people whose name doesn't match their
| birth certificate, make them produce every document with every
| change and toss their registration if there's a typo (this mainly
| affects married women, who are more likely to vote for the
| "wrong" party). This is an effective way to disenfranchise a lot
| of older women who don't have a current driver's license.
|
| * close as many DMV offices as you can in counties where people
| don't vote your way, restrict the hours on the remaining offices.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| that is fine but you pay for it.
| barbacoa wrote:
| > refuse to accept college IDs as valid for voting, even those
| issued by the state government because it's a state school
| (college students are more likely to vote for the "wrong"
| party). Hunting licenses? Cool (people with hunting licenses
| are more likely to vote for the "right" party).
|
| Have you ever tried to buy beer with a school ID? There is a
| reason they aren't accepted as a government issue legal ID.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The US government accepts school ID to verify identity. A
| beer seller has to verify your age.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Even if on its implementation free and open ID is available and
| quick to get it might not stay that way into the future. It is
| a common strategy to under fund institutions to undermine their
| ability to function. Opening up to ID where there isn't
| sufficient fraud to warrant it simply opens up another
| mechanism for abuse by those in power. This sorts of changes
| should be rejected by default by the populace especially if
| they aren't shown to be genuinely necessary as political
| opponents may very well misuse them in the future with little
| awareness from the public.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Well, in the rest of the industrialized world the thought of
| voting with your gas bill as "ID" is laughable.
| vinay427 wrote:
| What point are you getting at, here? The generalization in
| your comment isn't true, for starters [1, 2], and it
| doesn't address the premise of the parent comment that
| there may not be sufficient fraud to warrant stronger ID
| requirements. From what I can tell (correct me if I'm
| wrong), that assumption of insecure elections is what
| underlies the laughability of the situation.
|
| [1] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-
| briefings/cbp-...
|
| [2]
| https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/04/millions-
| in...
| tigershark wrote:
| In U.K. there is no need of any whatsoever id to vote. I
| would agree that requiring a gas bill to vote is laughable
| but probably for reasons at the complete antipodes than
| yours.
| exporectomy wrote:
| > refuse to accept college IDs [...] more likely to vote for
| the "wrong" party
|
| How is that different from accepting college IDs because
| students are more likely to vote for the "right" party? Seems
| like both options are biased one way or another.
| beecafe wrote:
| At least there they have the option of voting for the other
| party, rather than being disenfranchised
| loeg wrote:
| The point is that all state-issued IDs should be accepted.
| exporectomy wrote:
| But how is that less biased? That will still be biased one
| way or another (eg. more college students than gun
| licensees, or whatever) so regardless of whether they allow
| all of them or none of them or an arbitrary subset of them,
| it will still be biased and I don't think there's any
| objective set of acceptable IDs that isn't biased.
| bena wrote:
| Stop and think about this for a second.
|
| College students are residents. The policies of the local
| government affect them. Regardless of who they'd vote
| for, they deserve a say.
|
| If concealed carry licenses are accepted, student IDs
| should be as well. That's what he's saying.
| tzs wrote:
| If a sufficient range of state IDs are accepted that
| everyone who is eligible to vote can freely and easily
| get one, then it is not biased by definition.
| chad__homenim wrote:
| > refuse to accept college IDs as valid for voting, even those
| issued by the state government because it's a state school
|
| I mean, yeah, you don't have to be a resident of the state or
| even a citizen to go to a university in the US.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| It's authentication vs. authorization just like with computer
| software.
|
| You go to vote. They check ID to determine whether the person
| standing there is who they claim to be. Then they check the
| voter registration rolls to see if that person is eligible to
| vote.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You don't have to be a citizen to have a driver's license,
| either, but they're accepted.
|
| Doesn't matter if you're a resident of the state.
| https://help.vote.org/article/17-i-am-a-college-student-
| shou...
|
| > The choice is legally yours. You have dual residency, so
| you can register back home or on campus as long as you don't
| register to vote in both states. You can use our Voter
| Registration Tool to register to vote in less than 2 minutes.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > You don't have to be a citizen to have a driver's
| license, either, but they're accepted.
|
| This is the exact reason that issuing indistinguishable
| driver's licenses to non-citizens was controversial.
|
| > Doesn't matter if you're a resident of the state.
|
| The point is that maybe it should. It's reasonable to say
| that people should vote in the place where they're a
| permanent resident and not somewhere they're likely not
| going to reside by the end of the term of office for the
| election in question.
|
| It's not as if they can't vote, they can vote where they're
| actually from. Or demonstrate the intent to move to the
| state where they want to vote by getting a state ID there.
| tzs wrote:
| > The point is that maybe it should. It's reasonable to
| say that people should vote in the place where they're a
| permanent resident and not somewhere they're likely not
| going to reside by the end of the term of office for the
| election in question.
|
| That doesn't really have anything to do with voter ID at
| the polls, because the point of voter ID at the polls is
| not to prove that you are eligible to vote. Proof of
| eligibility should be taken care of when you _register_
| to vote.
|
| The point of ID at the polls is to show that you are the
| person who you claim to be, so that the poll workers can
| check to see if you are on the registered voter list.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > This is the exact reason that issuing indistinguishable
| driver's licenses to non-citizens was controversial.
|
| I don't think it's ever been controversial to permit
| permanent residents to have drivers' licenses.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This is the exact reason that issuing indistinguishable
| driver's licenses to non-citizens was controversial.
|
| No, it wasn't.
|
| Because nondistinguishable licenses for immigrants had
| been issued for generations when the controversy, which
| was about licenses issued to _people without valid
| immigration status_ , erupted.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Don't be pedantic, you can see what I'm getting at here.
|
| A lot more US citizens have a driver's license than a
| passport. It's the most common form of identification and
| if it doesn't specify citizenship then there will be
| millions of people who don't have any picture ID that can
| prove their citizenship status.
|
| That problem could easily be solved by specifying whether
| you're a citizen on your driver's license. It's a poor
| excuse to extend the problem to other forms of ID that
| don't prove citizenship status.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Don't be pedantic, you can see what I'm getting at here
|
| No, I don't. Because there is no reasonable on topic
| argument you could be getting at.
|
| > A lot more US citizens have a driver's license than a
| passport. It's the most common form of identification and
| if it doesn't specify citizenship then there will be
| millions of people who don't have any picture ID that can
| prove their citizenship status.
|
| Which is fine in the context of voter ID, because
| presenting ID to vote is notionally to confirm that the
| person presenting to vote is the person registered
| (authentication), not that the person registered is
| allowed to vote (authorization).
|
| Authorization of registered voters and
| removal/disqualification of unauthorized voters is, even
| in Voter ID systems and proposals, handled separately
| from voter ID, typically by the same kind of processes
| used without voter ID.
| michaelt wrote:
| Right, but voter ID isn't to prove you have the right to vote
| - that happens at voter registration.
|
| The state already knows John Jones, born 1st January 1970, is
| eligible to vote - I merely have to prove that I am John
| Jones, born 1st January 1970.
| Amezarak wrote:
| > The state already knows John Jones, born 1st January
| 1970, is eligible to vote
|
| It actually does not know this. This is a very hard problem
| to solve in the US. There can be _positive_ evidence of
| this (John Jones has been a resident of California since
| birth, has a birth certificate (state document) and a
| Social Security (federal) number reflecting that), but John
| Jones may have been born in PA with no Social Security
| number or birth certificate at all and be a current
| resident of California, having moved there last year, and a
| perfectly legitimate US citizen eligible to vote in
| California for local, state, and federal offices.
|
| There is no national US citizen registry, mostly for
| historical reasons, and making one is a total political
| nonstarter. Further, states are individually responsible
| for determining if someone is probably an eligible voter,
| and so there's different processes and checks in place
| depending on the state.
| mijamo wrote:
| What about for taxes? The UD has a reputation of being
| pretty good at tracking their citizens even outside the
| US to get their taxes.
| Amezarak wrote:
| The IRS doesn't actually know - it trusts you to report
| your status accurately. Of course, they could demand
| proof during an audit, I suppose, but "proof" can get
| fuzzy. But on top of that, not everyone, not even every
| adult, is required to file taxes. People can and do live
| their whole lives never filing taxes. So, "this person
| has never filed a return" is not proof of anything. It
| also doesn't share this information anyway - US agencies
| are not big on sharing and in the case of the IRS,
| there's privacy reasons. But of course, if you tell the
| IRS you're a citizen and you file taxes ten years in a
| row, they might have questions if you suddenly stop. :)
|
| Here are the voter registration requirements in New
| Hampshire, to pick a state out at random, for example:
| https://sos.nh.gov/media/nbhlz4bt/registering-to-vote-in-
| new...
|
| You can literal simply pinky swear and sign a document in
| front of an election official at your voting place and
| time that you are an eligible voter to register, and then
| go vote. They have no practical way of truly verifying
| what you say in most cases. There are legitimate edge
| cases that need this, so that's why things work this way.
| munk-a wrote:
| All US tax payers have a tax payer ID - attempting to use
| that for anything else would likely be shut down really
| quickly by republicans.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > All US tax payers have a tax payer ID - attempting to
| use that for anything else would likely be shut down
| really quickly by republicans.
|
| For most taxpayers, that's the SSN, and its widely used
| for other purposes.
|
| Republicans mostly seem to have a problem when people
| point out that their incompetence is causing them to leak
| publicly, e.g.,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28867562
| munk-a wrote:
| I believe (though I'm not totally certain) that the tax
| payer ID is actually always distinct - most domestic tax
| filing is done with SSN though and then translated to the
| tax payer ID. The context here is that my spouse is non-
| American and had to acquire a tax payer ID when we were
| married.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| "A Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) is an
| identification number used by the Internal Revenue
| Service (IRS) in the administration of tax laws. It is
| issued either by the Social Security Administration (SSA)
| or by the IRS. A Social Security number (SSN) is issued
| by the SSA whereas all other TINs are issued by the
| IRS."[1]
|
| [1] https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-
| taxpayers/taxp...
| munk-a wrote:
| Oh neat TIL - thanks!
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > Further, states are individually responsible for
| determining if someone is probably an eligible voter, and
| so there's different processes and checks in place
| depending on the state.
|
| It's more fundamental than that: states are individually
| responsible for determining who the eligible voters are.
| There are variations from state to state as to the terms
| of residency in the state, whether felons or people who
| have been declared mentally incapacitated [0].
|
| That, among other things, causes a substantial difficulty
| in attempts to (say) conform presidential elections to
| the national popular vote outcome; one of the functions
| of the electoral college is to (mostly in a very
| nonlinear binary fashion) normalize the results by state
| to the total population rather than simply the
| enfranchised population (hence the 3/5ths rule being a
| compromise between "count the slaves" and "don't count
| the slaves" in the weighting process).
|
| [0] https://www.vote.org/voter-registration-rules/
| tzs wrote:
| > close as many DMV offices as you can in counties where people
| don't vote your way, restrict the hours on the remaining
| offices.
|
| And make sure those remaining offices are nowhere near any bus
| lines, so if someone does not have a car they either have to
| take an expensive cab ride or spend a lot of time walking when
| they go to get their ID. And make sure that IDs are only issued
| during work hours in midweek so you can't get your ID on a
| weekend--which means many minimum wage workers will have to
| lose a day's pay to get their ID.
|
| And once people do have whatever ID you require, there are
| still ways to make it harder for the "wrong" group to vote.
|
| * Restrict absentee/mail-in voting so people have to show up in
| person, but also greatly reduce the number of polling places in
| areas with too many of the "wrong" group.
|
| * Make it illegal to provide food or water to people waiting in
| line to vote.
|
| The first can result in polling places where people have to
| stand in line for several hours to get their turn to vote, and
| can only drink whatever water they happened to bring with them.
| Of course they could leave the line to go get water, but then
| might lose their place and have to start all over.
| throwoutway wrote:
| > refuse to accept college IDs as valid for voting, even those
| issued by the state government
|
| What state governments issue a college ID? It's been a while
| for me but I don't recall much evidence required for me to get
| a college ID and even though I went to a public state
| university, it definitely was not government issued. Nobody
| would have accepted it as proof of identity besides the
| college, certainly not for voting
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Public universities are state agencies. What they require to
| issue ID and if anyone accepts it are different questions.
| But state issued photo ID isn't an unusual standard.
| teeray wrote:
| If a state school issues an ID, are they not a government
| entity issuing identification? Whether it's acceptable by a
| third party is another question, of course.
| voldacar wrote:
| > college students are more likely to vote for the "wrong"
| party
|
| Um, are you aware which party currently controls the
| presidency, the senate, almost all corporate media, educational
| institutions, and high-prestige institutions in general? that's
| the underdog? that's the "wrong party"?
|
| your comment reads like it's from a parallel universe or
| something
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Isn't it states that control most voter ID laws and aren't
| "the wrong party" the ones pushing voter ID 99% of the time?
|
| I'm a limey Brit, so I'm honestly asking...
| brazzy wrote:
| Are you aware that these vote restriction laws are passed on
| the _state_ , not federal level, that the party that
| currently controls the presidency is trying to _ban_ ID-based
| voting restrictions, which the other party is trying to pass
| in the state legislations it controls?
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/us/politics/filibuster-
| vo...
|
| https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/30/texas-voting-
| restric...
|
| Your comment reads like it's either from someone not really
| familiar with US politics, or someone who is being
| deliberately dishonest.
| bena wrote:
| First, they're also the party that isn't looking to enact
| voter ID laws.
|
| Second, he never said either party was the underdog.
|
| He just outlined how voter ID laws can only be a first step
| to disenfranchise voters.
| mgarfias wrote:
| So you're arguing for free hunting licenses?
|
| I'm joking of course, a hunting license isn't a form of ID.
| Curiously, my CHL isn't a form of ID, even though it is state
| issued, has my pic, and I had to be finger printed to get it.
| xxpor wrote:
| In some states (Texas I think), a concealed carry license is
| acceptable ID, but a student ID isn't.
|
| There is, of course, no bias in the types of people that have
| one but not the other.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| And no difference in the level of verification to get the
| ID. You need a state issued ID, and federal background
| check, and full fingerprints to get a Student ID, right?
|
| In terms of rigor of identity authentication: CHL >
| Driver's license.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| A CCL requires a background check. A student ID does not.
| [deleted]
| jlokier wrote:
| There is, of course, no bias in the types of people who
| are comfortable with and can easily pass a background
| check, and those who are not or cannot.
|
| In a free and fair election, the right to vote is not be
| based on your detailed personal history, or whether you
| have done something that looks off and might cause you
| trouble with authorities.
|
| Even if it's just fear of imagined trouble that puts
| people off feeling safe to obtain the necessary approvals
| to vote, that's enough to prevent a free and fair
| election.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| I am not suggesting you should need a background check to
| vote.
|
| All I am saying is we have a good idea that the person
| with a CCL is that person and they are not a felon (in
| some states felons cannot vote).
|
| Anybody can go to a community college including a
| noncitizen. There is no background check and no real
| verification the person is who they say they are. You
| just show up and have your picture taken.
|
| If you are going to trust one of these forms of IDs it is
| clear that it should be the CCL.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This was a huge problem in Texas last year, but it really
| points at another problem with these laws. The difficulty
| largely wasn't even intentional. The requirements for address
| verification and citizenship verification were far more onerous
| than they used to be, to the point I saw no less then three
| people get sent home with nothing when I was at the DMV, but
| that wasn't even the state's decision. It was a consequence of
| the Real ID ACT happening at the same time. And office closures
| made it take months to get an appointment. I was barely able to
| get in ahead of the election, in mid October, and I made my
| appointment in April! But that wasn't malicious, either. The
| office closures were due to Covid, which wasn't planned by the
| state of Texas.
|
| But it points at the ways in which any additional legal hurdle
| at all can become far more burdensome than lawmakers expect it
| to even if no one is intentionally trying to make it hard. It's
| all levels of government plus nature itself all adding new
| hurdles at the same time.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| If the issue wasn't fundamentally about putting a thumb on one
| side of the scale or the other, this would be a relatively easy
| to solve problem. Make it part of the FEC charter to issue
| voting ID at no cost, tracking people down like the census
| does. Fund them appropriately, of course. And make sure that
| there is adequate opportunity to vote in person (multiple days,
| lots of locations, etc). In theory, this should make both sides
| happy.
| taurath wrote:
| One side doesn't want a larger number of voters voting, at
| least historically.
| risho wrote:
| which one would that be exactly? historically speaking i
| mean
| munk-a wrote:
| The side that's currently rushing through legislation to
| roll out new ID requirements and reduce poll
| accessibility.
| risho wrote:
| the group that is doing it today is actually the opposite
| group of who was doing it in the past. as it turns out it
| isn't a single side that tries to restrict the voting of
| people they disagree with. everyone given the opportunity
| will do this.
|
| and in case this isn't obvious. it's always bad no matter
| who is doing it. i just think its ridiculously stupid to
| suggest that only 1 group would do it and the other
| wouldn't given the opportunity.
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| > the group that is doing it today is actually the
| opposite group of who was doing it in the past. as it
| turns out it isn't a single side that tries to restrict
| the voting of people they disagree with.
|
| I don't think this is true at all.
| munk-a wrote:
| Ideologies in political parties have shifted enough that
| calling modern-day republicans and democrats the same as
| 40s republicans and democrats feels fraudulent. Whether
| someone was in the wrong yesterday is less important than
| correcting the folks in the wrong today and doesn't
| excuse their current behavior in any manner.
|
| If things shift the other way and democrats start
| suppressing the vote I'll be just as outraged at them -
| regardless of whether "my guy is winning" or not.
| risho wrote:
| to be absolutely clear i am not making excuses for anyone
| or anything. no matter who does it, trying to prevent
| your opponents from having access to voting is
| despicable. my point is to say that this isn't a party
| problem, a side problem or a group problem, it's a humans
| and power problem. people will just do stuff like this.
| the suggestion of the person i was responding to was that
| it's only a single group of people that are doing this
| specifically saying historically. my point is that it is
| a specific group right now, it was a different specific
| group in the past and it will be a different specfic
| group in the future and it's always bad.
|
| i think we almost entirely agree with each other.
| munk-a wrote:
| I don't know if I totally agree with that though - while
| most parties in power around the world do take steps to
| cement that power though shady means it goes to a real
| extreme in the US - Canada certainly hasn't been free
| from election scandals[1]. Additionally, all sorts of
| authoritarians definitely do a lot worse than the US by
| wholly suspending elections or otherwise entirely rigging
| the system. That all said, for a democracy, America seems
| to be taking it to an extreme.
|
| And, in America at least, these voter restrictions have
| always historically minimized the black vote. So I do
| think there is one group that has been consistently quite
| happy with voting limitations - they aren't the
| republican party, but they currently find refuge under
| its wings.
|
| 1. This last election has been (IMO fairly) decried as a
| waste of taxpayer money and a move that endangered the
| public simply to strengthen Liberal dominance (even if it
| failed hilariously).
| bena wrote:
| It also ignores that even then, there were Northern
| Democrats and Southern Democrats.
|
| The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not pass along party
| lines.
|
| More Democrats voted to pass it than Republicans by
| numbers. Republicans only had 33% of the House and about
| 33% of the Senate.
|
| Now, Republicans did have a larger percentage of their
| members voting for.
|
| But when you split it by region, the picture comes clear.
| The old Union voted overwhelmingly to pass the act while
| the old Confederacy voted Nay.
|
| Northern Democrats outvoted all other groups by
| percentage and numbers for the act. And not a single (of
| the 12) Southern Republican voted for.
|
| So yeah, miss me with that "Democrats are the party of
| the Confederacy" stuff. The South was the party of the
| Confederacy.
| every wrote:
| "When he signed the act he was euphoric, but late that
| very night I found him in a melancholy mood as he lay in
| bed reading the bulldog edition of the Washington Post
| with headlines celebrating the day. I asked him what was
| troubling him. 'I think we just delivered the South to
| the Republican party for a long time to come,' he said."
|
| -- Bill Moyers in his book Moyers on America on LBJ
| following the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill...
| dhritzkiv wrote:
| It's infuriating when people use the "democrats were the
| conservative party disenfranchising minorities" XX years
| ago like some sort of "ha - gotcha. Your argument is now
| invalid. I am very smart." revelation.
| wwweston wrote:
| It's clearly a non-starter to suggest that only 1 _party_
| would do such a thing, but that 's distinct from saying
| only one "group" would do it if by group we're talking
| about social philosophy built around, say, the idea that
| there must be an in-group that the law protects but does
| not bind and the idea that there must be an out-group
| that the law binds but does not protect.
| davidw wrote:
| Different names, same crowd. My state, Oregon, has made
| it incredibly easy and secure to vote, and we do elect
| people from both parties.
| munk-a wrote:
| My former state (I emigrated) of Vermont has a Republican
| governor. Folks can label him as a RINO or Vermont
| Republican - but he's conservative in a manner that
| aligns with a lot of Vermont sensibilities.
| sanedigital wrote:
| Is that the same side that largely opposed the Civil Rights
| Act? Historically speaking, of course.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Make it part of the FEC charter
|
| Adding things to the FEC responsibility is not a solution,
| because the FEC is by structural design nonfunctional in
| normal conditions, and has sometimes been (e.g., most of
| 2020) completely nonfunctional due to lack of a quorum.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Make it so that government ID is federalized and free, with
| things like state drivers licenses endorsements on top of
| your provided ID. I don't even see a compelling reason for
| state-specific driver licensing. Make driver qualification
| federal like in every other country in the world.
|
| Things become a whole lot simpler when stuff can just get
| tacked on to your ID, and appropriate institutions can check
| the status of such endorsements in a central database.
|
| > In theory, this should make both sides happy.
|
| One side will _never_ be happy, because their entire strategy
| (according to leaked internal documents) is voter
| suppression.
|
| A reminder: there is very, very little voter fraud in the US.
| Most of cases of fraud that have been discovered turned out
| to be members of that side that is so very concerned with
| voter fraud.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| If you don't have ID you can't drive, get a job, or open a bank
| account. Requiring ID to vote is a no brainer. Anything else is
| violating the integrity of our elections and is just utterly
| absurd IMO.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Large minorities of people eligible to vote don't drive, have
| jobs, or have bank accounts.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I'd love to read the actual paper, not just the abstract.
|
| The statement near the end of the abstract - "Finally, strict ID
| requirements have no effect on fraud, actual or perceived." -
| seems surprising to me, and I'd like to see how they arrived at
| that conclusion.
| jcranmer wrote:
| There are basically three kinds of voter fraud: in-person voter
| fraud, mail-in voter fraud, and outright ballot stuffing.
| Actual fraud mostly occurs with mail-in ballots. Perceived
| fraud, judging from my recollection of outrage over supposedly
| fraudulent election results in the past 20 years, focuses
| mainly on ballot stuffing. Strict voter ID mostly tackles in-
| person voter fraud, which doesn't feature prominently in actual
| or perceived fraud.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > There are basically three kinds of voter fraud: in-person
| voter fraud, mail-in voter fraud, and outright ballot
| stuffing.
|
| Yea, that's not exactly a complete list. One example is
| undercounting. Another is changing people's party
| affiliation, so they cannot vote in primaries.
|
| You tried to simplify the far more extensive and
| comprehensive list of types of voter fraud into a list of
| categories. In doing so you removed all actionable
| information from the threat types. What you did is similar to
| saying that all computer hacks are remote or local. They are,
| but so what? That isn't actionable, because it removes all
| the actual descriptive information.
| exporectomy wrote:
| > Another is changing people's party affiliation, so they
| cannot vote in primaries.
|
| Aren't the primary elections the business of the parties
| conducting them and not really part of the democratic
| process at all, but rather a way for parties to find their
| favorite candidate to put up for the real election? In that
| case, it doesn't matter for voting rights if a party
| excludes someone from their own election, does it?
| IncRnd wrote:
| > Aren't the primary elections the business of the
| parties conducting them and not really part of the
| democratic process at all
|
| That's the ideal but not the real-world truth, where the
| parties are entangled with the legal process. If a person
| leaves one of the major parties, it is almost impossible
| for them to be recognized legally as a candidate for a
| presidential election. That's one of the reasons why you
| get Communists and Centrists in the same political party.
| The can't possibly ascribe to the same party platform,
| yet they are members of the same party.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Yea, that's not exactly a complete list. One example is
| undercounting. Another is changing people's party
| affiliation, so they cannot vote in primaries.
|
| The first example I'd call "ballot stuffing"--it's really a
| catchall term for shenanigans around turning the actual
| returned ballots into an official count. This even would
| cover things like poor ballot design (e.g., butterfly
| ballots in Florida's elections) that aren't strictly
| speaking fraud.
|
| The latter example is a fourth category of electoral
| shenanigans that I'd loosely term voter intimidation;
| essentially any mechanism by which people are dissuaded
| from casting a ballot in the first place, which I omitted
| because most of this category is unfortunately legal.
|
| > In doing so you removed all actionable information from
| the threat types. What you did is similar to saying that
| all computer hacks are remote or local. They are, but so
| what? That isn't actionable, because it removes all the
| actual descriptive information.
|
| No it's not. While it's true that the ballot stuffing
| category does contain a rather disparate list of potential
| frauds, they're all almost entirely solvable by auditing
| and oversight of the physical process of counting ballots.
| And more stringent checks on who can cast ballots (which
| strict id laws purport to be) _don 't_ affect it one whit.
| A more specific look at how to fix an election might dive
| into the details more, but grouping them in one category
| doesn't really affect the analysis here.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > The first example I'd call "ballot stuffing"--it's
| really a catchall term for shenanigans around turning the
| actual returned ballots into an official count. This even
| would cover things like poor ballot design (e.g.,
| butterfly ballots in Florida's elections) that aren't
| strictly speaking fraud
|
| You can call it ballot stuffing, but you are inventing
| your own definition when you do that.
|
| _" Ballot stuffing or ballot box stuffing is a form of
| electoral fraud in which a greater number of ballots are
| cast than the number of people who legitimately voted.
| The term refers generally to the act of casting illegal
| votes or submitting more than one ballot per voter when
| only one ballot per voter is permitted."_ [1]
|
| > The latter example is a fourth category of electoral
| shenanigans that I'd loosely term voter intimidation;
| essentially any mechanism by which people are dissuaded
| from casting a ballot in the first place, which I omitted
| because most of this category is unfortunately legal.
|
| That is absolutely not voter intimidation. I had my
| registration changed by someone who did this, so I am
| well aware of what happens here. I was not intimidated.
| [2] Voter intimidation is a federal crime and defined in
| the Civil Rigts Act and the Hatch Act.
|
| > A more specific look at how to fix an election might
| dive into the details more, but grouping them in one
| category doesn't really affect the analysis here.
|
| It absolutely does affect the analysis. You should be
| able to see that, since I pointed out two specific
| threats that your categories didn't cover. There are
| more, too. You cannot properly model threats unless you
| identify the actors, the vulnerability, how the
| vulnerability can get exploited, and some sort of
| analysis. You need to create a model of risks, not just
| pronounce "There are basically three kinds of voter
| fraud" using an incorrect, incomplete list. If you don't
| model risks, how do you know your categories are correct?
| THat's like when Oracle called itself, "Unbreakable". [3]
| [4] [1]
| https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_stuffing [2]
| https://ballotpedia.org/Intimidation_of_voters [3]
| https://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240043867/Ellison-
| Oracle-is-unbreakable [4]
| https://www.cnet.com/news/oracle-unbreakable-no-more/
| jcranmer wrote:
| > It absolutely does affect the analysis.
|
| The analysis is why strict voter ID laws didn't have an
| effect on actual or perceived voter fraud. So tell me why
| distinguishing undercounting matters for that analysis.
| lsiebert wrote:
| Yeah individual voter fraud, per all the vote security experts,
| basically isn't a thing, IE the rare instances never change
| election outcomes. Voting ID laws are at best security theater
| for non existent threats.
|
| At worst it's a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise minority
| voters, for example the NC voting law, where the legislature
| requested info on racial differences in how people vote before
| creating their bill.
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/north-carolina-court-rejects-republic...
|
| Of course this suggests that efforts to GOTV helped mitigate
| the voter ID requirements, which is part of why GOTV efforts
| and other support for people voting is being targeted now in
| many states.
| areyousure wrote:
| > the rare instances never change election outcomes
|
| https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article322208/Missouri.
| ..
| Beldin wrote:
| It also puts an extra barrier for re-enfranchising already
| disenfranchised voters.
|
| A way around such shenanigans could be some legislation where
| the government is required to give everyone an id card for
| free - and to put the onus on govt for achieving that.
|
| From my perspective, it's genuinely weird that requiring
| voter id would be disenfranchising... but I know that is how
| things are in the States. So either stop voter ID laws, or
| defang them by making IDs trivially available.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| But then we need to be careful to make sure the
| requirements for getting an ID aren't too onerous.
|
| Trying to get a "RealID" for a family member was a
| nightmare because apparently her ORIGINAL birth certificate
| from 70 years ago was not acceptable to the asshole behind
| the desk at the DMV. So we had to get a certified copy from
| the county this person was born in that bore some seal or
| stamp the clerk wanted.
|
| Guess who had lost decades worth of birth records, thus
| requiring us to pay for a special search process that took
| weeks?
|
| An expensive, time-consuming nightmare start to finish.
|
| There are people out there who have no idea where they were
| born because their parents didn't tell them, people whose
| parents held their birth certificates hostage for whatever
| reason, etc. Lots of people who rent and share an apartment
| might not have a single utility bill in their name. "Just
| give us a bank bill" someone says. Welllll in getting all
| frothy about terrorism we now demand banks verify the
| identity of their customers using...a government issued ID.
| The whole thing gets cyclical very quickly.
| johntfella wrote:
| pdf:
| https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w25522/w255...
| jedimastert wrote:
| > The statement near the end of the abstract - "Finally, strict
| ID requirements have no effect on fraud, actual or perceived."
| - seems surprising to me, and I'd like to see how they arrived
| at that conclusion.
|
| If I had to take a guess, I'd say that voter fraud was already
| very low to begin with, and the rare occurrences that do happen
| wouldn't be helped with ID laws.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It's the "perceived" part that I am suspicious of (and I
| assume the GP too). It makes sense to me that strict ID laws
| don't do much to fight actual fraud because the systems in
| place are pretty effective (moreso than ID laws, I'd think,
| since I've personally rarely had an up-to-date state ID).
|
| But how does it not have an effect on perceived fraud, when
| all of the people perceiving fraud are arguing for strict ID
| requirements? I think I know the answer (these people
| perceive fraud in response to their "team's" loss,
| regardless). But it would be interesting to read what the
| authors say.
| Kranar wrote:
| One hypothesis is that the motivation behind voter fraud
| never had anything to do with evidence suggesting that
| voter fraud occurs. Voter fraud is an excuse to enact
| legislation that makes it harder for certain demographics
| to vote.
|
| If that hypothesis is true, then people will never stop
| believing in voter fraud until said demographics no longer
| have any significant representation in politics.
| HappySweeney wrote:
| The perception of fraud is entirely due to loser
| politicians telling their supporters that they only lost
| due to fraud, and no amount of voter ID laws will change
| that.
| rayiner wrote:
| Not true. Taiwan doesn't count votes in this highly
| visible public way (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqKt-
| lPfJuw) because of "loser politicians."
|
| Most western European countries also have significant
| voter security measures, although comparisons are often
| hard to make because they piggy-back voter registration
| on the mandatory residence registration process. In
| Germany for example you get a voting card in the mail,
| but you have to shlep to your local citizens office with
| proof of residency (lease, etc.) within 30 days of
| moving. In Georgia you can register to vote entirely on
| line, but they check your ID at voting time.
| HappySweeney wrote:
| I was referring to the US, specifically.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| No. Your parent is correct in the main, and you're a bit
| off-topic with your comparisons to other countries.
| Election security is a function of multiple processes and
| protocols that work together. The fact that one country
| does X does not mean that X must be done elsewhere.
|
| In the U.S., it is true that the push for voter ID laws
| as a supposed fraud prevention measure has been the
| formulation of one modern political party, as are claims
| of widespread fraud in general. These claims have been
| refuted ad nauseum by election experts for years, yet
| they are still used by that party as justification for
| voter ID and a raft of other measures that consistently
| have uneven impacts on specific groups.
|
| What's most recently changed is that, while these false
| claims were used to preemptively disenfranchise select
| voters pre-election, they are now being used _by the
| loser_ in efforts to delegitimize the actual election
| _results_.
|
| The effect of this has been _for that same political
| party_ to now introduce yet more measures in the state
| legislatures they control. And, in some cases, they have
| wrested control away from state secretaries, allocating
| it to themselves.
|
| All of this is on the back of false claims.
| handrous wrote:
| > It's the "perceived" part that I am suspicious of (and I
| assume the GP too).
|
| Poll citizens and ask how much voter fraud they think
| happened in the last election, in their state, before a
| voter ID law is passed. Wait for a voter ID requirement to
| be passed, and another election to happen. Ask again.
| Compare. Repeat a few different places if you want to be
| thorough.
|
| That's one method, anyway.
|
| ("Polled citizens' perception of a thing about the world is
| _wildly_ wrong, and changes in that perception don 't
| follow changes in reality the way you'd hope they would" is
| a so-common-it's-boring result in political science)
| [deleted]
| klyrs wrote:
| This has been discussed to death, but I'll summarize what I've
| learned. Anonymous individuals don't get to vote. People who
| vote without an ID claim a name. At the polling station, they
| (the poll workers) look for that name on the voter roll. In
| many states, the voter is required to know an additional piece
| of information, like their mailing address on the voter roll.
| If you're not on the roll, then you don't get to vote -- or in
| some places, you get a provisional registration.
|
| It's possible to exploit this: you can claim somebody else's
| name, and apparently get away with casting their vote. If that
| person also votes, then that's easily detected. If the
| jurisdiction doesn't have a way to separate provisionally-
| authentic ballots from ID-verified ballots, then the election
| only needs to be re-done if the number of fraudulent votes is
| large enough to impact the outcome of the election. Elsewhere,
| both provisional ballots would be spoiled.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Does this actually work?
|
| I've voted in a number of elections where my ID didn't match
| my address. In those situations, they didn't take my word for
| it, I had to provide an alternative means of proof I am the
| person I claim to be and that I live where I'm registered.
|
| Also, what states have the individual find themselves on the
| voter roll? I've always had to provide the proof of my
| ID/address to a person at the polling station and _they_
| would find my ballot.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Also, what states have the individual find themselves on
| the voter roll? I've always had to provide the proof of my
| ID/address to a person at the polling station and they
| would find my ballot.
|
| In my state you show up and give a poll worker your name,
| and they look it up in a binder with the list of registered
| voters for the polling station and cross it off. The
| binder's open on a card table, so if you have good eyes and
| can read upside down you could get a name. I'm pretty sure
| there was a Murphy Brown episode where the title character
| actually committed vote fraud in this way (to vote before
| she was old enough).
|
| States do provide voter databases of registered voters (at
| least to the major parties for electioneering), so if you
| had access to one you could find a name to use. My state
| definitely does, because I once got election mail with my
| voting history for the last 5 or 6 federal elections.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I've never presented an ID to vote. As a registered voter I
| show up to the polling place, give them my name, and sign a
| book with my address at the time of registration. That's
| it. This includes needing a provisional ballot one time
| because I moved.
|
| Each state is tasked with voter registration/validation.
| Why provide an ID at all when every single voter and vote
| is going to be verified against the established voter rolls
| anyways? Every state has a register/recorder office that
| validates eligibility to vote at the state and federal
| level that is far more thorough than asking volunteer poll
| workers to becoming poll police.
|
| I don't know where you live, but it sounds like people are
| trying to stifle your voice with what amounts to BS.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"As a registered voter I show up to the polling place,
| give them my name, and sign a book with my address at the
| time of registration. That's it."
|
| This seems awfully not-secure.
| klyrs wrote:
| Insecure enough to attract a significant number of people
| willing to risk a felony? Sounds like it would need a
| massive conspiracy (busloads of people faking signatures
| at multiple polling stations) to impact an election.
| Especially compared to the impact/effort of burning or
| "misplacing" a box of ballots.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'd say so. It's within the wheelhouse for organized
| crime. It is also something a foreign adversary could
| pull off with some partisan local support.
| bruceb wrote:
| Its a felony to vote illegally. Your one vote isn't going
| to sway the election. The risk to reward ratio is so
| skewed there is not a problem of people claiming to be
| other people to cast a ballot.
| dolni wrote:
| > Your one vote isn't going to sway the election.
|
| It won't until it does.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_close_election_resu
| lts...
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Yes, it is a felony, but how likely is someone to get
| caught? How likely is it there will be an audit or
| investigation?
|
| All it takes is a motivated group of people to pull off
| election fraud. Someone wouldn't be doing this solo. You
| don't think mobsters, corrupt politicians, or even
| foreign intelligence couldn't manage to sway close
| elections using this method?
| bruceb wrote:
| I don't. I am happy to hear how it could be done if you
| want offer up any plausible scenario.
|
| To sway any election its needs to be done a couple
| thousand times at least. How exactly would that work? How
| many people could you recruit to do it and nobody says
| anything? How much would be paid per ballot cast?
| klyrs wrote:
| > You don't think mobsters, corrupt politicians, or even
| foreign intelligence couldn't manage to sway close
| elections using this method?
|
| No, because it's batshit stupid to involve large numbers
| of people in a conspiracy because the probability of a
| leak rapidly approaches 100% and your ability to track
| down the leak rapidly vanishes. Much safer to get a
| single operator inside the election administration --
| "finding" and "losing" ballots, printing bad ballots that
| "accidentally" leave a candidate off, etc.
| klyrs wrote:
| I can't speak to whether or not this works, just
| summarizing what I know about how it's implemented.
|
| > Also, what states have the individual find themselves on
| the voter roll?
|
| I've added a parenthetical to clarify that. That would
| indeed be absurd.
| kiklion wrote:
| > It's possible to exploit this: you can claim somebody
| else's name, and apparently get away with casting their vote.
|
| This is made more likely by voter rolls being public. In NC,
| you can even see if a given person voted in a given election.
| Not their vote, but whether they voted or not. Which is
| information you could use to identify identities up for
| impersonating.
| sharemywin wrote:
| Although possible how would you pull it off at scale? It's
| hard enough to mobilize voters to begin with. So, would you
| risk going to jail on an individual basis? probably but let's
| assume the minimum amount of time it happens probably equals
| itself out.
|
| At scale you would need to pay people. Now you risk getting
| caught trying to pay the wrong person. And for what?
|
| I would bet your money is better spent running propaganda web
| farms or dark money advertising.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > Although possible how would you pull it off at scale?
|
| You can't, which is exactly why it's not a serious concern.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| > _...and +1.4 percentage points for the effect on the turnout of
| nonwhite voters relative to whites_
|
| > _the likelihood that nonwhite voters were contacted by a
| campaign increases by 4.7 percentage points, suggesting that
| parties' mobilization might have offset modest effects of the
| laws on the participation of ethnic minorities._
|
| So, what they're saying here is that increased efforts to contact
| minority voters (ostensibly endeavored because the laws were
| interpreted as punitive towards that group) may have resulted in
| a slight increase in turnout sufficient to overcome suppressed
| numbers.
|
| There is also anecdotal evidence that these laws make some in
| groups who feel targeted by them more determined to vote as a
| matter of principle (irrespective of campaign outreach efforts).
|
| At the end of the day, however, the requirement that some voters
| wield outsized determination is not exculpatory for those who
| seek to disenfranchise them, and these efforts don't stop with
| voter ID laws. Poll location closures leading to massive
| overcrowding and long waits in select areas; outlawing efforts to
| make those who wait more comfortable by, for example, providing
| water; attenuated hours at select locations; weekend closings;
| outlawing Sunday/church-sponsored efforts to vote; curtailing of
| mail-in ballots, etc are just some of the surgically targeted
| tactics employed.
| option wrote:
| there is an obvious compromise here - require voter ID but only
| in counties where enough registered voters (say over 95%) have
| one. Regardless of voting, people not having an ID is a serious
| problem local governments must solve.
| switch007 wrote:
| This would be somewhat sensible: start a program to provide the
| free ID, wait a few years, measure what % of people have it,
| take it from there.
|
| That won't happen of course (here in the UK). The free ID will
| be bundled with the legislation to require voter ID, with some
| pathetic head-start of maybe a few months to a year or so.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I recall in the 2016 election here in NJ I went to vote (we are
| in a deep red town).
|
| Despite the fact that I voted in multiple cycles in the same town
| and polling place and the ladies working at the polling station
| remain unchanged over the years, because my signature was
| slightly off from the ones in their records they started saying
| out loud "hey wait a minute this does not seem legit".
|
| They started getting visibly angry and I started getting
| terrified because I am not white and there were a bunch of semi
| angry looking Trump people in the room with us.
|
| They asked me for another form of ID so I showed them my drivers
| license and then they were like "OK all is well" and calmed down.
|
| But still that experience of fear is what I imagine is going to
| prevent people from coming out to vote, especially in districts
| where Democrats haven't provided any meaningful reform when they
| have been in office(see rural areas getting killed under
| Clinton/Obama). If you combine an electorate that is already
| discouraged + the fear of altercation it spells doom in the long
| term.
|
| This culture of fear is what the Republicans want and its what
| they need to hold on to power amid changing demographics. They
| will strip the government of every last thing they possibly can
| on their way out of relevance.
|
| I won't ever give up my right to vote but would I have fought
| back if they continued pressing the issue? Would I accepted a
| provisional ballot that may result in my vote being thrown into
| the trash or becoming ineffective on election day? I don't really
| know.
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| Doesn't pass the smell test. There is a group spending a lot of
| time doing this. Do you think it's because it makes no
| difference, and they're just having fun?
| elliekelly wrote:
| What's odd about the title of the paper is the conclusion
| reached by the authors: voter ID laws are a waste of time and
| resources.
| drno123 wrote:
| I am amazed about low level od voter authentication in the USA.
| Living in Europe, we get national ID card when we turn 18.
| Everyone gets it. It is not hard to get it, it does not cost
| anything, even mentally challenged people get it. When there is
| an election, you need to show up with your ID card on voting
| place close to your residence - you cannot show in any voting
| place but one assigned to you. There they have a printed list
| with names of all eligible voters in the area, they check your ID
| card and you vote. When the votes are counted, any ordinary
| citizen can be present and verify the counts, providing he has
| registered in advance to be present at vote counting. Empty
| ballots are counted and verified against number od people that
| did not show up. American elections seem like a joke.
| Y_Y wrote:
| This, of course, depends on where you are. Not every country in
| Europe has a national ID. Countries which do have one often
| charge for issuing them. In some cases it is sufficient just to
| bring your ballot paper to the polling station.
| jayd16 wrote:
| >you cannot show in any voting place but one assigned to you
|
| There have been examples of this being gamed in the US.
| Gerrymander the county then force your political opponents into
| the least convenient polling place in the county.
| umanwizard wrote:
| In general the US is much more incompetently and inefficiently
| administered than many European countries. It shouldn't
| surprise anyone that the authorities are incapable of setting
| up a system like the one you describe.
| kube-system wrote:
| Your country is likely a unitary state where you vote in
| national elections with your national ID.
|
| The dynamic is different in the US. The US doesn't have
| national elections. All elections are run by each individually
| federated state. The national government of the US does not
| have the authority to override this.
| nerdponx wrote:
| > Everyone gets it.
|
| This is the problem. In the US, there is no equivalent
| universal ID. Voter ID laws keep people out by requiring forms
| of ID that certain people tend not to have, e.g. requiring a
| driver's license, which immigrants and inner city residents
| might not have.
| akomtu wrote:
| Oh, I've just read on axios about the new "voting rights" bill.
| As expected, the bill is a book-worth of boilerplate that
| obscures the important details, but if you search for
| "identification", you'll see what they're trying to do there.
|
| Again, if this is how software was developed, this bill would be
| a pull request with 5000 changed files and a million changed
| lines, mostly refactoring, but there will be a few tiny changes
| that break the security model. Of course, when you try to point
| this out, they try to shout you down.
| newbie789 wrote:
| This seems like a bit of a departure from one of the authors'
| papers from 2017(1). I wonder what the big differences are that
| somehow the US is immune to disenfranchisement but France isn't.
|
| 1.
| https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=author:%22Pons%20Vincen...
| egberts1 wrote:
| A pastebin, please.
| jedimastert wrote:
| https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w25522/w255...
| antonvs wrote:
| What this doesn't take into account is the degree to which
| introducing such requirements can more easily be exploited in
| future to introduce barriers to voting. We've already seen how
| far some people are willing to go to undermine the integrity of
| elections.
|
| This means the real question is, to what extent does the current
| system contribute to integrity issues? So far, there doesn't seem
| to be much evidence that it does. So, what is the rationale for
| introducing additional ID requirements, beyond what already
| exists via voter registration, matching at the polls, etc.?
| xdennis wrote:
| Most countries have id requirements, and it's not viewed as a
| slippery slope towards voter suppression.
|
| As an outsider, I find it really weird how instead of agreeing
| to id requirements, Sunday-voting, and automatic registration
| like most countries, Americans prefer to fight the other side's
| requirements with silly arguments like "We can't vote on a
| Sunday, that would offend The Lord!", and "We can't use ids to
| vote because black people don't know how to get them."
| adventured wrote:
| Voting on Saturday would work just fine in the US. There's
| little difference between the two weekend days in the US when
| it comes to some people working or not on those days (if you
| work Saturdays, you often also work Sundays; you're typically
| on a weekend shift in that case). Culturally it's an
| exceptionally obvious and easy compromise.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Unfortunately, Sunday voting could be seen as
| disenfranchising religious communities that treat Sundays
| as a Sabbath / day of rest.
| christkv wrote:
| You still have early voting if that is a complaint.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Personally, I agree, but I can easily see how not being
| able to vote in person on election day due to religious
| obligations would run afoul of the Supreme Court.
| klyrs wrote:
| If the _only_ day to vote was on Sunday, sure. But nobody
| is being oppressed by having the polls open on an
| additional day. And what about communities that observe
| Sabbath on Saturdays?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| A significant number of people, especially those lower on
| the socioeconomic ladder, are working on weekends.
|
| "Vote on saturday" would skew elections toward those who
| work M-F jobs.
|
| We need mail-in voting. It would solve so many problems.
| But the reason one party has fought against it so hard is
| because stripping certain communities of their precincts
| and poll workers and such to create massive waits for
| voting is a key part of their disenfranchisement
| strategy...and keeping voting as an in-person activity
| because it does such a wonderful job of keeping The Poors
| out of polls, thus starving progressive candidates of
| votes.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > We need mail-in voting. It would solve so many
| problems. But the reason one party has fought against it
| so hard
|
| ...for other people (their own voters, because of age
| demographics of the parties, being disproportionately
| more likely to qualify for mail-in [absentee] ballots
| under the restrictive rules they prefer to general mail-
| in availability)...
| antonvs wrote:
| Most democratic countries don't seem to have a right wing
| that's been doing its best to undermine the integrity of
| elections in a way that works in their favor.
|
| The countries where you see that kind of behavior tend to be
| the ones that have ended up with dictators or quasi-
| dictators. There's been plenty of serious discussion recently
| about the risk the US faces of ending up on that road.
|
| Whatever the arguments might have been for this 5 or 10 years
| ago, now seems like a really bad time to make a change like
| this. And again, what is the positive case for making the
| change? What problem is being solved? There already is a
| voter identification requirement at registration time, and a
| mechanism for detecting fraudulent votes.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| That party has, in internal presentations leaked to the
| public, stated to their own leadership (paraphrasing) "we
| are not popular, our platform is not popular. We cannot win
| elections unless we stop as many people from voting as
| possible, because our people ALWAYS vote."
| namdnay wrote:
| Most countries have IDs though... you can't do anything in
| most European countries without your ID. If we had to have a
| specific document to vote that we never need for anything
| else, we would be having the same arguments as you guys
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"You can't do anything in most European countries without
| your ID."
|
| That's the case in America, too.
| antonvs wrote:
| The difference is that in the US there's no standard ID
| that's suitable for voting, that everyone has.
|
| Not everyone has a driver's license. It's possible to get
| a non-driver ID from the motor vehicle department in most
| states, but not everyone without a driver's license has
| this either.
|
| There's also no federal ID, other than a passport, which
| a large number (majority?) of people don't have.
|
| This is a big part of the reason why separating voter
| registration from voting makes sense in the US. Voter
| registration allows identity to be confirmed using a
| variety of documents, which would be less practical to
| check at polling time.
|
| The "solution" to this (assuming a solution is needed,
| which no-one seems to be able to justify well) is to have
| a federal ID or a federal ID standard (like Real ID),
| coupled with a requirement that every citizen has such an
| ID.
|
| It's amusing that conservatives are the ones pushing for
| this "papers please" approach. Apparently their fear of
| imaginary voter fraud by imaginary immigrants outweighs
| their fear of a new federal government-imposed
| requirement that impacts their precious "freedoms".
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'm in favor of a Federal ID. I've never understood the
| opposition to it, especially considering each of us
| already has a few ID numbers issued to us by different
| federal agencies.
|
| >"It's amusing that conservatives are the ones pushing
| for this "papers please" approach. Apparently their fear
| of imaginary voter fraud by imaginary immigrants
| outweighs their fear of a new federal government-imposed
| requirement that impacts their precious "freedoms".
|
| This is some really snide rhetoric.
| antonvs wrote:
| It's snide because it's identifying a huge, irrational
| hypocrisy in what's supposedly important to those people.
|
| > I'm in favor of a Federal ID
|
| But there isn't one now. This means that your original
| point about the case with IDs in America being similar to
| Europe is not actually relevant here.
|
| In any case, what problem do you think requiring ID at
| time of voting is solving?
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| It's more an issue that there is no unified, universal ID
| system in the US. Different states do things differently and
| have different requirements. I'd be more in favor of an ID
| requirement if there was a universal, free, accessible ID
| system in place, but there isn't, and implementing one is a
| similarly fraught political question.
| christkv wrote:
| Everyone has a social security number you could expand that
| to be the basis for a federal level id system like most
| other western countries.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| You could, except currently a SSN is used more like a
| shared secret or password than a unique identifier. I
| would think that a green-field approach would be better
| than stapling yet more functionality onto an overloaded
| number that was never designed to be used the way we're
| using it.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| > Most countries have id requirements, and it's not viewed as
| a slippery slope towards voter suppression.
|
| Other countries have actual ID cards. They are issued for
| free to and required of every single citizen. The US does
| not: it has a long history of suspicion of national
| government IDs.
|
| Because of this, a "voter ID" in US states can mean whatever
| the state legislature wants it to mean, and republican
| legislatures are often accused of restricting valid forms of
| identification to specifically those which republican voters
| have more often than democrat voters.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > it has a long history of suspicion of national government
| IDs.
|
| I think it's more that the people in power and their
| supporters have had reason to make government IDs hard to
| come by for the transient, poor, and other undesirables. Or
| they simply don't want to 'muh tax dollars' going to the
| 'lazy bum' on the street getting a government ID card. I
| think there's also been a fair amount of pushing by the
| auto industry to make drivers licenses the default ID, too
| - starting in the fifties you really saw the "you have a
| car if you're important/Made It" attitude creep into US
| society.
|
| By the way: did you notice that the politicians shouting
| loudest about illegal immigration tend to be associated
| with industries and states that use lots of illegal
| immigration (like, saaaaay, farming?)
|
| It's not about stopping illegal immigration. It's about
| them having power over their workers. "Illegals" don't talk
| to police, public health officials, DAs, OSHA, etc about
| pesky things like missing/deducted paychecks, workplace
| safety, violence/theft, etc.
|
| "They're stealing your jobs" is just how they sell it to
| Joe Q. Public, because one way to win someone over is to
| tell them that there's someone further down the ladder than
| them.
| chestertn wrote:
| Most european countries require some sort of government ID
| before voting. I don't see what the big deal is.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Unlike many countries, US doesn't have a national required ID
| card, so voter ID schemes must resort to other kinds of
| identification. Republican-controlled states have often
| restricted forms of identification to those sorts that many
| democrats may not have in an attempt to discourage them from
| voting.
| triceratops wrote:
| They also provide ID for free. A lot of these countries have
| some form of government-sponsored health care, for which
| people already have ID by default.
| wolfhumble wrote:
| Not American, but from what I understand you would need an
| ID for e.g. foods stamps and unemployment benefits
| (searched via Google). I think the same is true when you
| are hired for a new job as well(?). These are just
| examples. Can you really live a normal life in the US
| without a passport, driver's license or State ID?
|
| I have read many times that requiring an ID card to vote in
| the US is seen by many as undemocratic as certain
| demographics are hindered from voting. To me this is
| absurd. To create trust that elections are held without
| fraud, IDs are an essential building block.
| triceratops wrote:
| > requiring an ID card to vote in the US
|
| Requiring an ID card without taking steps to ensure those
| IDs are available easily and for cheap. There are almost
| no "election security by voter ID" bills that provide the
| latter. On the other hand, making voter ID mandatory has
| been accompanied by closure of offices or reduction of
| hours, increasing wait times and so on. It's clearly a
| dirty trick.
| wolfhumble wrote:
| IDs are essential. It works in other countries. Fix it.
| tshaddox wrote:
| The ACLU cites a 2006 study which says that 25% of
| African-American eligible voters lack government-issued
| photo ID, and 8% of white eligible voters. Those are
| pretty huge numbers, not to mention the conspicuous
| ethnic disparity.
| odiroot wrote:
| Where exactly? I had to pay for all my government IDs.
| xdennis wrote:
| Not all European states provide free IDs, and some US
| states which require IDs provide them for free.
| triceratops wrote:
| Can you give me examples of European countries where
| there are no forms of ID that are free and accepted at
| the polls?
| chestertn wrote:
| In Spain, the national ID (DNI) costs 12 euros. They wave
| the cost under certain conditions.
| triceratops wrote:
| Is DNI the only acceptable form of ID for voting? Are
| there no free IDs that are also accepted? How long does
| it take to get a DNI? How convenient is it?
|
| Voter ID laws in the US are weaponized to reduce turnout.
| Make ID compulsory, then make getting ID really
| cumbersome (reduce office hours, increase wait times,
| increase costs).
| twofornone wrote:
| >So far, there doesn't seem to be much evidence that it does.
| So, what is the rationale for introducing additional ID
| requirements, beyond what already exists via voter
| registration, matching at the polls, etc.?
|
| Right, as any good security engineer will tell you, the best
| time to fix a hole is after its already been exploited.
| antonvs wrote:
| I've done security engineering work at both large and small
| companies, as well as for the US Navy.
|
| What's the threat model you're concerned about here?
| sharemywin wrote:
| To me the much bigger problem is this idea of putting inside
| people on the certification boards, saying the results are laced
| with fraud and flipping the election to the state legislators.
| How do you fix that?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Not just putting insider people on the boards. A whole lot of
| state legislatures this year tried to hand themselves authority
| to override election results
|
| https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/jul/14/are-state-leg...
| [deleted]
| elliekelly wrote:
| "Jury duty" for ballot counting and election certification?
| christkv wrote:
| In Spain you are a potentially draftee for election duty,
| especially if you are unemployed.
| sharemywin wrote:
| I guess thats better then my idea of locking them up until
| they come to a consensus.
| jayd16 wrote:
| This doesn't really gel with the observed increase in voter
| turnout in states with mail in voting. Anyone want to square that
| circle?
| godmode2019 wrote:
| In New Zealand you have to register months in advanced, you
| receive a voting ID in the mail and you use this to vote in
| person along with (from memory one form of ID)
|
| You can register on the spot but you need both ID and proof of
| address.
|
| Also telling anyone who you voted for on the day is illegal. You
| can not post about it, because all party voting advertising is
| banned on the day.
|
| I find this funny when Americans argue about things we figured
| out in the 90s.
|
| We also have MMP which means you have more than one party so for
| example Bernie would have his own party.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Why have IDs for anything?
| jimbob45 wrote:
| ID laws aren't really a debate at this point. The overwhelming
| majority of Americans are in favor of showing some sort of ID to
| vote as long as said ID is free (i.e. being poor isn't a possible
| impediment to voting). By 'free', that means free or reasonably
| free of time as well. People working multiple jobs with children
| simply don't have time to wait down at the DMV for three hours
| (if you're lucky) to be able to vote.
| tw04 wrote:
| But they are up for debate for all the caveats you've listed. I
| have yet to see any plan that resolves the issue of free as in
| beer and free as in: people can easily obtain said ID with
| little to no inconvenience.
|
| All of the politicians pushing for ID laws brush away the whole
| obtaining an ID thing as an already solved problem... except it
| very much isn't. Anyone that had to try to visit the DMV in a
| large city has likely discovered you're lucky if it's only a
| day-long affair.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| What matters is that we're all on the same page. Everyone is
| generally okay with voting ID requirements as long as they're
| free and _everyone_ is okay with lower costs /lower time
| investments to get IDs. The fact of the matter is that state
| budgets are finite and very few politicians are ever going to
| choose to fund DMVs over schools or public works. As such, we
| collectively choose to remain in stalemate until such a time
| when our DMVs function smoother so that we can make IDs free
| and then require them to vote.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| > little to no inconvenience
|
| Since when has this been the standard? Is anything else
| inconvenient? Strikes me as a little ridiculous.
| namdnay wrote:
| Well the objective is to get as many people to vote as
| possible, so it does make sense to make that as easy as
| possible.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Oh, well, when you put it that way it makes sense. We can
| just not authenticate the votes at all then. Then anyone
| can vote.
|
| That is absurd. That's not the goal. Only citizens can
| vote, and the votes need to be legitimate.
| switch007 wrote:
| Is it? Whose objective is that?
|
| It's not the objective of the ruling party in the UK, for
| example. Quite the opposite...just to get the _right_
| people to vote.
| twofornone wrote:
| >People working multiple jobs with children simply don't have
| time to wait down at the DMV for three hours (if you're lucky)
| to be able to vote.
|
| This is a tired trope considering that according to BLM
| statistics only about 5% of workers hold multiple jobs and I
| doubt most of them have children and can't spare a single half
| day to get the ID that they are required to show proof of
| employment eligibility in the first place.
| adventured wrote:
| Exactly. It should be provided by the US Government to anyone
| with citizenship, free of charge and at max convenience.
|
| It's well beyond time for a universal federal ID card, which
| could serve numerous purposes such as voting, general
| identification, more easily getting a passport, travel,
| government benefits & programs, and so on. You get one at birth
| and then update the photo every N years or if you need to
| change pertinent information. When I was born I got a Social
| Security card, there's no reason that shouldn't have been a
| multi-purpose national ID card instead.
| djrogers wrote:
| > People working multiple jobs with children simply don't have
| time to wait down at the DMV for three hours (if you're lucky)
| to be able to vote.
|
| Malarkey. I just got my first RealID in California last month,
| and I was in the DMV for around 20 minutes. And this wasn't in
| some bougie city with a special DMV.
|
| Make a reservation, show up, done.
| tgb wrote:
| I got mine in April and it involved standing in line for an
| hour before being let into the DMV to sit in line inside. It
| cost something like $50, too. I wouldn't call it convenient.
| Kique wrote:
| How nice of you to live in a state that wants people to get
| an ID and vote, it's not like that everywhere...
|
| Older article but wouldn't be surprised if more states are
| doing similar things today.
|
| "Many ID-issuing offices maintain limited business hours. For
| example, the office in Sauk City, Wisconsin is open only on
| the fifth Wednesday of any month. But only four months in
| 2012 -- February, May, August, and October -- have five
| Wednesdays. In other states -- Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi,
| and Texas -- many part-time ID-issuing offices are in the
| rural regions with the highest concentrations of people of
| color and people in poverty"
|
| https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
| reports/chal...
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _I just got my first RealID in California last month_
|
| > _Make a reservation, show up, done._
|
| California has already done the work in making voting
| accessible and it isn't califronia politicans arguing for
| voter ID laws. California isn't a battleground state and is
| run by people who have pushed to make voting as seamless as
| possible. Alabama, after passing voter ID laws, then turned
| around and made it more difficult for people to obtain IDs.
| [1]
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-01/alabam
| a-c...
| pseudosavant wrote:
| Yes, and getting identification is anything but free in most of
| the US. Often time you may have to pay to get some other
| documents (birth certificate, SSN card, etc) first to prove
| your identity. The threshold of proof for getting an ID in some
| states is pretty high, and only getting higher with the
| pointless REAL ID initiative.
|
| Many people in the rural US (which is a ton of people) are
| hours away from a place that will issue identification.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| yet another brain dead liberal argument.
| Zigurd wrote:
| They don't stop fraud, either. A common form of double voting is
| among voters who have multiple homes voting in more than one
| place.
| klyrs wrote:
| How common?
| Zigurd wrote:
| In absolute terms, it's a subset of a rare event.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| It's a good question but I doubt any good analysis has been
| done on this. The two different districts / jurisdictions
| would have to share voter roll data. And, most importantly,
| there would actually have to be a reason to go looking / do
| an investigation.
|
| Do you think a state like Indiana (for example) asks New
| Hampshire for voter roll data to make sure citizens who moved
| between the two states aren't double voting?
| titzer wrote:
| The title should have been "Strong mobilization efforts needed to
| neutralize voter turnout reduction of ID laws", because that's
| what the data in their abstract _actually_ says.
| elil17 wrote:
| Even then, there was a 0.1% reduction in voter turnout, but the
| reduction was primarily among white voters. Although this isn't
| the negative outcome that myself and other opponents of voter
| ID laws were worried about, any policy that reduces voter
| engagement is bad - even if it doesn't lead to racial
| inequality.
| mwilliaams wrote:
| .1% sounds statistically insignificant to me
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| .1% of the US population is 300,000+ people. That's not
| "insignificant" by any stretch and could easily sway an
| election given many of them come down to a handful of
| votes.
| nverno wrote:
| I agree, but there needs to be some compromise between
| integrity and ease. As programmers, we all know how easily
| systems can be compromised. Having effectively zero barrier
| to getting proper ID seems like a simple, inexpensive
| solution, especially given you already need ID for so many
| other essentials
| ryantgtg wrote:
| Could this be an issue of that sentence you quoted being really
| difficult to comprehend? So they attempted to rewrite it and
| got it wrong?
|
| I've read it 10x and am still baffled. It's the "voter turnout
| reduction of ID laws" part that I don't understand. I guess I
| should go read the paper itself.
| titzer wrote:
| The quotes were my attempt at summarizing their abstract,
| what they actually wrote was:
|
| > The lack of negative impact on voter turnout cannot be
| attributed to voters' reaction against the laws, measured by
| campaign contributions and self-reported political
| engagement. However, the likelihood that nonwhite voters were
| contacted by a campaign increases by 4.7 percentage points,
| suggesting that parties' mobilization might have offset
| modest effects of the laws on the participation of ethnic
| minorities. Finally, strict ID requirements have no effect on
| fraud, actual or perceived. Overall, our findings suggest
| that efforts to improve elections may be better directed at
| other reforms.
|
| Which is _completely different_ from their title.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| > It's the "voter turnout reduction of ID laws"
|
| That should be interpreted as "voter turnout reduction due to
| ID laws," or perhaps "voter turnout reduction as a result of
| the implementation of ID laws."
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| Exactly this. In fact, the current title is actually refuted by
| the abstract.
| tessierashpool wrote:
| that's a pretty significant title error
| bena wrote:
| It's not quite an error. The poster's other submissions are
| not surprising given the editorializing of this abstract.
| [deleted]
| brightball wrote:
| It's as if opposing voter ID has never made any sense and only
| increased suspicion of the people who oppose it.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-10-14 23:02 UTC)