I was just going to post that. I'm concerned that since election security is not (just) a technological problem, that very little will be done to improve it in the foreseeable future.
I'm from Idaho which is currently conservative by close to a 2/3 majority, but remember growing up that we had many liberal elected officials like Cecil Andrus and Frank Church. From my perspective, democrats are working to improve election security while republicans are not.
Is this simply a partisan issue? Does anyone from more liberal states have examples of democrats opposing election security?
If so - then how do we work to improve election security when our elected officials refuse to? If not - then how do we accomplish reforms within the republican party or make election reforms into political capital that it might be willing to trade for?
If one defines "election security" as "ensuring that each voter is registered, is alive and present, votes only once, and votes only in the correct location," then obviously requiring voters to legally identify themselves, just as they do when doing any number of everyday activities that involve local government, improves election security. Your assertion seems a bit knee-jerk.
None of those things you've mentioned requires voter ID, so I'm not sure why you're advocating for a solution that fixes nothing you claim is an issue.
Specifically: You can figure out if a voter is registered by cross-checking with the voting rolls, you can figure out if someone is alive by cross-checking obituaries and the other two issues can similarly be figured out by cross-referencing across all elections in a state. None of this requires strict voter ID to figure out and while it's possible that identities could be hijacked to vote for a certain person I believe but voter fraud is incredibly rare in practice.
Additionally all of those checks actually open up more avenues for hackers or less honest individuals to take advantage of said systems. For example dropping a bunch of people off of voter rolls to ensure that they have trouble voting or can't meet the deadline, mistakenly registering people as deceased and so forth. One of the major fears during the possible election tampering was that by altering voter roles you could shift the outcome of an election.
I think your assertion seems more knee-jerk than the person you're responding to.
> None of those things you've mentioned requires voter ID, so I'm not sure why you're advocating for a solution that fixes nothing you claim is an issue.
Respectfully, you're putting words in my mouth. I did not advocate for anything.
I was responding to the OP's assertion that, "democrats are working to improve election security while republicans are not." That assertion is facially incorrect, and Voter ID (whether you like it or not) is a reason why.
> Specifically: You can figure out if a voter is registered by cross-checking with the voting rolls, you can figure out if someone is alive by cross-checking obituaries and the other two issues can similarly be figured out by cross-referencing across all elections in a state. None of this requires strict voter ID to figure out.
Voter ID solves those problems at the ballot box. The volunteers sitting behind the desk aren't cross-checking obituaries or all elections in a state. You know that, so why did you say all that?
> voter fraud is incredibly rare in practice.
Why do you think that? After the last election, we saw video evidence of people being bused across state lines to vote where they weren't registered. That's just one example.
> Additionally all of those checks actually open up more avenues for hackers or less honest individuals to take advantage of said systems.
How would requiring photo ID matching that on the list of registered voters open up more avenues for attack? It's an additional form of authentication.
> For example dropping a bunch of people off of voter rolls to ensure that they have trouble voting or can't meet the deadline, mistakenly registering people as deceased and so forth.
What does requiring photo ID have to do with those forms of attack? Those can be done right now, without requiring photo ID. Why are you confusing the discussion with irrelevant issues?
> I think your assertion seems more knee-jerk than the person you're responding to.
Actually, your comment is the most knee-jerk in this thread so far. You've put words in my mouth and torn down a bunch of strawmen. You've identified me as an enemy when I haven't even advocated for one side or the other. All I'm doing is making logical observations. If you disagree with those observations, by all means, show me why.
To be honest, Voter ID addresses a made up problem. Search for wikipedia for 'Voter ID laws in the United States'.
Regardless of your political persuasion, I suggest you read a bit about how these voting machines are built. Assuming you are in tech, you will be horrified. Do you feel comfortable knowing your voting machine was written in VBA with a Excel spreadsheet as the backing data store? This is the level of incompetence we are dealing with. Integrity of our elections is an incredibly important issue for both parties, and this was a problem before Trump, Russia and the 2016 election.
I also suggest you read up on the stuxnet virus if you want to see what a determined state actor can create given unlimited resources.
Voter ID addresses a threat model that has been repeatedly proven to be minor at worst. It does absolutely nothing for the much more serious threat model of digital tampering.
Why do you think that that threat has proven to be minor? From what I've heard, I suspect we have only seen the tip of the iceberg. Voter fraud has been going on, no doubt, for as long as voting has.
> It does absolutely nothing for the much more serious threat model of digital tampering.
I agree that they solve different problems. I think we should use only paper ballots, and eschew all forms of electronic voting.
The opposition to voter ID laws is usually down to the implementation details of them that make them non-viable - for example, requiring costly IDs that are also difficult to get (while also closing facilities that issue them in some areas which just happen to vote a certain way).
A well-written voter ID law - one that truly guarantees the right to vote for every citizen eligible to do so - might well get enough bipartisan support; I'm just not aware of anyone ever trying such a thing.
Voter ID laws solve a problem that does not exist. I do not support pointless laws that open us up to further abuse by partisans.
Voter ID laws have been written in a way that they can be systematically (and I believe deliberately) abused to disenfranchise minorities. This is done by setting unreasonable office hours or locations to obtain voter IDs among other methods.
There is no need for voter ID laws and so there will be no bipartisan support for them unless both sides are interested in vote suppression.
Can you explain why the vast majority of other countries do have voter ID laws then?
As far as voter suppression, the whole point of what I wrote is that it's not inherent in voter ID. It only happens if the laws are deliberately designed that way. Again, look into how people vote in most European countries to see that it's not what these kinds of laws are actually about, when they're done right.
BTW, my perspective is that of a non-citizen on a track to citizenship. I think that even if real-world voter fraud is very low, there's also the question of symbolism at play. Voting is one of the few rights that are citizen-exclusive, so it is important to protect, even if only as a symbolic gesture. This goes both ways, of course - the right to vote shall not be denied to anyone who has it (and that part has priority for the same reason as presumption of innocence) - but conversely, if it is to be treasured, it needs to be secured to highlight its worth.
First, comparing America to other countries in this case is a poor point. Relative to European countries Americans are spread incredibly far apart with a culture designed around driving. Keep this in mind for the rest of my argument.
In many areas in America the hours for polling stations coincide with the typical workday. It can also take quite literally hours to reach your proper polling station to vote where taking any time off from work for many of the lower-class citizens is impossible. Proper ID for voting can also be harder to come across than you might think especially when access to them in minority or poor neighborhoods is deliberately limited. That's just to reach the location; never mind it potentially taking hours to just vote [1].
When you look at voter ID laws in a vacuum there isn't that much of an issue. However European countries have a far lower barrier to entry both for the act of voting and for getting a proper ID. When people talk about implementing voter ID in various areas; they're putting the cart before the horse, often intentionally because they know it benefits their voter base.
And as I've mentioned before voter ID solves very little. If you make it hard to vote just for a symbolic measure you're essentially admitting that you want to discriminate against minorities and the poor just for the sake of it.
I live in US, so yes, I'm well aware of the specifics. But also, "America is different" is a fairly used excuse by now, and frankly, I don't think it really is as different as Americans like to think it is. That "spread apart" thing and culture designed around driving is not unique, either.
All the issues you describe are, again, issues with a specific implementation. Voting day can (and should) be moved to a weekend. Government-issued IDs should be free and easy - I would even say automatic - to get. And so on, and so forth.
Voter ID does not have to make voting hard. I would not support any proposal that would do so (which is to say, any that I've seen pushed in US to date). However, I cannot in good faith support a principled opposition to voter ID as such.
And - speaking as a card-carrying member of the party - I believe that Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot by continually misrepresenting the core idea as racist etc. They should instead come up with a comprehensive voting reform proposal that would tackle all these issues - election security (including ID), voter registration, election day timing etc. And put it on the table with great fanfare. Then let Republicans explain why they're still opposed to it.
There's also an established history of voter ID laws in other countries not being used to suppress votes. This isn't a hypothetical, either.
From which directly follows that voter ID is not racist. The right-wing politics around voter ID in US specifically is racist. If lefties keep letting right-wing own the subject, then that's all it'll ever be. But it doesn't have to be that way.
We don’t need symbolic laws. Adding a restriction on our most fundamental rights because it feels good is misguided and extremely dangerous.
This country has a long and well documented history of voter suppression and voter ID is just the latest example.
You’re going to have to do better than “other countries do it” to convince me voter ID laws are a good idea. Start with any evidence of necessity and a how the south won’t abuse the hell out of it. Remember that they have already abused the hell out of it.
Voting is not a fundamental right like by definition, because only citizens have it. Fundamental rights are those that all persons have, innately, by virtue of being a person. Voting is a civic right of citizens.
Furthermore, in US specifically, right to vote is not even a guaranteed right for citizens - there's nowhere in the constitution that says a citizen has an inherent right to vote. There are various amendments that prohibit the government from discriminating based on certain traits (gender, race, age, poll tax etc); but none of them are a blanket grant of the right. This is why the states can prohibit felons from voting, for example, and why the criteria for that are so drastically different between them.
Now, personally, I think this is not a good idea, and every citizen should have an unconditional right to vote that can only be stripped with citizenship. But you insist that we talk about US as it is - and that is how it is.
The way you implement voter ID such that South can't abuse it is by using the constitutional power of Congress to set uniform rules for all congressional elections in the country. Since citizenship is a federal matter, it follows that voter eligibility as it pertains to citizens and non-citizens is also a federal matter, and should be set on the appropriate level. It would completely preempt any state legislation on this, solving the problem once and for all. This also means that the feds should be required to issue an ID that is sufficient to vote to any citizen who asks for one, at no cost to the citizen, and with minimal hassle - ideally, automatically - same as every other government in the world does.
And I disagree that symbols don't matter. The right to vote is valuable in part because of its exclusivity - not everybody has it. If you're unwilling to protect that exclusivity, even symbolically, that diminishes the right.
The question you should be asking is what party advocates for voter ID laws in the absence of any evidence to their necessity.
Voter ID laws are a solution to a problem that does not exist to allow political parties that advocate them to suppress votes at will. There is no existing need for voter ID laws and voter ID would not prevent tampering with voting machines.
It may be a worthwhile exercise to see what states advocate insecure voting methods (machines) and voter ID laws.
I'm from Idaho which is currently conservative by close to a 2/3 majority, but remember growing up that we had many liberal elected officials like Cecil Andrus and Frank Church. From my perspective, democrats are working to improve election security while republicans are not.
Is this simply a partisan issue? Does anyone from more liberal states have examples of democrats opposing election security?
If so - then how do we work to improve election security when our elected officials refuse to? If not - then how do we accomplish reforms within the republican party or make election reforms into political capital that it might be willing to trade for?