alt Hacker NewsHaving bare minimum protections against invalid voters, illegal immigrants or otherwise, is a basic precaution that every country on Earth except America does. The honor system we have here is absurdly lenient. I understand the Democrat desire to oppose everything Trump proposes, but imagine if in The Netherlands you can waltz in and say you are this person or that person, without any ID check whatsoever. Europeans might not realize this but that is literally the American system.
I totally grant that the fraud Trump is claiming is way off the mark. But why not just... require ID to vote? At least in federal elections? The lack of verification is the exact reason why the lies continue
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> But why not just... require ID to vote?
Among other things, consider https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
> The lack of verification is the exact reason why the lies continue
I think the evidence suggests they are not particularly constrained by reality? Recall "They're eating the cats and dogs."
> imagine if in The Netherlands you can waltz in and say you are this person or that person, without any ID check whatsoever. Europeans might not realize this but that is literally the American system
This is of course not true, why say clearly incorrect things?
First, there is no "American system" as such, because every state is responsible for running elections, so there are 50 state systems in the US.
More importantly, I get my ballot in the mail only because I'm registered to vote at the DMV, you know the same agency that issues the very ID they check to make sure I'm elegible to vote.
You don't just "waltz in" to the post office or whever to get a ballot.
> imagine if in The Netherlands you can waltz in and say you are this person or that person
That's not at all how it works. Typically, you do need to present ID to register. You also need to verify your address on the day of voting. If someone does commit fraud, it's easy to detect: as soon as the real voter tries to vote, the system will detect a "double vote." The fact that this almost never happens suggests that there is not much fraud, if any. And the amount of fraud required to actually change an election result with this method would require a concerted effort of tens of thousands of people, all risking federal prosecution.
> that is literally the American system.
No. Please stop misrepresenting the facts.
> But why not just... require ID to vote?
There are lots of good reasons, which you are probably already aware of, including the fact that many people eligible to vote do not have the requisite ID and are unlikely to get it. My litmus test for supporting voter ID is that it is accompanied by (a) free, mandatory, and automatic national ID cards, and (b) national holiday on election days. Republicans won't support part A for their own ideological reasons, and moreover their purported effort to support voter integrity is not sincere: the goal is simply to prevent undesirable (i.e. non-Republican) voters from voting.
Literally, what the fuck are you talking about.
As in, please be more specific with your claims that we don't require identification to vote.
Because it strikes me as a very low effort Fox News talking point, not any reality.
Most states allow you to cast a provisional ballot on polling Day without an ID, but require that you return and present an ID to accept it.
But no state is accepting votes without identifying the voter. They just vary somewhat in what alternatives they accept.
Compare your statement to the info here and come back with something better: https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_state
I have never voted without being required to present gov issued ID. Ever.
The comparison to western European countries doesn't hold up. Speaking from Norway: yes, it's true you have to provide ID to vote, both in national and local elections. The difference is that obtaining ID is trivial, to the point where essentially everyone here legally has ID. I wouldn't be surprised if the most common way for someone not to have ID would literally be "all of it was in my luggage and the airline lost it", or some similar very temporary state. In the US, the people who do have ID do not even form a representative sample of the population as far as I understand
I can't speak for the Americans, but I would imagine there'd be far less liberal pushback against voter ID if everyone could trivially obtain it.
How's this for a compromise: republicans get voter ID laws, in return for a national, bipartisanly monitored program to ensure that anyone who wants it can trivially obtain ID. Once that's realized, the voter ID laws can kick in?
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Voting systems in Europe differ by country, but for example here in Switzerland I just get my ballot in the mail, fill it in and send it back to get counted.
And of course Swiss Post just processes this as a regular piece of mail, routing it to the address written on the envelope, without any weird cross-tabulation against voter registers or barcodes…