Are voter I.D. laws necessary in order to maintain the integrity of our democratic process or are they a ploy to specific disenfranchise demographics home on election day?
Depends on the details of the process in question, I guess. The USA doesn't seem to have large amounts of voter fraud that requires laws to fight it, but it does have large numbers of voters (mainly poor and/or black and/or democrat voting) who don't have IDs of the correct type.
Here's a Last Week Tonight section about it. [link]
Quoting from the Trump thread so y'all don't have to:
This study is quite recent, and their numbers indicate that among the effects of voter ID laws are to skew voting in favour of white and right-aligned voters, because the laws have a greater impact on the voting of some minority groups (although I did wince at their use of the phrase 'almost significant'). Oddly, it's Republican legislators with substantial proportions of black people in their electorates that are most supportive of voter ID laws. Maybe it's just a coincidence that they seem to care the most about 'voter fraud'.
There is only one logical reason why the Democrats keep blocking the voter's ID issue... Voter Fraud.
There is zero evidence that Democrats (or members of any other party) are exploiting the lack of voter ID to commit voter fraud. There is evidence that at least some Republicans are embracing voter ID with the specific intent of disenfranchising Democratic-leaning voters. For starters, they keep saying so.
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The USA doesn't seem to have large amounts of voter fraud that requires laws to fight it, but it does have large numbers of voters (mainly poor and/or black and/or democrat voting) who don't have IDs of the correct type.
This. It's not as though the proposal of voter ID is completely outrageous in principle. I do not agree with activists who say that it's somehow an unconstitutional intrusion to have to prove your identity at the voting booth. If voter impersonation were a regular problem, the state would have every right to enact reasonable preventative measures, and an ID check certainly doesn't strike me as unreasonable.
But it's not a regular problem. And before changing the law to solve a non-problem, you should ask what ulterior motives proponents of the change might have, or, even granting them the benefit of the doubt, what the unintended consequences of the change might be. In this case, the consequence is an unnecessary bureaucratic obstacle to voting for a significant number of people who have the legal right to vote. I hate bureaucracy, you hate bureaucracy, we all hate bureaucracy, so why institute any more bureaucracy than is absolutely necessary?
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The USA doesn't seem to have large amounts of voter fraud that requires laws to fight it, but it does have large numbers of voters (mainly poor and/or black and/or democrat voting) who don't have IDs of the correct type.
This. It's not as though the proposal of voter ID is completely outrageous in principle. I do not agree with activists who say that it's somehow an unconstitutional intrusion to have to prove your identity at the voting booth. If voter impersonation were a regular problem, the state would have every right to enact reasonable preventative measures, and an ID check certainly doesn't strike me as unreasonable.
I agree that at first blush it doesn't sound unreasonable, which is probably why these laws have been passed in the first place. The problem arises when there is difficulty in obtaining the necessary type of ID. If people can't get to an open ID issuing office, or if they get denied ID repeatedly for frivolous reasons, or if obtaining the ID costs too much for the poorest people in our country to obtain them (so, basically, if the IDs aren't free), then it's not an ID that should be required for voting.
I am reminded of a friend of mine from Venezuela, who came to live with my family for a year. She needed to renew her passport before coming, and the passport office kept turning her away with more and more ridiculous excuses. The last one they gave her before she finally got her passport renewed was that they were "out of paper".
The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do. ~ Joseph Stalin
Vote counting, whether done by machine or by people in smoke filled backrooms, are rarely monitored in anyway. Voter ID laws are primarily about discarding votes and not at all about vote integrity. It's all hidden behind a veneer of good intentions. However it's applicability is sinister. ID are frequently free but in order to get an I.D. you have to have a birth certificate or Social Security card to get the I.D. and these cost money.
I agree with the general consensus here that voter ID laws are for the most part at least, unnecessary.
The vote is already compromised by incomplete information of the voters (people voting for someone they wouldn't have provided with all the relevant information), and this is a far more important issue to address than voter impersonation.
Discuss
Here's a Last Week Tonight section about it. [link]
Quoting from the Trump thread so y'all don't have to:
Art is life itself.
But it's not a regular problem. And before changing the law to solve a non-problem, you should ask what ulterior motives proponents of the change might have, or, even granting them the benefit of the doubt, what the unintended consequences of the change might be. In this case, the consequence is an unnecessary bureaucratic obstacle to voting for a significant number of people who have the legal right to vote. I hate bureaucracy, you hate bureaucracy, we all hate bureaucracy, so why institute any more bureaucracy than is absolutely necessary?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I am reminded of a friend of mine from Venezuela, who came to live with my family for a year. She needed to renew her passport before coming, and the passport office kept turning her away with more and more ridiculous excuses. The last one they gave her before she finally got her passport renewed was that they were "out of paper".
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Vote counting, whether done by machine or by people in smoke filled backrooms, are rarely monitored in anyway. Voter ID laws are primarily about discarding votes and not at all about vote integrity. It's all hidden behind a veneer of good intentions. However it's applicability is sinister. ID are frequently free but in order to get an I.D. you have to have a birth certificate or Social Security card to get the I.D. and these cost money.
The vote is already compromised by incomplete information of the voters (people voting for someone they wouldn't have provided with all the relevant information), and this is a far more important issue to address than voter impersonation.
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