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Comment by basetop | Hacker News Reader

You are conveniently leaving out the fact that many liberal Democrats also don't want national ids because it might hurt illegal immigrants, prevent voter fraud, etc.

I can't help but cringe whenever politically motivated people throw around talking points they heard on their favorite disinformation cable network.

The reason why we don't have a proper national id card is primarily a result of state's rights vs fed rights and to prevent centralization of power. But centralization of power has happened regardless so I'm sure we'll be getting national id cards eventually.

Historically, it was the Democrats ( the party of the South ) who were anti-national id card. The republicans were the party of the northeast elites. So if you want to blame anyone, blame the democratic party because they are why we don't have a national id card system.

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> prevent voter fraud

Actual recorded voter fraud of the kind that would be prevented by voter ID laws is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent [1], while we have direct quotes from Republican legislators and legislative aides about the intent to suppress minority votes with voter ID laws [2].

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/10/13/th...

[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/us/some-republicans-ackno...

> Historically, it was the Democrats ( the party of the South ) who were anti-national id card

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

Ironic. The "Democrats are trying to allow voter fraud" is itself a talking point from your favorite source of disinformation.

And calling the Republicans of the 19th century the party of "Northeast elites" is exceedingly historically inaccurate. The Democrats were as well, and the only reason why Lincoln won originally was that there was a party split in the Democratic party that year. The Democrats nominated two candidates (one northern and one southern) and split their vote. Not to mention that the initial push for a national ID card was during FDRs presidency, who was probably the strongest centralized government technocrat president we've ever had, _and_ a Democrat. And all of that is ignoring the southern strategy, and who's fighting which sides of these issues today.

At least in the conservative community where I grew up, the religious "mark-of-the-beast/new world order" narrative was the main anti-national ID narrative. I'd never heard the illegal immigrant angle before.

It's not a real thing. Nobody is pro voter fraud. Nobody is in favor of non US citizens voting in US elections.

They are against voter disinfranchisement. The problem is that the IDs can be made harder for some to get than others.

See momocasa's post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19879722

I think there probably are people that want to enfranchise mere residents.

It doesn't seem to be catastrophic for New Zealand, for instance.

There's a strong argument to be made that people participating in the economy and other parts of civic life deserve to have a voice in politics. It's convenient and popular to exclude them, that doesn't make it just.

(I phrase my first paragraph the way I do because I haven't thought about it much and don't have a real clear opinion 'bout it)

I'm sure there are some, perhaps I was too colloquial when I said nobody, but there is no widespread movement to give non-citizens the ability to vote in US elections. My main point is that opposition to voter ID wouldn't have much to do with that because that's not how voter registration works in the US. The post I had responded to was a mischaracterization of the reasons people are opposed to voter IDs.

On the topic of residents voting, a city near me had a policy+budget allocation vote that allowed anyone who lived there and was over 13. My opinion on that is that I think that's pretty neat at a city level, but I don't think it makes sense to allow non citizens to vote in a federal election.

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