Comment by acdha | Hacker News Reader

Comment by acdha | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Not everyone drives a car or buys alcohol (or gets carded when they’re decades past 21 in a place where everyone knows them), and if they don’t need it regularly it’s not uncommon for older people to let theirs expire. For example, I know someone who spent the last 40 years of her life medically unable to drive a car and unwilling to travel internationally but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have a right to vote. It’s not a huge number of people but it’s consistently on the order of a single digit percentage nationally - millions of people - and higher in certain communities, which is where the fairness question arises:

https://www.npr.org/2012/02/01/146204308/why-millions-of-ame...

The solution is easy: require access to state ID to be free, and reverse budget cuts which mean that in some areas of the country you might need to drive for hours to get to a DMV or produce things like utility bills which not everyone has.

I will believe anyone talking about voter ID has a goal other than suppressing opposition votes when their bill includes a robust implementation of any of this.

It’s also worth remembering that the “cheating going on” is largely an urban legend. Every credible study has found it to be exceedingly rare, nowhere near the level of affecting election results.

That NPR article is from 2012 and as far I can tell they referenced a survey from 2006.

"A SURVEY OF AMERICANS ’ POSSESSION OF DOCUMENTARY PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP AND PHOTO IDENTIFICATION" https://www.brennancenter.org/media/6697/download

In 2012 the same group said the number was only 500k. Also they mention "Legal precedent requires these states to provide free photo ID to eligible voters who do not have one." in the newer article.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/chal...

So in 6 years it went from over 3 million to half a million people without some form of ID that is valid for voting. Looking at it from a larger picture, that's approximately 0.217% of the entire US voting age population a decade ago that didn't have some form of legal ID that was valid for voting. That is a smaller percentage of people than were incarcerated in the entire US in 2012. What I am not able to determine is how people of that half million actually wanted to vote but were not able to for some reason? That missing number is the one I would care about putting the time and effort into making sure they had the opportunity to vote.

You can look at the yearly voter turnout in the US to easily see that a significant portion of the US simply didn't vote. And the freedom to choose to not vote is something I strongly support.

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

Again, voting is a right. If we’re going to add restrictions to that right we need to handle the edge cases. This isn’t a ton of people but it’s enough that we need to have an answer better than “they probably won’t vote for my guy”.

The US allows charities to help people that need it. A quick google came up with this website.

https://impactful.ninja/best-charities-for-voting-rights-in-...

Although I would strongly suggest you investigate any charity to see if they are spending the money donated to them for their stated goals. And double check their tax form 990 to see how much of that money is actually spent on “charitable work".

Charities in the US also have the added benefit of donations being tax deductible(to an extent) and a fairly direct way to make sure your taxable income is being spent on something you care about.

How do you feel about showing ID to buy guns? Or pay for a firearms license/ mandatory training? (Also a constitutional right)

The constitution ascribes the right to keep and bear arms to "the People."

Constitutional protections to voting explicitly apply to "citizens." This is why American Samoans, non-citizen US Nationals born in the US, can own a gun but (usually) not vote in the mainland.

If voting applied to "people" instead of "citizens" then the ID would make no sense. It's pretty insane to compare determining if someone is a citizen to determining if they are a person.

I think we’re in agreement.

I knew the exact (non)answer I’d get from the other poster based on their other comments.

Technically only a right to hear them as part of a militia - the idea of blanket freedom was a revisionist take popularized many years after the Founder’s era - but to be clear I’m of the opinion that national ID cards should be freely available to everyone, no harder than getting to a post office.

That, too, is a revisionist take. Sure, earlier commentary concentrated on advantages of the militia, especially verses a standing army. But there is only limited discussion of the scope of the right prior to the 20th century. It was only with the development of federal regulation of guns with the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968 that the question of whether or not the militia clause limited the right began to be discussed.

There was less discussion about the second amendment itself because it was so linked to the militias in common understanding. Early American cities and states had laws restricting storage, banning concealed carry, requiring registration and/or taxation, etc. One really important thing to keep in mind is the distinction between what a rich, white property owner could do (i.e. not only own guns but be expected to furnish supplies for the militia in which they were likely an officer) and what, say, a poor or black person was allowed to do even though they were ostensibly equal under the law.

I'm not saying there wasn't plenty of allowed activities but that the concept of this being an unrestricted right goes back to roughly the second half of the previous century.

>the concept of this being an unrestricted right goes back to roughly the second half of the previous century.

From a federal perspective this is laughably disingenuous. The strongest federal gun control is the GCA and NFA. In 1920 you could mail order a machine gun.

The bill of rights weren't even fully incorporated to apply to the states until later in the republic, such as when the 14th amendment was passed. So it's disingenuous to characterize 19th century restrictions as representations of statutes in compliance the 2nd, when the 2nd didn't even necessarily apply to local/state governments at that time.

Again, the point is that for the first couple centuries it was not considered controversial that there could be restrictions. People might disagree on the exact details but few people thought there couldn’t be any restrictions prior to that becoming a major political rallying point in the late 1970s.

Have you seen the sorry excuses for “historical precedent” that NYS dug up for Antonyuk v Hochul?

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/new-york-gun-law-temp...

This was filed by the State. Search the word “negro” to find their justification for character references.

https://reason.com/volokh/2022/11/07/preliminary-injunction-...

For a summary and explanation.

If you read any scholar pre 1900, you'll find that all of them understood as in no uncertain terms that it is a individual right unconnected to participation in a militia. The collective rights understanding is a complete fabrication of the 20th century.

No, that's why they said it is the "right of the militia to keep and bear arms."

If they wanted it to apply to people, unconnected to the militia they would have said "the right of the People to keep and bear arms."

Wait...

Read the founders, DC v Heller and this Twitter thread https://twitter.com/MorosKostas/status/1523800762706325504.

Another point you completely mis-quoted the amendment. It states

> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Yes, that was the joke. Note that notch656a has posted pro-2A comments elsewhere in this hellthread.

Ah missed that. Thanks.

Which scholars are you basing this on? I'd recommend checking out Lawrence D. Cress's “Citizens in Arms” and Saul Cornell's “A Well-Regulated Militia”. It's nowhere near as simple as the unrestricted gun activists tend to portray it.

This Lawyer has been documenting text in this Twitter thread https://twitter.com/MorosKostas/status/1523800762706325504

Unconstitutional.

It is not the same kind of right as the right to free speech or to keep and bear arms. It is a civic rather than a natural right.

Not since after the 15th Amendment (race, color, past status as a slave) and 19th Amendment (sex).

15th and 19th apply explicitly to citizens. US Citizenship is not a world-wide natural right. The natural right is to voting rights in your nation of citizenship to not be prejudiced by your protected class. Verifying votes are made by eligible voters in fact protect the 15 and 19th amendment from infringement -- imagine a scenario where a bunch of Idahoan men made a pact to come into California to [illegally] vote against state-level issues supported by female California voters.

How is that relevant? This thread is only about how the right to vote has to be considered when proposing ID requirements which would prevent someone from voting. Nothing about non-citizens, only what constitutes an acceptable burden for citizens.

The non-citizen consideration in inextricably linked to the citizen consideration. If you say something is specifically for citizens you're absolutely saying something about non-citizens.

The right for citizens to vote can only meaningfully be preserved by verifying votes are eligible, otherwise you could just bring in busloads of Mexicans or whatever and dilute the citizens votes to the point it was rendered a vote only in name. This is why it is harmful and deceptive to just frame this as a question about burden for citizens; if only citizens showed up to vote then obviously there needn't be any burden at all to verify citizenship. I reject your characterization as it being "nothing about non-citizens."

The 'burden' is there precisely to create an impassible, or at least fairly effective, impediment to NON-CITIZENS to stop them from voting. The question isn't what minimizes the burden of citizens (obviously not requiring any evidence would be least burdensome). It is what burden maximizes preservation of the right of the citizens to vote.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com