Comment by hagbard_c | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hagbard_c | Hacker News Reader

All this ballot-this and ballot-that is so easily solved if only those who oppose showing ID would drop their objections. Here's how it works:

1: show up at polling location, either on voting day or within the early voting period.

2: show ID to poll worker who verifies it and hands over the ballots for the elections in which you have the right to vote

3: fill in the ballots, put them in the envelope(s) and hand these over to a poll worker

4: poll worker checks again whether you have voting rights for the specific elections and drops the envelopes into the correct voting urns

Done. No postal service involved. You can vote at any (early) voting location for national elections, for local ones you'll need to go to a local voting location where the required ballots are available. Early voting can start a few weeks before election day so nearly everyone should have the possibility to set aside half an hour to an hour to do their civic duty.

That leaves those who really can't make it to the polls. For these people there can be a verified postal ballot system, i.e. they get one sent home on request, fill it out and send it back in the required envelopes. Voting by mail always adds risks but since it would only be needed for a small fraction of the voters that risk is manageable. Mail-in votes need to be counted on election day so they need to be in the mail about a week before election day. Why you ask? Because the fraud risk of mail-in ballots makes it all too easy to use them to add enough votes to push a close race towards a specific candidate. Count them early on election day and publish the results, these need to be final results, before the rest of the votes are counted. There's plenty of countries where votes are counted this way, this is not rocket science. I have voting rights in 2 different countries in northern and western Europe, both use something resembling this scheme. Everyone shows his or her ID either to get the ballots or to have them deposited in the voting urns, this has never been contested and the mere thought of voting without ID is so clearly outrageously silly that nobody brings it up. All the arguments against showing ID have been proven to be specious at best, you need ID to do just about anything related to the government so insisting on voting without it only serves to undermine trust in elections.

You are probably getting down voted because you are assuming that what works in other countries would work in the US. Maybe it could, but it would take a lot of effort which the people who are pushing for voter ID in the US are not willing to put in.

Those countries have robust and long establish national ID systems, and they do go a good job of making sure citizens easily obtain their ID.

The US has no such system.

There are millions of adult citizens without valid government issues photo ID acceptable and who cannot reasonably afford to get it. Before you say that states offer free ID, it is not the cost of the ID itself that is the issue. It is the cost of getting supporting documents.

Often getting copies of the supporting documents requires showing ID. Oops. There are alternate procedures, which often involve hard to find documents, often not digitized or centralized.

The only way to do a voter ID system in the US without disenfranchising a large number of voters is to establish a system similar to other countries with a national ID that is easy for every citizen to obtain and we grandfather in existing citizens by making the new system only required for people who are born after it is instituted.

It's also possible to craft a comprehensive law. My state allows all of the following, even expired versions as long as it expired within the last year, or if the voter is over 65 as long as it was unexpired on their 65th birthday regardless of how long it has been expired now:

1) Driver's license, even expired if expired within the last 2 years

2) State Non-Driver's ID

3) Out of state Driver's License

4) Passport

5) Free Voter ID

6) College / University ID

7) School employee ID

Additionally all the following are valid, without any limitations on expiration as long as they are photo IDs:

1) Military / veterans ID

2) Tribal enrollment ID for Native tribes

3) Any other photo ID issued by any federal or the state's government agencies

In addition to all of that, if you still are unable to produce an ID, you can still vote with a "provisional ballot" and sign an affidavit declaring your inability to obtain an ID. All of the following are valid reasons:

1) Lack of transportation

2) Disability or illness

3) Lack of supporting documentation to obtain an ID (birth certificates etc)

4) Work or school schedule

5) Family responsibilities

6) A lost, stolen or misplaced ID

7) Applied for an ID but haven't received it

8) Other impediment (write in)

9) Religious objection to being photographed

10) Victim of a declared natural disaster within 100 days of the election

All provisional ballots must be counted before the state can certify the vote count and a provisional ballot can only be rejected by unanimous vote of the board of elections commission that the ID exception form was filled out falsely.

That seems a pretty reasonable system to me given how it's pretty much impossible to interact with the state, the federal government, banks or employers without a photo ID these days.

That seems pretty reasonable, as long as #3 on the third list isn't is interpreted reasonably.

For example there are people for whom a birth certificate was issued, but they don't know where it was issued (e.g., their parents were migrant laborers and they don't know what county or even what state the parents where in when their Mom gave birth). At some non-trivial expense they could probably track it down, but getting a certified copy requires ID that they do not have, so they first have to bootstrap using the alternate procedure for getting the birth certificate without ID. That in turn often involves tracking down various scattered records from long ago and maybe getting affidavits from people who knew you as a child.

If your state won't let you use #3 until you've gone to the time and expense to go through all that and still failed to get the birth certificate I'd say that is not reasonable.

If they will, great.

> That seems a pretty reasonable system to me given how it's pretty much impossible to interact with the state, the federal government, banks or employers without a photo ID these days.

You'd probably be surprised at the number of people who are living a cash only life and work in jobs that are off the record. (Many things you might think impossible for such people are possible if they have a friend or relative who act as in intermediary with some non-cash service they need).

> There are millions of adult citizens without valid government issues photo ID acceptable and who cannot reasonably afford to get it. Before you say that states offer free ID, it is not the cost of the ID itself that is the issue. It is the cost of getting supporting documents.

To use Sweden as an example, there is no need for supporting documents. When a person here want a passport or national ID, and they don't already have a valid id, all they need is someone else with an valid ID to sign the paper. It can be a coworker, a teacher, a relative, or basically anyone with some form of relation to the person. The same apply for voting, so someone can go and vote as long they have a second person with an ID willing to sign that they are who they claim to be. Not a single paper required and all they need to do is say their name and date of birth.

No birth recipient, no electrical bill, no tax receipt, no money, nor any other paper which is honestly a less secure system that simply having already identified person signing a legally binding paper.

Your society doesn’t exist to punish the people who are part of it.

ID is already required in the US to vote. You are required to register to vote, and that registration includes an identity check. Performing the check at this stage allows the time to verify identity and correct any issues, well before voting day.

> if only those who oppose showing ID would drop their objections

You're not even wrong.

I worked as a poll judge for a long time. I know a little bit about election administration.

Most every jurisdiction has required ID for a very long time. And the exceptions prove the rule. (IIRC, North Dakota?)

I also strenuously objected to closing the local polling sites in my county and state. (We activists were only able to delay it 2 years. Mostly by exposing lies of vendors and their lackeys.)

One of the (many) reasons was the long term decline of USPS, mostly caused by the decades long revanchist campaign to dismantle it, to further undermine our democracy.

Sadly, we were proven right.

The United States barely has a standard ID system across states, no federal system of ID besides the passport, and a horrible history of using every single possible opportunity to turn any requirement into a racist, discriminatory system.

Somehow folks who call for voter ID laws seem to also be opposed to making getting a photo ID free and easy

0. Make polling day a public holiday for everyone who isn't super essential. Make another polling day for super essential workers which they get as a holiday instead (people who aren't super essential will cover their shifts).

-1. Give everyone an ID. Actually give them one and don't just pretend to do it.

voting should be frictionless and not have to go anywhere

it's a constitutional right, not something you should have to jump through hoops

people don't have the time to take off work and not get paid and wait in line for hours which is exactly what many places do now by reducing voting location radically

many people can't even afford a car these days or to fill it with gas

if you insist on in person voting, make it a paid day off

the ID thing is a false narrative, it's not ID that's the problem, it's that it costs money to get the ID and now they want your birth certificate saying the ID doesn't even prove you are a citizen with "realID"

You missed the part where registering to vote requires ID in the first place, so the only thing being added are opportunities to deny the right to vote which has already been asserted.

Insult to injury is the additional administrative burden of voter registration.

It's a database query to generate a list of eligible voters and where they can vote. Literally.

Bonus points for maintaining 50+ heterogeneous legally separated voter registration databases. Thereby maximizing the likelihood of errors. Plus every VRDB has one or more teams of saboteurs; purging eligible voters, monkey wrenching, and sowing FUD.

...it's almost as if the there's some far reaching, widespread campaign to disenfranchise voters.

Obtaining an ID card in most developed democracies costs money, sometimes modest fees, sometimes rather hefty fees.

In the US, the 24th Amendment makes it illegal to charge people a tax to vote:

https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-24/

> The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

Any states requiring a particular kind of ID for voting have to make a suitable ID available for free, they cannot charge for it or it becomes a de facto poll tax. That means that while they may accept a driver's license or passport (which cost, at least in every state I know of DLs aren't free), they also have to have some suitable free ID (other than the time to obtain it). But even the time to obtain an ID can become subject to lawsuits against states if they try to play games with it like closing down DMV locations or cutting down on operating hours to make it harder for people to obtain the necessary ID.

Time (and transportation) are very real barriers for the working poor, the disabled, and others.

We accept a degree of friction for other constitutional entitlements.

Buying a gun, free speech, right to assembly. Each with caveats.

Appearing in front of your fellow citizens as a breathing person is central to how voting has worked for hundreds of years.

Why change it?

I agree it should be paid day off.

I don't think people who want to exercise their first or second amendment right accept friction over it. In fact it seems to me that's been one major source of political unrest.

But those same people who don't want their first and second amendment rights to be infringed are okay with voting having high friction so a lot of people can't do it.

Any friction must be weighed against the harm it seeks to prevent.

There simply is no meaningful intentional voter fraud in the US.

I agree. But I also like the ceremony.

In an even more online and disconnected world, it forces us out of our homes to stand with our neighbors in an exercise of our power.

There's a beauty to this that, when a large amount of voting is done over mail, I feel is lost.

I personally would prefer in person on a national holiday with civic groups (eg Boy Scouts) selling hotdogs.

When you say "why change it" are you not aware that many US states vote by mail (and/or ballot drop boxes) and have for decades? Or are you ignoring it?

Yes I'm aware. By change it I mean the gradual shift from in person to mailed ballets. This is shift toward isolation. Bubble preservation.

Standing inline with your neighbors to exercise our vote is empowering. It reminds us of our status as voters. As equals. It crosses boundaries. It's beautiful.

Sure there's cases where appearing in person isn't practical and I'm not suggesting we close the door to that. But I think it should be needs based.

I appreciate the vibe you're going for, but standing in line with your neighbors is also a massive time sink that directly costs people money via lost wages. Making drop-box voting needs-based just places democratic participation in the hands of those who determine who 'needs' and why. A democracy is only as real as its citizens' access to ballots.

I still don’t understand how meaningful in-person voter impersonation would work.

I’m working as a poll worker for the current US election, and I can’t see how you would do it. We don’t check ID.

Right? The person who you impersonated would then be marked as having voted twice, which would pretty quickly get noticed and investigated. So somehow you'd have to get away with that, plus do this at scale so as to actually influence the outcome. Doesn't make sense.

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