As european, I find it extremely baffling that you don’t have to prove your citizenship to vote in USA. Is there some detail here I’m missing? Is it about how difficult it is to implement this in practice?
All U.S. states and territories, except North Dakota, require voter registration by eligible citizens before they can vote in federal, state and local elections. In North Dakota, cities in the state may register voters for city elections, and in other cases voters must provide identification and proof of entitlement to vote at the polling place before being permitted to vote. Voter registration takes place at the county level in many states or at the municipal level in several states. Many states set cutoff dates for registration or to update details, ranging from two to four weeks before an election, while 25 states and Washington, D.C. have same-day voter registration, which enables eligible citizens to register or update their registration on the same day they cast their vote. In states that permit early voting, and have voter registration, the prospective voter must be registered before casting a vote.
I think the argument is that its somehow racist or prejudice against a group that doesn’t know how to get IDs. Ive never seen a solid argument against providing proof of citizenship to vote. I think the main complaint against it is Trump is doing it.
To get a state ID, (RealID™ you currently need a birth certificate, social security card, and or a passport and mail/bills with your address.
The cards aren’t free. If you’re poor, or your parents don’t have their shit together you might not have all of that.
Getting a copy of your birth certificate is not generally free. In many states getting a copy of your birth certificate requires you to go back to the state you’re born in and go to the health department there to get a copy.
They would usually like to see your state ID.
To get a replacement social security card, you have to go through the same kind of scenario. I think they are free though.
If you are from a rural area you need to drive. Everyone around you drives you have family that drives. The poor innercity? They don’t need to drive, can make it through most of not all of life without a license, or by having family member step in to help.
It’s a tax on the poor non-driving. They also like to close polling areas in the poor areas because they have a hard time getting to remote polling places. Then they like to crack down on people giving people standing in line water.
These particularly affected poor area disproportionately black.
10% of Americans would have trouble proving citizenship. Most of them are non white. Most are Democrat or independent. And voter fraud isn’t a problem according to experts / audits.
That’s like 10 million minorities you can disenfranchise just by pretending proof of citizenship is necessary.
We don’t do that. Honestly mail theft here is bad enough, I’m not certain that it’d be a good idea.
Then our ID’s aren’t even free. You’d think that’s all taxes, but it’s not.
You need to go to the department of motor vehicles with a bunch of proof that you exist just to get a walker’s id. (base state ID card)
Getting an MVA ID without other documents is hard
Getting other documents without an MVA ID is hard
Getting government documents without MVA ID and other documents is impossible.
Used to be the MVA would let you get a license pretty easily. RealID chilled that the fuck out.
Now you need to get a birth certificate from your state of birth, (which might require cross-country travel without a drivers license)
We don’t have to prove citizenship for anything…. No one even knows how. I doubt the people proposing this legislation know how to prove they are citizens.
Of course it’s not a good reason, but it’s also not the main complaint. That’s a disingenuous argument.
The problem is that the locations that offer IDs become political footballs.
Imagine that you change the law to require a certain type of ID in order to vote (even though you already have a social security card, it doesn’t count for voting purposes), and that said ID cannot be acquired via mail.
Imagine, then, that the place you go to get the necessary ID is closed down, or intentionally understaffed via defunding/budget cuts. Hours reduced to 10am-4pm Monday through Friday, perhaps, when most people work. The next nearest location may be hours away. It may not be accessible via public transit. It then becomes incredibly burdensome for someone with limited time, transportation, or income to get the necessary ID. Now you’re able to control access to the IDs in lower income areas by shuttering or defunding locations.
This isn’t just a theoretical situation. This occurs.
Now, I think you’ll find that most people are onboard with requiring ID to vote, provided that the barriers to getting the ID do not have a chilling effect on low-income voters.
But that’s not the way things tend to go.
Present a plan that expands access to the ID printing services and watch the resistance to these sorts of policies disappear. Or better yet, mail one to every eligible taxpayer the first time they file a tax return. It’s not particularly difficult.
Exactly, if the government were to put in effort to ensure every citizen has an eligible ID and were held accountable for failures in it then I’d be all on board with voter ID laws. As it stands now I fear my vote might get thrown out because my passport and birth certificate don’t match
My Republican controlled county is moving services away from the Democratic cities into rural Republican areas. This makes them slightly easier to access for Republicans and much much harder for Democrats. These aren’t theoretical concerns, it’s an ongoing attack that Americans are trying to manage.
As european, I find it extremely baffling that you don’t have to prove your citizenship to vote in USA. Is there some detail here I’m missing? Is it about how difficult it is to implement this in practice?
The problem is the US in the past has designed voter registration rules explicitly to prevent black people from voting.
This talk of voter fraud is a dog whistle. Election fraud is way more prominent than voter fraud.
Voter registration is handled at the state level, not Federal. It’s a problem that has never existed. Just Mango Mussolini trying to Nazi harder.
Voter registration in the United States
(Emphasis mine.)
Ohh, thank you. That makes sense.
They make these things difficult on purpose
First it isn’t an actual problem. In most elections there’s one fraudulent vote cast out of every million or so votes.
Second, historically every single attempt to institute these policies has been done with the goal of suppressing the vote.
I think the argument is that its somehow racist or prejudice against a group that doesn’t know how to get IDs. Ive never seen a solid argument against providing proof of citizenship to vote. I think the main complaint against it is Trump is doing it.
To get a state ID, (RealID™ you currently need a birth certificate, social security card, and or a passport and mail/bills with your address.
The cards aren’t free. If you’re poor, or your parents don’t have their shit together you might not have all of that.
Getting a copy of your birth certificate is not generally free. In many states getting a copy of your birth certificate requires you to go back to the state you’re born in and go to the health department there to get a copy.
They would usually like to see your state ID.
To get a replacement social security card, you have to go through the same kind of scenario. I think they are free though.
If you are from a rural area you need to drive. Everyone around you drives you have family that drives. The poor innercity? They don’t need to drive, can make it through most of not all of life without a license, or by having family member step in to help.
It’s a tax on the poor non-driving. They also like to close polling areas in the poor areas because they have a hard time getting to remote polling places. Then they like to crack down on people giving people standing in line water.
These particularly affected poor area disproportionately black.
10% of Americans would have trouble proving citizenship. Most of them are non white. Most are Democrat or independent. And voter fraud isn’t a problem according to experts / audits.
That’s like 10 million minorities you can disenfranchise just by pretending proof of citizenship is necessary.
People don’t know how to get ID? In my country you just get that shit on the mail with your new address whenever you move…
We don’t do that. Honestly mail theft here is bad enough, I’m not certain that it’d be a good idea.
Then our ID’s aren’t even free. You’d think that’s all taxes, but it’s not.
You need to go to the department of motor vehicles with a bunch of proof that you exist just to get a walker’s id. (base state ID card)
Getting an MVA ID without other documents is hard Getting other documents without an MVA ID is hard Getting government documents without MVA ID and other documents is impossible.
Used to be the MVA would let you get a license pretty easily. RealID chilled that the fuck out. Now you need to get a birth certificate from your state of birth, (which might require cross-country travel without a drivers license)
We don’t have to prove citizenship for anything…. No one even knows how. I doubt the people proposing this legislation know how to prove they are citizens.
But those people would theoretically be able to get IDs? Or are we talking about illegal immigrants?
That’s not a very good reason, is it?
Of course it’s not a good reason, but it’s also not the main complaint. That’s a disingenuous argument.
The problem is that the locations that offer IDs become political footballs.
Imagine that you change the law to require a certain type of ID in order to vote (even though you already have a social security card, it doesn’t count for voting purposes), and that said ID cannot be acquired via mail.
Imagine, then, that the place you go to get the necessary ID is closed down, or intentionally understaffed via defunding/budget cuts. Hours reduced to 10am-4pm Monday through Friday, perhaps, when most people work. The next nearest location may be hours away. It may not be accessible via public transit. It then becomes incredibly burdensome for someone with limited time, transportation, or income to get the necessary ID. Now you’re able to control access to the IDs in lower income areas by shuttering or defunding locations.
This isn’t just a theoretical situation. This occurs.
Now, I think you’ll find that most people are onboard with requiring ID to vote, provided that the barriers to getting the ID do not have a chilling effect on low-income voters.
But that’s not the way things tend to go.
Present a plan that expands access to the ID printing services and watch the resistance to these sorts of policies disappear. Or better yet, mail one to every eligible taxpayer the first time they file a tax return. It’s not particularly difficult.
Exactly, if the government were to put in effort to ensure every citizen has an eligible ID and were held accountable for failures in it then I’d be all on board with voter ID laws. As it stands now I fear my vote might get thrown out because my passport and birth certificate don’t match
My Republican controlled county is moving services away from the Democratic cities into rural Republican areas. This makes them slightly easier to access for Republicans and much much harder for Democrats. These aren’t theoretical concerns, it’s an ongoing attack that Americans are trying to manage.