- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/42694823
Trump has no power to “decree” that voters must present ID or to end mail-in balloting. But that doesn’t mean he can’t at least try both. Under the Insurrection Act or some other dusty statute, he can declare a state of emergency. Then he can decide that said state permits, nay requires, him to take extraordinary measures. On October 5, say, that might mean outlawing early voting. By October 13, it might mean no mail-in voting. By October 29, a reminder that all voters must present ID to vote. And by Sunday, November 1, two days before the election—an announcement that all these “reasonable” measures have alas failed, and he is now forced, against his will, to postpone the election.
Can anyone tell me what’s the big deal with voter ID? It’s a standard in EU, Noone complains about it there.
A current example is states invalidating all Trans people’s IDs during a primary election. That’s happening right now.
Also - getting an ID is expensive and time consuming in the US. The cliche of spending 4 hours in line at the DMV to get a license even though you made an appointment ahead of time isn’t an exaggeration, and applies to getting an ID as well. The reality is most people won’t spend the time and money to do it just so they can vote every 2 or 4 years - especially people who can’t afford to take a day off work and travel to do it.
But people will do it so they can drive their car every day - so people with IDs are more likely to have more money.
And for people who have driver’s licenses that fall on hard times it’s also a problem, because they stop paying for insurance (invalidates driver’s license), lose their car (keeps them from paying for insurance or renewing license), or even lose their home (address change invalidates license). These are not people who can take a day to go pay to vote. And that’s exactly what they’d be doing, because the new ID card they’d be buying would strictly be for voting. Aside from the cost of the ID, when I updated my DL in June I had to travel 80 miles round trip, and the process took about 7 hours - and I had a car to speed things up.
So it’s effectively pay-to-vote system that only applies to poor people. People with money can vote for free through “motor voter” registration by checking a box when getting or renewing their driver’s license.
In the US, there is no free option for public ID. Voting is a right. You are required to prove identity at the time of registration, which can be done using your birth certificate.
Essentially, the push for photo ID is a way to disenfranchise poor people, women and trans people, and other groups who may for whatever reason not have easy access to an “acceptable” ID.
Historically our courts have found that creating a financial barrier to voting is a violation of the constitution. The current Supreme Court, staffed entirely by far-right activists rather than serious jurists, is far less likely to rule that way, so anti-democracy folks are pushing to establish a new precedent before the court can be reformed.
The idea of not having a government issued photo ID in the US is inane to me. I didn’t know it wasn’t a basic thing as a us citizen.
It is for most people. But most people aren’t all.
In the USA the issuing of IDs will be made deliberately difficult enough to discourage cartain demographics in a way that favours Republicans. For example, it may carry a fee so poor people are discouraged, it may require your birth name and gender so trans people are discouraged, it will require birth certificates and marriage certificates so immigrants and women are discouraged. The whole thing will be used to erode the numbers of non-white-male voters and this disproportionately boost the right.
Kansas Republicans just invalidated the driving licenses of trans people overnight with no warning. We can expect the same kind of political shenanigans with Real ID.
One problem is that they decided to change the ID situation so that everyone has to have a “Real ID,” in which your name has to match what’s on your birth certificate, or else have supporting documents like marriage certificates or divorce papers. So it’s easy for men, who never change their names, but can be problematic for women who can change their names multiple times, depending on marriages and divorces.
My wife and I were married in the Caribbean over 30 years ago. We have no idea what happened to our marriage certificate, we haven’t found it in decades, it must have gone missing during a move or something. We’ve requested a copy several times over the last decade. It only costs about $10, and we’ve spent over $100 trying to get a copy. They keep the money, and send nothing. Over and over. My wife STILL doesn’t have a valid Real ID because of it. We live in a state that doesn’t care what Trump wants, so it isn’t an issue for voting, but she hasn’t tried flying yet.
So IDs aren’t nearly as easy for many women, and the female vote is a problem for MAGA. Some have even suggested that the vote be removed from women, because that’s how MAGA thinks: If the people don’t like what were doing, we don’t change what we’re doing, we just suppress the rights of anyone whose complaining.
How come she cant just get an ID in here maiden name ? Is that good enough to then vote ? Fly ?
You could do a vow renewal at your local courthouse and get a “new” marriage license from them.
Edit: but yeah, stupid additional barriers…
Yeah, we’ve thought of that, and we may have to. I wonder what that does to all the things we’ve done together in the last 30+ years. If we get married now, does that mean that we weren’t married before, making all our legal paperwork for mortgages, loans, credit card, etc. fraudulent?
It sounds dumb, but if the government decides to target someone, and they uncover this “marriage fraud scheme,” they could use it to really clobber someone, if they wanted to. We’ve seen where MAGA loves to exploit loopholes like this.
So you’re arguing that because your own Caribbean government screwed you, there can be no voter ID? That line of thought is insane. Blame the Caribbean gov for the problem.
BTW, how do you live for 30 years without ID? In EU it’s nearly impossible
We’re Americans, who got married in the Caribbean. We eloped, it was romantic.
My wife has had a driver’s license like everyone else, but a few years ago, they declared that everyone had to get a NEW ID that required these extra steps and documents - but only for women. It was to “discourage terrorism,” although I doubt it’s stopped a single instance.
So without a marriage certificate, she can’t get a Real ID, which is already required to fly, and MAGA wants to make it a requirement to vote. My wife, through no fault of her own, can’t get the docs she needs to get a REAL ID, so she won’t be able to vote under the MAGA proposal.
And I’m sure she’s not alone. MAGA knows that this new policy, which women have never had to navigate before, will keep at least some women from voting. So they cut off some votes here, cut off some more with voter roll purges, discourage voting by cutting off mail-in votes, prohibiting or decreasing early voting, closing polling places in populated cities, while leaving sparsely populated rural polling places open, etc., and the result is that a few percentage of your enemies can’t vote, and in a race that is only a couple of points apart or less, that may be enough to win.
You don’t have to get a new ID
They don’t like that your old one doesn’t have a record in a centralized government database.
I am never getting a “Real ID”. I pay the extra $40 fee every flight. FUCK YOU NAZI TRUMP
Except when your driver’s license expires, you don’t have a choice. And if you’re a man, it isn’t a problem. You show your birth certificate, and you’re done. A woman has to explain and document name changes from marriages and divorces.
Frankly, if I were a woman getting married today, I wouldn’t change my name. I can’t believe that tradition hasn’t died decades ago.
My state allows me to get a State drivers license that is not Real-ID compliant.
My state-issued drivers license does not have on it:
It is in part because of this somewhat recent Amendment to our Constitution
https://www.nh.gov/glance/state-constitution/bill-rights
How is it “their Carribean government”? They just took a vacation and got married it sounds like.
They have a state issued ID, just not a “REAL ID”.
Exactly.
They didn’t live without ID for 30 years, there are now more strict requirements for obtaining one, and older IDs that don’t fit the new qualifications aren’t accepted for things like flying. Many countries especially 30 years ago might not have digital records of marriages, people born in the US are having the same issue obtaining birth certificates from rural hospitals, or some people born in the US decades ago never received a birth certificate.
In my experience in an EU country, sufficient ID was also provided freely by the government (eg a social security card).
This is not something in the US that is free. ID must also be a photo ID. So let’s say you have a job where you work 7 days a week and take the bus because you don’t have a driver’s license. To get sufficient ID you must then: take unpaid time off of work, get to an office that issues ID, pay like $20 for such an ID… All to have the opportunity to exercise the right to vote.
This is both a tax and an unreasonable burden, effectively disenfranchising millions of poor people.
This is solvable though, if the government issues free IDs and sets something up to facilitate people getting their photos taken. However that would never be executed effectively, nor would people support paying the costs.
You omitted that in the US, employment is largely “at will”, which means even taking a few hours off work, even asking for that, can result in that person being fired, and many won’t take that risk.
They don’t want to solve it… the unreasonable burden and disenfranchisement are the point.
In Germany you do not need a ID to vote. Every citizen gets a voting invitation per mail which is a notification saying when and where to vote. It is also a single use “voting ticket”, as instead of a ID.
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You’re not wrong in most of what you’ve said but equally in the EU you got to apply for one and pay for it, and an ID card is ~40€. Passport is a bit more. But yeah you could actually take your own passport photo with a mobile as long as it fullfills a few requirements. Most people just use a photographer who sends them directly to the police and then you just go online and pay and wait a few weeks and get your ID in the mail.
But yeah I know how different it is in the US especially because it affects different populations differently.
in Belgium it is fairly painless. it’s possible to take time off for admin. and life here is really difficult without one. it’s essential.
Yeah I wouldn’t know about that aspect, the only time I’ve ever had a “normal schedule” were in the army and a few months of day shift as a taxi driver. And if I had to do something in the middle of the day I just did it between fares.
So I don’t I now if people working 8-16 in Finland take personal days but it’s possible at least. Not that it’s even necessary for most I think. There’s not many places you still have to physically go to to apply to things and whatnot. Mostly online.
$20 once every like 10 years is unreasonable?
For an ID? No. For voting? Yes. Having to pay anything for voting is a problem. Just as having to stand in line all day, thus paying by not earning, is a major problem.
Government photo ID is required for a lot of reasons, not just for voting. But yeah pretty weird that we have to miss work* to stand in line all day to get one, and that we have to PAY for this thing the government requires us to have. Like social security cards are required in USA too but I’m pretty sure we don’t have to pay for those.
I think the reason govt photo ID’s cost $20-ish is because originally they were a Driver’s License, which is a privilege to have, not a requirement, so we pay for that privilege. And the place we get that photo ID is at the motor vehicle office / department of motor vehicles.Then over the years the motor vehicle office started offering government photo ID’s for people who DON’T drive too. But for some reason those ID cards cost $20-ish too which is a bit extortionate since there isn’t even a driving privilege associated with that. Government-issued photo ID’s are REQUIRED so should be free like social security cards are.
*Don’t really have to miss work. Just go there on a day you’re not scheduled to work. Not fun to spend a day off at the motor vehicles office but c’est la vie.
It’s an extremely small cost for ensuring most important democratic process is untampered. The opposition for voter ID check is completely unreasonable
Believing that everyone can find money for an ID is extremely privileged.
I have had students who couldn’t put together the equivalent 15USD, without a month’s notice. In the US you have entire families being homeless, we don’t.
Well that’s great, since next elections are far more than one month away. You just made an argument that even poor students can afford it
I also made the argument that you shouldn’t have to pay to vote, but you don’t like to respond to that. Only that you through your immense intellectual powers have found the logical loophole, that made me debate whether I should even make my comment.
Is the age of your account an indication of your intent to troll, or do you care to explain, why it’s OK to require people to pay to vote? Not why it’s not unaffordable, but why it’s OK to require payment to vote.
Except that it’s already secure. There are monitors, studies, and statistics to back the fact that illegally voting is a statistically nonexistent problem. The number of such cases is vanishingly small. There is no problem that needs solving here. It’s just assholes like yourself trying to impose their will on the law.
In the EU everyone is likely to have an official ID card, so it’s a non-issue.
In the US this is not the case, and the people who do have an ID or who are likely to know what to do to get an ID probably skew a certain way. So requiring voter ID is a way of voter suppression to discourage disenfranchised groups from voting.
If they don’t bother to vote it’s their choice. The requirement isn’t unreasonable in any way.
If they’re putting up barriers to selectively exclude certain voices, it becomes everyone’s problem because the outcome of the election no longer represents the will of the people.
Even if 90% of the group that they’re trying to suppress does get an ID, and 10% doesn’t, it can be enough to swing elections, especially in a winner-takes-all system that’s in place in most of the US.
It’s amazing how we made it for 250 years without MAGA fixing our horribly broken system for the Sociopathic Oligarchs. It’s almost like the Founding Fathers didn’t even care about Billionaires.
People in the English-speaking countries generally don’t have government issued ID beyond a driver’s license. That’s also true for the UK. Historically, ID cards are connected to military conscription. The UK could rely on the Navy for defense and did not maintain vast land armies like the continental nations. Political initiatives to introduce ID cards are usually rejected by voters as totalitarian overreach.
The former slave states in the US have a history of using procedural rules to exclude blacks from voting. After the end of slavery, there was formally equality before the law. So, laws were created to maintain the status quo that were non-discriminatory on their face. EG literacy tests. This not only targeted blacks who were denied an education. Administering such tests was fully in the hands of local elites. They could be made arbitrarily hard to black people, while politically reliable white illiterates could be excused.
In addition to the bullshit “count the number of bubbles in this bar of soap” tests, the IDs required to vote are not free, making this a form of poll tax, which is illegal in the United States.
We have it in Canada too, and it’s generally not a big deal… But that’s likely because both our governments are doing it in good faith to ensure who shows up is the actual person on that voter card
The problem with the US is that they do not operate in good faith and use voter id laws to target people they do not want to vote, it’s the same bullshit as putting a single polling station in minority districts with 10+ hr wait times (and criminal penalties of you give someone standing in line a bottle of water) and plenty of polling stations throughout the suburbs where you can be in and out in under 5 minutes.
It’s not really about the id, it’s about “fuck you”