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A Thread for Talking About Voter Fraud and Voter ID
Quid
Definitely not a bananaRegistered User regular
Definitely not a bananaRegistered User regular
Some people think voter fraud is a threat to elections in America and therefore voter ID should be mandatory. In their view, even if it disenfranchises people of a constitutionally guaranteed right, the net good will be worth it.
Other people disagree.
Here's a post stolen from @Mild Confusion with relevant numbers:
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Frankly I find the fear to be nonsense. It's extremely difficult and time consuming to commit voter fraud in a way that requires physically faking your identity at multiple poll stations.
Other people disagree.
Here's a post stolen from @Mild Confusion with relevant numbers:
Mild Confusion wrote: »Between 2000 and 2012, there were roughly 145 million registered voters in this country. Since there were seven Federal elections in that time frame, we get to a grand total of 741,800,000 votes cast in that time frame. Feel free to check the math.
How many cases of voter fraud between 2000 and 2012? 2068. Total. Not per election. Total. If you do the math, for every vote, 0.00028% is fraudulent. You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning, while being eaten by a shark, inside a tornado, than finding voter fraud.
But I'm not done yet.
Cause that 2068 voter fraud cases? Almost 50% of those are fraudulent absentee ballots and registration fraud. A total of 77 were alleged with 33 being convicted of in person fraud. That is the only kind of fraud that voter ID presents! Now, for every vote, only 0.000004% is the type of voter fraud that can be prevented with an ID. Now the lightning sharknado flew into a volcano.
If you wanna parse the data yourself and prove me wrong, I welcome it. Here's the Republican National Lawyers Association's website that tracks all voter fraud.
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Frankly I find the fear to be nonsense. It's extremely difficult and time consuming to commit voter fraud in a way that requires physically faking your identity at multiple poll stations.
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I'm not okay with the kinds of Voter ID laws being proposed. Their just meant as another bar to prevent certian groups from voting.
While I agree with the idea that a free state issued ID would be nice. There is still the issue is that it costs a lot of money for the tax payers to solve a problem that doesn't exist. And if you count in the absurd amount of distance that some people have to travel in order to get their picture taken, it amounts to a poll tax.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
I'm more or less opposed to anything that puts a barrier to entry up in front of casting a ballot. People are already too reluctant or too busy to cast votes; we don't need to further discourage the practice, no matter how 'easy and convenient!' it actually us to get an ID. Even if the government really went the extra mile & spent all sorts of money shipping absolutely every eligible voter a government-approved photo ID, all that will have been accomplished is providing another excuse to not vote ("Oops forgot my ID. Oh well,"), extra complications / points of contention at the polling station & a legitimization of an illegitimate argument.
If voter ID laws were passed and everyone got a voter ID card, do you think this would actually make the people lobbying for this change happy, or do you think they would just keep moving the goal posts to see how many more restrictions they can place on voting?
I would have roughly zero confidence that any given voter ID law wouldn't throw up bureaucratic roadblocks that disproportionately affect minorities.
"Oh, you got married and now your birth certificate name doesn't match your driver's license name? No voter ID for you. No, really, this is just about fraud and has nothing to do with making it harder on women."
"Oh, you don't have a birth certificate because you're an immigrant from a poor country? No voter ID for you. No, really, this is just about fraud and has nothing to do with making it harder on foreign-born citizens."
"Oh, there's a minor misspelling on your voter ID because somebody didn't know the difference between Muhammad and Mohammad? Can't vote today. No, really, this is just about fraud and has nothing to do with making it harder on Muslims."
"Oh, hello, Brad Wilson. Here's your ballot."
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'd like to know why this is. Texas offers photo IDs at no cost. I haven't looked at the form to get a state-issued ID but they can't be more complicated than getting a passport.
As someone who lived in one of Texas' major cities it's likely because the public transit is terrible and goes nowhere near the DMV.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/08/voter_id_laws_why_do_minorities_lack_id_to_show_at_the_polls_.html
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I get why you might feel this way, but it's still wrong.
There's no reason for Voter ID laws, regardless of how easy ID is to get. Because there's no problem it's solving.
There's literally nothing for Voter ID laws to fix. Except, you know, an election in favour of a conservative candidate.
gonna take a shot in the dark that hunters and fishers tend to vote one way
edit: The Wisconsin state govt has announced they're going to continue to find ways to implement voter ID THIS NOVEMBER despite the supreme court ruling
Judge Posner on Voter ID:
But plenty of economic ones.
And then there's the fact (like many of you mentioned) that it would be impossible to implement voter ids without them screwing over the poor and minorities.
So I'm 100% against them.
I'd rather have universal mail-in balloting. No disenfranchisement, and all of the accountability occurs by professional staff at a centralized location with the ability to ensure it follows best practices and the capability of running audits multiple times with proper oversight. Rather than relying on the discretionary responsibility of retirees volunteers toward the tail end of a 16 hour day.
Yeah on principle there is nothing to object to. In fact here in the Netherlands you do actually have to provide ID when voting.
But the particular ways US society works currently makes voter id a terrible idea. The US just does things differently and it means voter ID is stupid.
The US system is horribly patchwork and uneven. The only truly universal form of Photo ID is a passport and getting of those is a colossal pain in the ass than can take months
The Netherlands is so tiny that a non-universal ID wouldn't even make sense. A driver's license and national ID card are both valid everywhere and because you are required to provide ID for many reasons everyone has one or the other. You can get them, and a passport too, in a week. (Or two days if you really need it and don't mind paying extra.)
Basically there is no comparing the two unless you're comparing "things that make requiring voter ID not a bad idea" and have The Netherlands checking all the items on the list and the US none.
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You mean like a picture which is on the student id and not the fishing/hubting license?
In order to provide the role that photographic identification is purported to ensure, that you are indeed who you say you are, it would need their name and a photograph. I have never had a student id that did not provide my name and my picture on it.
What about a system that sent you out a unique key - basically the equivalent of a Steam key - and allowed you to use it to vote by text / e-mail / functional government website (hahahahaha!)?
I keep trying to napkin-up a way that SMS voting could work...
I don't see how that would be better. Particularly since a lot of referendum questions are complicated and should be accompanied with informational pamphlets. Ones that could easily be shoved in the same envelope as the ballot. I mean, vote by mail can still be done wrong but it is a lot easier to do it right.
Yeah our whole state system makes it all a giant mess. Like there's no guarantee you can even transfer your ID from one state to another it all depends if the states have an understanding with each other. As a result tons of people never even bother to transfer their license or whatever when they move.
For instance, Arizona licenses are valid for 25 years while Wisconsin's is 8. If I got a license and moved from Arizona a year later, why would I ever voluntarily get a new license in Wisconsin before the Arizona license expires? To pay 3 extra rounds of registration fees?
You'd do it because you are likely legally required to, if you take up residency in Wisconsin. For instance, I got nailed for not getting a Montana license for that same reason (an Arizona license that was good until 2040), and the ticket for failure to obtain a Montana license within X months (think it was 3, maybe 6) of moving there was more than the ticket for the stop sign I ran. The only exceptions are military and educational non-residents, which (of course) would not be voting.
I've also never heard of any significant roadblocks to transferring from one state to another, is that a thing? I thought just about every state (or every state) would accept an unexpired driver's license from another state to issue a new driver's license in that state. I'm all about railing against the crazy patchwork of IDs in this nation, but this is just a problem I've not observed, or really heard of.
EDIT: Admittedly, since I turned 16 I've only transferred my license between five states. Maybe the other forty-five are terrible about it.
This makes some sense in the context of Texas gun permits, which are a statewide identification issued by the DoL (or their equivalent) and which do carry a photo, ID number, address, and I believe they even have all the holograms and shit just like a license. But if the hunting/fishing license actually don't carry a photo in Wisconsin, then allowing them for the supposed purpose of the law (preventing in-person voter fraud) seems...ineffective.
I'm more sympathetic than (presumably) most here to the whole "we don't accept college IDs" policy, but that still sounds like crazypants to me.
...Why? Is there now not only a group of nefarious vote fraudsters out to steal the election, but an entire counterfeit ID apparatus for them to fall back on?
Why don't you educate me instead of telling me that I'm ignorant
keeping in mind that a fishing license is a green card with black text and no security features or photo on it, providing exactly zero protection against voter fraud
and my UW ID is a smart card so
I knew I should have prefaced that.
I do not think voter ID laws are reasonable or necessary.
However, if we accept for a moment that they are (and I'll remind you again that my position is that they are not), then I am more supportive that the norm on this forum for not allowing student ID as a valid ID.
And yes, it's precisely because there are both far too many different forms to keep track of, and because the apparatus through which they are issued seems less secure. On the spectrum from Ralph's Card to U.S. Passport, I'm sorry but I put many student IDs down towards the lower end. You may have a few exceptions when it comes to major flagship state universities, but then I see no reason to privilege those students over the students of East Podunk Community College. We should be working harder to ensure that actual valid state IDs make their way into the hands of the citizenry, including poor and minority citizens, rather than accepting less legitimate credentials.
Again, assuming such a voter ID law was necessary to begin with, which it is not.
One final time, I do not support voter ID laws.
EDIT: Also, override, I'd agree that accepting the fishing license is pants-on-head.
http://dnr.wi.gov/permits/csrsp/images/txnnbr.gif
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To verify that I am who I say I am, which of these 3 would you personally choose? Please note, you do not get any other documents to use to verify I am who I say I am.
And that bottom one is a many-years-ago expired license, so that's obviously not accepted.
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Yeah why doesn't an ID that has a picture of you include things like hair and eye color. That just makes it so unreliable for trying to see if it is the person in question. If only there was something else they could put on it that would make up for all that lost information. Some way to summarize a thousand words of description in one part of the ID. Damn shame.
Is there something I am missing, or could most of those be faked with the right paper and a printer?
but the information doesn't do anything to identify the holder as the person voting
I think you've made it pretty clear you're unconcerned with voter fraud and are pretty in line with the state GOP, the main concern is democrats voting, which they don't approve of
the state has lots of control over public universities
Why could the state not make any satisfactory changes to their IDs?
It would be relatively trivial compared to the rest of the costs of implementation!
I fail to see how that would be preferable to simply increasing the availability of statewide identification cards (aka driver's licenses and non-driving IDs). Let's be real here, it's not like students at flagship state university campuses are, statistically, some disadvantaged underclass. Go get a damn ID. And hey, state, make that easier to do!
Plus, hey, that addresses all the poor and black people being disenfranchised that aren't UW students. Which might be "a thing."
Which of course is why voter ID laws are terrible absent some pretty compelling evidence of a legitimate state interest (which is to say in-person voter fraud), and must carefully balance that interest against the right to vote, and should come coupled with (or preferably following) a real push to make legitimate state ID cards available and easily obtainable.
I think most of us here are on team Voter ID Sucks. But I'm just not really sure that the integrity of the Bucky Badger card is the hill you want to die on here. Because even if you win that battle, voter ID laws are still terrible and fuck the vast majority of poor and minority voters that aren't students of state universities.
And seriously kids, student IDs aren't real IDs for an adult to carry. Get over it. You can't use your Bucky Badger card to cash a check at many places, either. Maybe consider putting in the work to go get a real ID. Which should be easier, and you shouldn't need it to vote, but seriously.
* - This is an assumption, and if I'm wrong I'll totally feel bad for making it.
The green ones are paper, so you are right there. The middle one is a plastic ID with a microhip built into it, so you'll need a little more than paper.
And you would then be arrested for not allowing a voter to vote if presented with Option 1 or 3 (and just for you willie, pretending that both are valid and this years license). Sorry, you lose the game of Voter ID in Wisconsin.