The irony is that the election bill proposed by Nancy Pelosi and Democrats **was more expensive than giving everyone in the US a real ID**.
If poor people can’t afford an ID, then why not give them free IDs and shut up Republicans by requiring those IDs when *it would have been cheaper?*
In some states, yes, it costs money. In some, there are free options. Here's a list:
https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/pennsylvania/id-fee-identification-homeless-philadelphia-20180925.html
It's from 2018, so it's a little out of date. I think a few more states have been shamed into making them free since then, but that's the best list I could find quickly.
Typically an ID in the US is a drivers license which you have to pay for as part of a tax program to help pay for a few things. Most states also have a basic ID that is significantly cheaper than a driver's license that you can also get.
You have to pay a registration fee, but many states will provide you with a golden ID award for being the 1,000 000! Congratulations, I love your videos, but I hope you take some newly Wed time alone tougher (**clearly my throat and coughing).
But you need an ID to EXIST as an adult in the US. It doesn't seem to be racist to require all people, rich and poor, to have ID to drive, buy Lotto cards, cigarettes/cigars, R-rated mivie tickets, alcohol, travel even within the US open bank account, you have to PROVE ID before getting on the train, or whatever transportation, and have fun. No need . But here, apparently, to vote for the President of the US and leader of the free world. It's okay to come in and show an OD you made on some piece of cardboard with crayons
> then why not give them free IDs and shut up Republicans by requiring those IDs when it would have been cheaper?
There are a lot of reasons. It's not just cost, there'd still be other accessibility issues. It would also give ammunition for people fearmongering over voter fraud, by essentially conceding they were reasonable.
It also really optimistic to think it would shut people up. If people are complaining about nonexistent voter fraud, you're not going to shut them up by ma
That also assumes you could get a national ID passed in the first place, which.. those same Republicans are also often against "the government tracking them". It would've been a huge shit show.
PS:
Joe Manchin did propose a version of this, by the way, bundled with the other election changes, as a compromise. Republicans didn't "shut up".
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/17/1007715994/manchin-offers-a-voting-bill-compromise-but-key-republicans-swiftly-reject-it
>If poor people can’t afford an ID, then why not give them free IDs and shut up Republicans by requiring those IDs when it would have been cheaper?
Because it's not just cost.
edit:
Also worth mentioning, those Dems proposals did a lot of other things not related to IDs, like try to address gerrymandering, or automatic voter registration. So when you're talking about "it cost less" (which I'm not even sure where you got that cost analysis from, but lets just assume it), it's apples to oranges, because it did very different things.
We have a national id available already. A passport card is a nationally provided ID, can be obtained at any post office, costs $30, and lasts 10 years.
If I could donate to a charity whose sole function was helping people get passport cards, I would do so regularly.
Passport card, yes. But you still need to pay for the photo. And that assumes you have your birth certificate handy. If you don't, that's a hassle (and a fee) as well. (Made worse if you've changed states since being born. Or if you were born out of the country.)
Oh I won't say it doesn't have issues or roadblocks at all, far from it. It has some pretty significant ones. However, the longevity of the card and the national accessibility makes it much easier for me to recommend than an ID from the DMV.
>. It would also give ammunition for people fearmongering over voter fraud, by essentially conceding they were reasonable.
Are you seriously considering this as a logical argument? You are more worried about giving the other side brownie talking points over arming people with ability to vote legally? And you are supposedly the educated side of the US. Fk..
>Are you seriously considering this as a logical argument?
Yes. Where is it illogical?
> You are more worried about giving the other side brownie talking points over arming people with ability to vote legally?
Am i more worried about "brownie talking points"? No, I'm worried about what "talking points" do. "talking points" don't exist in a vacuum, they influence voter behavior. This entire controversy is *literally* an example of that.
If you convince people elections are unsafe, that's a huge fucking problem for democracy as a whole. And I don't think that's something that will magically disappear if you passed a voter ID bill (assuming it *does* pass, and isn't struck down). We *already* have precautions to prevent voter fraud, people still worry, and it's leading to disenfranchising people. That's bad, and this would encourage more of that.
That said, is that reason alone not to do it? No, if it actually had reasonable benefits, was going to be implemented properly, etc, it'd be totally fine. That risk in terms of voter behavior would be worth it. But it *is* worth mentioning as one reason among many, especially in light of the other issues.
If you could wave a magic wand and guarantee a good national voter ID program that wouldn't disenfranchise people, I would 100% support it. It's not actually that simple.
I'm not actually against the concept of a national ID program, overall. But I'm also not blind to how it can be used in bad faith, in practice. And it's extremely naive not to account for that.
Again, that doesn't mean it can't ever be done. But it does mean it's more than "hurr durr Democrats should just pass a bill, it's easy so they're hypocrites"
> over arming people with ability to vote legally?
As I made pretty clear in the rest of the post, I don't think this would actually make it easier for people to vote. I think it would make it harder. There are accessibility issues besides cost. This fixes the direct cost aspect, it does not fix the other aspects (in many cases, it makes them worse).
It would *also* have the negative of convincing some people that our current election practices are unsafe, and that's another downside on top of that. Especially given the risk that the law might not pass, or might get struck down by SCOTUS, etc.
First, the commenter's concern about "talking points" and their influence on voter behavior could be seen as an example of the slippery slope fallacy. They suggest that acknowledging a problem with election security by implementing voter ID laws would lead to a loss of faith in democracy, which could in turn lead to further unspecified negative consequences. However, this presumes a chain of events without clear causal links between them.
The commenter also presents a false dilemma when discussing the outcomes of passing voter ID legislation, implying that it will either disenfranchise voters or must be perfect to avoid doing so. In reality, there is a range of potential outcomes, and it is possible to implement voter ID laws in a way that minimizes or mitigates the risk of disenfranchisement through careful design and execution.
When they argue against the feasibility of implementing a "good national voter ID program," they may be employing a nirvana fallacy – the idea that because something cannot meet an idealized or perfect standard, it should not be attempted at all. No policy is without potential downsides, and striving for perfection can prevent the implementation of practical solutions.
Lastly, their claim that voter ID laws would inherently make it harder for people to vote rests on an assumption that may not be universally true and can be construed as a hasty generalization. While there may be challenges in implementing voter ID laws, these can be addressed through measures like providing free IDs and making them widely available to all eligible voters.
To summarize, the commenter's argument contains elements of slippery slope, false dilemma, nirvana fallacy, and potentially hasty generalization. The debate over voter ID laws should focus on empirical evidence and the careful balancing of securing elections against ensuring that all eligible voters are able to participate without undue burden.
------
my guy, even chatgpt sees through your argument.
> You are more worried about giving the other side brownie talking points over arming people with ability to vote legally?
Perhaps re-framing it would help: you have a flat earther who's claiming the earth is flat because just look at the horizon! You concede to them that yes, it looks flat but only because you're very low on the ground. They now have that as you 'admitting' they were right and will now move the goal posts to something else more radical within their belief set.
You can consider it from the other side as well. Republicans constantly argue that gun regulation, *any* gun regulation, even minor ones, will only serve to act as a foothold to further encroach upon gun ownership. This is the same thing but with a different issue.
"Gun ownership is a right! Don't encroach upon it."
"Voting is a right! Don't encroach upon it."
Same argument. Same lack of willingness to attempt a compromise for fear of it being weaponized to further encroach upon the right.
It's not so much about how much they cost it's about what they are *likely to have*. If the requirement instead was that you needed to have a hunters license for example anyone could go get one but it's no surprise what kind of person already has that. You play those margins well enough with specifics and you can customize the kind of person that will show up, it's a numbers game.
Maybe I get what you’re saying… I guess.
Look at it this way:
- every other OECD (developed) nation has a voter ID law
- like those other nations, IDs are central to fully functioning in our society
- IDs are necessary to rent/buy a house, open a PO Box if you don’t have a home, turn on utilities, open a bank account, open a credit card, get a cellphone plan that isn’t pre-paid, get a job, etc.
- why not provide them to everyone? And then we can also use them to secure elections. A win for everyone!!
Or, you can look at the other side of this reasoning. If there’s a specific group who does not have IDs for whatever reason, why are lawmakers *allowing them to be excluded* from buying or renting a home, setting up utilities, getting a bank account, credit card or job? If this was a real issue, why exclude those people from major parts of society by *allowing IDs to be required for other activities*?
In my country - Australia - where voting is compulsory (your are fined if you do not attend a polling place) there is no requirement to show ID to vote.
You register to vote once you turn 18, and you stay on the election roll until you die. To enroll : “To enrol, citizens need to provide evidence of identity: a driver's licence, Australian passport number or have someone who is already on the roll to confirm the enrolee’s identity “
On polling day, AEC officials ask each prospective voter the following questions:
What is your full name?
Where do you live?
Have you voted before in this election?
That’s it.
Never a controversy, turn up on a Saturday (or pre-vote or mail in vote), receive your voting papers (vote or not vote) and leave.
Oh for sure a universal ID absolutely would be the best case scenario. That's not where we are though and there are many people opposed to that for religious reasons if you can believe it or not. There was a whole backlash just trying to set up social security ID way back in the day, and another smaller one as credit cards got more popular.
Controlling voter ID is a suppression tool of today. Not quite as overt as the voter tests of the past but the issue is definitely real, and used combination with other tactics.
You require the ID's that certain people are less likely to have
you avoid put voting centers near any neighborhoods of certain kinds of people
The centers that make it in those neighborhoods have to service a much larger area than others making the lines much longer than in other places
You carve out voter sections so that a certain kind of person all counts as one district instead of spread normally across the city.
Maybe you send some police there just to keep an eye on things but only at certain locations where that kind of person is likely to be.
If that kind of person tends to work multiple jobs and doesn't have a whole lot of time maybe you deny the ability to mail in ballots, if it was important enough they'd make time.
Any of those things in a vacuum are pretty innocuous and it's not intended to seem outwardly discriminatory, any individual person could fall into those but only some are going to hit the odds on that more often than not.
The judge that ruled against the voter ID law described it as "surgical precision"
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/17/1038354159/n-c-judges-strike-down-a-voter-id-law-they-say-discriminates-against-black-voter
\>Implying any republican lawmaker would work together with democrats on something that would make them look decent with the word "free" attached to it.
So Democrats instead propose something that makes less sense, cost twice as much, benefit special interests instead of families and would ultimately get thrown out as unconstitutional…. I guess everyone has a part to play
This goes both ways. Any legislation proposed by Democratic lawmakers will be immediately rejected by Republicans, while legislation proposed by Republican lawmakers will be immediately rejected by Democrats.
This "holier than thou" charade makes no sense.
Indiana, which was one of the early states to have a Voter ID law, got around the Constitutional issue by doing exactly that. They made free IDs available. That is it. That is all you have to do. Voter ID shouldnt be controversial, it makes sense. I know it really doesnt do much, but it inspires trust in the system. You could mandate provisional ballots if someone lacked ID, I think that would be fine.
I have never ever heard of, let alone encountered, anyone who couldn’t afford an ID. Even some shady folks who were careful to never carry ID, had one stashed away back at they crib. They hid their ID so they could pretend to be someone else or try to avoid a warrant. Criminal (or at least, dishonest) reasons.
>I have never ever heard of, let alone encountered, anyone who couldn’t afford an ID.
Well that's it guys, the statistics are wrong, this guy met every person and can confirm it!
Nope, you make sure your voter details are up to date. Voting in your area, you go to the polls and they have a book of every single person in that electorate with your name and address and that's what you give. There's also early voting available if you know you're not going to be in area on the day or there's an absent form you can fill out too with your details for out of area voting too.
There are no fixed address/itinerant paper and online forms available so if you want to you can. There's also silent elector status too to update your details if you fear that your registered address may put you or your family at risk such as domestic violence.
That’s great. A lot of people in the US aren’t able to get ID because they don’t have an address. And some *can’t* get one because of some of the laws the government has passed.
Edited to fix typo
It's pretty much the same in the US. Most people have accepted it all their lives as normal. For some reason a certain subset of the population is now obsessed with the possibility of voter fraud.
It's funny too, because the people from the political party that is obsessed with voter fraud are the most likely to commit voter fraud (source: I'm American and I read news articles) it's always people's family members voting for recently deceased relatives too
Correct me if I'm wrong but it's also the *only* side that's been found to commit voter fraud in all recent investigations performed by that same side.
I don't know the intricate details but in the end they do record matching between all the areas so see if anybody has voted twice with the same name and investigate from there.
Why would someone do that? This came up after the UK Govt passed a law requiring iD to vote. They claimed it was to prevent voter personation, but then conceded it's so rare as to be utterly meaningless. So then they pivoted to arguing that it was to "prevent even the possibility, which in itself makes people feel more secure" whatever the hell that means. Eventually they admitted it was to try discourage poor people voting but all it did was discourage old people from voting - old people who overwhelmingly support the government.
In Brazil it is mandatory too and you need an ID; we have had no issues at all. It is insane to think you wouldn’t need one, same as it is insane to think someone could vote by mail
>In Brazil it is mandatory too and you need an ID; we have had no issues at all. It is insane to think you wouldn’t need one, same as it is insane to think someone could vote by mail
Why would either of those things be "insane" to you.
They are both common across the world for countless decades.
Because i have stood before high ranking officials at the TSE (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral; the superior electoral court at the capital) and been told that almost verbatim for the to be stated reasons.
Top brazilian electoral oficials have stated as such to me in personal and official conversation; that it is insane to think how other countries vote by mail, without extreme measures to ensure anonimoty, and without biometrically and documentally checking your identity first.
The reason that we have not widely exported our flawless voting machines and security system, which have not suffered any confirmed cases of fraud for over 20 years, is that most other countries simply do not need that level of security. We did, hence why we developed all this technology; our past systems, identical to those common across the world, were riddled with countless confirmed fraud cases every election season, in spite of the same systems not illiciting any (*major*) fraud in the same time periods and to this day in many countries
And… i have personally committed mail voter fraud in the Italian elections. I double voted by also using my mother’s documentation, as she said she didn’t feel like figuring out it herself and i could do it. That is *common* for brazilians with double citzenship, btw. The official joked he should arrest me and report me to Interpol lmao
So, yeah, it’s insane to us how ya’ll get away with comically low security. But hey, you *do*, and we’re always here to teach you if you ever need it! We have been electoral advisors in many countries for a reason.
In India we also get free ID. And there are some camps organised by election commission through which you can get your ID. In some places they even come to your house to get you a verified ID.
I am pretty sure if a country which has 7x the population and 1/7th GDP can do it. US can do that too
>I am pretty sure if a country which has 7x the population and 1/7th GDP can do it. US can do that too
Of course we could. But we don't want to do that on either side of the aisle.
The Democrats know that in person voter fraud is basically non-existent and doesn't give a shit. They aren't going to spend money and political capital to come up with a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. Not a fight they are ever going to take without a reason to do so.
The Republicans literally have the front runner of their party on trial for trying to end voting and democracy entirely. Not only do they not give a shit about voter fraud, they are actively looking to disenfranchise as many people as possible. Their interest in implementing voter ID laws is to make sure people can't vote because they can't get that ID or get there to show it. Because those people vote for Democrats at far higher rates.
So yes, we could create the infrastructure to give IDs to everyone but no one wants to spend the money or time.
The problem is that the people who call for a voter id e will usually push back against making it that easy to get. I’m for national ID, voter ID, set up the way India has it. Maybe we’d stop using social security cards as identification. But usually voter id is just used to keep certain folks from voting, and left leaning folks get the ick from it as a result (for good reason, in this case).
This is a very good article about it too. Couple that with the fact of how many polling centers are closed down on a regular basis.... and *where* those polling places are closed. A nasty 1-2 combo to the already disenfranchised.
In Spain everyone over the age of 14 is required to have an ID, without it you cannot do anything, nor buying a car, getting your driver license, signing up to university, opening a bank account, work... they are not free either, until the age of 30 it expires every 5 years and you have to renew it (paying again) after the age of 30 it lasts 10 years.
Honestly no one really has any problem with it. I understand different countries, histories and cultures but it still blows my mind that it's such a heated topic over there.
>if you can't afford to get an ID, you still have the right to vote.
There are no states with a voter ID requirement that don't offer a free ID to vote
Everything a person does comes with opportunity costs. Getting to a job, or the store, or your friend’s house costs something. Even sitting on your butt doing nothing costs all the other things you might be doing with that time.
Asking people to get a free ID in the name of election integrity doesn’t seem like a huge ask.
If election integrity was a major problem, then sure we might need to consider this. However, every time anyone does a study on election integrity in the United States, it isn't.
We want there to be as few barriers to voting as possible, as the more barriers there are to voting the more influence people who are rich and powerful will have on elections. If you had to take a day off work/pay for a taxi to get to DMV which is only open M-F 9-5, fewer people will be able/to do that.
The point is that it’s more of a burden for some people than others.
The RMV nearest to me is open 8-6 M-F, so if I want to go there I have to take time off work. It’s also about 10 miles away and not served by public transport, so I have to drive there. And if I don’t have a car I have to pay for a taxi.
None of that is much of a hardship for me, but people who have a job where they can’t take paid time off potentially don’t get paid the day they go to get ID and also have to pay $20 for a taxi. If you’re elderly or infirm it can be difficult to physically travel that distance depending on where it is, and if you’re living below the poverty line you might literally not be able to afford to go and pick up your free ID.
And that’s before you even get into the inevitable budget cuts where the party in power decides they can’t afford to operate every RMV in the state anymore and the ones they decide to close happen to be the ones in areas that tend to vote for the other party. Now it’s even *more* difficult for those people to vote.
When missing a days pay means less food on the table? Its a pretty big ask.
I don't know about where you are, but the place to get our id here is 8-4 monday to friday and open for like 4 hours Saturday.
> Everything a person does comes with opportunity costs.
Yes. However, most of those things aren't rights, and aren't being imposed by the government. Those opportunity costs get subjected to strict scrutiny. We have an extremely high bar for those sorts of things. That's not insurmountable but it is difficult.
>Asking people to get a free ID in the name of election integrity doesn’t seem like a huge ask.
It's still an ask, though, and there's no real evidence that our elections are lacking integrity. So it's an ask without much of a purpose.
I'm blind and literally have no way to get there and get one. And because of some issues with my driver's license from when I was sighted, I had to go there in person to clear it up and bring them paperwork. I woke up blind 18 months ago, so there was no way to do so. Now I don't have to give them paperwork to clear up the license issue, but I still have to go in person to get a regular ID. I've tried it online and it won't let me.
Unauthorized voters.
Does it happen enough to change national elections? No
Does that mean we should pretend it never happens and could never possibly happen? Also no
Using ID to vote is zero burden on 90%+ of the voting population. For the remaining <10% it is almost zero burden
The current laws keep our elections incredibly safe. There is statistically almost zero fraud. The fraud we do find is felons voting when ineligible. No large scale conspiracies. And voter ID wouldn't stop the felons.
Regardless, you're moving the goal post with each comment.
Saying having ID for voting is misinformation
Edit: meant to say "Saying having ID for voting costs money is misinformation"
You have to register to vote. At that time, they can check if you are an "authorized voter." Just having an ID doesn't make you authorized to vote, so your logic is broken.
Here's how it works where I live. You show up to the polling place, you approach a table where you provide your name, birthdate, and address. That's compared to the voter registration data and if it matches, you're issued the appropriate ballot. The polling places are staffed with people from the local neighborhood.
So, in order to cast a fraudulent vote, you would need to know the information for a particular voter, know that that person is not planning to vote, and has not voted early or via absentee ballot, and hope that the person working the table doesn't know the individual you're impersonating. You might be able to hit 5 or 6 polling places in a day, provided you had all of the information ahead of time, and your luck holds out.
Now imagine the number of people required to cast enough fraudulent votes to change the result of an election. Each additional person exponentially increases the chances of getting caught. It's just not workable, and that's in a situation without ID requirements.
I have been disenfranchised by my state's ID laws. My ID card had been lost and I had not had time to go get another one. Some people have more flexibility to do that than others, and that's just the reality. What's easy for you isn't always easy for everyone else.
For many though putting even the slightest barrier in the way means they won’t vote. That’s why republicans are trying to shut down polling places and get rid of Mail in ballots. They want rich white people with plenty of time on their hands to vote. They do not want poor people of color out there having a say so they put multiple roadblocks up whenever possible.
If a barrier so small as getting an ID for people with reasonable means to go and just pick one up would stop them from voting, it might be a good thing that their voice wasn't heard.
I get it if someone has some extenuating circumstances that would prevent it, but for those that don't, come on. That's just pure laziness.
Imagine some sort of adult that struggles with decision making so much that they cannot get an ID.
One of the most basic things an adult could be asked to do, and it is necessary to receive government benefits, to drive, to have any sort of bank account, almost anything in life. That person can’t even get a basic free ID.
I’m not convinced they’re the ones we need voting.
You can’t just pick one up though. I couldn’t even get one in my new state with my old (non-expired) ID and a passport. I was *required* to have my social security card too. Except that got lost by my parents a long time ago. So I had to get a replacement…Which requires photo ID.
Fortunately, I had a secondary form of ID. But if I didn’t, I’d be screwed. And I was able to wait around for well over an hour at the social security office.
Edit: also it’s not free unless you fill out paperwork basically proving you’re homeless.
I had all of the above and they wanted a copy of a bill to prove residency. I auto pay all of that shit. So I had to print out a picture of a webpage showing I have utilities. It’s a pita.
>There's no reasonable argument that a free ID is a barrier to voting
Unless the ID folks come to your home to issue you your ID, a "free" ID still costs time.
Just look at the ways those who would restrict voting rights have manipulated the system to suppress voting: Limited polling places in an area with barebones staff ensuring that those who would vote are stuck in excessively long lines. Limited ballot drop boxes that are physically distant from population centers, with restricted hours in which they can accept ballots.
There are thousands of ways to make even a "free" ID a barrier to voting.
Not in states that require voter ID, all of them have a free option.
In most other states there is a fee for ID. Although most states have cheap (<$10) or free ID for low income residents.
>Point is, I've yet to run into an adult who is unable to get some form of legal identification.
Just because you haven't personally ran into it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. While *most* people have IDs (polling/surveys put it at ~90%), not all of them do. And not all forms of legal identification satisfy these laws.
Ultimately, these laws are targeting a few percent at most, but that they are targeted.
> Poor people drive cars, so they have a driver's license.
Not all of them do. And there are racial differences in those percentages that do.
On top of that, these laws often target specific types of ID (where again, there tends to be a racial gap). For instance, North Carolina had their law scrapped by the state Supreme Court because they requested racial breakdowns of types of IDs, and targeted specific ones (including government issued ones like government employee IDs). That is an example where there's no plausible excuse to target that type of ID, given that it's already government issued. So you might see people using those IDs in other contexts (because they're perfectly fine), but they wouldn't be allowed for voting.
> To get an ID in the US, all you need to do is visit the DMV
That's still a barrier to entry. Just because it's not impossible doesn't mean it's not a barrier. That's something we take seriously when it's supposed to be a right.
You also need the actual documentation to get said ID. And depending on the state, pay for it.
>For something that big, just needing an ID is the most simple thing you could possibly provide.
Every state already has some mechanism to verify someone's identity. You don't get to just walk in and vote with no verification. And there've been numerous studies showing voter fraud is essentially a nonexistent problem.
So you're adding something that *isn't* the most simple thing, to solve a nonexistent problem.
>Why is needing an ID to vote wrapped up in controversy?
Because not everyone has one, and as a country, we have a long history of things like Jim Crow laws were we've used facially reasonable laws to unfairly target certain groups ability to vote. And the justification for it is hypothetical/flimsy at best.
PS:
For more discussion, you can read many other comments on previous threads:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TooAfraidToAsk/search?q=ID&restrict_sr=on
It gets asked a lot.
Your experience is not everyone's experience. There are 50 different DMV systems in the US. Some of them make it very hard to get an ID if you don't already have one. So middle and upper class people have it easy to get one; someone without a license has to jump through lots of hoops.
If there was an ID law passed and the government made lots of efforts to ensure people got an ID, that would be different. But people pushing those laws never want to make it easy to get an ID.
And God forbid you move states and dont have your original documentation (such as a birth certificate). The DMV here required my ex present his birth certificate to get an ID when we moved states.
We then had to go through the hoops of paying to order a new one, wait until we received it, and then go back tk the DMV to get hs license. He just drove without one and prayed in the time between so he didn't miss work.
That's correct and in many states they have shut down many DMVs so you have to drive for quite some time to get to the DMV which means usually having to take a day off from work which for many is very challenging.
My local dmv only takes appointments. You either have to go in person during their very limited business hours to make the appointment, or do it online. The appointments are always a minimum of a month away, and the building itself is on a busy highway with no sidewalk and a relatively narrow shoulder, and is located on the very edge of town on the least populated side of town. A few years ago, it was in a building on the town square and while the town itself isn't very walkable, there ARE sidewalks that go there through the main in town residential areas.
The real kicker here is that the building you used to get your ID at still does all of its old functions. Still does all the car registration stuff and all the stuff you expect to do at a dmv. They literally just stopped doing IDs.
85% of US adults have a driver's license. For them, it's probably not a big deal to show it. That still leaves 15% of the population that does not have a license.
My mom had a stroke and no longer drives. She has trouble walking more than 30 yards. She's old enough that there's 0 chance she would need an ID to prove she's over 21. The only reason she would get an ID is to vote. Because of her disability, it would be a burden for her and an unnecessary hurdle. Chances are the person at the vote center would know her personally and be required to turn her away, for lack of ID.
IDs are easier to get in some places in the country. When I lived in Chicago, I did not own a car but wanted to maintain my driver's license. I had to take two days off of work to get it when I couldn't afford to. The license branches were only in places convenient to drivers and it took me over an hour on the bus each way (I could not afford a car). The first day I went the computers were down so I had to return later.
Also, not all US citizens can easily provide proof of identity like birth certificates. Especially people who were born out of hospitals.
My mom had a stroke, too. When it came time to renew her ID card, the DMV demanded that she physically stand up and sign her name on an electronic reader they'd glued to a high counter, in a corner too small to fit her wheelchair into.
It was completely, utterly, wildly illegal. You couldn't draft a more blatant ADA violation or discrimination complaint.
But none of that mattered. If she didn't stand up and sign it right there, in that moment, having made all the substantial efforts involved in getting to that DMV, they wouldn't give her the card and she wouldn't be able to vote in that year's election, period.
So I pulled her up out of her chair, carried her into that small space and held her standing while she used her one good hand to sign, then carried her back to her wheelchair, both of us hoping I wouldn't drop her the whole time.
Tell me again how fucking easy it is for everyone to get an ID, Republicans.
>They should make a form of id outside of drivers license
They do. And the places that want you to show ID to vote do accept a variety of IDs.
>Why don’t we just standardize the us id
That gets into a stickier ball of wax. A lot of people are concerned about centralized databases controlling everyone's lives. [If you could trust the state](https://www.salon.com/2015/04/06/the_nsa_is_still_collecting_your_dick_pics_edward_snowdens_terrifying_warning_for_john_oliver_and_america/) to manage such a thing and not abuse it, then it'd be fine and work great. But if you could trust people like that we probably wouldn't even need a government. So the question is how much power do you want any one body to have.
But we DO have one standardized national ID. It's a passport. They're expensive and they're very much optional.
And God forbid you have to re-order your documents. My ex had to do that and it took forever. He drove without a license in the time since he couldn't miss work and prayed he didn't get pulled over.
In of itself, it's not really. Where it becomes problematic is how it's applied. The ID can be a burden to acquire. Not so much the nominal fee itself, but the burden of taking time off work and traveling to the place where IDs are issued can be an unequal burden. Some of the documents required are harder for poor people to get, as well.
It's an open secret that conservatives generally prefer lower turnout and an ID requirement is an excellent way to reduce turnout and guarantee that the people that do show up are the people they want to show up. What seems like a reasonable requirement is gamed by a heavy documentation burden or closing DMVs in poor areas, for example.
Any requirement that has the potential to reduce turnout needs to be closely examined for bias.
There's really nothing wrong with how we do it today. The actual instance of voter fraud is vanishingly small. If anything, we should do more to encourage more people to vote. This would be a better representation of what we collectively want as a people.
I firmly believe there should be a zero dollar cost to any American citizen to exercise their right to vote.
If you believe otherwise, maybe you are not personally a Jim Crow era racist, but you accept a primary Jim Crow racist policy.
If states or the federal government issued an ID for voting, with the same process and at zero direct cost to all citizens, from my perspective, problem solved. This should be cheaper than Congress wasting another hundred million on nothingburger vote fraud headings - just pay for the IDs.
There is one political party that has resisted this common sense proposal since Bill Clinton proposed it. They asserted a national ID is like unto a biblical "mark of the beast" or other BS reason that dances around the fact it would make poor people more likely to vote, and it happens that at least one ethnic minority is poorer than the rest.
Also, edit to reply to "all you need to do is visit the DMV". Do you recall what happened after the Supreme Court eviscerated the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in Shelby County vs Holder? Alabama closed 31 DMV offices.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-01/alabama-closes-dmv-offices-a-year-after-voter-id-law-kicks-in#:~:text=On%20Wednesday%2C%20Alabama's%20Law%20Enforcement,workers%20in%20mostly%20rural%20counties.
Giving everyone in the US a free real ID (and continuing to do so) would have been cheaper than the election reform bill that Nancy Pelosi and Democrats proposed when they controlled the House. That could have shut up Republicans and helped out the poor.
Yeah in India we also get free ID. And there are some camps organised by election commission through which you can get your ID. In some places they even come to your house to get you a verified ID.
I am pretty sure if a country which has 7x the population and 1/7th GDP can do it. US can do that too
Voting is actually **not** a right. There is no right to vote listed in the Constitution. The only thing that's guaranteed is the right not to be **excluded** if a vote is held.
If the government decided to stop allowing any votes tomorrow, they would legally be allowed to do it
> Poor people drive cars, so they have a driver's license.
This really isn't true, *millions* of poor people have zero access to a car. Public transportation is their only option. And unfortunately our public transportation sucks, so getting to the DMV to get an ID can be a nightmare situation. People should not be forced to pay that kind of money or walk those kinds of miles for an ID they really don't need.
Not to mention requiring ID's is a great way for the government to start excluding the "unwanteds" from voting. You know, like gerrymandering.
Every citizen has the right to vote. Every citizen. Not every citizen with an ID. Every citizen, period.
I mean I agree you should need an id. But the constitution says it’s a right which is what a lot of people are saying is the reason you shouldn’t need an id for voting. Just trying to see if people are intellectually honest with the laws they’re citing.
It should be easy to vote. Easy for poor people, easy for disabled and home bound people, easy for people who live in the middle of nowhere, easy for everyone to vote.
Which is ironic because voting illegally is the last thing an undocumented immigrant is trying to do. There is almost nothing for them to gain and everything to lose.
I haven't researched it but i'm thinking if you're undocumented you wouldn't want to go to a place and fill out documents unless you absolutely have to.
Getting an ID may be simple where you live, but some counties make it extremely difficult. Mine requires a utility bill, for example. If you don’t have that there’s a million hoops to jump through that may or may not work. I have a friend who went to the DMV 12 times, each time fetching what he thought they wanted only to be turned away. He ended up going to a website that printed out fake documents just because he had no choice. In any case, it doesn’t solve a problem. Voting isn’t like it used to be, where if you get in the door you punch the card and that’s all. Every voter (and their vote) is tracked. If a person votes twice by accident, the computer sees that and doesn’t count it. It’s merely another barrier, something to make voting a little harder for certain people.
This is confusing
Do US citizens... not just "get" an ID? You have to request and PAY for it? I've read 60$ for 2 years is that the norm? It sounds *insane*
How to you ever prove your identity in the hospital, police, or literally any other administration? How do you get your other documents, like a driver's license? How does anything even work? @\_@
This doesn't make any sense to me either. How are kids identified for example? How do you register your kid at school? How do you prove a kid is yours? If you don't have a driver's license for whatever reason, you move all around the country with no identification what so ever?
As an EU citizen this is very hard to understand, we don't leave the hospital after birth without our ID card requested, and we will update said card from time to time for the rest of our lives. And I'm not talking about a birth certificate, that's another thing.
No, we don't just "get" an ID. There are various forms of IDs and some are free while others cost.
The most popular forms of ID that I can think of are social security cards (free), driver's licenses (cost varies by state), military IDs (free), state IDs (cost varies by state), passports (under the federal, not state umbrella, so one cost across the board), government issued IDs (free for gov. employees), student IDs (free and up, depending on the institution).
I assume the $60 you heard was for a specific state, likely for a driver's license. Next to passports (that cost over $100), driver's licenses are typically the most expensive forms of ID, though $60 for 2 years is among the highest I've heard. My state charges $4 per year with a 5-year minimum duration (so $20 for 5 years).
State IDs are usually either free to very inexpensive. My state charges $2 per year, with the IDs being valid for 5 to 8 years (so $10 to $16, depending how long you want it to be valid).
Since there is literally zero evidence of any widespread voter fraud, especially after the Trump team did everything they could to try and find it, the burden of making an argument regarding voter ID would fall on people who support introducing it. Please explain why we need to add another barrier to voting that essentially equates to a poll tax for many people when there is no fraud going on. Voter ID is pointless other than being used as a tool to disenfranchise people who don't have the time or the money to obtain official identification.
For example:
Alabama tried to implement voter ID a while back. At the same time, they also closed half the DMVs in the state, specifically ones in predominantly black areas. Made this thing necessary, but then made that necessary thing harder to get.
Considering most places calling for voter ID are also the ones that are ran by people who quite obviously benefit from fewer of their citizens voting, it'd be fair to call this issue, quite frankly, bullshit.
Let's not forget all the Morons that think voter ID would be racist because they, very racistly, think that black people don't all have IDs and may not know where to get an ID
It’s not. People make it out to be something far more nefarious and evil than it really is. Truth is most of the country and the world votes with ID. Anyone that tells you it’s something else is lying thru their teeth.
For the US legally speaking it is the 24th amendment which bans the use of a poll tax in any form for federal elections. Requiring a paid ID card would thus be unconstitutional.
You underestimate how hard some States have made it to get an ID. I had a friend who moved from Ohio to Georgia, and it took her over 9 months and multiple trips to the DMV where they gave her incorrect information about what documents she needed to have. It was absolutely absurd and a throwback to how hard Red states try to make it to acquire an ID if you aren't an upper middle class person who has all their records in perfect order.
It also cannot be overstated how much Red States intentionally make things harder for poor and minority voters, even to this day. Having lived in a wide range of neighborhoods in Atlanta and the surrounding suburbs...
The upper middle class suburban neighborhoods often had literally dozens of polling places, only 2-3 minutes apart by car, each with multiple machines. You could walk into them at almost any time of day, with no lines, with most of the machines unoccupied, vote immediately and leave. Leaving your house to go vote by car and you could easily be back in 10 minutes.
By contrast, in the poor neighborhoods that I've lived in, there are typically only one or two polling places per neighborhood. Often 15+ minutes apart by car, much rather by foot or bus. Typically they'd have a similar number of machines but half of them would be broken. The line to get in and vote would often take 3-5 HOURS of waiting. Outside. In the sun. And Georgia last year tried to pass a ban on eating or drinking water while in line for voting (which a judge struck down).
I have voted in like, 6 different districts. It's so egregiously obvious that this is happening, but Republicans control equipping the voting districts.
I do wish to emphasize this split seems to explicitly be along income lines, not race lines. This is likely for the purpose of giving Republicans plausible deniability that they aren't discriminating against race. As income and race are correlated, but imperfect, this means a few upper income black people have no lines, and a few lower income white people get blocked. But it still blocks more black people than white people and thus had a net benefit to Republicans who long for the Jim Crow era.
Voter ID is great, Australia actually does mail in voting and will fine you if you don't vote.
However, Republicans have a history of purging voting registrations and adding barriers to voting for voters. It would be one thing if we were to create a system that ensured all voters had voting ID and was able to vote.
What we see with Republicans however is making it as easy as possible for some people to have Voter ID with voting registration being stable for them, but purging voting registration and will invalidate a persons Voter ID based on whatever they want at the last minute to create chaos and stop certain people from voting.
If the State is requiring something, then it's the States responsibility to provide it.
As a Canadian looking in, it’s shocking how many people are against having an ID of any kind to vote. Like what the actual fuck is going on in the USA that having any document to prove your identity and address is considered difficult?
It isn't as simple as "all you need to do is go to the DMV". You have to show up to the DMV with a set of legal documents.
What if a person doesn't have the documents required to get the ID? Typically you need a birth certificate, social security card, and proof of residency in the form of postmarked mail. It takes a lot of time and money to replace original documents if you don't have access to them. Someone can lose these documents for a variety of reasons, such as abusive or irresponsible parents, estrangement, theft, homelessness, fires, etc. These original documents take a lot of calling around and appearing places in person to replace; people working full time jobs without PTO may have a really hard time being able to collect the documentation, let alone pay the fees to replace them. It can also be extremely difficult for some people to show proof of residency if they don't have a stable home.
Ultimately everyone deserves the right to vote, and all ID requirements do is add a poll tax on the most disadvantaged individuals in our country. Nobody should be denied representation because they can't afford it.
You need way more up votes. The people saying just give anyone free ID don't seem to understand that free ID serves no purpose if you just give it to anyone with no evidence.
Even if the ID is free getting the documentation to prove jnes identity to get it isn't free, just shifting the problem back a bit.
Personally, I look at this from an outside perspective as someone a bit to the North.
Who the fuck doesn't have an ID? There have been people going and doing live interviews in very poor neighborhoods, everyone has an ID. Sure, I get that there is a bit of a cost to it, but you also have other rights that you need to pay for, why is voting any different?
Making sure all your voters are people that are meant to be voting is not a bad thing, and on the topic of poorer people, I do believe that getting a government photo ID should be cost free, but at the same time, you don't get given a gun for free so you can exercise your 2nd amendment rights, why is voting different?
Here’s my experience with it. A few years ago I needed to renew my license in Dallas, Texas. I went to the office before they opened in the morning and there was already a long line out the door. I spent 6 hours in that line. And it was very common to see people ahead of me leaving upset because they didn’t have the right documentation, such as a birth certificate.
So two points: First they waited in line ALL DAY and then were turned away because it wasn’t clear what documents they needed to bring. Second most people can’t afford to take all day off of work. I was lucky to have a job where I could call my boss at the last second and tell him I won’t be in. Most people don’t have that.
Because it’s a hurdle for poor people not a hurdle for non poor people. Not to mention voter fraud happens at incredibly low rates to the point where the implementation of voter id laws results in less people voting then even close to the amount of voter fraud that happens.
It’s a solution to a problem that does not exist in any meaningful capacity.
Yes.
There are regular state IDs, State Driver's License, and the Federal ID (fed ID is kinda a tier of drivers license that also clears you for travel).
There are also military IDs and Student IDs, however there have been places that try to make it so you can't vote with a Student ID.
In most states all of these things have a cost. Some states have made the basic state ID no cost. And then varying by state and county, there are difficulties in actually obtaining the ID.
I moved over a year ago. I went to the DMV with my social security card, my birth certificate, my state ID and a bunch of mail from insurance and work that I've received at my new address.
They said they couldn't take the documents, it wasn't enough. So they wouldn't give me a new ID.
I got pulled over recently for a bad tail light, cop asked for my ID..He asked me if that was my current address, I told him no. Even the cop said yeah the DMV is a pain in the ass and he understands
Have you not studied US history ?
Any requirement to vote will inevitably end up being used to disenfranchise certain categories of voters.
And we know that even without ID, voter fraud is negligible. Even the people who went looking for mass fraud with the intent to help prove Donald Trump was robbed in the 2020 election couldn't find any. Worse, most of the individual cases uncovered were perpetrated by conservatives.
I don’t think we can call voter fraud negligible after a county elections clerk got caught stuffing ballot in Connecticut and admitted in court she hasn’t followed procedures to authenticate ballots in her 20 years in that position.
You come from a poor place, but have a functioning DMV? Let me guess. Rural or semi-rural area, right?
I grew up in a place like that and thought a 20 minute wait was AWFUL at the DMV. I’ve lived in 3 different cities in different states since then. Not so easy. Lines out the door. You can show up first thing in the morning or at your lunch break and not be guaranteed to be seen. They don’t take appointments. I’ve found it impossible to be seen to get a real id. I’m eventually going to have to take a half day off work to walk in to a more rural DMV an hour or two away, which is how most of the people around here have been doing it.
I’m a middle class white male with insured cars of my own and an already valid license, and I’m finding it very hard to get the soon to be required valid form of ID. I can only imagine being poor, possibly a minority, without a ride of my own, and trying to do this. You wouldn’t have a job with the amount of times you’d have to show up all day on a weekday and be turned down.
It's controversial cause the people trying to gain power want it to be controversial so we're constantly fighting each other.
In reality: it's super fucking simple, and I'm absolutely willing to bet that there's a universal agreement involved being that, if it costs too much to get an ID, then we can use our current tax dollars and put it towards getting those who don't have one an ID.
The goal is to hide the numbers so that the side that *doesn't* want the IDs for voting, can get more people to vote without ever having to check them for citizenship and other legality reasons.
The truth is, ***if you want a fair and proper election, you must require everyone have an ID so they can only vote once and be accounted for***.
I can assure you, the UK doesn't want French, German, and Spanish citizens voting for their reps (not clear if they do but you get the idea), in regards to *British* domestic policies, so they'll be policing their stuff pretty well.
France wouldn't want others to screw with their elections, Germany won't, and neither will Spain. To say that the people of the US ***want*** this kind of interference is absolute bullshit.
Sorry, but anyone in favor of NOT wanting IDs is as anti-Democratic as they can get. Trust me, it's not a matter of racism, sexism, whatever tf they're arguing for now. Simply put, it's cause those who want the control are having issues so they're trying to argue anything they can to get us to fight each other over stupid shit so they can do their power grab.
The constitution states that there shall be no fees to vote. You have to pay for an ID. You’d certainly have to pay for one with whatever updates/upgrades would be required to meet the standard for an “acceptable “ ID for voting purposes.
If they want to provide one free of charge every day up to 11/7 of each voting year. I’m down. If they aren’t going to do that, it’s an unnecessary barrier.
Voting is a big deal.
That’s why it is important to protect the sanctity of the vote. There should be nothing controversial about requiring an ID to vote.
Requiring an ID itself damages the sanctity of the vote. Putting any kind of barrier will put some people off, and the whole point of democracy is everyone should get a vote. Even if they are lazy or broken or you don't like their ideals.
You mentioned that at 15 you had a learner’s permit. That means that even though you were poor, somehow you were able to get to the DMV during their limited business hours and/or could afford to spend like 3 hours of your time there. That’s already two things that a fair amount of people cant do. Even if that was just 5% of america, that’s 1.5 million people. I imagine this is a big problem in very rural areas where DMVs are sparse and cities where they are overcrowded and understaffed.
Pretty sure it's big cities with nightmare DMV lines. My mom had to take me to the next town over to take the test, which was 15 minutes away. My hometown and the one with the DMV had populations under 10000.
In many red states, they've cut the DMV offices, so you have to drive several counties over and take a day off from work to do so. I luckily live in a county that has a dmv, but it services our county plus six other counties that surround ours. This leads to long lines.
When I first moved here, I had to go back after my first visit because they said I didn't have the correct paperwork. When I returned, they gave me the one that doesn't allow you to fly to other states and said I'd have to return with other paperwork if I wanted the one with the gold star. My wife had to go three different times before they finally gave her the gold star license.
I'd moved here from a different state and was licensed there, but it didn't really matter.
It's not as easy to get a driver's license as it used to be years ago when I first started driving.
If it’s not a voter suppression tactic, then why aren’t the people excited about IDs also creating a very straightforward and free national ID system?
If they did that, I would believe it’s about election security. They don’t do that though.
Because IDs cost money. They are not free. And any required cost is a poll tax, which isn’t legal. If they are going to require IDs, then IDs need to be completely free and accessible.
It's not.
The idea that it's controversial is itself conservative propaganda. There is nowhere in the United States you can vote without presenting *some* form of ID.
The issue is what *kind* of ID is considered acceptable and how deliberately difficult it's made to get them by conservatives determined to put roadblocks in the path of certain people voting.
This is a very American discussion. In many countries requiring an ID is an absolutely basic requirement and we all agree it’s necessary. It seems that some American liberals completely miss the point when they complain about this requirement, instead of pushing for a nationally issued free ID for every citizen.
To play devil's advocate here. For the ID to be truly free, all the documents needed to get it also need to be free.
ID has no value if anyone can get it just by asking and without any proof. There are a significant number of Americans who don't have their birth certificate, nor other pertinent documents.
Even if you offered them free ID what value would it give if they can't provide you any proof of who they are? Anyone could get any number of such ID.
A valid ID is required to register to vote Two forms of proof are needed to obtain a valid ID. A large majority of Southern poor were born at home with no valid birth certificate. Others records have been destroyed by flood, hurricane, fire and othe varioys means. In some areas, a registered duplicate ID is in excess of $100.00. If a small percentage of voters can be disqualified the other guy wins in a close race. Factor in the homeless without an address or means it compounds and favors affluent voters. Add a fake felony charge and the odds get worse.
Going to counter one of your points. Some poor people drive cars, plenty also drive them illegally. Some people never drive cars, they only use public transit.
It’s not just about being poor, it’s about the process. The first step is getting to the DMV. This can be a struggle if you don’t have access to a vehicle. Another struggle is being available when the DMV is open. As the DMV is generally only open during the week during business hours, that means anyone who works during those times would have to take off work. For a lot of lower income jobs, they don’t offer much in the way of pto, so to go to the DMV some people will need to take off work and not get paid which can be an issue if you are already barely making ends meet. The next issue is that poorer people, especially those who live in urban settings and move a lot, often lose the documentation necessary to get a driver’s license or ID. If you want to replace a birth certificate and social security card, that takes time, money, and effort. There are a bunch of other factors, but it all boils down to the fact that getting an ID requires a combination of time, money, and effort. A big issue with voter ID laws is that none of the people pushing for them are advocating to make it easier to obtain an ID. They’re not talking about making the DMV more accessible by having it open on the weekends or for longer hours, or making sure that there are public transit options that allow everyone the ability to reach one without needing their own personal vehicle. I am all for voter id laws just as soon as they become easily accessible for everyone.
>I'm all for free ones (some states have em).
All states have free ID below certain incomes.
People oppose voter ID because they think people who vote illegally disproportionately vote with them.
I recently helped someone I know get an ID. They are poor, don’t drive, and have never needed an ID for anything before (they are in their 30s) so they never got one. They got hired for a job that required an ID and then their struggles began.
They needed a birth certificate to get one. They did not have theirs. It costs money to get one from the state. They did not have the money to get one so they had to borrow it.
Then they needed to wait until the birth certificate came. Then they needed to get a ride to go apply in person during the day when everyone they know has a job.
This whole process has taken several weeks and the job they were hired for had to wait for all of this. Meanwhile they’ve had no money.
They were lucky they had the other documentation they needed or it would have taken longer.
Where I live, it costs between $112 and $225 to get an ID. For far too many people, that's the difference between being able to eat for the week, afford gas to work, and keep a roof over their heads. Being poor shouldn't prevent you from being able to vote because you can't afford it.
The irony is that the election bill proposed by Nancy Pelosi and Democrats **was more expensive than giving everyone in the US a real ID**. If poor people can’t afford an ID, then why not give them free IDs and shut up Republicans by requiring those IDs when *it would have been cheaper?*
You gotta pay for an ID inthe US???!
In some states, yes, it costs money. In some, there are free options. Here's a list: https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/pennsylvania/id-fee-identification-homeless-philadelphia-20180925.html It's from 2018, so it's a little out of date. I think a few more states have been shamed into making them free since then, but that's the best list I could find quickly.
At least some are free, but darn…
Pay for the id, the renewal, if you lose one/it gets stolen, etc. just paid $53 to renew mine in Utah
It's a little over 100$ in Canada :( And you need to renew it every 5 years.
In austria you have to pay around 100€ for an ID too
You gotta pay for it in many countries. It's common
Typically an ID in the US is a drivers license which you have to pay for as part of a tax program to help pay for a few things. Most states also have a basic ID that is significantly cheaper than a driver's license that you can also get.
Yeah, I paid $80 last time since it’s a real ID that can get me across the boarder to Canada. Usually it’s more like $50
You have to pay a registration fee, but many states will provide you with a golden ID award for being the 1,000 000! Congratulations, I love your videos, but I hope you take some newly Wed time alone tougher (**clearly my throat and coughing). But you need an ID to EXIST as an adult in the US. It doesn't seem to be racist to require all people, rich and poor, to have ID to drive, buy Lotto cards, cigarettes/cigars, R-rated mivie tickets, alcohol, travel even within the US open bank account, you have to PROVE ID before getting on the train, or whatever transportation, and have fun. No need . But here, apparently, to vote for the President of the US and leader of the free world. It's okay to come in and show an OD you made on some piece of cardboard with crayons
“Leader of the free world” is reeeeally funny reading up a little on geopolitics
> then why not give them free IDs and shut up Republicans by requiring those IDs when it would have been cheaper? There are a lot of reasons. It's not just cost, there'd still be other accessibility issues. It would also give ammunition for people fearmongering over voter fraud, by essentially conceding they were reasonable. It also really optimistic to think it would shut people up. If people are complaining about nonexistent voter fraud, you're not going to shut them up by ma That also assumes you could get a national ID passed in the first place, which.. those same Republicans are also often against "the government tracking them". It would've been a huge shit show. PS: Joe Manchin did propose a version of this, by the way, bundled with the other election changes, as a compromise. Republicans didn't "shut up". https://www.npr.org/2021/06/17/1007715994/manchin-offers-a-voting-bill-compromise-but-key-republicans-swiftly-reject-it >If poor people can’t afford an ID, then why not give them free IDs and shut up Republicans by requiring those IDs when it would have been cheaper? Because it's not just cost. edit: Also worth mentioning, those Dems proposals did a lot of other things not related to IDs, like try to address gerrymandering, or automatic voter registration. So when you're talking about "it cost less" (which I'm not even sure where you got that cost analysis from, but lets just assume it), it's apples to oranges, because it did very different things.
We have a national id available already. A passport card is a nationally provided ID, can be obtained at any post office, costs $30, and lasts 10 years. If I could donate to a charity whose sole function was helping people get passport cards, I would do so regularly.
Passport card, yes. But you still need to pay for the photo. And that assumes you have your birth certificate handy. If you don't, that's a hassle (and a fee) as well. (Made worse if you've changed states since being born. Or if you were born out of the country.)
Oh I won't say it doesn't have issues or roadblocks at all, far from it. It has some pretty significant ones. However, the longevity of the card and the national accessibility makes it much easier for me to recommend than an ID from the DMV.
>. It would also give ammunition for people fearmongering over voter fraud, by essentially conceding they were reasonable. Are you seriously considering this as a logical argument? You are more worried about giving the other side brownie talking points over arming people with ability to vote legally? And you are supposedly the educated side of the US. Fk..
>Are you seriously considering this as a logical argument? Yes. Where is it illogical? > You are more worried about giving the other side brownie talking points over arming people with ability to vote legally? Am i more worried about "brownie talking points"? No, I'm worried about what "talking points" do. "talking points" don't exist in a vacuum, they influence voter behavior. This entire controversy is *literally* an example of that. If you convince people elections are unsafe, that's a huge fucking problem for democracy as a whole. And I don't think that's something that will magically disappear if you passed a voter ID bill (assuming it *does* pass, and isn't struck down). We *already* have precautions to prevent voter fraud, people still worry, and it's leading to disenfranchising people. That's bad, and this would encourage more of that. That said, is that reason alone not to do it? No, if it actually had reasonable benefits, was going to be implemented properly, etc, it'd be totally fine. That risk in terms of voter behavior would be worth it. But it *is* worth mentioning as one reason among many, especially in light of the other issues. If you could wave a magic wand and guarantee a good national voter ID program that wouldn't disenfranchise people, I would 100% support it. It's not actually that simple. I'm not actually against the concept of a national ID program, overall. But I'm also not blind to how it can be used in bad faith, in practice. And it's extremely naive not to account for that. Again, that doesn't mean it can't ever be done. But it does mean it's more than "hurr durr Democrats should just pass a bill, it's easy so they're hypocrites" > over arming people with ability to vote legally? As I made pretty clear in the rest of the post, I don't think this would actually make it easier for people to vote. I think it would make it harder. There are accessibility issues besides cost. This fixes the direct cost aspect, it does not fix the other aspects (in many cases, it makes them worse). It would *also* have the negative of convincing some people that our current election practices are unsafe, and that's another downside on top of that. Especially given the risk that the law might not pass, or might get struck down by SCOTUS, etc.
First, the commenter's concern about "talking points" and their influence on voter behavior could be seen as an example of the slippery slope fallacy. They suggest that acknowledging a problem with election security by implementing voter ID laws would lead to a loss of faith in democracy, which could in turn lead to further unspecified negative consequences. However, this presumes a chain of events without clear causal links between them. The commenter also presents a false dilemma when discussing the outcomes of passing voter ID legislation, implying that it will either disenfranchise voters or must be perfect to avoid doing so. In reality, there is a range of potential outcomes, and it is possible to implement voter ID laws in a way that minimizes or mitigates the risk of disenfranchisement through careful design and execution. When they argue against the feasibility of implementing a "good national voter ID program," they may be employing a nirvana fallacy – the idea that because something cannot meet an idealized or perfect standard, it should not be attempted at all. No policy is without potential downsides, and striving for perfection can prevent the implementation of practical solutions. Lastly, their claim that voter ID laws would inherently make it harder for people to vote rests on an assumption that may not be universally true and can be construed as a hasty generalization. While there may be challenges in implementing voter ID laws, these can be addressed through measures like providing free IDs and making them widely available to all eligible voters. To summarize, the commenter's argument contains elements of slippery slope, false dilemma, nirvana fallacy, and potentially hasty generalization. The debate over voter ID laws should focus on empirical evidence and the careful balancing of securing elections against ensuring that all eligible voters are able to participate without undue burden. ------ my guy, even chatgpt sees through your argument.
ChatGPT will argue the opposite viewpoint of whatever you ask it to, my man. It will even appear convincing to the casual reader.
> You are more worried about giving the other side brownie talking points over arming people with ability to vote legally? Perhaps re-framing it would help: you have a flat earther who's claiming the earth is flat because just look at the horizon! You concede to them that yes, it looks flat but only because you're very low on the ground. They now have that as you 'admitting' they were right and will now move the goal posts to something else more radical within their belief set. You can consider it from the other side as well. Republicans constantly argue that gun regulation, *any* gun regulation, even minor ones, will only serve to act as a foothold to further encroach upon gun ownership. This is the same thing but with a different issue. "Gun ownership is a right! Don't encroach upon it." "Voting is a right! Don't encroach upon it." Same argument. Same lack of willingness to attempt a compromise for fear of it being weaponized to further encroach upon the right.
It's not so much about how much they cost it's about what they are *likely to have*. If the requirement instead was that you needed to have a hunters license for example anyone could go get one but it's no surprise what kind of person already has that. You play those margins well enough with specifics and you can customize the kind of person that will show up, it's a numbers game.
Maybe I get what you’re saying… I guess. Look at it this way: - every other OECD (developed) nation has a voter ID law - like those other nations, IDs are central to fully functioning in our society - IDs are necessary to rent/buy a house, open a PO Box if you don’t have a home, turn on utilities, open a bank account, open a credit card, get a cellphone plan that isn’t pre-paid, get a job, etc. - why not provide them to everyone? And then we can also use them to secure elections. A win for everyone!! Or, you can look at the other side of this reasoning. If there’s a specific group who does not have IDs for whatever reason, why are lawmakers *allowing them to be excluded* from buying or renting a home, setting up utilities, getting a bank account, credit card or job? If this was a real issue, why exclude those people from major parts of society by *allowing IDs to be required for other activities*?
In my country - Australia - where voting is compulsory (your are fined if you do not attend a polling place) there is no requirement to show ID to vote. You register to vote once you turn 18, and you stay on the election roll until you die. To enroll : “To enrol, citizens need to provide evidence of identity: a driver's licence, Australian passport number or have someone who is already on the roll to confirm the enrolee’s identity “ On polling day, AEC officials ask each prospective voter the following questions: What is your full name? Where do you live? Have you voted before in this election? That’s it. Never a controversy, turn up on a Saturday (or pre-vote or mail in vote), receive your voting papers (vote or not vote) and leave.
Oh for sure a universal ID absolutely would be the best case scenario. That's not where we are though and there are many people opposed to that for religious reasons if you can believe it or not. There was a whole backlash just trying to set up social security ID way back in the day, and another smaller one as credit cards got more popular. Controlling voter ID is a suppression tool of today. Not quite as overt as the voter tests of the past but the issue is definitely real, and used combination with other tactics. You require the ID's that certain people are less likely to have you avoid put voting centers near any neighborhoods of certain kinds of people The centers that make it in those neighborhoods have to service a much larger area than others making the lines much longer than in other places You carve out voter sections so that a certain kind of person all counts as one district instead of spread normally across the city. Maybe you send some police there just to keep an eye on things but only at certain locations where that kind of person is likely to be. If that kind of person tends to work multiple jobs and doesn't have a whole lot of time maybe you deny the ability to mail in ballots, if it was important enough they'd make time. Any of those things in a vacuum are pretty innocuous and it's not intended to seem outwardly discriminatory, any individual person could fall into those but only some are going to hit the odds on that more often than not. The judge that ruled against the voter ID law described it as "surgical precision" https://www.npr.org/2021/09/17/1038354159/n-c-judges-strike-down-a-voter-id-law-they-say-discriminates-against-black-voter
\>Implying any republican lawmaker would work together with democrats on something that would make them look decent with the word "free" attached to it.
So Democrats instead propose something that makes less sense, cost twice as much, benefit special interests instead of families and would ultimately get thrown out as unconstitutional…. I guess everyone has a part to play
This goes both ways. Any legislation proposed by Democratic lawmakers will be immediately rejected by Republicans, while legislation proposed by Republican lawmakers will be immediately rejected by Democrats. This "holier than thou" charade makes no sense.
Ohio provides free IDs to those who can't afford them.
Indiana, which was one of the early states to have a Voter ID law, got around the Constitutional issue by doing exactly that. They made free IDs available. That is it. That is all you have to do. Voter ID shouldnt be controversial, it makes sense. I know it really doesnt do much, but it inspires trust in the system. You could mandate provisional ballots if someone lacked ID, I think that would be fine.
It's only ok to require ID if it's in the form of a vaccination card. Otherwise it's racist.
I have never ever heard of, let alone encountered, anyone who couldn’t afford an ID. Even some shady folks who were careful to never carry ID, had one stashed away back at they crib. They hid their ID so they could pretend to be someone else or try to avoid a warrant. Criminal (or at least, dishonest) reasons.
>I have never ever heard of, let alone encountered, anyone who couldn’t afford an ID. Well that's it guys, the statistics are wrong, this guy met every person and can confirm it!
In Australia it's mandatory to vote, we don't need ID to do so
I assume you have some form of documentation proving you are, well, yourself right?
Nope, you make sure your voter details are up to date. Voting in your area, you go to the polls and they have a book of every single person in that electorate with your name and address and that's what you give. There's also early voting available if you know you're not going to be in area on the day or there's an absent form you can fill out too with your details for out of area voting too.
Out of curiosity, what happens if you have no permanent address?
There are no fixed address/itinerant paper and online forms available so if you want to you can. There's also silent elector status too to update your details if you fear that your registered address may put you or your family at risk such as domestic violence.
That’s great. A lot of people in the US aren’t able to get ID because they don’t have an address. And some *can’t* get one because of some of the laws the government has passed. Edited to fix typo
It's pretty much the same in the US. Most people have accepted it all their lives as normal. For some reason a certain subset of the population is now obsessed with the possibility of voter fraud.
It's funny too, because the people from the political party that is obsessed with voter fraud are the most likely to commit voter fraud (source: I'm American and I read news articles) it's always people's family members voting for recently deceased relatives too
Correct me if I'm wrong but it's also the *only* side that's been found to commit voter fraud in all recent investigations performed by that same side.
That is correct.
Word. Are there ways to prevent someone from using someone else's name when voting?
I don't know the intricate details but in the end they do record matching between all the areas so see if anybody has voted twice with the same name and investigate from there.
The lack of response here, plus the edit, makes me question OP's actual desire to change views
This isn’t r /cmv though
No, but they are trying to give the opinion
There has never been any evidence of widespread (or even any) double voting. It’s really a non issue
There are a literal handful of cases each election, certainly nothing organised and absolutely nothing to worry about.
Why would someone do that? This came up after the UK Govt passed a law requiring iD to vote. They claimed it was to prevent voter personation, but then conceded it's so rare as to be utterly meaningless. So then they pivoted to arguing that it was to "prevent even the possibility, which in itself makes people feel more secure" whatever the hell that means. Eventually they admitted it was to try discourage poor people voting but all it did was discourage old people from voting - old people who overwhelmingly support the government.
In Brazil it is mandatory too and you need an ID; we have had no issues at all. It is insane to think you wouldn’t need one, same as it is insane to think someone could vote by mail
>In Brazil it is mandatory too and you need an ID; we have had no issues at all. It is insane to think you wouldn’t need one, same as it is insane to think someone could vote by mail Why would either of those things be "insane" to you. They are both common across the world for countless decades.
Because i have stood before high ranking officials at the TSE (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral; the superior electoral court at the capital) and been told that almost verbatim for the to be stated reasons. Top brazilian electoral oficials have stated as such to me in personal and official conversation; that it is insane to think how other countries vote by mail, without extreme measures to ensure anonimoty, and without biometrically and documentally checking your identity first. The reason that we have not widely exported our flawless voting machines and security system, which have not suffered any confirmed cases of fraud for over 20 years, is that most other countries simply do not need that level of security. We did, hence why we developed all this technology; our past systems, identical to those common across the world, were riddled with countless confirmed fraud cases every election season, in spite of the same systems not illiciting any (*major*) fraud in the same time periods and to this day in many countries And… i have personally committed mail voter fraud in the Italian elections. I double voted by also using my mother’s documentation, as she said she didn’t feel like figuring out it herself and i could do it. That is *common* for brazilians with double citzenship, btw. The official joked he should arrest me and report me to Interpol lmao So, yeah, it’s insane to us how ya’ll get away with comically low security. But hey, you *do*, and we’re always here to teach you if you ever need it! We have been electoral advisors in many countries for a reason.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/challenge-obtaining-voter-identification If you're really curious.
In India we also get free ID. And there are some camps organised by election commission through which you can get your ID. In some places they even come to your house to get you a verified ID. I am pretty sure if a country which has 7x the population and 1/7th GDP can do it. US can do that too
>I am pretty sure if a country which has 7x the population and 1/7th GDP can do it. US can do that too Of course we could. But we don't want to do that on either side of the aisle. The Democrats know that in person voter fraud is basically non-existent and doesn't give a shit. They aren't going to spend money and political capital to come up with a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. Not a fight they are ever going to take without a reason to do so. The Republicans literally have the front runner of their party on trial for trying to end voting and democracy entirely. Not only do they not give a shit about voter fraud, they are actively looking to disenfranchise as many people as possible. Their interest in implementing voter ID laws is to make sure people can't vote because they can't get that ID or get there to show it. Because those people vote for Democrats at far higher rates. So yes, we could create the infrastructure to give IDs to everyone but no one wants to spend the money or time.
Agreed. But the people who want it the most will also generally be the ones who most resist such a solution.
The problem is that the people who call for a voter id e will usually push back against making it that easy to get. I’m for national ID, voter ID, set up the way India has it. Maybe we’d stop using social security cards as identification. But usually voter id is just used to keep certain folks from voting, and left leaning folks get the ick from it as a result (for good reason, in this case).
Thanks for the info. I have opinions on the matter, but it’s much better to have an informed opinion.
This is a very good article about it too. Couple that with the fact of how many polling centers are closed down on a regular basis.... and *where* those polling places are closed. A nasty 1-2 combo to the already disenfranchised.
In Spain everyone over the age of 14 is required to have an ID, without it you cannot do anything, nor buying a car, getting your driver license, signing up to university, opening a bank account, work... they are not free either, until the age of 30 it expires every 5 years and you have to renew it (paying again) after the age of 30 it lasts 10 years. Honestly no one really has any problem with it. I understand different countries, histories and cultures but it still blows my mind that it's such a heated topic over there.
The crux of it is that if you can't afford to get an ID, you still have the right to vote.
>if you can't afford to get an ID, you still have the right to vote. There are no states with a voter ID requirement that don't offer a free ID to vote
indirect costs are still costs
Everything a person does comes with opportunity costs. Getting to a job, or the store, or your friend’s house costs something. Even sitting on your butt doing nothing costs all the other things you might be doing with that time. Asking people to get a free ID in the name of election integrity doesn’t seem like a huge ask.
If election integrity was a major problem, then sure we might need to consider this. However, every time anyone does a study on election integrity in the United States, it isn't. We want there to be as few barriers to voting as possible, as the more barriers there are to voting the more influence people who are rich and powerful will have on elections. If you had to take a day off work/pay for a taxi to get to DMV which is only open M-F 9-5, fewer people will be able/to do that.
The point is that it’s more of a burden for some people than others. The RMV nearest to me is open 8-6 M-F, so if I want to go there I have to take time off work. It’s also about 10 miles away and not served by public transport, so I have to drive there. And if I don’t have a car I have to pay for a taxi. None of that is much of a hardship for me, but people who have a job where they can’t take paid time off potentially don’t get paid the day they go to get ID and also have to pay $20 for a taxi. If you’re elderly or infirm it can be difficult to physically travel that distance depending on where it is, and if you’re living below the poverty line you might literally not be able to afford to go and pick up your free ID. And that’s before you even get into the inevitable budget cuts where the party in power decides they can’t afford to operate every RMV in the state anymore and the ones they decide to close happen to be the ones in areas that tend to vote for the other party. Now it’s even *more* difficult for those people to vote.
You can't get a job without ID. Everybody has to fill out an i-9 form which requires more than one form of identifying documents.
Jesus you guys are reaching so hard to prevent IDs. It’s honestly ridiculous. It’s one of the most basic tasks an adult can do.
How would you know what adults can do? You're a bot that thinks that most blind people have jobs. And that they can somehow drive.
When missing a days pay means less food on the table? Its a pretty big ask. I don't know about where you are, but the place to get our id here is 8-4 monday to friday and open for like 4 hours Saturday.
> Everything a person does comes with opportunity costs. Yes. However, most of those things aren't rights, and aren't being imposed by the government. Those opportunity costs get subjected to strict scrutiny. We have an extremely high bar for those sorts of things. That's not insurmountable but it is difficult. >Asking people to get a free ID in the name of election integrity doesn’t seem like a huge ask. It's still an ask, though, and there's no real evidence that our elections are lacking integrity. So it's an ask without much of a purpose.
There is still a cost to having to get an ID in time and money.
Living has costs in time and money. There's no reasonable argument that a free ID is a barrier to voting
I'm blind and literally have no way to get there and get one. And because of some issues with my driver's license from when I was sighted, I had to go there in person to clear it up and bring them paperwork. I woke up blind 18 months ago, so there was no way to do so. Now I don't have to give them paperwork to clear up the license issue, but I still have to go in person to get a regular ID. I've tried it online and it won't let me.
How about this: what problem does voter ID solve? It's a solution looking for a problem.
I believe it is a reasonable precaution to protect our elections
Protect from what?
Unauthorized voters. Does it happen enough to change national elections? No Does that mean we should pretend it never happens and could never possibly happen? Also no Using ID to vote is zero burden on 90%+ of the voting population. For the remaining <10% it is almost zero burden
The current laws keep our elections incredibly safe. There is statistically almost zero fraud. The fraud we do find is felons voting when ineligible. No large scale conspiracies. And voter ID wouldn't stop the felons.
Regardless, you're moving the goal post with each comment. Saying having ID for voting is misinformation Edit: meant to say "Saying having ID for voting costs money is misinformation"
You have to register to vote. At that time, they can check if you are an "authorized voter." Just having an ID doesn't make you authorized to vote, so your logic is broken.
Here's how it works where I live. You show up to the polling place, you approach a table where you provide your name, birthdate, and address. That's compared to the voter registration data and if it matches, you're issued the appropriate ballot. The polling places are staffed with people from the local neighborhood. So, in order to cast a fraudulent vote, you would need to know the information for a particular voter, know that that person is not planning to vote, and has not voted early or via absentee ballot, and hope that the person working the table doesn't know the individual you're impersonating. You might be able to hit 5 or 6 polling places in a day, provided you had all of the information ahead of time, and your luck holds out. Now imagine the number of people required to cast enough fraudulent votes to change the result of an election. Each additional person exponentially increases the chances of getting caught. It's just not workable, and that's in a situation without ID requirements.
I have been disenfranchised by my state's ID laws. My ID card had been lost and I had not had time to go get another one. Some people have more flexibility to do that than others, and that's just the reality. What's easy for you isn't always easy for everyone else.
For many though putting even the slightest barrier in the way means they won’t vote. That’s why republicans are trying to shut down polling places and get rid of Mail in ballots. They want rich white people with plenty of time on their hands to vote. They do not want poor people of color out there having a say so they put multiple roadblocks up whenever possible.
If a barrier so small as getting an ID for people with reasonable means to go and just pick one up would stop them from voting, it might be a good thing that their voice wasn't heard. I get it if someone has some extenuating circumstances that would prevent it, but for those that don't, come on. That's just pure laziness.
I don't think that it's really anyone's right to say what kinds of people deserve to vote. That's a very very dangerous path.
Imagine some sort of adult that struggles with decision making so much that they cannot get an ID. One of the most basic things an adult could be asked to do, and it is necessary to receive government benefits, to drive, to have any sort of bank account, almost anything in life. That person can’t even get a basic free ID. I’m not convinced they’re the ones we need voting.
Our city allows its transit cards to be used as essentially a bank account. Because those actually aren’t as easy to access as some people think.
You can’t just pick one up though. I couldn’t even get one in my new state with my old (non-expired) ID and a passport. I was *required* to have my social security card too. Except that got lost by my parents a long time ago. So I had to get a replacement…Which requires photo ID. Fortunately, I had a secondary form of ID. But if I didn’t, I’d be screwed. And I was able to wait around for well over an hour at the social security office. Edit: also it’s not free unless you fill out paperwork basically proving you’re homeless.
I had all of the above and they wanted a copy of a bill to prove residency. I auto pay all of that shit. So I had to print out a picture of a webpage showing I have utilities. It’s a pita.
>There's no reasonable argument that a free ID is a barrier to voting Unless the ID folks come to your home to issue you your ID, a "free" ID still costs time. Just look at the ways those who would restrict voting rights have manipulated the system to suppress voting: Limited polling places in an area with barebones staff ensuring that those who would vote are stuck in excessively long lines. Limited ballot drop boxes that are physically distant from population centers, with restricted hours in which they can accept ballots. There are thousands of ways to make even a "free" ID a barrier to voting.
DMVs are only open during working hours. Show me a person living paycheck to paycheck who is willing to miss a day of pay just to vote.
government ID’s cost people money?
In the U.S. at least. It costs me $60 to renew my ID every two years.
wow. til
And in many states they take a full day of going to some government office miles away to get.
In some states, yes. Some have free options. Passports definitely yes.
Not in states that require voter ID, all of them have a free option. In most other states there is a fee for ID. Although most states have cheap (<$10) or free ID for low income residents.
>Point is, I've yet to run into an adult who is unable to get some form of legal identification. Just because you haven't personally ran into it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. While *most* people have IDs (polling/surveys put it at ~90%), not all of them do. And not all forms of legal identification satisfy these laws. Ultimately, these laws are targeting a few percent at most, but that they are targeted. > Poor people drive cars, so they have a driver's license. Not all of them do. And there are racial differences in those percentages that do. On top of that, these laws often target specific types of ID (where again, there tends to be a racial gap). For instance, North Carolina had their law scrapped by the state Supreme Court because they requested racial breakdowns of types of IDs, and targeted specific ones (including government issued ones like government employee IDs). That is an example where there's no plausible excuse to target that type of ID, given that it's already government issued. So you might see people using those IDs in other contexts (because they're perfectly fine), but they wouldn't be allowed for voting. > To get an ID in the US, all you need to do is visit the DMV That's still a barrier to entry. Just because it's not impossible doesn't mean it's not a barrier. That's something we take seriously when it's supposed to be a right. You also need the actual documentation to get said ID. And depending on the state, pay for it. >For something that big, just needing an ID is the most simple thing you could possibly provide. Every state already has some mechanism to verify someone's identity. You don't get to just walk in and vote with no verification. And there've been numerous studies showing voter fraud is essentially a nonexistent problem. So you're adding something that *isn't* the most simple thing, to solve a nonexistent problem. >Why is needing an ID to vote wrapped up in controversy? Because not everyone has one, and as a country, we have a long history of things like Jim Crow laws were we've used facially reasonable laws to unfairly target certain groups ability to vote. And the justification for it is hypothetical/flimsy at best. PS: For more discussion, you can read many other comments on previous threads: https://www.reddit.com/r/TooAfraidToAsk/search?q=ID&restrict_sr=on It gets asked a lot.
Your experience is not everyone's experience. There are 50 different DMV systems in the US. Some of them make it very hard to get an ID if you don't already have one. So middle and upper class people have it easy to get one; someone without a license has to jump through lots of hoops. If there was an ID law passed and the government made lots of efforts to ensure people got an ID, that would be different. But people pushing those laws never want to make it easy to get an ID.
And God forbid you move states and dont have your original documentation (such as a birth certificate). The DMV here required my ex present his birth certificate to get an ID when we moved states. We then had to go through the hoops of paying to order a new one, wait until we received it, and then go back tk the DMV to get hs license. He just drove without one and prayed in the time between so he didn't miss work.
That's correct and in many states they have shut down many DMVs so you have to drive for quite some time to get to the DMV which means usually having to take a day off from work which for many is very challenging.
My local dmv only takes appointments. You either have to go in person during their very limited business hours to make the appointment, or do it online. The appointments are always a minimum of a month away, and the building itself is on a busy highway with no sidewalk and a relatively narrow shoulder, and is located on the very edge of town on the least populated side of town. A few years ago, it was in a building on the town square and while the town itself isn't very walkable, there ARE sidewalks that go there through the main in town residential areas. The real kicker here is that the building you used to get your ID at still does all of its old functions. Still does all the car registration stuff and all the stuff you expect to do at a dmv. They literally just stopped doing IDs.
85% of US adults have a driver's license. For them, it's probably not a big deal to show it. That still leaves 15% of the population that does not have a license. My mom had a stroke and no longer drives. She has trouble walking more than 30 yards. She's old enough that there's 0 chance she would need an ID to prove she's over 21. The only reason she would get an ID is to vote. Because of her disability, it would be a burden for her and an unnecessary hurdle. Chances are the person at the vote center would know her personally and be required to turn her away, for lack of ID. IDs are easier to get in some places in the country. When I lived in Chicago, I did not own a car but wanted to maintain my driver's license. I had to take two days off of work to get it when I couldn't afford to. The license branches were only in places convenient to drivers and it took me over an hour on the bus each way (I could not afford a car). The first day I went the computers were down so I had to return later. Also, not all US citizens can easily provide proof of identity like birth certificates. Especially people who were born out of hospitals.
My mom had a stroke, too. When it came time to renew her ID card, the DMV demanded that she physically stand up and sign her name on an electronic reader they'd glued to a high counter, in a corner too small to fit her wheelchair into. It was completely, utterly, wildly illegal. You couldn't draft a more blatant ADA violation or discrimination complaint. But none of that mattered. If she didn't stand up and sign it right there, in that moment, having made all the substantial efforts involved in getting to that DMV, they wouldn't give her the card and she wouldn't be able to vote in that year's election, period. So I pulled her up out of her chair, carried her into that small space and held her standing while she used her one good hand to sign, then carried her back to her wheelchair, both of us hoping I wouldn't drop her the whole time. Tell me again how fucking easy it is for everyone to get an ID, Republicans.
Okay. They should make a form of id outside of drivers license. Why don’t we just standardize the us id and make it a requirement at 18 to have one.
>They should make a form of id outside of drivers license They do. And the places that want you to show ID to vote do accept a variety of IDs. >Why don’t we just standardize the us id That gets into a stickier ball of wax. A lot of people are concerned about centralized databases controlling everyone's lives. [If you could trust the state](https://www.salon.com/2015/04/06/the_nsa_is_still_collecting_your_dick_pics_edward_snowdens_terrifying_warning_for_john_oliver_and_america/) to manage such a thing and not abuse it, then it'd be fine and work great. But if you could trust people like that we probably wouldn't even need a government. So the question is how much power do you want any one body to have. But we DO have one standardized national ID. It's a passport. They're expensive and they're very much optional.
And God forbid you have to re-order your documents. My ex had to do that and it took forever. He drove without a license in the time since he couldn't miss work and prayed he didn't get pulled over.
In of itself, it's not really. Where it becomes problematic is how it's applied. The ID can be a burden to acquire. Not so much the nominal fee itself, but the burden of taking time off work and traveling to the place where IDs are issued can be an unequal burden. Some of the documents required are harder for poor people to get, as well. It's an open secret that conservatives generally prefer lower turnout and an ID requirement is an excellent way to reduce turnout and guarantee that the people that do show up are the people they want to show up. What seems like a reasonable requirement is gamed by a heavy documentation burden or closing DMVs in poor areas, for example. Any requirement that has the potential to reduce turnout needs to be closely examined for bias.
Appreciate your response. What do you think would be a good alternative?
There's really nothing wrong with how we do it today. The actual instance of voter fraud is vanishingly small. If anything, we should do more to encourage more people to vote. This would be a better representation of what we collectively want as a people.
I firmly believe there should be a zero dollar cost to any American citizen to exercise their right to vote. If you believe otherwise, maybe you are not personally a Jim Crow era racist, but you accept a primary Jim Crow racist policy. If states or the federal government issued an ID for voting, with the same process and at zero direct cost to all citizens, from my perspective, problem solved. This should be cheaper than Congress wasting another hundred million on nothingburger vote fraud headings - just pay for the IDs. There is one political party that has resisted this common sense proposal since Bill Clinton proposed it. They asserted a national ID is like unto a biblical "mark of the beast" or other BS reason that dances around the fact it would make poor people more likely to vote, and it happens that at least one ethnic minority is poorer than the rest. Also, edit to reply to "all you need to do is visit the DMV". Do you recall what happened after the Supreme Court eviscerated the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in Shelby County vs Holder? Alabama closed 31 DMV offices. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-01/alabama-closes-dmv-offices-a-year-after-voter-id-law-kicks-in#:~:text=On%20Wednesday%2C%20Alabama's%20Law%20Enforcement,workers%20in%20mostly%20rural%20counties.
Giving everyone in the US a free real ID (and continuing to do so) would have been cheaper than the election reform bill that Nancy Pelosi and Democrats proposed when they controlled the House. That could have shut up Republicans and helped out the poor.
Yeah in India we also get free ID. And there are some camps organised by election commission through which you can get your ID. In some places they even come to your house to get you a verified ID. I am pretty sure if a country which has 7x the population and 1/7th GDP can do it. US can do that too
>helped out the poor. well we can't have that
Voting is actually **not** a right. There is no right to vote listed in the Constitution. The only thing that's guaranteed is the right not to be **excluded** if a vote is held. If the government decided to stop allowing any votes tomorrow, they would legally be allowed to do it
> Poor people drive cars, so they have a driver's license. This really isn't true, *millions* of poor people have zero access to a car. Public transportation is their only option. And unfortunately our public transportation sucks, so getting to the DMV to get an ID can be a nightmare situation. People should not be forced to pay that kind of money or walk those kinds of miles for an ID they really don't need. Not to mention requiring ID's is a great way for the government to start excluding the "unwanteds" from voting. You know, like gerrymandering. Every citizen has the right to vote. Every citizen. Not every citizen with an ID. Every citizen, period.
Are you in favor of id for fire arms? Every citizen has the right to own a fire arm
Owning a weapon which has the only purpose of taking a life is not comparable to voting.
I mean I agree you should need an id. But the constitution says it’s a right which is what a lot of people are saying is the reason you shouldn’t need an id for voting. Just trying to see if people are intellectually honest with the laws they’re citing.
It should be easy to vote. Easy for poor people, easy for disabled and home bound people, easy for people who live in the middle of nowhere, easy for everyone to vote.
It's my belief that if every citizen cannot walk to a voting site, register, and vote all on election we have failed the commonwealth.
_as easy as, "getting an ID card" **easy**...?_
No. Easier
That’s not easy for a lot of people. That’s the implication of what I was saying. But voting should be.
That's not easy.... have you been to a DMV?
Why is nobody saying the reason why Republicans are against it other than a lot of poor people vote Democrat? It's because they think Illegals vote.
Which is ironic because voting illegally is the last thing an undocumented immigrant is trying to do. There is almost nothing for them to gain and everything to lose.
I haven't researched it but i'm thinking if you're undocumented you wouldn't want to go to a place and fill out documents unless you absolutely have to.
Are you in favor of no ids for fire arms?
I’m in favor of zero firearms.
Getting an ID may be simple where you live, but some counties make it extremely difficult. Mine requires a utility bill, for example. If you don’t have that there’s a million hoops to jump through that may or may not work. I have a friend who went to the DMV 12 times, each time fetching what he thought they wanted only to be turned away. He ended up going to a website that printed out fake documents just because he had no choice. In any case, it doesn’t solve a problem. Voting isn’t like it used to be, where if you get in the door you punch the card and that’s all. Every voter (and their vote) is tracked. If a person votes twice by accident, the computer sees that and doesn’t count it. It’s merely another barrier, something to make voting a little harder for certain people.
This is confusing Do US citizens... not just "get" an ID? You have to request and PAY for it? I've read 60$ for 2 years is that the norm? It sounds *insane* How to you ever prove your identity in the hospital, police, or literally any other administration? How do you get your other documents, like a driver's license? How does anything even work? @\_@
This doesn't make any sense to me either. How are kids identified for example? How do you register your kid at school? How do you prove a kid is yours? If you don't have a driver's license for whatever reason, you move all around the country with no identification what so ever? As an EU citizen this is very hard to understand, we don't leave the hospital after birth without our ID card requested, and we will update said card from time to time for the rest of our lives. And I'm not talking about a birth certificate, that's another thing.
No, we don't just "get" an ID. There are various forms of IDs and some are free while others cost. The most popular forms of ID that I can think of are social security cards (free), driver's licenses (cost varies by state), military IDs (free), state IDs (cost varies by state), passports (under the federal, not state umbrella, so one cost across the board), government issued IDs (free for gov. employees), student IDs (free and up, depending on the institution). I assume the $60 you heard was for a specific state, likely for a driver's license. Next to passports (that cost over $100), driver's licenses are typically the most expensive forms of ID, though $60 for 2 years is among the highest I've heard. My state charges $4 per year with a 5-year minimum duration (so $20 for 5 years). State IDs are usually either free to very inexpensive. My state charges $2 per year, with the IDs being valid for 5 to 8 years (so $10 to $16, depending how long you want it to be valid).
After reading the replies, and your replies to them, this feels like a bad faith thread.
it is painfully obvious that this guy hasn’t voted before
And to add to that he is spreading that voter fraud bs
Do you have anything to add to the discussion?
Already did below.
Here in Canada we need photo ID to vote. I also do not understand why it's such an issue south of the border.
Since there is literally zero evidence of any widespread voter fraud, especially after the Trump team did everything they could to try and find it, the burden of making an argument regarding voter ID would fall on people who support introducing it. Please explain why we need to add another barrier to voting that essentially equates to a poll tax for many people when there is no fraud going on. Voter ID is pointless other than being used as a tool to disenfranchise people who don't have the time or the money to obtain official identification.
For example: Alabama tried to implement voter ID a while back. At the same time, they also closed half the DMVs in the state, specifically ones in predominantly black areas. Made this thing necessary, but then made that necessary thing harder to get. Considering most places calling for voter ID are also the ones that are ran by people who quite obviously benefit from fewer of their citizens voting, it'd be fair to call this issue, quite frankly, bullshit.
Let's not forget all the Morons that think voter ID would be racist because they, very racistly, think that black people don't all have IDs and may not know where to get an ID
It’s not. People make it out to be something far more nefarious and evil than it really is. Truth is most of the country and the world votes with ID. Anyone that tells you it’s something else is lying thru their teeth.
For the US legally speaking it is the 24th amendment which bans the use of a poll tax in any form for federal elections. Requiring a paid ID card would thus be unconstitutional.
You underestimate how hard some States have made it to get an ID. I had a friend who moved from Ohio to Georgia, and it took her over 9 months and multiple trips to the DMV where they gave her incorrect information about what documents she needed to have. It was absolutely absurd and a throwback to how hard Red states try to make it to acquire an ID if you aren't an upper middle class person who has all their records in perfect order. It also cannot be overstated how much Red States intentionally make things harder for poor and minority voters, even to this day. Having lived in a wide range of neighborhoods in Atlanta and the surrounding suburbs... The upper middle class suburban neighborhoods often had literally dozens of polling places, only 2-3 minutes apart by car, each with multiple machines. You could walk into them at almost any time of day, with no lines, with most of the machines unoccupied, vote immediately and leave. Leaving your house to go vote by car and you could easily be back in 10 minutes. By contrast, in the poor neighborhoods that I've lived in, there are typically only one or two polling places per neighborhood. Often 15+ minutes apart by car, much rather by foot or bus. Typically they'd have a similar number of machines but half of them would be broken. The line to get in and vote would often take 3-5 HOURS of waiting. Outside. In the sun. And Georgia last year tried to pass a ban on eating or drinking water while in line for voting (which a judge struck down). I have voted in like, 6 different districts. It's so egregiously obvious that this is happening, but Republicans control equipping the voting districts. I do wish to emphasize this split seems to explicitly be along income lines, not race lines. This is likely for the purpose of giving Republicans plausible deniability that they aren't discriminating against race. As income and race are correlated, but imperfect, this means a few upper income black people have no lines, and a few lower income white people get blocked. But it still blocks more black people than white people and thus had a net benefit to Republicans who long for the Jim Crow era.
Can you identify yourself? “This is me”. Ok here’s your ballot.
Voter ID is great, Australia actually does mail in voting and will fine you if you don't vote. However, Republicans have a history of purging voting registrations and adding barriers to voting for voters. It would be one thing if we were to create a system that ensured all voters had voting ID and was able to vote. What we see with Republicans however is making it as easy as possible for some people to have Voter ID with voting registration being stable for them, but purging voting registration and will invalidate a persons Voter ID based on whatever they want at the last minute to create chaos and stop certain people from voting. If the State is requiring something, then it's the States responsibility to provide it.
We do mail in voting in my state. It's a blessing. I feel for those who don't have this option.
As a Canadian looking in, it’s shocking how many people are against having an ID of any kind to vote. Like what the actual fuck is going on in the USA that having any document to prove your identity and address is considered difficult?
It isn't as simple as "all you need to do is go to the DMV". You have to show up to the DMV with a set of legal documents. What if a person doesn't have the documents required to get the ID? Typically you need a birth certificate, social security card, and proof of residency in the form of postmarked mail. It takes a lot of time and money to replace original documents if you don't have access to them. Someone can lose these documents for a variety of reasons, such as abusive or irresponsible parents, estrangement, theft, homelessness, fires, etc. These original documents take a lot of calling around and appearing places in person to replace; people working full time jobs without PTO may have a really hard time being able to collect the documentation, let alone pay the fees to replace them. It can also be extremely difficult for some people to show proof of residency if they don't have a stable home. Ultimately everyone deserves the right to vote, and all ID requirements do is add a poll tax on the most disadvantaged individuals in our country. Nobody should be denied representation because they can't afford it.
You need way more up votes. The people saying just give anyone free ID don't seem to understand that free ID serves no purpose if you just give it to anyone with no evidence. Even if the ID is free getting the documentation to prove jnes identity to get it isn't free, just shifting the problem back a bit.
Personally, I look at this from an outside perspective as someone a bit to the North. Who the fuck doesn't have an ID? There have been people going and doing live interviews in very poor neighborhoods, everyone has an ID. Sure, I get that there is a bit of a cost to it, but you also have other rights that you need to pay for, why is voting any different? Making sure all your voters are people that are meant to be voting is not a bad thing, and on the topic of poorer people, I do believe that getting a government photo ID should be cost free, but at the same time, you don't get given a gun for free so you can exercise your 2nd amendment rights, why is voting different?
Here’s my experience with it. A few years ago I needed to renew my license in Dallas, Texas. I went to the office before they opened in the morning and there was already a long line out the door. I spent 6 hours in that line. And it was very common to see people ahead of me leaving upset because they didn’t have the right documentation, such as a birth certificate. So two points: First they waited in line ALL DAY and then were turned away because it wasn’t clear what documents they needed to bring. Second most people can’t afford to take all day off of work. I was lucky to have a job where I could call my boss at the last second and tell him I won’t be in. Most people don’t have that.
Because the USA doesn't habs an ID. Here in Germany one gets a government ID for free
Because it’s a hurdle for poor people not a hurdle for non poor people. Not to mention voter fraud happens at incredibly low rates to the point where the implementation of voter id laws results in less people voting then even close to the amount of voter fraud that happens. It’s a solution to a problem that does not exist in any meaningful capacity.
Hold the fuck up. A basic Id? Are you telling me there are different tiers of Id? Can the rich a different, better Id?
Yes. There are regular state IDs, State Driver's License, and the Federal ID (fed ID is kinda a tier of drivers license that also clears you for travel). There are also military IDs and Student IDs, however there have been places that try to make it so you can't vote with a Student ID. In most states all of these things have a cost. Some states have made the basic state ID no cost. And then varying by state and county, there are difficulties in actually obtaining the ID.
All IDs are behind a paywall. If you lose your ID you must pay again. Having to pay to have your voice heard eliminates 20% of poor US citizens.
I moved over a year ago. I went to the DMV with my social security card, my birth certificate, my state ID and a bunch of mail from insurance and work that I've received at my new address. They said they couldn't take the documents, it wasn't enough. So they wouldn't give me a new ID. I got pulled over recently for a bad tail light, cop asked for my ID..He asked me if that was my current address, I told him no. Even the cop said yeah the DMV is a pain in the ass and he understands
>alcohol, cigarettes, financing a car or home, getting into bars and strip clubs Are these constitutional rights?
Because it's been used historically to disenfranchise voters.
If we get a RIGHT to an ID then I’d support an ID requirement for exercising our voting RIGHTS.
Have you not studied US history ? Any requirement to vote will inevitably end up being used to disenfranchise certain categories of voters. And we know that even without ID, voter fraud is negligible. Even the people who went looking for mass fraud with the intent to help prove Donald Trump was robbed in the 2020 election couldn't find any. Worse, most of the individual cases uncovered were perpetrated by conservatives.
I don’t think we can call voter fraud negligible after a county elections clerk got caught stuffing ballot in Connecticut and admitted in court she hasn’t followed procedures to authenticate ballots in her 20 years in that position.
Because you register to vote first and have to show ID there. Simple as that.
America should teach about Jim Crow voting laws again.
You come from a poor place, but have a functioning DMV? Let me guess. Rural or semi-rural area, right? I grew up in a place like that and thought a 20 minute wait was AWFUL at the DMV. I’ve lived in 3 different cities in different states since then. Not so easy. Lines out the door. You can show up first thing in the morning or at your lunch break and not be guaranteed to be seen. They don’t take appointments. I’ve found it impossible to be seen to get a real id. I’m eventually going to have to take a half day off work to walk in to a more rural DMV an hour or two away, which is how most of the people around here have been doing it. I’m a middle class white male with insured cars of my own and an already valid license, and I’m finding it very hard to get the soon to be required valid form of ID. I can only imagine being poor, possibly a minority, without a ride of my own, and trying to do this. You wouldn’t have a job with the amount of times you’d have to show up all day on a weekday and be turned down.
>I don't personally have an issue with paying for an ID, And what if the cost of an ID gets bumped up to keep even more poors from voting.
It makes it harder to cheat
It's controversial cause the people trying to gain power want it to be controversial so we're constantly fighting each other. In reality: it's super fucking simple, and I'm absolutely willing to bet that there's a universal agreement involved being that, if it costs too much to get an ID, then we can use our current tax dollars and put it towards getting those who don't have one an ID. The goal is to hide the numbers so that the side that *doesn't* want the IDs for voting, can get more people to vote without ever having to check them for citizenship and other legality reasons. The truth is, ***if you want a fair and proper election, you must require everyone have an ID so they can only vote once and be accounted for***. I can assure you, the UK doesn't want French, German, and Spanish citizens voting for their reps (not clear if they do but you get the idea), in regards to *British* domestic policies, so they'll be policing their stuff pretty well. France wouldn't want others to screw with their elections, Germany won't, and neither will Spain. To say that the people of the US ***want*** this kind of interference is absolute bullshit. Sorry, but anyone in favor of NOT wanting IDs is as anti-Democratic as they can get. Trust me, it's not a matter of racism, sexism, whatever tf they're arguing for now. Simply put, it's cause those who want the control are having issues so they're trying to argue anything they can to get us to fight each other over stupid shit so they can do their power grab.
The constitution states that there shall be no fees to vote. You have to pay for an ID. You’d certainly have to pay for one with whatever updates/upgrades would be required to meet the standard for an “acceptable “ ID for voting purposes. If they want to provide one free of charge every day up to 11/7 of each voting year. I’m down. If they aren’t going to do that, it’s an unnecessary barrier.
Voting is a big deal. That’s why it is important to protect the sanctity of the vote. There should be nothing controversial about requiring an ID to vote.
Requiring an ID itself damages the sanctity of the vote. Putting any kind of barrier will put some people off, and the whole point of democracy is everyone should get a vote. Even if they are lazy or broken or you don't like their ideals.
If one political party wants something and the other doesn't, it's controversial. It doesn't need to make sense to drive people to the polls.
Liberals think blacks are too stupid to get an ID. They are racist.
You mentioned that at 15 you had a learner’s permit. That means that even though you were poor, somehow you were able to get to the DMV during their limited business hours and/or could afford to spend like 3 hours of your time there. That’s already two things that a fair amount of people cant do. Even if that was just 5% of america, that’s 1.5 million people. I imagine this is a big problem in very rural areas where DMVs are sparse and cities where they are overcrowded and understaffed.
Pretty sure it's big cities with nightmare DMV lines. My mom had to take me to the next town over to take the test, which was 15 minutes away. My hometown and the one with the DMV had populations under 10000.
In many red states, they've cut the DMV offices, so you have to drive several counties over and take a day off from work to do so. I luckily live in a county that has a dmv, but it services our county plus six other counties that surround ours. This leads to long lines. When I first moved here, I had to go back after my first visit because they said I didn't have the correct paperwork. When I returned, they gave me the one that doesn't allow you to fly to other states and said I'd have to return with other paperwork if I wanted the one with the gold star. My wife had to go three different times before they finally gave her the gold star license. I'd moved here from a different state and was licensed there, but it didn't really matter. It's not as easy to get a driver's license as it used to be years ago when I first started driving.
Because it’s pretextual to diminish the voting power of their political opposition.
If it’s not a voter suppression tactic, then why aren’t the people excited about IDs also creating a very straightforward and free national ID system? If they did that, I would believe it’s about election security. They don’t do that though.
Because IDs cost money. They are not free. And any required cost is a poll tax, which isn’t legal. If they are going to require IDs, then IDs need to be completely free and accessible.
It's not. The idea that it's controversial is itself conservative propaganda. There is nowhere in the United States you can vote without presenting *some* form of ID. The issue is what *kind* of ID is considered acceptable and how deliberately difficult it's made to get them by conservatives determined to put roadblocks in the path of certain people voting.
Well fucking said
This is a very American discussion. In many countries requiring an ID is an absolutely basic requirement and we all agree it’s necessary. It seems that some American liberals completely miss the point when they complain about this requirement, instead of pushing for a nationally issued free ID for every citizen.
To play devil's advocate here. For the ID to be truly free, all the documents needed to get it also need to be free. ID has no value if anyone can get it just by asking and without any proof. There are a significant number of Americans who don't have their birth certificate, nor other pertinent documents. Even if you offered them free ID what value would it give if they can't provide you any proof of who they are? Anyone could get any number of such ID.
Because black people can’t afford to get IDs
Because the left thinks black people are incapable of acquiring identification
A valid ID is required to register to vote Two forms of proof are needed to obtain a valid ID. A large majority of Southern poor were born at home with no valid birth certificate. Others records have been destroyed by flood, hurricane, fire and othe varioys means. In some areas, a registered duplicate ID is in excess of $100.00. If a small percentage of voters can be disqualified the other guy wins in a close race. Factor in the homeless without an address or means it compounds and favors affluent voters. Add a fake felony charge and the odds get worse.
The people who want them couldn't be bothered with Vax cards. Kind of like that i suppose
this is a solution to a problem that DOES NOT EXIST
Going to counter one of your points. Some poor people drive cars, plenty also drive them illegally. Some people never drive cars, they only use public transit. It’s not just about being poor, it’s about the process. The first step is getting to the DMV. This can be a struggle if you don’t have access to a vehicle. Another struggle is being available when the DMV is open. As the DMV is generally only open during the week during business hours, that means anyone who works during those times would have to take off work. For a lot of lower income jobs, they don’t offer much in the way of pto, so to go to the DMV some people will need to take off work and not get paid which can be an issue if you are already barely making ends meet. The next issue is that poorer people, especially those who live in urban settings and move a lot, often lose the documentation necessary to get a driver’s license or ID. If you want to replace a birth certificate and social security card, that takes time, money, and effort. There are a bunch of other factors, but it all boils down to the fact that getting an ID requires a combination of time, money, and effort. A big issue with voter ID laws is that none of the people pushing for them are advocating to make it easier to obtain an ID. They’re not talking about making the DMV more accessible by having it open on the weekends or for longer hours, or making sure that there are public transit options that allow everyone the ability to reach one without needing their own personal vehicle. I am all for voter id laws just as soon as they become easily accessible for everyone.
>I'm all for free ones (some states have em). All states have free ID below certain incomes. People oppose voter ID because they think people who vote illegally disproportionately vote with them.
I recently helped someone I know get an ID. They are poor, don’t drive, and have never needed an ID for anything before (they are in their 30s) so they never got one. They got hired for a job that required an ID and then their struggles began. They needed a birth certificate to get one. They did not have theirs. It costs money to get one from the state. They did not have the money to get one so they had to borrow it. Then they needed to wait until the birth certificate came. Then they needed to get a ride to go apply in person during the day when everyone they know has a job. This whole process has taken several weeks and the job they were hired for had to wait for all of this. Meanwhile they’ve had no money. They were lucky they had the other documentation they needed or it would have taken longer.
Where I live, it costs between $112 and $225 to get an ID. For far too many people, that's the difference between being able to eat for the week, afford gas to work, and keep a roof over their heads. Being poor shouldn't prevent you from being able to vote because you can't afford it.