First things first, I don’t doubt it is a bad thing, considering who supports it and who doesn’t.
But my question is what exactly is the issue and what is the current and proposed voting process when it comes to IDs?
Here in my EU country, you have to show some version of a government ID, be it an ID card, drivers license or passport. And we don’t have to pre-register to vote.
Before you can vote, you have to “register” to vote. When you do this, you need to prove you’re a U.S. citizen. Usually providing a birth certificate, or passport, military id, idk everything.
My understanding was that the name you were registering to vote with had to match the document you were using. But if you got married then often times the women would have a different last name and now it doesn’t match your birth certificate. Normally you’d just have to prove you got married too but this new law would say no, you have to have the exact name or you can’t vote.
Since women typically take the man’s last name, it would effectively mean any married women registering to vote would not be allowed. And since the bill is worded confusingly on purpose, many women would not even realize this until they went to register to vote, and told they couldn’t because of their new last name.
Here’s my perspective from other countries (I’ve lived and voted in two). The America right will go absolutely apeshit if you criticize them from the point of view of a other country by saying “you have voter ID laws, you just want the USA to fail by allowing illegals to vote”
The thing is, for example Canada or the UK (both where I never once needed to show ID to vote) have voter ID laws in case you need to produce ID, but you probably don’t. Because for most people you are registered to vote, you pay taxes, the government knows where you live and who lives there.
I turn up at a polling place with my name and address and they hand me my ballot. If another me showed up earlier, or later it’d be immediately apparent there was a problem when I tried to vote again.
If you aren’t in this position, that’s where vote ID comes in. What the right wingers in America never say is that almost any kind of ID at all that has your name on it is acceptable. There are hundreds of acceptable forms of ID and it’s as broad as possible.
Also if all that fails and you literally have nothing to show for it, you can literally ask someone who is registered to just vouch for you. Yep, that’s bill, he’s a citizen as far as I know. Now bill gets a ballot.
We’re allowed to have voter ID laws because we’re using them to make sure absolutely everyone is able to vote while still ensuring secure elections. We’re not using them to purge voter rolls and make sure you need an obscure specific government ID card in order to have the “privilege” (you see cause it’s not a privilege, it’s a right)
one thing you forgot to mention is that the american right wants these new voter IDs to implement a poll tax. they pretend like they aren’t pushing that when someone explains to them why voter IDs are racist and classist, but the entire point is to disenfranchise non-white and poor voters with a poll tax. it fits right in line with red areas removing polling places from e.g. majority black neighborhoods.
You have to understand the roots of the voting registration rules here to understand it better. The whole point of them was to keep black men and all women from having a vote.
That’s it - that is what they were for. So every permutation since is built on that framework, it’s always "the wrong people might vote’ instead of “we want to make sure everyone votes”.
So voter ID is not a bad idea on its face, you go in to vote the poll workers need to know who you are, right? The lady who sits across from me at work is old, she went to renew her driver’s license in February this year and they said no, your current license (that they issued) is not enough, there are new requirements - we need your birth certificate, your first marriage license, your divorce paperwork, your second marriage license, your divorce decree from that marriage, then we can renew your license.
She just managed to get all this by mid-October, so she did get through in time to vote but what the fuck? She had to reach out to 3 states and getting a birth certificate from like the 1950s is not easy. Why is it not easy to renew? Because the laws were written to prevent voting not to enable it.
mmmm…not exactly.
JFK and his father used the Mob to generate thousands of votes to get him elected in 1960. There was serious fuckery in that election.
You LITERALLY cannot register to vote without already being a fucking citizen.
The ID thing is a complete non issue bullshit smoke screen to disenfranchise voters.
Not yelling at you at all, but this issue makes my blood boil.
It’s not in a vacuumm, but when you look at the material conditions in the US, the way it is argued to happen is really for one reason only: voter suppression. I always said if anyone was arguing for it in good faith, they would set in motion a multiple-year program with a dedicated agency that’s sole goal is to make sure every eligible voter has an ID first, and then make it a requirement. The way things are, many eligible voter have been kept from aquiring IDs via various historical and beuracratic systems.
You LITERALLY cannot register to vote without already being a fucking citizen.
True, but without taking IDs at polling places, I can go claim to be my non-voting friend without even needing a disguise.
Not that I’m saying it’s common (nor could any of us possibly know if it was), but it is possible.
I’ve never once had to prove I am whoever I say I am at the little table they set up, “if I wasn’t, then why would I say I am” always works.
We have the data on how often this happens, spoiler, it doesn’t, who does it, almost exclusively republicans, and how it happens generally, which is dead relatives.
The call is coming from inside the home!
it doesn’t
who does it, almost exclusively republicans, and how it happens generally, which is dead relatives
Pick one lol.
But how do you know I don’t go vote in place of my friend every time and write in Bruce Campbell because I think it’s funny, and I just don’t get caught? There’s literally no way to know, he’d have to vote for once to catch me.
It’s like my mom said when I was a kid “you get caught EVERY TIME you do bad stuff…” yes mom, every time. Pay no attention to the 500 nights you didn’t catch me sneaking out, must not have snuck out yup that’s it, nothing to see here…
Well it’s far simpler than you think. If your friend votes, then two votes bynhim show up. Easy detect. If you friend doesn’t, they also probably didn’t bother to register. So trying to vote as them won’t work, and will get you identified. You need someone you know registered and you know isn’t going to vote. It’s not super common to have that kind of situation and truely know they won’t vote. Thus they mentioned the dead relative situation. But that is detectable on audit.
If your friend votes
Covered that already:
he’d have to vote for once to catch me.
There’s a reason I’m referring to my non-voting friend as non-voting, it’s to imply that he doesn’t vote, so that kinda sorta precludes the whole “he votes” thing anyway because the premise is that he does not, in fact, vote.
they also probably didn’t bother to register.
He was born with a penis, he’s registered for the draft since 18 and therefore to vote since 18 as well, because those are coupled for people born with a penis. Unless he changes his name (unlikely) or political affiliation (for what, to vote in primaries? He doesn’t vote.) Technically he should re-register because he changed his address, but again why would he if he doesn’t vote? Literally no consequences could befall him, there’s no incentive for him to do it. Bro I’m still registered at my mom’s despite having bought a house (which the government knows about because it’s public info), because it’s easier to just drive 15min to my old polling place every few years than to go fill out a form, been doing it for years, and I vote! There’s no way in hell he’s ever going to change that address from his parents’ just to continue not voting.
You need someone you know registered
Literally all 18+ AMABs in the US
and you know isn’t going to vote.
Know any AMABs that don’t vote? There’s one right there. Not as uncommon as you might think.
Except that the US and multiple organizations have conducted research on voter fraud and guess what it’s .003% of voting AND it’s nearly always the people clamoring for the ID.
Don’t believe the bullshit.
- Your first claim is not supported by “data”.
- Your second claim is not supported by anything…ever, and refutes your first claim.
- Your third claim refutes your first and second claim.
good job
Don’t be ignorant on purpose, there is no reason for a voter ID law.
Here you want the sources you lazy ass?
How widespread is election fraud in the United States? Not very | Brookings https://share.google/hSb96tqZELBjj4AS6
The Effect of Voter and Election Fraud Misperceptions on U.S. Election Legitimacy | MIT Election Lab https://share.google/MuOIar2tC7CznE5zU
There’s no issue, we just like to argue over stupidity.
Of course you should have to use ID, like everywhere else on Earth. But we don’t, because really it doesn’t matter. It’s not as if the elected candidates are all that different in USA. It’s not like you can vote pro-labor or anything.
Amazon gets what it wants and the election is to decide… will the candidate pretend to care but not care, or not care enough to even pretend?
I’ve never needed ID to vote in my life and it’s not normal.
Okay, thanks but I never said or implied that it was “normal”.
But it should be! EU knows what’s up, good on them
in other countries its feasible and easy to have a national iD, in the states you have to go through a huge process to get one. also having more people votes hurts the estasblishment politicians in general.
If the government wants to make everyone have an certain ID to vote, it has to be the governments responsibility to actively make sure everyone gets that ID without any cost or hassle. We know that’s not what will happen because the whole point of this is that the Republicans want to disenfranchise certain people.
The knockdown problem is that creating such an ID is a mere half a thought from “vere are your papers?” That’s basically a guaranteed outcome.
they also dont want everyone to vote, lower voter turn often results in having R wins, and or have the run of the mill coporate dem win too.
I will give you an example I overheard for five whole minutes while at the early voting place in my state:
We present our ID and it has to match with the record. You have to confirm your name and address by saying them out loud to the poll worker. Easy, right? Not for this one guy. I’m not sure what the specific issue was, but he could not follow the instructions. The poll worker asked for his name, which went ok. Then she asked for his address. He could not give the address. She asked again. He gave his name. She asked again. He couldn’t answer. She tried all variations of “where do you live?” She was willing to settle for him writing it down. She got to the point where she asked if he could read it off the ID card and he couldn’t. I have no idea what it took, but he was eventually given a ballot about the time I left.
There are many reasons he may not have been able to understand what to do or verbalize (some kind of disability, maybe a language barrier), and it was a bullshit step that depended entirely on who was behind the table and their level of patience. It could have easily disenfranchised him despite having an ID.
It would only let people with their names matching their birth certificates vote, disenfranchising trans people and married women that have taken their spouse’s name.
Also immigrants whose US name doesn’t match their original birth cert exactly. For example, in my birth country we have two last names but I dropped one in the US.
And the dozen of us men who took our wife’s name
Oh yes, sorry, you’re right.
It’s a whole can of worms. For the golden standards of what counts as an ID, getting a State ID, Driver’s License, or Passport can be hard. My first time getting a passport was an over 6 month long journey and was hell, getting my Driver’s License was a long journey and cost me like $30, and then what counts as a good form of ID?
Back when I lived in Texas, my license for Concealed Carry worked as a valid form of ID but my Student ID when I was attending Uni there wasn’t. So why is a CCL a valid form of ID but a student ID isn’t?
My opposition to Voter ID is because of this, it would be handled on a state level and not the federal level. This would disenfranchise a lot of people who might not be able to get a valid form of ID.
DMVs are slow and in many areas hard to get to. I know people who live like 100 miles away from any and that is where you get your either State ID or Driver’s License. How are they supposed to prove who they are?
I would support a Voter ID law if and only if we had a free and easily accesible way to get a form of identification.
paspport you have to make appt which can be weeks or months out to schedule your picture, and the process too and only at specific USPS offices. and apparently red states never worried about having to get passports/birth certificates, because theier voting is not disenfranchised there. when the republicans reccommended last year, they freaked out as red areas are unlikely to have post offices that afford passport services.
Not a single thing you say changes my opinion.
I’m pretty sure they are agreeing with your point.
Maybe. I’m not literate.
We don’t have a free national ID, even state IDs cost money. There should be no money involved in the right to vote.
Same thing in EU. At least over here in Finland. But, the passport is paid for by the social service if you are on their money.
US passports cost hundreds of dollars and take 4-6 months to receive… sometimes even after paying an additional fee to expedite the process.
I’m pretty sure ours doesn’t work like that. But also, a passport isn’t as common to have here.
Yeah, but here nothing works without having an ID or a passport, so everyone must have access to it.
That’s how the US works as well, you need ID for everything, it’s just lies and propaganda that claims undocumented people are using any services, the reality is literally the opposite.
Every single state with voter id requirements either gives free voter id cards or waives fees on existing id forms if u state if for the purposes of voting.
Interestingly I come from a nation where voting is not a right but a duty. Yes in Australia you get fined if you don’t vote. U can purposely spoil ur ballot that’s fine and that goes in the statistics but u still need to show up and purposely do that.
Canada. No free national ID card. About $15 a year, renewed every 5 years. Your health ID and driver ID can be separate or same-card, and can be used to fulfill “government-issued picture ID” required to vote; otherwise it’s a passport, probably, which is a little more.
Who are the US modeling themselves after when they demand a free ID card before it is required to verify identity for voting?
It’s not a model, it’s a guaranteed constitutional right that has been upheld a LOT of times in the supreme court over the last two centuries. You cannot have a poll tax, period. In any possible way, shape or form. It cannot cost a single cent to vote. Ever. Under any possible circumstances, without a significant constitutional amendment. It cannot be changed via law, and any laws passed that do require ID but do not make IDs free are undeniably unconstitutional based on 200 years of precedent.
So we find ourselves trapped in a loop, because voting is an enshrined right.
It’s also… just not needed. The only way you can register to vote is by proving your identity and citizenship. Using the free process that exists in every state and most US territories (not for federal elections in the territories unless they overlap with a state).
We aren’t Canada. Voting is a right and it shouldn’t be tied to any fee.
Having government ID of any kind (in fact, any documentation of any kind) isn’t strictly required to vote in Canada.
Free id and voting are technically distinct concerns.
We get it Canada sucks you don’t got to convince us. Lick that boot and pay that poll tax son.
The problem is primarily that it falsely validates a fascist conspiracy theory which is being weaponized to dismantle western democracy. That’s really most of it.
If it validates a conspiracy theory then has it not proven the conspiracy theory to be more likly. When one is doing science and one discovered evidence that supports a conclusion you cannot dismiss the evidence or change you methodology to avoid the evidence simply because you don’t like what the evidence implies. Follow the science mate don’t change ur methodology cos the science disagrees with ur preconceived notions.
Voter fraud is incredibly rare in the US. The conspiracy theory is that elections are horrifically insecure and the result of every vote is fraudulent.
The proposed voter id laws take that as an inroad to erode the right to vote for all citizens.
How can u know its rare worhout checking id? I’m not a us citizen whats stopping me from walking into a polling booth and voting? It seems pretty insecure to me. One cannot simply assert an assumption and proclaim it to be true.
In 25 years of records, there have been fewer than 1500 convictions for voter fraud. In Arizona, there were 36 proven cases against 42 million ballots cast.
What’s stopping me from walking into a polling booth and voting?
The wonderful thing here is you aren’t American, so you convince yourself far more thoroughly than my words ever could. The election is Tuesday, come over and try to vote.
U didn’t address my point. Without id how can u know if the fraud isnt happening. Absense of evidence is not evidence of absence. Its not like they send an FBI agent to go id a couple hundred people to do a proper statistical analysis. They caught the dumbest most obvious worst offenders that’s it.
Ur stats are the absolute lowest bound they are not a statistical sample. Ur attempt at purposefully implicating that it is such when it is not is very telling of your priorities here.
A sarcastic reply does not count as good faith argument do better.
I’m with you mate, as an European and after reading some of the comments I still have no clue how they monitor voting without any ID… I assume everyone has to pre-register but how do they do that without an ID? Birth certificates? Also, I’m antifascist which doesn’t mean I don’t believe in organizing society in an efficient way to minimize the chance of cheating to a minimum. In an ideal world there would be no borders and we could vote wherever we live but as I understand the US seems to have a vulnerable system and fascists are using it as an argument in favour of their current agenda… It’s likely a complex issue to solve due to other complex issues that have been left unsolved throughout the years but not admiting it to “own the fascist Republicans” is not the way to approach it imo.
Registering to vote is done by proving citizenship and residency, this is the step at which documents are checked. Doing it again at the polls duplicates work for little benefit.
The US system isn’t vulnerable. They meaningfully swing an election, it would require massed coordination between millions of people spread across hundreds of precincts. Each one would need to know that the person they are pretending to be has not voted and is not planning to vote after them - multiple voters for a single voter registration begins an investigation.
Voter rolls are purged frequently, so inactive registrations are not widely available for this kind of fraud. The rules vary by state, but generally if the voter does not cast a ballot for 2 consecutive elections they are deactivated.
Voters can only vote at their assigned polling places, meaning any large scale fraud must be distributed, increasing the number of people who must be involved and decreasing the likelihood it goes undetected.
So the argument against voter id is that some people can’t get the id they need due to financial reasons or whatever and thus this is disenfranchising minorities. But if you need that very same id to register to vote then your entire argument falls flat on its face.
First thing is that it is up to states to administer elections and make their own rules and laws. Given the record of the current president, many people and states are not very interested in giving up power over that to the federal government, who keeps trying to claim and take control of state-run elections anyway.
In the US, people are not automatically given IDs or driver licenses. They require a fair amount of time, other paperwork, and fees to procure. Therefore having one is automatically more likely for people with more time (retired, better job, etc), money, organized lives and physical ability since you must show up in person.
By organized lives, I mean people of higher economic status are more likely to live in stable situations where they have social security cards, passports and birth certificates easily accessible. If you don’t have those documents - perhaps they were lost in a move, never given by parents, never applied for - it costs a fair bit to get them. A replacement SS card is free. A duplicate birth certificate can be $20-30. The average charge for an ID/DL is about $40. A copy of a marriage or divorce certificate is typically $10-40. A replacing naturalization certificate is almost $1,400.
Getting these documents could take weeks and an amount of money that’s trivial to higher income people and significant to lower income people. Like voting, if you have a white collar job, it’s fairly easy to take time out to do it. If you have an hourly job with little flexibility and/or lack a vehicle, it’s much more difficult to go to government offices to obtain this paperwork. Some might ask, why would someone not have at least a driver’s license or ID? Perhaps it expired, was lost, they moved and never got the paperwork, or couldn’t afford the fees and time. Younger people and non-white people are known to be less likely to have the documents that would be required. It also creates barriers for armed service members.
Another aspect is the bill says women must prove their citizenship with documents that match their original, non-married name. So if you have a birth certificate that says Jane Doe but all your other documents say Jane Smith, since it was changed after marriage, that won’t work. The requirements would also make it harder for trans people to register.
Next, there’s the changes to registration process. Currently 42 states allow you to register online or by mail. That would be nixed. Voters would have to show up at an office in person to register. Currently signing under penalty of perjury that you are a U.S. citizen is considered adequate, along with proof of residency and documents like an ID (which required the aforementioned birth certificate etc to get in the first place). Under the proposed law, a drivers license would not be adequate in 90% of states. In some areas, voters must travel over 200 miles to get to an election office in person.
Another question is why this would be necessary. While Republicans have been claiming that non-citizens voting in federal elections is a major problem, there is no actual evidence of that. In fact, data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says 0.04% of voters might be ineligible, and that’s considered likely an overcount. When states have tried similar laws in the past, it ended up disenfranchising far, far more legitimate voters than the number of illegitimate voters thwarted.
So what’s the actual effect of this? Mainly, to make it harder for poor people and women to vote, two groups who are more likely to vote for Democrats.
Thank you for the very trhourough explanation. That’s all fucking distopian.
I can imagine the issue with lack of easy access to government IDs also has other consequences for lower income people.
It makes the homelessness trap nearly impossible to escape without outside help.
Yeah, when I was homeless after high school and couch surfing, I needed to get a friend to notarize a statement that I was living with him to get my ID so I could get a job. I got lucky, I don’t know how I would have done it if I was sleeping rough.
How difficult/expensive/time-consuming is it to get a government ID in Europe? Is it something that’s sent to you with basically no action on your part?
Unfortunately its neither free nor automatic, though it should be.
It’s about €75 in my country, and you need to go in person. But in general, at least our labor laws are much better so its easier to take PTO for these things,and public transport is good to get there. Most people get them at 14 years old, when it becomes mandatory to have one.
That depends completely on the country. There can be very big differences!
In Finland it works so that you go to some company that will take a photo of you and uploads it to the police’s database. Then you go to the web site of the police, log in using your online banking passwords and apply for the new ID card or passport. The site might say “visiting the police station required”, in which case you must go physically to a police station to show your face. That was necessary for example when I was getting the first passports for my children. Or if you have no previous ID.
The new ID card or passport is delivered to the nearest R-Kioski (think Seven-Eleven) and you get it from there by showing your previous ID. If it’s your first ID, you probably need to get it in person at the police station when it’s ready.
USA has a rule that people can visit it visa-free only if they are from a country where passports and ID cards are renewed every 5 years or more often. Therefore, in EU the passports must be renewed every 5 years instead of every 10 years like it is in USA, where US laws regarding this do not apply.
Taking the photo typically costs about 25 €, the actual document is something like 50 or 60 €. So, altogether about 75 € or so.
And the official instructions for how to apply for an ID card are here: https://poliisi.fi/en/how-to-apply-for-an-identity-card
Another question is why this would be necessary. While Republicans have been claiming that non-citizens voting in federal elections is a major problem, there is no actual evidence of that.
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2026/10/28/dozens-illegal-aliens-arrested-nationwide-voter-fraud-crackdown
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/four-things-to-know-about-noncitizen-voting/
Ah yes, a handful of cases over multiple elections. On a population of 340+ million people. You just prived the GPs point.
I said there’s no evidence it’s a major issue. The numbers mentioned there are extremely small compared to tens of millions of votes. One person? Wow. 16 people? Im sure it was worth their time and taxpayer money. The stat I cited said .04%. Others say less. No elections are won or lost by .04%.
The Heritage Foundation looked into this and found a total of 100 cases since 1982.
https://electionfraud.heritage.org/search (Choose “alien” in the bottom menu).
The idea that non-citizens would take the time and risk to vote illegally sounds pretty stupid to me, and it seems they agree.
I wonder which side the folks committing fraud admired
Not sure if that matters for like 5 people. Anyway, looking at the Heritage Foundation data, many of the illicit voters were Hispanic, a group that went for Trump in 2024 and are seen as a major bloc that got him elected. Most people from Central America are Catholic, and tend to be socially conservative. This group is supporting Trump less these days, but this goes back to 1982, as noted. What was your guess?
Oh look, someone who doesn’t understand basic statistics.
The US has about 3.8 million valid citizens with no official records, and about another 21 million that would need to jump through very difficult hoops in order to obtain their documentation. It’s called the Burned Counties phenomenon, because records were kept at the county level, that had a court house burned down. Or flooded, or destroyed by unrest. We like variety in our destruction.
As will come to no surprise, the majority of those affected, are minorities who vote for Democrats. So the laws being proposed are designed around blocking them from voting, not getting them documented to vote.
I would love to throw some source material in people’s faces, can you link where you got your numbers from?
Brennan Center has done multiple rounds of polling on it, there is no single source, just a wide group of agreement in data from voting rights and legal groups like the SLPC.
The problem is that when it comes up in documented cases like when Connecticut rolled back their voter ID law due to disruptions in municipal votes, it’s a small sample that doesn’t reflect the entire state, just that local area. When it comes to larger data sets, you run into voter privacy protection laws that no one wants to risk violating on either side. So you can’t even collect information. Which is why we have exit polling and similar sampling methods.
also its designed to block black votes specifically, they are a large populaiton in red states that generally vote D trend wise.
That’s crazy! It’s like 7% of the population! I feel that complicates life way beyond voting rights.
Meanwhile, I have friends who received EU citizenship based in ancestry and literary contacted the relevant municipalities here and got birth records from their great grand parents. Of course, I am sure going that far back, many records were also lost.
its actually somewhat difficult to get citizenship in the us, surprisingly enough. thats why you hear sometimes people overstay thier visas alot.
There’s a postulate that a lot of the areas around the world with “oldest alive humans” are actually just places with bad/lost records. Especially if it lets you claim retirement benefits early.
I say this as response to show that there are a lot of places with bad records.
Japan has a large percentage of the oldest people in the world. The country has been digging into this to understand what is special about Japan. The biggest reason people in Japan live so long is because their children lie about them still being alive.
That’s insterearing and unsurprising.
Yep, a large enough chunk of the population to sway entire elections, which is why it’s an ongoing fight. And also why there’s never a push to fix it.
also benefits the parties that dont want any change besides the republicans.
Closer to 1%, but still surprising. I’m not sure how one functions without identification.
Legally, as long as you have a social security number, as in you know the number, there’s no problem. Driving can be hard but most of these people have lived and worked within 5 miles of where they were born for hundreds of years now. But besides that you don’t need your ID for much.
What really gets to me is that even if, even if there were a few dozen or even a few hundred scattered votes that shouldn’t count…no presidential election is decided by a such a small number of invalid votes. There’s so much effort by the GOP to suggest fraud will cost them the election when its just not true. The amount of effort someone would have to go through just to get a 2nd vote is monumental, and for what 1 extra vote among 10s of thousands… And the risk of getting g caught is high and penalties are severe. Vote fraud is not worth the risk.
