Live data from Hacker News

Brennan Center for Justice Report: The Campaign to Undermine the Next Election

brennancenter.org

111–120 of 126 posts

Re: Brennan Center for Justice Report: The Campaign to Undermine the Next Election

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Common sense isn't saying "oh there's no ID required at the polls? Illegals must be tipping elections", it's recognizing that there are armies of people auditing these elections each cycle. Irregularities are caught and people challenge results in court all the time. In practice, if you tried to commit voter fraud, I think you'd find it very hard to accomplish (especially if you're trying to change the outcome) Even…

If ID is required, then your whole “Illegals must be tipping elections" argument just goes away. People keep making this debate in the US of “we need ID to prevent election fraud” vs “we can’t have ID required because ID can be hard to obtain”. It’s just silly. If you take a step back and make it easier to get an ID than the whole things resolves itself. The pro-ID people are happy Because only registered voters can…

You basically just disregarded the comment you replied to and doubled down on your original idea.

You are saying that the problem would be a non-problem if only we had voter ID was. However the evidence before you (and that includes evidence collected by conservative organizations that generally align with politically motivated voter suppression) is that the problem is effectively already a non-problem, due in part to the many other controls in place around voter registration and vote counting. Meanwhile there is quite a bit of evidence showing that your favorite solution to the non-problem is itself problematic, measurably so in the historical record.

You are of course welcome to continue believing whatever you want to believe. But it's hopefully obvious by now to anyone reading this thread that your beliefs are not aligned with facts.

It's like arguing that Python is bad because it has dynamic types, and if we all just adopted static types in Python then all type errors in Python would go away. Even if that is true, it's a ridiculous position to hold.

If you want voter ID to be a thing, then you need to first establish a nationwide ID system that is equitable in terms of access. Until that exists, voter ID is a bad idea in the USA.

Re: Brennan Center for Justice Report: The Campaign to Undermine the Next Election

#112
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s great that those organizations say it’s uncommon. But this shouldn’t even be an issue. It doesn’t take many votes to tip a close election. Requiring ID like every other country is the common sense thing to do. And it helps build confidence in the election process without the need for organizations to try and demonstrate that the election was legitimate after the fact.

Triage, you work by priority to maximize impact. Look at the problems in this country 23 instances. 23. As an analogy, let's say I'm triaging a broken neck, a burn, a gunshot wound, a compound fracture, a stab wound, a broken toe, and a hangnail. If Voter ID were to be placed somewhere on here, it would be below hangnail. This is smoke and mirrors nonsense that is using minorities and trans people as a scapegoat and…

That's a specious argument because the voter ID problem requires basically zero resources. Just mandate voter ID, problem solved. Practically every other first-world country does, including progressive European countries.

Re: Brennan Center for Justice Report: The Campaign to Undermine the Next Election

#113
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Triage, you work by priority to maximize impact. Look at the problems in this country 23 instances. 23. As an analogy, let's say I'm triaging a broken neck, a burn, a gunshot wound, a compound fracture, a stab wound, a broken toe, and a hangnail. If Voter ID were to be placed somewhere on here, it would be below hangnail. This is smoke and mirrors nonsense that is using minorities and trans people as a scapegoat and…

That's a specious argument because the voter ID problem requires basically zero resources. Just mandate voter ID, problem solved. Practically every other first-world country does, including progressive European countries.

Back to the triage analogy, there is a person with a compound fracture that is losing blood. The gsw needs care. We need pressure on that artery.

We're arguing over the color of the bandaid for the hangnail.

That's why I don't give a fuck about voter ID, because the people that give a fuck about voter ID have been fucking duped, and I don't know how to reason with that human, so I just have given up trying and scream into the void.

If somebody will streamline the process and actually fund some DMVs to get this done I'd be all for it - but they won't, because it's not the point, they'll just mandate it as a form of voter suppression without doing anything to fix the infrastructure problem.

deep sigh

Re: Brennan Center for Justice Report: The Campaign to Undermine the Next Election

#114
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>where he tries to work with a group of homeless people in Las Vegas to get them papers and the process is extremely difficult. Like bordering on impossible. That seems like the worst case scenario though? I don't think homeless people should be disenfranchised, but at the same time it's unfair to pretend the typical experience of getting a voter id resembles whatever the TV show is depicting either.

"But these marginalized group of people isn't something we need to worry about right?" But even setting aside homeless, US states have a very documented, very public history of disenfranchising African American voters. * 1890-1960 you've got "literacy tests" that would routinely fail black voters but allow white voters through * 1800-1960 you've got poll taxes which was used strategically in places to harm black & so…

>"But these marginalized group of people isn't something we need to worry about right?"

Im not sure how you got that impression when I specifically acknowledged that homeless not being able to get id is a real issue.

Re: Brennan Center for Justice Report: The Campaign to Undermine the Next Election

#115
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But these marginalized group of people isn't something we need to worry about right?" But even setting aside homeless, US states have a very documented, very public history of disenfranchising African American voters. * 1890-1960 you've got "literacy tests" that would routinely fail black voters but allow white voters through * 1800-1960 you've got poll taxes which was used strategically in places to harm black & so…

>"But these marginalized group of people isn't something we need to worry about right?" Im not sure how you got that impression when I specifically acknowledged that homeless not being able to get id is a real issue.

> That seems like the worst case scenario though?

> but at the same time it's unfair to pretend the typical experience of getting a voter id resembles whatever the TV show is depicting either.

"Typical" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Is it typical in your socioeconomic class? No probably not. Is it typical in terms of many millions of people experience this problem every election cycle? Yes.

> when I specifically acknowledged that homeless not being able to get id is a real issue.

In one breadth you acknowledge it and then say "but is it really that big a deal?" in the next. That's minimization.

Re: Brennan Center for Justice Report: The Campaign to Undermine the Next Election

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every other country can do it, why not the US? American exceptionalism is a real thing, unfortunately. And what I've found is that when confronted with a flaw or aspect of their society that could be improved, Americans tend to work backwards from the problem and try to explain away the problem, while inventing ridiculous hypotheticals for why other countries implementations won't work. See: this thread and voter I…

Apart from the fact that you are basically disregarding all of the detail explanations on why the US is in fact different when it comes to voter ID, all of the things you mentioned are primarily decided by states, with relatively federal authority beyond the ability to withhold funding conditional on states adopting certain policies, which is a very crude instrument that is only used in a handful of circumstances lik…

I don't disagree. My comment has little to do with that.

Let's take the fact that sales tax isn't baked into the price in the US, a common criticism of the US. I understand the sales tax is different per state. Not having the sales tax baked in is an annoyance, and I believe almost everybody would agree having it baked in would be an improvement.

I don't understand why Americans work backwards to try and explain it away. I've genuinely seen comments such as:

"What if the sales tax changes often? Then they have to reprint all the labels" (does this actually happen that often?)

"They have to print different labels for each state" (Many stores already print different labels for regional pricing, or use e-ink)

"It's not that hard to just compute +X%, just get better at math" (It's not hard but what's wrong with transparency and clarity with the price?)

It's that kind of discussion that my comment is referring to.

Re: Brennan Center for Justice Report: The Campaign to Undermine the Next Election

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If ID is required, then your whole “Illegals must be tipping elections" argument just goes away. People keep making this debate in the US of “we need ID to prevent election fraud” vs “we can’t have ID required because ID can be hard to obtain”. It’s just silly. If you take a step back and make it easier to get an ID than the whole things resolves itself. The pro-ID people are happy Because only registered voters can…

You basically just disregarded the comment you replied to and doubled down on your original idea. You are saying that the problem would be a non-problem if only we had voter ID was. However the evidence before you (and that includes evidence collected by conservative organizations that generally align with politically motivated voter suppression) is that the problem is effectively already a non-problem, due in part t…

I think I have been convinced by this thread that risks of no-ID voting is fairly low. Certainly not nearly as big of an issue as I thought when I first posted.

I still maintain that this should be a non-issue. ID’s are issued by the state, and they are the entities responsible for voting and voter registration. You don’t need a national database to fix this.

Re: Brennan Center for Justice Report: The Campaign to Undermine the Next Election

#118
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

another angle is: if the ID costs money, no matter how trivial the amount, then it is effectively a ballot fee.

All states that require voter id have free ids that work for voting.

And how accessible are said ids in every state?

Re: Brennan Center for Justice Report: The Campaign to Undermine the Next Election

#119
post #80
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be incredibly difficult and time consuming to get a birth certificate if you have lost yours. If you work full time, you'd have to take off for an unknown time period (typically multiple hours) to stand in line at a court or other facility that provides them. In some cases, people just don't have the option to take that time off and/or lack vehicle access to get there. Then there's a fee to get a copy, lots of…

Oh man the birth certificate thing is ridiculous. I had to get a new Id from scratch recently and it was the most painful process The state I was born in decided to outsource the handling of birth certificates to some shit tier consulting firm. In order to get my birth certificate shipped to me, I would have to wait over six months simply to process my request (ostensibly due to Covid, but this was 2023). It would ha…

For non-US contrast, when I needed a birth certificate recently, I filled an online form and the next day I received a digitally signed pdf by email. It was free.

Re: Brennan Center for Justice Report: The Campaign to Undermine the Next Election

#120
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people pushing for non-citizens to vote in non-federal elections. One example is New York City where they literally passed a law to allow it. It was struck down because it violated New York's constitution though...

It's not exactly unprecedented and also orthogonal to voter id laws. Scotland, for example, allows foreigners to vote in local elections [1] and makes photo id mandatory [2]. 1. https://www.mygov.scot/voting-in-elections-in-scotland 2. https://www.mygov.scot/voting-in-elections-in-scotland/how-t...

I'm not suggesting otherwise. I'm saying the person I was responding to was wrong. He said it is fox news propaganda to suggest people want non-citizens to vote illegally. People in NYC did just that.
Post reply on HN