Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20% • Hacker News Board

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#241

Post by weberc2 » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 12:34 PM UTC

zucker42 wrote: post #234

weberc2 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So to be clear, we can’t have common sense non-racist voter ID laws because the Republicans won’t allow it (and defeating entrenched interests is hopelessly intractable, so why bother), but somehow there will be more political will for no voter ID requirements at all ?

No the point is that there are other voting reform laws that will have an actual effect on improving representation and don't have the practical effect of preventing black people from voting. I'm suggesting the problems we have with voting rights in this country are not caused by failing to require ID at polling stations. I'm not opposed to voter IDs in a theoretical sense, it just seems like either a unimportant or…

Of course, they don’t have the practical effect of preventing blacks from voting. Can we stop conflating abuses in the US with the same system that works uncontroversially all over the world? I’m not arguing it’s the most important thing to do, only that it’s ridiculous that we have a debate about whether or not it’s a problem and the solution is cheaper than investigating.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#242

Post by specialist » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 3:49 PM UTC

andrewla wrote: post #120

crispyambulance wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one should be praised other than the people who discovered "the mistakes". The tactic here is voter disenfranchisement. It's a tried and true tool of the Republicans and has been around since forever. The thing is inactive voters are just that, inactive . There is very small risk that some of their names might get used for voter fraud. But every time this is researched, only a handful of incidents are discovered a…

> The thing is inactive voters are just that, inactive. There is very small risk that some of their names might get used for voter fraud. But every time this is researched, only a handful of incidents are discovered and it takes thousands to swing an election. You claim the risk is small, but I'm not aware of anything that actually supports this assessment. This form of manipulation is nearly impossible to detect in…

I was an election integrity activist, poll judge, poll worker for ~10 years. No one I know opposes need for identifying voters when issuing ballots. Jurisdictions vary, IIRC North Dakota doesn't require ID, so YMMV.

Voter ID is verified during registration. Generally, voter ID is then confirmed when a ballot is issued in person. In most jurisdictions, many forms of identification are accepted to be issued a ballot.

The stricter voter ID laws reduce kinds of identification permitted. Further, they'll do stupid shit like insist on exact matches, so "Mike" vs "Michael" would be rejected. Generally, these laws insist on perfection while injecting errors into the system, for explicitly partisan reasons.

Tellingly, postal ballots are issued without confirming identification. Which are a much greater source of errors. But there's no partisan food fight over postal ballots.

The fix is simple. Eliminate data quality problems with universal automatic voter registration. Moot the ID confirmation kerfuffle by issuing government ID, such as the upcoming Real ID.

Then voila, the USA just joined all the other mature democracies by adopting time proven reasonable best practices.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#243

Post by CompanionCuuube » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

ebiester wrote: post #236

CompanionCuuube wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So assume a spherical cow and immigration enforcement is "easy". Don't let that get in the way of actually responding to the objection regarding tracking of the residents of the US. But tell us how you really feel.

That tracking is already being done. It is just poorly coordinated. Social Security is not a national ID. Hell, many men have a number due to "Selective Service" (AKA the draft that hasn't happened since Vietnam). Three companies have our entire address history unless we don't have credit cards. Our phone numbers are tied to us and our GPS is tied to our phones. The vast majority of us are tied to biometrics due to R…

"It is just poorly coordinated." Another spherical cow statement. The coordination makes all the difference. As a trivial example: an area could be covered in CCTV, but that's significantly different than if they all feed into a central governmental agency.

Re: Ohio Was Set to Purge 235,000 Voters. It Was Wrong About 20%

#244

Post by CompanionCuuube » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

9HZZRfNlpR wrote: post #224

ebiester wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So long as it isn't used to disenfranchise people from a single vote, there's no problem. Now, things get complicated and we would have to do work to get it right in that we have inconsistent rules on residency in terms of students and temporary housing, and we have a significant number of people who don't want to see a national registry of citizens (see issues with using SSN as a national ID) but there's nothing spe…

In Germany and Europe (UK is outliner) you pay a fee for ID card, but it's valid for 10 years or so and cost is around 20-30 euro. Really don't understand what's the panic about in America, you don't have to do and pay it every year.

That's a lot of assumptions.

1. The people can keep track of a card for 10 years. 2. They can afford to pay 20-30 Euros for something they only use for voting, since apparently they aren't involved in any other part of civic life that involves having an id.