But again you’re missing the point. It’s not about having a valid ID so you can vote; our existing system covers that. This is a plan to create ID restrictions so you can use them as a reason to deny people their right to vote.
All of the examples you give are situations where somebody actually wants to establish a person’s identity. But those examples don’t apply in a situation where somebody wants to say they can’t establish a person’s identity. ID’s that work in the first case won’t work in the second.
But it doesn’t need to have a current address on it. Voter registration does.
One of the huge problems (I’m an election judge in a state that doesn’t require ID and does same day registrations) is that a large part of the population is pretty transitant. You can get a job with a three year old state issued ID, but you can’t vote in the precinct you currently live in, because you have moved. Minnesota state IDs are valid for four years. So your ID is fine for buying vodka or getting a job or showing to a teller at a bank for four years.
Getting that license updated is a little over $20 and a few hours worth of time. If you live in an urban area, your DMV wait might be hours. If you live in a rural area, it may be difficult to get to a DMV at all - it may be across the county 40 miles away with no bus lines - so now you need to find someone to drive you who can give up two hours to getting you an ID.
I don’t agree that makes such compromises useless. If someone is lying about their actual position, then treating that position as legitimate can serve as a way to call their bluff.
In other words, even though I agree that Republicans don’t actually care about voter ID, it could be useful to try and call their bluff. Give them this thing they keep saying the Democrats won’t allow. Then, when they refuse, Democrats can use that as proof that they aren’t really after voter ID. If a Republican tries to use voter ID as a way to show Democrats don’t support fair elections, Democrats can reply back “We tried to allow voter ID, but they wouldn’t let us.”
Of course, there’s also the risk that Republicans do actually go along with the compromise. But then that’s an even bigger win for the Democrats (and for democracy). Thus attempting such a compromise is a win-win situation.
That is, unless you don’t think it would be a good trade.
I think that the concept of a photo ID being commonplace is a fine thing if you are at the least a middle class person who has a bank account, credit/debit cards, and familiarity with the internet. For the other potential voters, it may not be quite so easy.
I lived in Florida for many years. When I moved to the state, getting a drivers license was easy. Show the old out of state license, maybe a birth certificate, a couple of bills or other things to show residence, and bingo, there you go. After 9/11, however, when I went to renew said license, in addition to the certified birth certificate, I now had to show the following: Married previously with a name change? Show your wedding license as proof. Don’t have it 30+ years later? Send for a certified copy. From a different state? It’s going to cost $$$ and it’s going to take time. Need it quick (because we have to keep driving), then pay extra–to the tune of around $30-$40. Married several times–rinse and repeat. Don’t have your birth certificate? Same thing, more $$. Not really familiar with the internet? Ordering these documents is not a piece of cake to begin with. No credit/debit card? How can you pay on-line? Order by mail? Just another step. No cash accepted, have to get a money order.
Maybe you’re from another country and have lost/mislaid said documents. Having them sent from your country of origin may make things virtually impossible for somebody who just wants to vote.
Is your Social Security card up to date with current name? If you’ve switched residences even within a city, have you updated your drivers license with the new address? Another $$$ required situation.
Toss in people who may not speak or read English very well, if at all. Maybe the requirements are simply too much for them to fathom. If they need help, are there people who can help them through the entire process? The list goes on and on and on.
And maybe that’s why convoluted voter ID requirements really aren’t fair to all potential voters.
Again, there are many ways that voting rights activists can work around issues with ID. Getting an ID is a government process, there are people who can help people get them. A gerrymandered congressional district has no solution at all. I’ll also reiterate we know for sure multiple congressional districts are going Republican solely because of gerrymandering. We have little evidence any currently extant Voter ID scheme has cost Democrats very many, if any, votes. In fact several jurisdictions saw record turnout after Voter ID laws were passed. Democrats have been using these laws to drum up support, get people to go through the paper work required to vote etc. Voter ID from a strategic level is a push, gerrymandering is much more important.
My issue with that is how does it prove citizenship? Counties should have ways of getting proof of birth like some nationwide database or if I go to register to vote in Abeline County, TX that they can verify that I was born in Beaver County, NE as I claim. Until recently it was easier to fly to Los Angeles County and get a birth certificate in person than it was to try to get one online. The procedure is easier now but I can still see how it would be a problem with many Americans to even do Step 1: Go on the internet …
It doesn’t. This is a discussion about voter ID, not voter proof of citizenship. I don’t know of any state that requires voters to re-submit proof of citizenship every time they vote.
The problem I see is that given their history, I feel the Republicans would use the negotiations towards a compromise as a weapon. If the Democrats indicated a desire to work on an acceptable compromise, the Republicans could feign willingness. Then the Republicans will drag out the negotiations for as long as possible and in the end, nothing will be agreed upon because the Republicans didn’t want an agreement from the start. They just wanted to force the Democrats to waste time and distract them from working on a different plan to enact voter reform. The Republicans win just by delaying things.
And the application for ID is 35 pages long in 3-point type, and requires the names and residence addresses and mailing addresses for all your ancestors going back twelve generations, and all their Social Security numbers. Spelling counts!
Okay let’s break it down. The first part of the statement
And you think
This suggests you are stating what I have previously thought. Now, unless you assert the ability to read minds, it would typically be unusual to use a phrase like this unless you believed something had been stated by my that was suggestive of what I am thinking.
we haven’t placed enough obstacles in the way
This specifically is you indicating that I think we don’t have enough obstacles to voting.
Now, I believe the normal reading of this phrase would be that you are suggesting I am generally in favor of, or concerned about, Voter ID. I do not believe there is remotely any evidence of that in this thread. I think what there is instead evidence of, is someone in a thread about acceptable compromises, myself making a post in which I said “Voter ID for gerrymandering reform would be a worthwhile trade.” That does not imply remotely support for Voter ID, it just implies a willingness to horse trade on it.
However you felt strongly enough that I supported voter ID that you felt comfortable suggesting you knew what I was actually thinking, which I believe most would only do based on strong actual evidence. I don’t see that any such evidence existed.
So all the way back to the begin, are you capable of answering this simple question:
Could you explain your reason for presenting my point this way?
And we have two in the house where it isn’t that easy. Both my husband and son were born overseas. My son was adopted from Korea - his birth certificate is “not proof of U.S. citizenship” - his naturalization certificate is…that’s a pain in the back end to replace - a much bigger deal than getting a birth certificate. My husband was born to U.S. citizens living abroad. He has a U.S. Consular Report of Birth - from the 1960s - getting a replacement for that took his brother eighteen months.
Both my son and husband keep updated U.S. passports (not cheap to acquire) to prove their citizenship and identity, because passports tend to trump pretty much any other form of ID.
Voter ID laws are an obstacle to voting. I think that’s a given; obviously having to show an ID to do something is an obstacle compared to not having to show an ID. Even a good voter ID law which serves a valid purpose would be an obstacle. And for reasons I and other people have given in this thread, I feel it’s reasonable to assume that any voter ID law supported by the Republicans would not be a good voter ID law. Such a law would be designed to be as much as an obstacle as possible; that would be its intent.
You wrote that you would support a system of Federal voter ID laws. This would be the creation of a whole new level of obstacles that do not exist now. So I wrote that you wanted more obstacles. I think it is reasonable to state that a person who supports having more obstacles thinks we don’t currently have enough obstacles.
You wrote this. I felt it was a reasonable surmise that this was an indication that you think this. There was nothing in your post to indicate you were just taking a devil’s advocate position on the issue.
I hope this makes my position clear. If I have misunderstood something you have written, I hope you will clarify it for me. If the problem is a difference of opinion, I am willing to discuss it further and see if one of us can change the other’s mind. But if not, I accept that we have different opinions on this issue with no personal animosity intended because of it.
I go back to you seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge both the OP of this thread, the thread title, or the multiple uses of the word “compromise.”
Maybe by comparison to a historical “Great Compromise” I can explain further:
During the 1787-88 constitutional convention, the “Virginia Plan” was to apportion delegates to both houses of a bicameral congress via proportional representation based on population. The “New Jersey Plan” was to apportion delegates based on equal representation between each of the states. The advocates of the Virginia Plan had the support of more states, and these states represented most of the population of the country. But multiple states that backed the New Jersey plan (all lower population states) were threatening to withdraw from the convention and presumably their states would have declined to ratify the new constitution. A compromise was ultimately reached–one House of the bicameral Congress would apportion delegates via population, the other by an equal amount per state.
It is not correct to say that, for example, Edmund Randolph, the author of the Virginia Plan, supported equal representation in the Senate. However he was willing to compromise on it. A core element in almost any compromise is an end result that both sides see as worthwhile, but also individual elements that both sides have to agree to something that, in a vacumm they would not like.
So back to this thread, when you ignore (and you actually did it again with your last post) someone saying they support something only in the context of a compromise that would see a limitation placed on partisan gerrymandering, and instead seem to just neutrally suggest this person actually supports the compromise concession de novo, you are misrepresenting that person’s position.
It is very difficult for me to understand how this is anything but deliberate. I think I’ve mentioned that I specifically only support it as a concession in a compromise at least three times, and now multiple times you’ve responded and chosen to simply not acknowledge at all a compromise is being discussed. I struggle to see how that isn’t a deliberate attempt to say I’m here advocating for Voter ID as a positive good vs a compromise concession. I go back to asking why you are choosing to represent someone’s views this way.
I think his point is that a federal voter ID system would be more fair than a state one. A voter ID system is not ideal, but might be an acceptable compromise for, say, getting rid of partisan gerrymandering. Get-out-the-vote groups could make headway against a voter ID system, but cannot do anything about gerrymandering.
The OP is asking if that’s an acceptable compromise, and @Martin_Hyde is arguing that, yes, that would be acceptable, since gerrymandering does much more damage and is much harder to counter than a voter ID system, especially if the voter ID system were done at a federal level, where the states couldn’t put all those additional barriers.
I would give way on voter ID in return for passage of the Fair Representation Act. That would be a huge first step towards more representative elections in this country and I believe that more good things would spring from it. Including a revisit of restrictive voter ID requirements.
Part of the issue is that Voter ID is a poisoned well. It’s a racist, classist, disenfranchising effort under the guise of solving an problem that isn’t even real.
However, I can get behind using it as a lever to solve an actual problem like gerrymandering, by agreeing to ‘solve’ voter fraud. ID availability is a problem that can be solved on its own, both by grassroots campaigns, as well as by State or Federal initiatives.
I can also get behind solving voter fraud all by itself in a way that makes ID readily, genuinely, available to those that need it to vote. If only to get Republicans to shut up about it.
