Question: Wouldn’t the religious people who believe in a coming apocalypse consider a mandatory National ID card to be a sign of the coming apocalypse? If so, wouldn’t pointing at European countries to make an argument simply reinforce that belief? My understanding of this belief system is limited to Chick tracts and The Omen movies, so I might be misunderstanding it.
Sure they will, but they also think the Tele Tubbies are signs of the End Times.
I was wondering the same thing. Is fear of a national ID card linked to an irrational but deep-seated fear of the mark of the beast and an inability to buy anything if you don’t have Satan’s RFID chip?
Just for fun, I’d make the national ID card black and blood red and covered in pentagrams, with each ID number starting with 666. I’d also have instructions on it saying:
THIS IS YOUR NATIONAL ID/MARK OF THE BEAST CARD
CARRY IT AT ALL TIMES
OR YOU WILL BE SUCKED INTO HELL
Thank you for your cooperation.
I’ll back up RNATB on this one; it’s really not clear, it’s a quite massive political kerfuffle with substantial public and political opposition. That the scheme is in it’s rather anemic version is because there was such a large opposition to a more widespread, more requisite version. It’s possible, I personally would doubt it, but my opinion aside it really isn’t a case of “clearly another country that’s going to have them”.
Citizenship isn’t even what you want it to show. You want it to show eligibility to vote.
Since state laws also can bar someone from voting, it makes more sense to me that we use a state ID. If there is a national ID card, even if it looks the same it will have to contain different information since some states allow felons to vote and some don’t, for example. I also don’t like the idea of that type of information on a card that is also used for multiple other purposes.
It seems to me that leaving identification to the states makes sense. I’m also not convinced a national ID would have any effect whatsoever on voter fraud. It seems like a big waste of money and the new passports with RFID chips in them have been shown several times already to be insecure, so there are also additional problems that a national ID will bring.
I’d like a national ID card similar to the one that Dan Blather mentioned upthread. A card that was readable for anything you might need to do. I also have no issue with being told to carry it at all times off my own property. Provided one could recite one’s social to a police officer if one was stopped without the card, which would bring up your file and picture as a back up of course. Everyone makes mistakes after all. Let them give you a couple of warnings for each time you get stopped without it and start fining after that. People will get with the program. I’ve been asked for ID by the police less than twice in the last five years, so I doubt that anyone but problematic people will be stopped without their cards very often.
Sweden does not have a national ID card.
Sweden allocates everyone a national ID number. It is your choice whether you want to have a card or not. As far as I am aware there is no official card issued by the government. Several different cards(documents may work as an ID card, the most common ones being your passport, your driver’s licence or one issued by your bank or the post office.
I’ll also point out that accusations of voter fraud have been part of recent Italian elections (to the point that I believe the 2006 election is still being contested in the courts!), so apparently National ID cards are at the least, not a cure-all for such problems.
So of the six countries Bricker mentioned, at least two don’t really have National ID cards and at least one has had problems with voter fraud (or perceptions of voter fraud, anyways).
The key difference is that universal health care is only being offered. Nobody is required to use it if they choose not to. A mandatory national ID card would presumedly not be optional. That’s what makes one a threat to freedom and the other not.
And, yes, before somebody else raises the issue, I understand that people will only have a choice about using UHC services. They will not have a choice about paying for them. But that’s a taxation issue not a health care issue. Compulsory taxation is a diminishment of personal liberty. But taxation for health care is no different than any other taxation.
Actually amanset, I’m looking at my National identity card right now, sssued by the swedish police. I opted to get it when I renewed my passport. It has the same info as my passport (name, citizenship, national id #, birthdate, name, gender, height).
I got it because I don’t have a driver’s license and wanted an ID that’s easier to handle and more durable than a passport.
I use it mostly to travel between Schengen countries, verify my age at systembolaget (more rarely now) and to verify my name for a credit card transaction when a PIN can’t be used.
I fail to see the UK and US dsitrust for a voluntary ID card. The US driver’s licenses have a lot more info than my ID card.
I have no problem with a national ID card in theory, although the OP is a very weak argument in favor of them, as others have pointed out. The arguments about jackbooted governments putting national ID cards in effect are ridiculous, IMO.
The main argument against the cards, as I see it, is practical: they’re gonna cost money to implement, and they’re inevitably going to run into all kinds of logistical problems, as does any new bureaucratic measure. How long until someone cracks them? If they’ve got a chip in them with RFID capability, will that lead to greater human errors in perusing IDs? When a card is stolen or lost, how quickly can it be deactivated, and will this deactivation percolate in a timely manner through all linked databases? How do we ensure that cards cannot be obtained through fraudulent documents? These are not insurmountable problems by any stretch, but it’d be highly naive to imagine that they’re nonexistent problems.
So there are some real costs to putting the cards into effect. We need to compare those costs to the benefits.
One benefit has been mentioned so far: “If every person has a card that clearly identifies their citizenship, provided for them at no cost, as a matter of routine policy, then any concerns about improper voting would be substantially allayed.” If this benefit outweighs the costs, then great.
Thing is, I’m pretty convinced it doesn’t. There are scattered reports of actual voting fraud, but I’ve yet to see evidence of an election that turned on fraudulent votes. (Compare to the a certain important election that certainly turned on ill-designed ballots that led to a huge Jewish vote for Pat Buchanan). If voter fraud is rare enough that it doesn’t actually change the outcome of an election, then it’s a very small issue. It should be punished when it occurs, absolutely, but it hardly indicates the need for a major national program.
So are there other benefits to a national ID card? Again, I have no problem with it in theory, but I don’t see benefits to it that are worth its financial and logistical costs.
The OP had an argument in it? I mean, other than “I’m going to try again and point out the hypocrisy of the poopieheads on the left but fail miserably because I’m constructing a flawed kind of strawman/false equivalence argument without any real facts or research”?
I was figuring it was a “gotcha”. He was expecting people to denounce the idea as the kind of thing the Bush administration would have done. And then he could “innocently” post how the Obama administration had just made a similar proposal.
So you didn’t read what I wrote then.
There are cards available the verify ID, including photo and ID number (personnummer). Personally, I use my driver’s licence but have had a card issued by my bank. Also one card that I had issued to me via work for using the alarm system worked as an ID card. There is, however, no card that a resident is required to have and those that do generally go for one of the ones I have mentioned. I don’t have statistics to hand, but anecdotally I’d say the most common ones for those that don’t have use their passport or driver’s licence is one issued by the bank or post office.
I thought of that too, but the Obama proposal (which I think is a good idea, if one unlikely to pass into law), is explicitly forbidden for use in verifying voters identity. Or much of anything else:
Of course overtime it might evolve into a National ID card, in the same way that SS# has kind-of sort-of evolved into a national ID number or drivers liscenses have kind-of sort-of evolved into a State ID card, even though its not supposed to do so.
if citizenship status is a requirement then you can definitely scratch the Swedish one, even though it isn’t required anyway. Far and away the most popular form of ID must be the driver’s licence and that only shows:
Photo
Surname
Given names
Date of Birth
Issuing date
Expiry date
Issuing Authority
Reference Number
ID number
Signature
Class of vehicles carrier is licensed to drive
There is nothing on the card to show my nationality or citizenship status. This is interesting as I am not Swedish but as a citizen of an EU country (the UK) I am allowed to vote in local elections but not national elections.