# Are voter ID policies (and their supporters) racist? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 15, 2016, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039 "2016-11-15T04:38:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2016, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/41 "2016-11-15T22:18:02Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > And I paid hundreds of dollars to my car insurance company this year and after all that I had no accidents! That’s a cost you bear for your own reasons. You are asking others to bear the cost that you yourself do not feel. If you want to analogize that to voter ID, it would be like you paying high risk insurance premiums, even though you’ve never had an accident, because you might have one. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2016, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/42 "2016-11-15T22:24:52Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > If you want to analogize that to voter ID, it would be like you paying high risk insurance premiums, even though you’ve never had an accident, because you might have one. I think \*\*Bricker \*\*probably already has ID, so the appropriate analogy would be if he made other people pay extra premiums to improve his “driver confidence.” Not everyone, though, just the drivers he didn’t like. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2016, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/43 "2016-11-15T23:25:11Z")
> [@tim-n-va](#): > > For me it seems to be timing. If a legislative body is concerned about people voting who shouldn’t, put up the money to issue a free photo ID at the time the person registers to vote. **Implement an aggressive plan to issue no cost IDs to anyone currently registered to vote - include mobile teams in shopping malls and a free house call for people who can’t travel easily. Mail the ID where a government entity already has a photo on file (driver’s license, etc) Start this several years before the ID will actually be required in an election.** If a legislator is willing to support those effort to not disenfranchise, I’ll believe it is only about the security of the election. … This makes sense as a filter for whether a voter ID measure is racist—any state implementing such a plan would thereby insulate itself from any such accusations. But as such measures have been implemented so far, the disadvantages of lacking free time and plenty of money are inescapable, and those disadvantages fall disproportionately on black and Latino populations. > [@Saltire](#): > > I think that voter ID laws are surely classist, in that those with more economic resources and freedom will always be able to vote if they want, but those lacking such will see most of the difficulties imposed by the law. > In any population in which some race tends to be economically disadvantaged (which is extremely common), that gives the law a racist effect. I agree. Only something like the alternative tim-n-va outlined could shield those proposing a voter ID law from potential accusations of racism. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2016, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/44 "2016-11-15T23:57:20Z")
The really sad thing was that North Carolina’s laws _weren’t_ even targeted against Democrats. The governor could have requested research on what methods Democrats usually use to vote, and then shaped the law based on the results of that research. He didn’t. The research he explicitly asked for, and which he tailored the law around, was on how blacks vote. It wasn’t even partisan-- It was pure, distilled racism. And if we want to catch or deter vote fraud, or increase confidence that it’s not occurring, or whatever, why don’t we do the simple ink-on-the-thumb thing that nations around the world use? It’s cheap, it’s effective, and it’s non-discriminatory. If any of those legitimate purposes were truly the motivation behind voter ID laws, we’d do it. The fact that we don’t do the thumb thing proves that those were never the motivations behind these laws, and that anyone who says that they were is lying. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/45 "2016-11-16T00:10:07Z")
> [@tim-n-va](#): > > For me it seems to be timing. If a legislative body is concerned about people voting who shouldn’t, put up the money to issue a free photo ID at the time the person registers to vote. Implement an aggressive plan to issue no cost IDs to anyone currently registered to vote - include mobile teams in shopping malls and a free house call for people who can’t travel easily. Mail the ID where a government entity already has a photo on file (driver’s license, etc) Start this several years before the ID will actually be required in an election. Which is what we did here – we implemented Voter ID starting in **19-by-Og-80** by\* actually issuing a voter photo ID card when registering\* starting in 1978, grandfathering those who were already registered old-style for the 1980 election and making the Voter-Card requirement universal by the _1984_ election. The photo ID is issued at no charge to the voter, in the Elections Commission office in every precinct, that has Saturday hours and registration drives offsite in election years; the card does not expire unless you get purged from the rolls; a replacement for a lost or destroyed card can be got until just before the polls open. The poll worker at the voting station has in his/her copy of the voter roll the information and picture that’s on your card (and a note whether you had an absentee ballot sent to you). Just to make sure on top of that, we also use a blacklight inkmark. > [@DrDeth](#): > > > [@Slash1972](#): > > > > There must be benefits to requiring an ID to vote, numerous other countries have an ID requirement. Or are all those countries ID policies racist too? > > _Numerous other countries have a NATIONAL ID requirement._ They have a national ID, you gotta get one. :rolleyes: > > We dont. Right. The voter ID requirement in many of those “numerous other countries” is the Universal Citizen Identity Document. Try and get the Americans to go for the creation of THAT… ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/46 "2016-11-16T00:26:30Z")
> [@tim-n-va](#): > > For me it seems to be timing. If a legislative body is concerned about people voting who shouldn’t, put up the money to issue a free photo ID at the time the person registers to vote. Implement an aggressive plan to issue no cost IDs to anyone currently registered to vote - include mobile teams in shopping malls and a free house call for people who can’t travel easily. Mail the ID where a government entity already has a photo on file (driver’s license, etc) Start this several years before the ID will actually be required in an election. If a legislator is willing to support those effort to not disenfranchise, I’ll believe it is only about the security of the election. Why should the public pay for these extraordinary efforts to get people ID cards? I know it is probably an extreme position, but if you are so disconnected from society that you are able to function without a photo ID card in the year 2016, maybe you are not informed enough to vote? But that aside, why is it not enough to provide a free ID at the DMV or some other such location? We really have to deliver it to someone’s home? ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/47 "2016-11-16T00:58:51Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > Why should the public pay for these extraordinary efforts to get people ID cards? I know it is probably an extreme position, but if you are so disconnected from society that you are able to function without a photo ID card in the year 2016, maybe you are not informed enough to vote? > > But that aside, why is it not enough to provide a free ID at the DMV or some other such location? We really have to deliver it to someone’s home? The problem, though, is that you really don’t have to be all that disconnected from society to function quite well without a photo ID. For example, one of my older family members was, until the very last months of her life, actively engaged in the world–she watched the news, read the newspapers, and probably knew more about the candidates and issues than most voters. She didn’t drive for the last two decades of her life, and lived in a nursing home for a number of years. She wasn’t out buying booze, she didn’t fly around the country, her pension check was direct-deposited, and the doctor came to her. What did she need an ID for? And no, a “free” ID at the DMV isn’t really free if you have to hire a medical transport to take you there. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/48 "2016-11-16T01:02:13Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > By this I mean that the imposition of Voter ID is an insurance policy that helps protects the public confidence in ultra-close results. If this year produced no ultra-close races, that’s fortunate, but it does not mean that the insurance policy was imprudent. So it’s ok to disenfranchise one group of voters, as long as it makes another group feel better about the election outcome? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/49 "2016-11-16T01:02:45Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > That’s a cost you bear for your own reasons. You are asking others to bear the cost that you yourself do not feel. Yes, and they agreed to do so. By passing the laws that you now object to. Isn’t that how our government works? I paid to send my kid to Catholic school but still bore the taxation burden of supporting public school. Others asked me to bear that burden by electing legislators who passed the laws creating the burden. That’s what happened here. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/50 "2016-11-16T01:04:53Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > So it’s ok to disenfranchise one group of voters, as long as it makes another group feel better about the election outcome? I don’t accept that the term “disenfranchise,” is accurate, since no voter is denied the vote. A slight additional burden is added to the process, and the answer is: yes, it’s ok to add a slight additional burden as long as it makes another group feel better about the election outcome. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/51 "2016-11-16T01:05:56Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > And no, a “free” ID at the DMV isn’t really free if you have to hire a medical transport to take you there. The same problem would exist for her to get to the polling place, then? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/52 "2016-11-16T01:10:02Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > I think \*\*Bricker \*\*probably already has ID, so the appropriate analogy would be if he made other people pay extra premiums to improve his “driver confidence.” Not everyone, though, just the drivers he didn’t like. Not at all – I would absolutely make insurance mandatory for all drivers, though. Just as is done in real life. The law applies to everyone equally: everyone must carry insurance, not just the people I don’t like, and everyone must obtain ID to vote, not just the people I don’t like. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/53 "2016-11-16T01:12:48Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The really sad thing was that North Carolina’s laws _weren’t_ even targeted against Democrats. The governor could have requested research on what methods Democrats usually use to vote, and then shaped the law based on the results of that research. He didn’t. The research he explicitly asked for, and which he tailored the law around, was on how blacks vote. It wasn’t even partisan-- It was pure, distilled racism. > > And if we want to catch or deter vote fraud, or increase confidence that it’s not occurring, or whatever, why don’t we do the simple ink-on-the-thumb thing that nations around the world use? It’s cheap, it’s effective, and it’s non-discriminatory. If any of those legitimate purposes were truly the motivation behind voter ID laws, we’d do it. The fact that we don’t do the thumb thing proves that those were never the motivations behind these laws, and that anyone who says that they were is lying. I’m not opposed, but your conclusion is incorrect: inkstaining a thumb does not prevent a non-citizen from voting, or a felon from voting. Does it? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/54 "2016-11-16T01:18:11Z")
Neither does a required ID card. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/55 "2016-11-16T01:19:07Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > if you are so disconnected from society that you are able to function without a photo ID card in the year 2016, maybe you are not informed enough to vote? I think that, if “being too uniformed” was a legitimate voting criteria, we’d have a different president-elect. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/56 "2016-11-16T01:20:54Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > The law applies to everyone equally: everyone must carry insurance, not just the people I don’t like, and everyone must obtain ID to vote, not just the people I don’t like. Yes, yes, yes, “the rich as well as the poor are prohibited from…” heard it before. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/57 "2016-11-16T01:26:58Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > I’d like to work with your insurance analogy, but I don’t know how to analogize the voters who had their civil rights taken from them by mealy-mouthed partisans. Perhaps they are the bumps you drive over on the way to pay your premium? This is one of the few threads that have remained almost civil over the last week. Back away from the personal remarks or take it to The BBQ Pit. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/58 "2016-11-16T01:29:03Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Which is what we did here – we implemented Voter ID starting in **19-by-Og-80** by\* actually issuing a voter photo ID card when registering\* starting in 1978, grandfathering those who were already registered old-style for the 1980 election and making the Voter-Card requirement universal by the _1984_ election. The photo ID is issued at no charge to the voter, in the Elections Commission office in every precinct, that has Saturday hours and registration drives offsite in election years; the card does not expire unless you get purged from the rolls; a replacement for a lost or destroyed card can be got until just before the polls open. The poll worker at the voting station has in his/her copy of the voter roll the information and picture that’s on your card (and a note whether you had an absentee ballot sent to you). Just to make sure on top of that, we also use a blacklight inkmark. It’s pretty well established that the various voter ID laws are for the most part simply attempts to reduce Democratic voter turnout. The approach you outlined would certainly work to get everyone an ID. But that’s not what we’re going for here. The talk about “voter fraud” is just how we sell voter restriction to the rubes. We need a cover story because there are actually people out there who would be rightfully disgusted if they knew the purpose of the voter ID laws. It’s been repeatedly established that the kind of fraud that voter ID would prevent is vanishingly (why is this word not showing up in my spellchecker) rare. No one really cares about it. ---
**Author:** ![HeXen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@HeXen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeXen)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/59 "2016-11-16T01:44:53Z")
If you want everyone to be racist then your opinion will always be that they are racist. The catalyst for your judgement is irrelevant. Any one of us can take any form of bigotry, make an excuse and point it at someone and just like yawning, anger is contagious. That’s the beauty of the race card, in that it’s easy to get people to side with you, gather up hatred and point it like a gun. It’s the same social principals on how a single bully can attract others to hate their target as well. The media certainly does it quite often politically. Anger is a powerful tool for trolls, you can invoke the darkest reactions and behaviors of complete strangers with it with long lasting consequences. Now that’s power and the media in the past few months has demonstrated that power slowly but surely through the use of biased political perspectives and meaningless polls that bring to life all sorts of hatred through these protests and back again through fake protests and cries of racism that reach into every facet of daily life. And it even created a circle where others using social media repeat, if even inaccurately or out of context, the same catalysts of hatred as people continue the vicious circle by giving into their own anger and pointing it at anyone for any reason they justify. The mass media trolled em real good. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039/60 "2016-11-16T01:46:05Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > This is one of the few threads that have remained almost civil over the last week. Back away from the personal remarks or take it to The BBQ Pit. > > [/Moderating] Sorry, hadn’t realized how that could be read. I’d intended a generic “you.” Perhaps something more like this: I’d like to work with your insurance analogy, but I don’t know how to analogize the voters who had their civil rights taken from them. Perhaps they are the bumps in the road we drive over on the way to pay our premiums? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-voter-id-policies-and-their-supporters-racist/772039.md?page=4)