Nice story, but one of you is full of shit (probably both).
As an adopted person, I got a certified birth certificate the same way as anyone else, and just as easy.
Agreed. I have a really difficult time believing the article’s assertion that 25% of all African-Americans don’t have any form of ID.
Moreover, nobody’s produced any evidence that such laws actually have disenfranchised people which would be very easy to produce.
All you’d have to do is show that voting amongst poor or minorities has declined since such laws took effect.
That said, I think both sides are chasing phantoms. Our voting system is highly vulnerable to fraud, but people who engage in it are far more likely to exploit absentee ballots then use any of Curley’s infamous shenanigans.
At the same time, requiring people to produce IDs to vote as most countries do, including such impoverished countries as the Dominican Republic and Mexico is hardly comparable to Jim Crow.
If people were serious about doing something about disenfranchisement they’d get rid of the laws banning felons from voting, but that’s not something you can blame on the GOP since disenfranchising felons has broad, bi-partisan popular support.
Nope, but it counts as ID for all purposes, because the verification process the bank has to go through is run and controlled by a government office. Case in point, I used it to advance vote just today (we have elections here too.)
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Many times in previous discussions the USian dopers have explained that a passport in the US is quite expensive, time-consuming and troublesome to get, and not useful in daily life, because the average Joe rarely travels outside the US to countries where he would need one (Canada and Mexico no longer require one).
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I must have missed and/or forgotten that. Here, they last 10 years, and cost less than a cheap paperback (processing fee). What is the rationalle behind not having a simple, accessible piece of ID that everyone is suposed to just have? We use passports for that, but if passports are against the american spirit if indepence, why not make something else?
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No, but you can prove who you are and meet the requirements to study at a University without meeting the requirements to vote in the US. (Hear of foreign students? Age of voting eligibility vs. studying early?)
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Ok, the student card was a bit flippant, I’ll admit.
Well, certainly if someone of your limited abilities can do it, it must be easy. 
Or maybe, just maybe, your personal anecdote doesn’t apply to everyone, everywhere in every situation. If you drunkenly stumbled across a busy street with a pillowcase on your head, it doesn’t mean that it’s safe.
We (American’s) don’t recognize or use the term “bank card” the way you do. To us, a “bank card” is a credit card. To you, it is obviously some form of government ID.
Most American’s don’t have passports either. First, they are expensive. Also, our country is huge. We don’t need a passport to get around in-country and you also don’t need one to take short trips to Canada of Mexico, so unless you are really going somewhere, they are unnecessary.
Your bank card is a picture ID? And recognized as ID when you buy liquor or whatever? You can show your bank card to a cop when he asks for ID?
Because in Germany, I have to show my national ID (Personalausweis) when opening a bank account, but there’s no picture and it doesn’t count as “government-issued ID”. When in my job or elsewhere people are asked for ID (for age or as safety deposit or when getting a library card or similar) only three kinds are accepted:
National ID card (Personalausweis)
Passport (Reisepass)
New EU drivers license (because it meets tamper-proof guidelines). This is not accepted everywhere, though, because it doesn’t have residence on it. In many cases, when opening an account at the library or similar, people want to check not only identity and age, but also verify your address, so that should it be necessary to send nasty letters, they will reach you.
Passports are not everyday in Germany, either. They cost quite a lot more than the required national ID, and with the Schengen treaty and other treaties, the national ID is enough for normal travelling even from the continent to the UK.
No, anything that means national ID is scary because … national database! Registration! No Freedom! Mark of the beast of the apocalypse! (Many right-wingers overlap with Rapture-Christian extremists).
Yeah, I don’t get it either.
A lot of the resistance is because required national identification papers evoke some highly distasteful historical precedents.
That’s not the half of it. If you’re applying for a passport for the first time, you have to do so in person. My local post office is such an acceptance site, but they have limited hours for that, and you have to make an appointment, which may involve taking kids out of school, because everyone applying for a passport has to appear in person. They are stupid expensive ($165 for both book and card, which includes the execution fee. Kids’ passports are $120, including the execution fee. This is per person, not per family. If the three of us were to get passports, we’d be looking at $450. Skip the kid and it’d cost $330.) You also have to wait 4-6 weeks for the application to be processed and mailed back. Renewal isn’t such a big deal, but you’ve got to start somewhere.
So unless there’s overseas travel involved, most Americans don’t go through the hassle and expense of getting a passport.
I’m sorry, Elvish, but I simply cannot address your concerns until you come to grips with the crucual, all-important issue of felons denied voting rights.
You fucking liberals with your lack of interest in felon voting! Hypocrites! Hypocrites! Hypocrites!!!11
This is like tearing up the interstate highway system because Hitler liked highways. The likelihood of some sort of widespread, organized vote fraud may be low, but it is surely much higher than the likelihood of voter ID laws leading to genocide.
Um, what? If the “historical precedents” being alluded to are the “Papers!” command from Nazis in Hollywood movies, then please note that passports/ IDs were around in Europe loooong before Hitler. And it wasn’t passports that made the genocide possible.
Nobody has said it’s anything but an emotional reaction.
Apartheid is another such precedent for a national ID requirement - and it’s actually the one that came to mind first. First voting, then down the slippery slope to checkpoints on roads crossing state borders?
Thank you for illustrating my reasoning so quickly. Not only did you go right to the insults, you also didn’t bother to include the part of my post that showed why I didn’t want to try to wrest any answers from you. If I wanted to mirror your attitude, I would say it was because I’ve noticed that far too many of the lefties on this board cannot see past your own sound bites. However, I think it’s far more telling that you assume that I am right-wing merely because I asked a question. Very sad.
It is kind of amusing that you think that the quote from The Wire you have in your next post only applies to those who don’t think the way you do.
This is the second time I’ve seen this - unless things have changed VERY recently, you do need a passport to travel to Canada or Mexico, particularly if you want to come back to the US, if you go by air and it is far easier to get back in with a passport if you are driving. I think the law just changed about driving back in, but I couldn’t find anything on it in a quick search.
I have a Washington “Enhanced” license so I can go back and forth with just that. It was almost as much of a hassle to get the license as it would have been to get a passport though.
What is an enhanced license?
Eh? The whole point of Apartheid pass laws was issuing separate papers for Blacks. One national ID (without any demographic data, natch) kind of defeats the purpose of that.
It’s an otherwise normal license with a RFID chip and a background check.
You ask me, in effect, whether I think the new anti-voter rules by Republicans are partisan efforts to increase GOP’s electoral chances. The answer is: Yes.
I’ve asked you, twice, the same question and you’ve never responded, just repeated ambiguous nonsense. Can you answer now?
What is amusing is the pretense that right-wings are intellectually equal to rationalists.
That wasn’t me you quoted, it was Ca3799.