I’ve said that I think Democrats are, on average, the more determined voters, and I do think that.
What I think is going through the minds of both Democrats and Republicans is the idea that Democrats are disproportionately Black, and Black people are less determined voters. Republicans often think it’s because Blacks are lazy, while Democrats tend to think racism and poverty would explain it.
I don’t know what state you live in, but when I had to get a new DL after moving to CA from FL, it was mandatory that I get a Real ID and it was $75. A new passport is $165, and dog help you if you don’t have your birth certificate. I don’t recall how much that was, but I had an extra layer of fun, having been adopted, so it took several weeks. There is nothing ‘mere’ about any of it. I wasn’t working then so I had all the time in the world to go here and there, and make phone calls. I also had the money this time around, but there have been times in my life that these extra burdens would have rendered the whole situation moot.
Since the states orchestrate their own elections, how is the Fed able to stick their noses in? Is it because it’s for a federal election? What about all the non- federal, state elections? Would these ridiculous rules effect those also?
Yes, because the fucking Republicans do this deliberately as a conscious voter-suppression tactic.
Y’all are getting hung up on the amount of money. You are forgetting that as soon as Republicans force the camel’s nose of mandatory ID into the tent of voting, they start engaging in all sorts of shenanigans to ensure their side has an advantage.
Here’s a story from a couple of years ago where state Republicans target the means of identification typically used by students.
On the flip side, here’s a story from a year ago in which Republicans expand identification to include hunting licenses and firearms permits.
They don’t want students voting, but they do want hunters and gun owners voting.
Hmmm, I wonder what distinguishes these two groups.
And there are lots and lots of these kinds of stories, showing how Republicans are using voter ID not as a means of insuring clean elections but in order to slant likely participation.
Here’s something from the ACLU ten years ago noting that the Republicans have been closing DMV offices in a targeted fashion based on voter leanings. If you’re a Black voter in a Democratic district, you have to travel for an hour or more to get to an office. But if you’re in one of the GOP’s favored areas, you’ve got much easier access.
So all this “it’s just an ID, how hard can it be” stuff is bullshit and ignores documented history. We know the GOP will treat this as another tactic in the electoral toolbox, because they already fucking do.
I live in a country which has compulsory voting. If you don’t vote, and you don’t have a really good excuse (you were unexpectedly hospitalized, your employer sent you out of the country at the last minute and you didn’t have time to request an absentee ballot, etc), you get fined. But at the same time, the country makes it really easy to vote. Polls are open all day on a Sunday. Absentee ballots are freely available. Public transportation is free. Everyone uses the same ID, which is freely issued. And so on. (Also, the compulsory aspect ends at age 75. The elderly are still able to vote, of course, but they’re not penalized for health or mobility issues.)
If you’re going to support something like this SAVE Act, then you must at a minimum provide the same kind of guarantees for equal — and I mean equal — accessibility to the ballot box for all — and I mean all — voters. Any sort of discrepancy will be leveraged for advantage.
This is also not new information. All of this has been well known for twenty years. How is it still being hashed out as if this were some great mystery?
Seems like just a couple of months ago, boy does time fly, that DOGE (et al) went on a government agency local office closing spree . . . not that that could possibly be related.
This is a key question, and fortunately one that we have some good research to turn to for a possible answer:
The estimates that average over all six election types suggest that the advantage to either major party is about 1% point or less, with confidence intervals that indicate that Republican or Democratic advantages are plausible.
I can’t find it now, but I remember reading something that suggested that the 10s of millions of people in the country who don’t have an applicable ID are generally not the type who vote anyway, regardless of their nominal political affiliation, meaning that in practice, voter ID laws are “much ado about nothing.” That is, they don’t seem to have much of an effect either way, certainly not one that’s worth the amount of effort put into either passing these or resisting them.
@PhillyGuy has an interesting theory about Democrats actually being more determined, which did actually manifest itself in a way:
These estimates indicate that the first few voter ID laws (i.e., until about 2012) exerted substantively large and statistically significant (P < 0.05) negative effects—a Democratic advantage. The small sample sizes warrant appropriate caution, but the estimates imply average differences around 10% points during the early years. The effects then weakened in subsequent elections, leveling off near zero. This heterogeneity suggests that initial Democratic efforts to counteract the laws were quite effective but may have waned in efficacy over time.
Voter ID laws may actually have backfired on Republicans in the short term, and had no effect in the long.
Now, there are ideological reasons to oppose voter ID, but to me those are mitigated by free public IDs (and perhaps active state programs to get people proper IDs and get them registered). That may be why voter ID tends to have wide support – even as a lefty, I don’t really have a problem with every citizen needing a state issued ID card if they want to participate in government. It’s fairly common worldwide and isn’t really controversial elsewhere.
Of course, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that Republicans do not have positive intent on this issue. Voter ID has always been grouped in with much worse laws that making voting harder – things like restricting mail-in voting, restricting voting hours, restricting polling locations, and limiting ballot drop boxes, the latter 3 of which are often structured in such a way that they target minority voters who are more likely to vote D. The fact that one of their half-a-dozen attacks on Democrats doesn’t actually work doesn’t forgive them for their absolute disregard for the democratic process.
I kind of feel the same way about the SAVE act. People are talking like it’s going to change the midterms, but 1) Republicans have gone on record saying this is not the issue they’re going to use the nuclear option for, meaning it will probably never pass, and 2) it only affects new voter registrations. I’m curious how many people actually need to register to vote for the first time and don’t have a birth certificate, for instance. It would probably take years for any measurable partisan effect from requiring citizenship for voter registration, and it may never.
But we can’t separate the SAVE act from the ill intent of those pushing for it. Has it been combined with any effort to make proof of citizenship free? Does it give grants to states to make birth certificates free to get, or does it reduce the cost of US passports to $0? Of course not, because whether or not it will actually skew an election, Republicans think it might, and everyone should make them feel bad for that. I don’t think Democrats necessarily need to go to the mat on this one, though.
Order a new birth certificate immediately from the county of your birth. I’ve had to do this for myself and my kids numerous times. I order two at a time now, since my kids keep misplacing them.
I’ve posted in one of the other threads on this: it took me 7 months to get a passport due to married name change. The county misspelled my name in the clerk records 40 years ago. I had to obtain a notarized affidavit from a person who knew me both before and after the name change. It took 3 in-person appointments at the community center during my working hours and a sister getting the affadavit notarized. Plus the costs involved.
And guess what: Public Libraries have been ordered to stop processing passport applications.
How can anyone think that the system’s not being rigged?
Now all they have to do is limit the number of passport offices in blue areas. Sucks to be you.
The passport office where I am is 2 bus rides away, downtown where parking is expensive, and packed. You need an appointment to go there. And it can take multiple visits. Without the public library appointments, the offices won’t be able to keep up with people needing help.
I keep seeing confusion about the issue of birth certificates in this thread and other places. A quick online search indicates it is possible to get a new certified copy of a birth certificate from the office of vital records in the state/county where you were born. I know this works because I have done this myself on a couple of occasions.
The idea one possesses the “original” and only copy of their birth certificate appears to be inaccurate, at least in the U.S.
Thank you for this wonderful post. It’s spot on. Republicans have been making “voter fraud” at the ballot box – mostly non-existent – a basis to rig elections for decades. You’ve summarized it beautifully.
Right, And it is a MAGA idea, thus likely a bad racist bigoted idea.
Short and sweet – haven’t read the thread:
“They had things — levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
– Donald Trump - March 2020
Mail-in ballots could be “devastating” for Republican candidates.
– Georgia state House Speaker David Ralston (R)
“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
We should make it as easy and as safe as humanly possible for any eligible voter to vote. Gerrymandering and voter suppression campaigns may help put a party in office but they’re virtually treasonous (though, clearly, that isn’t the deterrent it once was).
Like nearly every other thing that Trump claims (“accuse the other side of that which you are guilty”), there’s really no legit problem to be solved here. As is typical for Trump, The Big Lie – repeated often enough – converts people to its premise.
But it’s still a lie. And tantamount to treason.
I do not know about always, but usually, yes.
This headline seems to me an accurate description of Trump’s Truth Social post where yesterday he pledged a new executive order:
CNBC: Trump says he will issue executive order to get voter-ID requirements before midterms
If the executive order just says that you need photo ID to vote, it will be a predictable own-goal for Democrats to oppose it. But there’s an excellent chance Trump will include unpopular SAVE Act provisions like requiring presentation of a birth certificate, or restrictions on vote-by-mail. Those Democrats should oppose, because they are no only unnecessary, but also unpopular.
So what are the chances that this SAVE Act abomination will pass the Senate?
It needs 60 votes, and I can’t imagine any Democrats voting for it (even Fetterman, the Zell Miller of Joe Manchins, is a no, as cited above), so it’s probably DOA.
The problem is that in most (or all, post 2001) jurisdictions, you are going to need to establish your legal entitlement to order a copy. If your name has changed multiple times, how do you do that? Right now each jurisdiction sets its own rules on what documentation they’ll accept.
Taking this literally, it then will be easy to vote when ineligible. Do I realize that extremely few ineligible persons will vote? Yes, but that’s not the only consideration.
Democrats should advocate for a system where eligible voters see an effort being make to stop ineligible voters. It might be good enough to require either signature matching or photo ID. But to just say that we should make it as easy as humanly possible to vote unnecessarily hands over to Republicans a potent issue.
WA has been all vote-by-mail for 20 years now. We use signature verification.
It’s actually kind of a hassle for me. When I was young, I used to write out my full signature in cursive. After I got to the age where I was regularly having to sign credit card receipts and the like, my signature devolved into my first and last initials each followed by a brief squiggle, but I still have my full signature on file with the Secretary of State’s office, so when I sign my ballot I have to make an effort to sign it the way I used to.
I suppose I could update it, but at this point taking the time to write my full signature is part of the “ritual” of voting for me. I’ve only had my signature challenged once, around 18 years ago or so, and as I recall all I had to do was sign another form that they mailed me and send it back.
It is worth repeating that the same act failed last session.
119th Congress (passed the House on April 25, 2025, pending before the Senate)
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/22/all-actions
118th Congress (passed the House on July 10, 2024, died in the Senate)
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/8281
~Max
That’s because they’re lying and we’re telling the truth.
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
–Mark Twain
The Republicans insist this is a fake issue but the actual text of the SAVE Act does not answer your question:
I consider this a bit of a GOP own-goal. The Save Act could have said that if a married woman shows a birth certificate with her first name and signs a statement that it is her birth certificate, it will be accepted. Instead they make the rules a mystery to by addressed by a federal commission at some unstated future time.
Requiring a first name birth certificate match, but not a full match, would strongly discourage trans people from voting without annoying your typical GOP married woman voter. It’s so obvious to me that this would in their interest that I’m surprised it isn’t in the SAVE Act.