My daughter registered to vote in our hometown when she turned 18.
When she went to college elsewhere in our state, she registered there, and voted there yesterday.
Yesterday, when I voted at my local polling place, I was surprised to see her registration slip in the book next to mine.
What would have stopped someone from going into my local polling place, getting a ballot under my daughter’s name, and voting?
Doesn’t your polling place require photo ID when you go to vote?
Not every state requires a photo id. New York doesn’t require any kind of identification, for example.
This does seem to be a serious problem in the US, when voter registration is at the county level. In a better organised system, when you register, one of the questions should be, “Are you already registered to vote in another precinct/county/state?” And if you are already registered, a message should go off you take you off the rolls at your old address. But obviously it doesn’t happen.
Absolutely no ID required at all in IL. Not even my non-photo little voter’s reg card. Which I always consider a little odd.
There has been some discussion recently that leads me to understand some folk belive requiring ID would somehow lessen participation by minorities. I believe it is criticized as the first step on a slope slipping towards voter tests - which have been ruled unconstitutional. But I do not share - or understand - that concern, so I cannot explain it well.
Always seems a little odd to me that I can just walk in, give a name, and be handed a ballot. Once I am given the ballot, there is no way to identify it to the name I gave. So, for example, let’s say I falsely pulled a ballot for my daughter and voted in the local election. At some point down the line, it might be noticed that the same person voted twice in 2 different counties. But I don’t know of any way that they would be able to tell which was the valid one. Well, you do have to sign your name, so maybe they could figure out which was the forgery. But they wouldn’t be able to determine what effect the false vote had on the outcome.
And, I guess if someone really wanted to vote twice, they could do it personally, so no forgery would be involved. In fact, my Congressional district spans 2 counties. So how hard would it be to register in both places, and vote twice?