This makes no sense. You can literally register to vote at the DMV and I know very few adult Americans, of one ethnicity or another, who don't have a driver's license.
You dont know many poor people, or very young people.
I work a furry convention in the Southern US, about 3% of our attendees have some ID related malady - can't get a timely appointment at DMV, missing core documentation, unable to prove residency, etc - nevermind rural voters who may live hours from a DMV.. which they can't get to without a license (assuming they can afford a car) or a ride. No bus service to speak of either.
Its a huge issue, I'd 100% support voter ID if getting an ID was free and easy, without it I'm skeptical.
Yeah, see the article about "RealID" yesterday. The first step is to require an ID, and the next step is to make it harder to get. For example, a married woman without a perfect paper trail of name changes? No Id.
I unironically keep an original copy of those documents in my safety deposit box because of this. In theory I should be able to go to the courthouse and get another copy but if 40 years down the line they've lost them I'm screwed.
I feel bad for the people in states that don't require court orders for this because they apparently have the worst time trying to update accounts.
What state do you live in? I think this argument is very frustrating when people who live largely in blue states (like California) that don't up any hurdles to getting an ID, can't imagine the level of dysfunction that is intentionally executed in other states in order to prevent people from getting IDs.
Yeah, everyone you know has a valid ID because you don't live in a battleground state that is currently fighting electoral welfare. Republicans don't care to put up barriers to getting an ID in California, Texas or New York.
Most people are friends with people like themselves?
The selection bias of extrapolating an entire country (not to mention one as large and diverse as usa) by using your friend group should be very obvious.
I'm just pointing out obvious ways in which you have selection bias here.
FWIW googling, allegedly 1 in 10 people in rural america do not have a license. Or at least that is the claim floating around the internet. So yes, i think figuring out if this is a real issue should include both checking on rural and urban people, along with many other demographics. It is not obvious how this situation differs between urban/rural.
RealID documentation requirements are a PITA. I have a birth certificate and passport and valid DL and it still was a nuisance the accumulate the required point allocation. People without those golden documents can be very hard pressed to meet the bar.
Republicans are trying to make it so that the vast majority of drivers' licenses do not work either. You may have to get a new one, with passport-level paperwork.
The group I stayed with in West Virginia (back to lander hippies basically) only had driver license, which to my understanding, is not a valid voting ID (it isn't a proof of citizenship), so they cannot vote (Lincoln county, WV). Some are a bit mad about it, most don't care.
I don't live in the USA to be able to name people, you have 350 million people, there's definitely enough to have gone through life without doing any of the stuff you mentioned, barring them from voting is antithetical to democratic values. It's very simple probabilities, there's a non-zero number of people that will be affected.
On top of that, making vote more difficult through technicalities (voter roll purges, increased friction to vote, increased uncertainty if one can vote and will be punished if not eligible due to a technicality, etc.) further tilts the scale of who votes or not, either being barred by technicalities or fear.
None of that has any place in a real democracy, if democratic values are to be uphold it should be as easy as possible for any eligible voter to exercise their vote if they so wish.
You want anecdotes to fight against statistics, I think you got stuff reversed there, mate...
Edit: ah, lol, I think I need to repeat your own words back to you:
No, I'm asking you to prove the existence of a situation. Sigh. For your sake I hope you are just pretending not to understand the difference.
Do you know anyone in your country who doesn't have a state issued ID card? It's simply not true that 10% of people lack a state ID, it's absolute fiction made up for political reasons. If you bother to look it up (of course you can't be bothered) you would find that it comes from a single phone poll which they then extrapolated using census data. It's beyond dubious.
> None of that has any place in a real democracy, if democratic values are to be uphold it should be as easy as possible for any eligible voter to exercise their vote if they so wish.
So Norway isn't a real democracy? Ireland? Germany? Sweden? Netherlands? Italy? India? Greece? Why aren't you on their forums calling them fake democracies?
The US highway administration says that 102% of driving age individuals in 3 US states have valid driver's licenses. 102%. That's a statistic published by the government. Don't try to explain to me that "you can't have more than 100%" because that's just an anecdote, mate. You have to just believe whatever the statistic says.
> Do you know anyone in your country who doesn't have a state issued ID card?
Where I live right now it's simply impossible because it's required to have an ID, we are also 10 million people so it's pretty easy to not fall into the cracks.
Back in my native country (Brazil), yes, I do know people who did not have any form of documentation up to when they died, like my great-grandfather, or a former's colleague grandmother.
> It's simply not true that 10% of people lack a state ID, it's absolute fiction made up for political reasons.
It's not about state IDs, read the fucking thing I posted, it's about "proof of citizenship" which 10% of the population does not have ready access for it, and rules have been changed for voters needing proof of citizenship, learn to read before spouting vitriol, please.
> So Norway isn't a real democracy? Ireland? Germany? Sweden? Netherlands? Italy? India? Greece? Why aren't you on their forums calling them fake democracies?
Here in Sweden is really easy to vote, nothing even close to what the US does to its voter rolls, or states deciding to purge them right before elections to tilt the scales, etc.
You simply are talking past through me, it's clear as day that people in the USA who want to vote many times cannot vote, you live there so probably have read more articles about this happening than I ever did. That is a problem, it's a fact, and it's used for political manipulation, 10% of the population will have increased friction to exercise their right to vote, that's simply anti-democratic, plain and simple :)
> Where I live right now it's simply impossible because it's required to have an ID, we are also 10 million people so it's pretty easy to not fall into the cracks.
The hypocrisy here is astonishing. You are fine with your country requiring an ID but not mine. I think it's really telling that everyone on this thread is concerned with letting people vote without an ID, but nobody is saying we should try to help get people IDs because without an ID your life must be a complete shambles and they have no access to many basic government benefits or just basic things in life.
A state ID is proof of citizenship. There is no federal ID card in the US. I'm sorry, you shouldn't express opinions on these things when you clearly don't have basic understanding of what is going on.
> You simply are talking past through me, it's clear as day that people in the USA who want to vote many times cannot vote
Right, that is what the media puts out there, but it never actually happens. That's why I said it must be easy to find at least one actual person who couldn't vote, because supposedly there are so many. I've never met one nor heard of one. In the worst case they give you a 'provisional' ballot and in the event the election is close enough they check each one to see if that person was qualified to vote before counting it, but they ALWAYS let you vote. I had to do a provisional ballot in Santa Cruz, California (one of the most liberal cities in the US) to vote for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary. It's not uncommon, but they NEVER turn anyone away from voting. I'm sorry, but you just have absolute ignorance here.
