Edit: this was never supposed to come across as support for voter ID.
So I saw this article today, and was thinking about how hilarious it would be if Dems passed some sort of voter ID law just because it would make reddit libs cry. But I don't want people to be hurt over it either. Also, as much as we like to dunk on libs, "owning" them through screwing people over is never cool.
I understand that one of the main reasons people are against it is that it's essentially a poll tax as it stands now, and I agree with that. Making IDs free would invalidate that argument. The next argument I hear is that people who live far away from DMV or Secretary of State offices would have trouble getting there to get their picture taken. I am one of those people who live far away from government offices and I manage to get my ass there once every three years.. I don't see how this is such a problem. But I also recognize that attitude is similar to some sort of bootstrapping chud bullshit.
I also see arguments that boil down to "all POC are too dumb and poor to be able to go to the DMV and get the licenses" and that's obviously awful, and is basically the libs version of the subtle racism of lower expectations. You never see this said about white people. To them, all white people who live in rural areas are MAGA knuckle draggers who don't deserve the time of day. I really feel like libs only care because it's something that is popular on the right, and they want to stick it to them. They also think that voting is the most precious and sacred institution ever devised by man, so that's part of it. Point being, I'm sure every lib that goes to vote, hands over their license when asked. It's another example of libs using POC for political gain and then not caring about any of their real problems.
I think if the government wants to hand out free ID cards and all it requires is you going to an office to get your picture taken three times a decade, I don't see a problem, and I'll bet it would actually help people out with other obstacles that require ID. Like, how do libs think these people function in other areas of life? You need an ID to buy several items, sign up for social programs, drive, enroll in school, sign up for utilities, rent/buy a house...
Please tell me if this is chuddy and set me straight if that's the case.
Rmember when Alabama passed a voting id law in 2011 and then a year after it went into effect in 2014 they attempted to shut down 31 of the states 75 driver license offices? Wanna guess the color of the residents being serviced in the majority of those offices being shutdown? It was only due to mass public backlash that kept it from happening.
I'm not talking about shitty racist bills that don't make the ID easy to get. All I'm wondering about is if they were free and easy to get, what's the problem?
Oh, totally. I expect if this actually happens, that it will be more of a hinder than a help
Seems the only solution is accelerationism. Can't be disenfranchised if we are all dead!
If you wanna pull the scope out, all that's happening is they get to go pretend to pick their next oppressor.
...I was wondering how a free ID card from the government is a bad thing.
Sorry I asked. You can all go back to posting twitter screencaps now
voter ID is a barrier to entry regardless of how much you stream line it, that's why it exists. people of colour, who are the most disenfranchised to begin with, and have the most barriers to state institutions, are disproportionately affected by this barrier, because of many systemic factors. that's the point, that's literally the whole point of it, you can make that barrier lower in a performative way but you still have the barrier there
Specifically how does it effect people with a different skin color? I'm poor, I live in the middle of nowhere, and I still get it done.
I just don't see the harm of having a free ID. Voting aside, it would be super helpful for other things. If I could rebuild society, I would throw out all forms of ID. I like my privacy, and frankly, other people don't need my info for stupid shit like voting.
because people of colour are more systemically disenfranchised than poor white people in a variety of ways. it's not that poor white people don't have it bad, it's that because of the ingrained white supremacy in American society there is at least some shit there for many poor white voters that is not for poor people of colour who have been redlined and so on
Yeah, so give the ID away and change the picture requirement to every five years or something. You can't tell me that people are stuck in their house for 5 years and never had a moment to get to an office.
yeah, some people are. people who are disabled, can't afford child care, work 2 jobs, don't have a car. that actually is the case and ngl you sound kinda racist blaming poor black voters for their own disenfranchisement because you can do it fine
I'm racist because I think that three years is plenty of time to figure out a ride to an office to get your picture taken?
How is it not racist to project helplessness onto POC?
yes, you're totally overlooking the structural racism that you do not face and saying it is their fault for not doing this 'easy' thing to you. that is racist. this barrier literally exists to stop poc voters, you already know that, and yet you're still saying why can't they just overcome that
Could you explain the barrier? I just don't see how having three years to run an errand is that big of an ask
because there are ways that poc voters are not given those opportunities. systemic impoverishment, which puts poc people who are poor worse off than white people who are poor, is one very obvious thing that leads to other factors like the lack of a car, the need to work longer hours, a lack of child care. second of all is how this disenfranchisement leads to this barrier being seen as one to just not bother with many times as what's even the point. redlining means that typically black American have been forced into their own areas that very often do not have access to the same public facilities are more white areas.
America is a racialised society that exists to put poc down, to not let them have a say, to not let them have a chance to get far in life, and you have to see how that has secondary impacts like it actually being hard to register to vote for legal poc Americans. this doesn't even touch on the whole ass thing of illegal immigration and how illegal residents should still have a say in a democracy they live in, or migrant labour where many Mexican citizens work on farms for months in the US and ought to have a say on US affairs that impact their lives that they don't have a change to vote on, but that's a secondary issue.
The part about how Mexican immigrants who aren't "legal" yet being able to have a say in the democracy is a really good point. I don't believe in borders, and if I had my way, you wouldn't need an ID to vote or sign up for government assistance. We should just be helping people no strings attached.
That being said, it's not the way thing are right now, and I don't see a path to making that happen. There are always going to be people at the top with their boot on our neck. That's not a reason to stop fighting and taking whatever we can get
You can’t tell me that people are stuck in their house for 5 years and never had a moment to get to an office.
I'll put it like this. Imagine this person does exist; do they have the same right to vote as everyone else? A person sleeping on the street has the same control over the government as the richest man in the country, that's how its supposed to work right?
Yes, but there's always going to be someone falling through the cracks. There is no possible way to guarantee everyone gets a ballot without massive societal overhaul. That won't happen without revolution or small incrementalism until we all burn alive.
What's the solution? If we (rightfully) don't require ID for voting, they still have to get to the polls (which I've been assured is impossible and don't even suggest it) for some people or they have to have access to a mail box for a mail in ballot, which excludes homeless and a bunch of people in other situations..
Solution? Just don't make it more difficult in the interim elections are only so important anyways
right, lmao look at the lab leak shit. when Trump said it it was stupid and a completely baseless accusation, now it's the party line for the dems they're all 'just saying...'
or the camps, or police brutality, or so many other issues which every dem was against in the lead up to the election which suddenly they flipped on
They do that with literally everything. I'm surprised they don't see that this is the kind of stuff they were mad at chuds about.
This is what I imagine would happen. They are just as good at mental gymnastics as MAGAs
Issuing 100% ID cards to everyone in the country is a possible step they would take as an anti-immigration measure in preparation for huge climate induced migration waves.
They can dial up the fascism with it as the climate refugees get desperate and simply cross into the country illegal in the tens of thousands.
"Your papers please."
Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich— that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the “petty”— supposedly petty— details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for “paupers”!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc.,— we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been in close contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.
—Lenin, State and Revolution
But if all of us peons were on an even playing field (free ID) it would be happening to all of us. Right now it's just happening to some of us
But no matter what it's just another pointless barrier. Even in a hypothetical country where there isn't any racism, it still prevents people who happen to not have an ID on them from voting, reducing the number of people who can vote, who are probably more likely to have other stuff on their mind causing them to forget or lose their ID. There should be no reason to add requirements to voting. Requirements should be reduced over time as technology improves.
In Washington state, the government doesn't even require stamps on ballots (which are all mail-in) and it takes 5 minutes to change your mailing address online to get your ballot. They've consistently made it easier to vote instead of harder. And the only people with any incentive to "cheat" are rich people who already have hundreds of more effective ways of influencing elections (including electoral fraud of course).
I didn't come here to argue in favor of ID for voting. I think everyone should be able to mail in their ballot with no stamp.
Voter IDs are a poll tax which is unconstitutional. I don't care if you make the actual ID free. A person still needs to take time out of their day to get one. This is a tax on your time and in some cases is monetary in nature to. You need to spend gas to get there in a car or you need to spend money on a bus. Also working class poor would have to take time off of work which means a loss of money on their paycheck. All of these add up to a poll tax no matter how you slice it.
That's true for everyone though. It takes effort to do stuff. What do we do? Send someone to every house and ask them personally? That would disenfranchise mute people, agoraphobics, people who can't be in contact with others because of an immune disease....
What do we do?
Not have a voter ID. Its truly that simple. We cannot allow people to be disenfranchised because of something like a voter ID. Once again its a poll tax which is unconstitutional.
But how do we make sure those people that can't get to the DMV are able to get to the polling station?
The postal services offer free PO Boxes for the homeless. I am getting super tired of these bad faith replies.
Sounds more like you're mad that you can't square the circle between "there are some people that no matter what, are disenfranchised and fuck you for suggesting otherwise" and "there are plenty of avenues for disenfranchised people to work it out and just go get a free mailbox"
If the argument hinges on free IDs, that will never happen in a million years. Also, even if that was the case, it’s not “bigotry of low expectations” to recognize that the poorest citizens might not be able to afford to take time off to go to the DMV during business hours. Besides, the only type of fraud IDs prevent is voter impersonation which is a high risk low reward scenario. You have to know the name and address of the person you’re stealing a vote from, know that they haven’t voted yet and potentially getting spotted by neighbors or poll workers who know the person you’re pretending to be.
Voter fraud would be really hard out where I live because there are two families in this town. All of the local government people here are from those families and know everyone else. Last time I voted,I showed them my address and they were like "oh, you bought my nephew's house over on redacted road".
All I'm getting at with the bigotry of low expectations is whenever that argument comes up, there's only one race ever mentioned, and one area of the country mentioned. I find it odd that it never gets talked about in regards to the First Nations reservations out west or people living in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. My problem with that argument is just the way that libs use POC as props then throw them to the wolves once they got their way.
To provide a specific example of a barrier that people would face under even a free ID with lax updating requirements and better access to issuing offices: a lot of people do not have sufficient documentation to get an ID, particularly the unhoused, people born without official record, and people who have lost the paperwork for whatever reason. Without the documentation, it becomes either impossible or a much longer, byzantine process to obtain ID.
Now, for the more theoretical question: could an ID system exist that was accessible and egalitarian enough to be distributed to very nearly everyone with ease and therefore not be a meaningful obstruction to voting rights? Yes, but it would still be pointless to require. Individual voter fraud has pretty much never been an issue in this country, without these measures.
The instinct to say, "well ok, some people are putting voter ID laws into place and maybe it's because they believe in it. So we should at least make the process easy." Is understandable, but very much in keeping with the liberal orthodoxy of letting the GOP have its way and we'll fight again someway else. I think their record speaks for itself in that regard, but to expand: accepting what is inarguably a barrier to democratic participation at present and provides no benefit (save that barrier) in order to mitigate the harm in the future always means you have lost and will further have to expend resources to simply achieve where you were to begin with.
It is one hundred times better to fight at the source and reject the requirements entirely even once they are in place. We should not speak of how voter ID needs to be made easier to reduce its harm; we should speak of how all voter ID can do is harm.
It is one thousand times better to fight at the root and reject our bourgeois republic that was never intended to be democratic and will by its structure resist any change grafted onto it toward the end of empowering all people.It's the norm in most countries, but of course muricans are gonna use it racisticly.
I really hate voter ID. I don't know how it is elsewhere but by the time you get a ID and registered to vote you've already proven who you are using at least 4 different types of documentation. It's just incredibly tedious and doesn't make any sense.
True. It's also a solution looking for a problem. I just think that if the government is going to require people to use an ID for pretty much everything, the least they can do is give it away
