this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2025
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[–] drthunder@midwest.social 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Here's my general summary of why this is an issue: the US has been denying people the right to vote since day 1. You had to own land to vote in 1788. Half the country seceded and started a civil war that killed more of our citizens than any war since, over the right to own people. The 15th amendment was passed in 1870 to make it so you can't deny Black people the right to vote, but places made it happen anyway. They made it so you had to pass a "literacy test" with intentionally ambiguous instructions, or pay a poll tax, or one of your grandparents had to have the ability to vote (afaik, the origin of the phrase "grandfathered in").

These were all legal until the 1960s. Lots of people here have parents who were alive before legislation was passed to end Jim Crow. Without that, the racists that be turned to the War on Drugs, because lots of places take away your right to vote if you've been convicted of a felony. They started passing voter ID laws and closing down DMVs in areas with lots of black people and reducing their hours. A politician in Wisconsin bragged after the 2016 election that these laws here threw the state to Trump. They've also started banning giving food and water to people in line to vote and throwing out mail-in votes that show up after election day.

This isn't about election security and it never has been; voter fraud has never changed an election in the country's history. The real election fraud is in suppressing people's votes and fucking with voting machines (2004) and having allies in positions of power to throw the election your way (2000). There's more than that too, but it's a tangent.

[–] WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world 6 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

I mean I would argue the whole system of having to show up in person to a place to vote on a non-holiday day and wait in a long line is in of itself a way to stop poorer people from voting. I've lived in a state with only mail in voting for my whole life and as result we have some of the highest voter turn out. It makes sense the Republicans want to do everything they can to to alter that as the harder they make it for poorer people to vote the better their odds of winning are.

[–] drthunder@midwest.social 2 points 19 hours ago

100% agreed

[–] MoreFPSmorebetter@lemmy.zip 1 points 15 hours ago

I truly do not understand how this bothers people. In other countries you have to prove who you are to vote. It's ludicrous to me that there hasn't been a requirement to prove who you are this whole time.

[–] Cryophilia@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

Less of an overhaul, more of a keelhaul

[–] Guns0rWeD13@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Held by whom? Pointed at whom?

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[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago

Elections are STATE things, right? Is he nationalizing elections?

[–] Wrrzag@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago (30 children)

Doesn't most of the world already work like this? I have to identify myself to vote in my country, it's the obvious way to prevent people from voting more than one time.

[–] Longpork3@lemmy.nz 1 points 11 hours ago

There are other methods. In NZ every enrolled voter's name gets printed into a physical book, and then crossed off by poll workers when they arrive to vote. An "easy vote" card is also mailed out to everyone, which is basically in index card to make it easier to look you up in the book.

As part of the vote counting process, all these books are checked against each other, to identify if a person has cast a vote at multiple polling places. With any duplicates investigated by the electoral commission.

Effectively the only way to manipulate the vote count would be to spend election week driving around the country, voting once per polling station under the name of a person you knew was enrolled to vote, but would not be voting themselves.

There were ~150 cases of attempted/apparent vote fraud in the last election, out of ~2M votes cast. That seems like a fairly low number to me, and I would not support any attempts to restrict voting to prevent it.

[–] RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

I live in a country where every citizen automatically receives a government id at the age of 12. We have to bring that id when we go to vote, but even if I were to lose the card at the worst possible time, there are contingency measures to allow me to still cast my vote. The idea is to get as many people as possible to vote, the id card greatly facilitates this process, but it's not used as a tool to keep people from voting.

In the usa (and the uk, and maybe other countries as well), citizens are not automatically granted an id card. Instead they have to acquire + maintain some accepted means of identifying themselves if they want to vote. And there some Americans saw a great opportunity: what if they made it so that certain minority groups would have a statistically harder time acquiring and maintaining identification that was deemed acceptable? And what if the state government could arbitrarily purge voter lists based on data mined information? The voter id requirements are used not only for facilitating the voting process, but also for suppressing undesired votes.

If you want some examples of usa voter suppression: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States

[–] Jhex@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The key is what id would be acceptable.

They'll raise the bar until only ids most people (they don't like) don't have and they have already destroyed the public service so getting one will ve very very hard and/or expensive

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Interestingly, it may backfire on them. For example they cite Real Id or passport.

So passport only people who travel internationally bother to get. The rural MAGAs are less likely to get this.

For Real Id, it's more likely since that can be done with your license, however most people I know who do not fly have not bothered, because it's a hassle, they have to find DMV acceptable materials for a feature they don't even need (if you aren't flying, you still won't need real id for much of anything).

[–] Cryophilia@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

I can 100% guarantee that implementation will be left up to the states, and there will be a discretionary level of federal oversight. Rural Louisiana officials will be given leeway to allow votes for people who seem genuine. Meanwhile every single signature will be audited in New Orleans, and a computer glitch will accidentally purge a lot of people. Every town of 350 people will have 4 registration offices, and every large college town will have one office open 10am to 1pm with a 2 hour break for lunch. Registered Republicans will get mail, emails and calls reminding them to register to vote. Democratic party members will get one flyer that gets lost in the mail.

If you think these rules will be applied fairly to all, you're a sucker.

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