I got the hipocrisy, thanks.
How’s the voting process in the US? Are there electoral rolls? How do you check voter identity?
I’ve been on private insurance healthcare, I’ve been without healthcare, and I’m currently getting my care through the VA. Of these situations, it should surprise no on that being without healthcare sucked the most, but apparently it surprises many to learn that my VA care sucks the least. I don’t know your associates situations, but I’m overall pretty damned happy with mine. My doctor actually listens to me. My medications arrive in the mail and with minimal effort on my part (i.e., I don’t even have to go to a pharmacy) and even my non-service related mental health needs are being met.
My only complaint is that my dental work isn’t covered, but then again it’s been the exception for workplace insurance to cover that and I sure as hell didn’t have it when I didn’t have any insurance.
As leery as I am over endorsing military service as a viable option, I think it’s worked out as a pretty fair trade when it comes to my medical care.
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sufficiently, I suppose. Most of the problems come from voters being removed from the rolls, not people pretending tobe other people. Which was also mentioned in the clip.
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In any system, you measure the costs versus the benefits. The previous system of enumeration and some form of non-photo ID had an extremely low level of fraud, and more to the point, disenfranchised as few people as possible while maintaining at least some level of accountability.
A restricted range of photo ID decreased fraud by almost nothing (because the fraud was almost nothing to start with), and disenfranchised thousands upon thousands of voters. Since I have consider voting perhaps the most fundamental right outside of personal security, that’s pretty close to evil in my department.
Now, if widespread voter fraud (of the sort that is caught by photo ID) was actually a significant problem, then perhaps such measures could be justified. But without that, we’re faced with the ugly situation of having a large group of people being denied representation for next to no reason.
And honestly, I cannot conceive of how anyone who has an ounce of patriotism could countenance such measures. Surely the idea of their fellow Americans being denied such a right should unite people from all parties in outrage. To accept this as just another measure in politics is to admit that the United States has, as a state, and as an ideal, failed.
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got it, thanks for the answer. I was under the impression the voting system up there was way laxer than it actually was.
Another question: Do american citizens have a goverment issued id of some sort? Down here in argentina our DNI should be carried at all times.
No. it is state by state. I remember drivers licenses in Maine in the 80s didn’t have photos on them yet. Licenses have been somewhat standardized, but driving is a privilege, not a right, so they are not a standard ID and not required (unless you plan to lawfully operate a motor vehicle)
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One more thing that I think was left out in answers to you is that voter fraud also isn’t a problem in the U.S. because the penalties for it are too high to make it worthwhile. Not many people at all would knowingly risk these kinds of penalties just to vote again, or vote when they’re not allowed to.
Both federal and state laws include stiff fines and imprisonment for voter fraud. Under federal law, perpetrators face up to five years in prison and a fine of $10,000 for each act of fraud. In Alabama, voter fraud is punishable by up to two years in prison and a $2,000 fine. In Wisconsin, the punishment is up to 31 / 2 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Missouri imposes a penalty of up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. And in Texas, the maximum prison sentence is 10 years.
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I think I’d go with zero. I know that sounds kind of absurd in a way, but honestly, if I knew that there was one person who would only get to vote if we allowed every single other person to vote twice, I’d say that was worth it, at least their vote counts for half then, so I wouldn’t disenfranchise one voter to prevent hundreds of millions of fraudulent votes.
Obviously the problem isn’t the number of ballots, it’s when there is a conspiracy to cast hundreds or thousands of fraudulent ballots in one area to change the outcome of a particular district or state, etc. But has that ever happened? This is disenfranchising voters to try to stop phantoms and bad dreams, not actual cheating. If there has been a serious conspiracy to cheat an election, it is has almost certainly been done by counting votes, not by casting them because that is the practical place where it could be done without involving a web of people so large that it would almost have to be detected.
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For driving a vehicle, ok. That actually makes some sense. But we also require valid driver’s licenses to
- get a bank account (in case you need to drive through the lobby to the teller to make a deposit?)
- get into clubs (in case you suddenly need to participate in a demolition derby on the dance floor?)
- buy decongestants (because a runny nose must be the same thing as a running engine?)
- buy alcohol (because the only people who should be drinking are those who are driving?)
Let’s face it. Collectively, we’re stupid.
Luckily, there’s a way to fix that. We can change the government that makes the rules! All we need to do is collectively (uh-oh) make a decision. But you need a valid driver’s license to participate. And now we see that we’re collectively stupid^2.
What other relevant info is there besides that you’re alive and human? Why do you need a form for that? The fact that you are capable of participating in the voting process implies that info. Registrations are just another collection of data that isn’t needed and can cause hassle when leaked.
To actually prevent fraud, every vote would need to be signed. It would need to be public record who you voted for and when. Is there a reason we don’t do that?
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Out of curiosity, why would it matter where they voted? Why would a poll be able to accept votes from some people but not others? Is this a leftover legacy of segregation or something?
To a non-bureaucrat, it just doesn’t make sense. Sounds like the people in charge are trying to rig the system.
[quote=“tlwest, post:104, topic:73768”]
And honestly, I cannot conceive of how anyone who has an ounce of patriotism could countenance such measures.[/quote]
TBH when I was younger, dumber, and less experienced with bureaucracy, I probably would’ve supported it, and assumed it was the patriotic thing to do. I would have naively assumed that anyone without an ID was either a non-citizen or someone trying to game the system. There’s a cultural norm there, where we expect that everyone is either like us or ‘the other’ (aka evilbad). Thankfully I outgrew it.
Older and wiser, having dealt with some bureaucracies, I agree that trying to force someone else to do so is evil and unpatriotic.
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Please don’t remind me about the trains.
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Fuck yes.
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I’d rather go back to what libertarianism was before a bunch of selfish American capitalists hijacked it, an anti-authoritarian socialist movement focused on empowering everyone. I’ll admit I’m trying to move libertarian-capitalists towards some form of libertarian-socialism rather than statism. I think there will be less resistance to that and I suspect that some libertarians would prefer it, if only the lib-caps hadn’t got an interest in keeping that ideology silenced.
It’s not like governments are the main problem anymore, when we have businesses taking over their power and showing themselves to be authoritarians too. Can you blame me for wanting to take that power and directly give it back to the people?
Edit: I suppose that rather than getting rid of government, I’m wanting to change things so that everybody is the government.
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While we’re on the subject of government services that don’t suck, I should once again mention my voting experience.
I live in a country with near 100% voting attendance (Australia). Despite having, per capita, three times as many voters as the USA, I have never had to wait more than ten minutes to vote. Normally, I don’t have to wait at all.
No ID is required, elections are held on weekends, I can vote at any polling booth I go to (but if you live in a city there will always be a booth within a few blocks of your house), and pre-poll voting is trivially easy to organise if you’ve got something better to do on the day. Our electoral boundaries are drawn by a non-partisan independent agency, too.
All of the hassles and aggravation involved in voting in an American election are not some inevitable consequence of the process; they are a deliberately manufactured and maintained attempt to suppress the vote.
For a non-electoral subject, if I’m sick I go to any doctor I feel like. If it’s a bulk-billing GP (about half of 'em), they’ll send the bill direct to the government. If they don’t bulk-bill, I pay the doc and then click some buttons on a webpage to have the government refund me. I have never in my life directly paid for health insurance.
A few years ago I did something stupid and illegal that landed me in hospital in a life-threatening condition. I was in there for around a week; the treatment saved my life. Total cost to me: zero.
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You mark them off the list as they vote, without ID. After the election, you check all the lists and see if any names were marked off twice. If it’s more than the usual handful of clerical errors and dementia-driven elderly double-voters, you investigate.
If there was a suspicious pattern of mass double-voting in a close election, you may even put some effort into the investigation. It’d be a trivially easy conspiracy to crack, as the number of people required for it to be effective is not compatible with long-term secrecy.
But given that this has never ever happened in a hundred years of Australian elections, it isn’t a major concern.
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First, they do have a ledger they check you in, and you have to sign against your name (signatures must match), which keeps anyone else from signing against your name. Second, there is a further process after the fact to double-check any questionable ballots.
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Yeah, in the UK I remember (last time I voted in person there was 2005, I think), they just have a list of all the people registered in that location, and you just tell them your name and they find you and draw a line through it.
And IIRC, there’s a number on the ballot card you’re given that’s recorded there.
From what I remember of registering, they send a letter regularly, asking who lives there, and you fill out the form and send it back. That’s about it.
There was a scandal back in (I think) 2004 with ballot box stuffing when a whole load of postal votes were intercepted in Birmingham, but that’s about the only issue I remember.
I can’t vote now because although I am registered for postal votes, they don’t send them out quickly enough for me to get them back. I wonder if I’ll get a vote on Britain leaving the EU?
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Because you register to vote in your district and that is how they track if you are registered to vote. I don’t think this has anything to do with segregation, and in general, the polling place you are supposed to go to is closest to where you live. If you could vote willy nilly, then it would be possible to hit say the 5 closest polling places and they would have no way to track if you had already voted somewhere else.
Also, besides just voting for president, there will be several other offices you are voting on and judges as well. So the LOCAL options may be different.
And again, they bent over backwards to get even people not registered registered that day. They still have a system in place for the last minute folks.
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Perhaps you should register for in-person voting, then.
