binary solo said:
We don't have or need photo ID laws. What we do have is a voting card mailed out to every registered voter. You take the card to the polling place hand it over and you get your ballot.
The problem with requiring photo ID is that it's a cost on those who don't have photo ID: the poor, because no one provides photo IDs for free. Thus in order to be able to vote you have to pay a fee. That does not meet the definition of "free and fair elections", it amounts to a poll tax. The concept of a photo ID is fine, it's the implementation that can be disenfranchising. Free elections just means you have to be a citizen (or permanent resident in some countries) and not have exceed the criminal threshhold (whereby your right to vote is removed for a specified time. You don't have to have a job, you don't have to have paid taxes (of course if you're convicted of tax evasion then that might cause you to lose the right to vote), you don't have to have a driver's licence or passport or any other form of ID that has a photo. So to require a photo ID for which you must pay is a tax. And it is fundamentally undemocratic to tax people in order for them to be able to carry out what is a basic right in a democracy.
The fact that the vast majority of people already have a photo ID for which they paid for it's primary purpose (drive a car, go overseas, obtain certain social services) is irrelevant. A proportion of people will not have a photo ID and their only reason for getting one is to vote. Ergo it should come at no direct cost to them.
A free photo ID is fine. A paid for photo ID specifically to be able to vote is not.
In my view it's better to let 10 people cast fraudulent votes than to prevent 1 person from casting a vote that is their absolute right in a free and fair democracy (somewhat akin to the better to let 10 guilty people walk free than see one innocent person wrongly convicted)
Besides, there is no evidence of large scale voter fraud. That being the case why are people so hell bent on photo ID? I question people's motives in this context, not the base concept of photo ID.
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There is no proof of large scale voter fraud because... becuase nobody is looking for wide scale voter fraud.
Saying there is no wide scale voter fraud is like saying there is no stealing in a store where nobody does inventory, nobody keeps track of the profits and nobody is watching any of the customers. Since when people vote, we don't really keep track of how many votes are expected to be cast, nobody see's if it's the same people voting, and nobody every gets notification that they voted.
As for sending voting cards in the mail... well that just increases the chances of both fraud AND voter supression by a factor of 10.
I mean hell, what's to stop people from breaking into mailboxes the day these things are supposed to be sent out and stealing them all.
Now a ton of people have phyiscally had their vote stolen all in one night.
Nevermind, going to areas with low voting records, stealing them, then just using them to vote. Maybe you'll catch 1 out of every 1000 people?
If anything, if you were particularly concerned by this, what you would do is get Government ID vans to show up in certain areas on certain days.
Though, if you actually look at who votes, and what you need an ID for it doesn't look like an actual problem.
It looks like a problem that may effect a couple dozen people here or there. Studies that have larger numbers generally inflating numbers by counting every potential voter as a voter, counting people who don't have ids rather then people who can't get Ids and counting anyone who's name is slightly different on their ID and their voting registration. William on your voting ID, but RIck on your voting registration, despite the fact that you could vote, your counted as if you couldn't.
