I find it ridiculous that you cannot buy pseudoephedrine without the pharmacy checking whether you've purchased any quantity of the OTC medicine in any other state via a inter-agency, multi-state networked solution... And yet this kind of stuff still exists.
There is more than enough way to solve these problems, but for some f'n reason there is no will...
EDIT: The following may be specific to the U.S. state.
Also ridiculous but only tangentially related:
Psychiatrists (or similar functions) cannot send prescriptions for ADHD drugs (Adderall / Amphetamines etc) to pharmacies (by any method) [EDIT: at least in Washington State as of March 2020]. You need to pick up the physical prescription from the health care provider, then take it to any pharmacy. The pharmacy may not even have the medication, and certainly will need some time to fill it on the spot.
Of course this is a controlled substance. Somehow this process is imposed by the DEA perhaps together with the FDA (unsure). I know it's a running joke to throw out the term Blockchain, but this really is where Blockchain might be a good solution. Regardless I don't see how a physical piece of paper changes the potential for abuse or any tracking of the patient. The pharmacy doesn't exactly make me verify my identity any differently from normal prescriptions to be picked up.
Also, the prescription is generally only issued for a month. You may get a few prescriptions with different start dates into the future. So every month you will make your pharmacy scramble (and waste your own time) because they could not prepare for your prescription to be filled.
All of this is even more annoying in the time of COVID-19. I need to unnecessarily have in person interactions for things that can happen remotely or virtually.
> Also ridiculous but only tangentially related: Psychiatrists (or similar functions) cannot send prescriptions for ADHD drugs (Adderall / Amphetamines etc) to pharmacies (by any method). You need to pick up the physical prescription from the health care provider, then take it to any pharmacy. The pharmacy may not even have the medication, and certainly will need some time to fill it on the spot.
This is not true, at least in California. I take a certain ADHD medicine that’s a Schedule 2 drug. So I’m limited to 30 day prescriptions with no refills (so my doctor sends in 3 at a time), but my doctor can most definitely send them direct to my pharmacy.
That's odd that you can't get a 90-day supply. I'm also on a Schedule 2 drug for ADHD in California and have gotten a 90-day supply with Kaiser.
Granted, when I was seeing an individual psychiatrist prior to having Kaiser, she said I could only get a 30-day supply as well and would just send 3 at a time too. I feel like there is a way to do a 90-day supply that many providers either don't want to do or don't know about.
Edit - It might be something that's possible with electronic scripts and not possible with paper.
With Kaiser at least, if a doctor sends an Rx to the pharmacy the pharmacy can likely see the history. If the doctor sends a 90 day Rx and the last fill date was around 90 days prior, it's plain from that data the abuse is unlikely. They can also easily ping the doctor to verify the Rx and after so many Rx'es would flat the Rx as ok for 90 day supplies. But that's just me spitballing.
Some random pharmacy can't see the fulfillment history from other pharmacies. They only way they could see abuse would be after the fact. They don't want to set themselves up for a lawsuit or criminal investigation so they just limit their Rx amounts.
You don't triple fill all at once. The doctor calls in one prescription for, say January, then one prescription for February, then one for March. You have to go to the pharmacy each month, but the doctor only 4 times a year. Basically the doctor can prescribe a prescription that doesn't start until a certain time. So the start time on the three prescriptions differs.
That's how it's done in FL for non-opioid schedule II. None of our Dr's can call or transmit Schedule II Rx, they have to be hand carried paper scripts.
Opioids are limited to a 3 day supply tho (with some tight exceptions, for those patients that can afford a PM Dr).
It varies state-to-state. In Michigan it is as op described. You have to go in person to get a physical prescription. A few years ago it changed briefly but it changed back. Since COVID the rules have been relaxed at least in MI.
Yep. For a long time in Michigan it was physical prescription only, but they could write you two additional 30 day scripts at the time, or you could get a longer script if you were going to be out traveling. But you still have to take it to the pharmacy yourself every 30 days in most cases. (again, much of this has been relaxed.)
My gut says that a lot of this is because of all of the regulations around handling and amount-on-hand rules in MI. There is one not-terrible side effect to the resulting process however; Since typically you'd just wait to get it filled (or pick it up ASAP,) It limits the risk of an electronic fill sitting around and getting 'lost'.
I’m in Minnesota and take both a stimulant and testosterone. You can pick up the prescription from the doctor and deliver it to the pharmacy, or they can mail it in. They can’t use their online system, which I would think would actually be the most secure out of those three options. 30 days only for the stims, 90 days for testosterone.
My psychiatric nurse practitioner certainly wanted to reduce her own possible COVID-19 exposure here in the Seattle area but stressed that she could not call or send in the prescriptions for Adderall because of government regulations. Unclear who that regulating body is however.
My GP doc in WA sends electronic prescriptions of Adderall. When I was using a solo psychiatrist, he would give 3 mos of (1 per month) printed hardcopy prescriptions.
Note, getting the scrip from my GP requires an annual HIPAA privacy waiver and random piss tests. Privacy waiver is because they share medical records of patients prescribed controlled substances with law enforcement or any other local or federal government agency that wants to take a peek.
They are testing for abusive behavior to identify drug abusers, re-sellers, or negligent providers (over prescribing).
I have read some people complaining that their provider will not prescribe the drug they need if THC comes up in the test. That is not universal, it probably depends on the individual provider or the health provider system.
The best part is that law enforcement can review the records at will (as long as they can articulate an official reason which is a very low bar.)
I guess I did overstate it. I was thinking about the health system I use.
I assume the drug testing requirements may depend on the state or the provider. It benefits the provider/health system by providing evidence they are taking reasonable precautions to limit abuse.
Also, I don't know if psychiatrists in WA are held to a different reporting standard than general practitioners. When I used a solo psychiatrist, no testing or privacy waiver required. When my insurance changed, I lost that psychiatrist and went to a regular doc in a large health system (UW Physicians). They require the testing and waiver.
But the law was changing when I made the change, so it may apply to psychiatrists now, too.
UW is a special case. By law they have to accept everyone in the state and medicare has special requirements for some medications. To avoid discrimination they have everyone take the same tests.
> requires an annual HIPAA privacy waiver... Privacy waiver is because they share medical records of patients prescribed controlled substances with law enforcement or any other local or federal government agency that wants to take a peek.
So, how good is a regulation if you need to waive it for something as basic as getting your medication?
Yes, it totally sucks, and it almost caused me harm trying to avoid it. I am sure I was not the only one. I imagine some poor souls got into some real trouble even suicide.
The American Medical Association, et al., sold out their patients in exchange for not being held accountable for the US opioid crisis. (my opinion of course.)
My doc didn't think it was any big deal, she said I was her first patient to question it. She thought the waiver had some limitations, I showed her that it did not have any limitations except that access had to be for official use (which is not much of a limitation.) The records are stored in an electronic registry that various local or federal government agencies can access without warrants or notice.
As a lawyer I cannot imagine voluntarily entering into such an agreement against the interest of my clients. I still find it shocking.
I had a similar issue with refusing to give a podiatrist I saw one time my SSN.
The rationale was, prior to getting a surgery once, I was asked in pre-op to review my EMR information by the nurse. The info was completely wrong and very dated. I asked the nurse where the info was from since I had never been to that hospital chain before. Her comment was an affiliated urgent care I went to years ago was in their medical system. But the brand name was different because they were acquired. I was pissed. What if I had been rolled in unconscious and that EMR record was meaningfully inaccurate against my wellbeing?
So now it raises eyebrows but I refuse to provide any nonlegally required info. And to OPs point the response is one of almost mocking surprise. But the counter argument is, why would I trust you to not sell my data going forward? What if I'm wheeled into a hospital unconscious and your medical records from 20 years ago somehow cause me harm? Absolutely no way.
So I looked it up because that is very perculiar, and my quick skimming of the laws seem to imply that Schedule II through V drugs can be sent electronically:[0]
> (1) Information concerning a prescription for a controlled substance included in Schedules II through V, or information concerning a refill authorization for a controlled substance included in Schedules III through V, may be electronically communicated to a pharmacy of the patient's choice pursuant to the provisions of this chapter if the electronically communicated prescription information complies with the following:
My understanding is that an NP is considered as autonomous as a physician. I know several of my friends who are PAs and they're lobbying to be treated the same as NPs, as they feel that some of their restrictions are unnecessary and bureaucratic, logistical issues only, rather than based on patient care.
I think you misunderstood the parent comment. The commenter is not saying NPs are a problem, they are pointing out that NPs aren't treated with due respect. The sarcastic use of "lowly NP" gives it away.
Every month I end up playing the game of "will they have my medicine?" and regularly have to drive around different pharmacies to find one that can fill the prescription that day (because they only fill one every thirty days, and there is exactly a thirty day supply given, so there is zero buffer).
This becomes far more problematic if I have to travel for work (which was very common pre-COVID) and I'd literally have to drive an hour to a 24hr pharmacy and wait until 12.01am on the day of my flight, then wait half an hour to get the prescription filled, drive an hour home, then leave at 5.30am to get my morning flight.
And if the refill date occurs when I am away, I'm SOL - CA won't take a prescription from WA for a controlled substance. I usually have to ask my wife to go in early to pick it up, then spend a ton of money to overnight the medicine to my hotel.
There needs to be a system that allows for people who have been taking the same stuff for years to have SOME kind of buffer or slight flexibility. The current system is bullshit.
This is an insidious predicament to be in, having once been through this myself. I take it you are also forced to make the decision to burn meds to be able to function while driving to and from pharmacies or face life altering withdrawals to conserve your 30 day supply while you are navigating this BS pharmacy refill circus act we find ourselves subjected to when filling a script we've been on for years, yet met with disdain or a watchful eye meant to keep tabs on a suspected criminal/drug seeker by an overworked and grossly understaffed pharmacy tech who acts as a gatekeeper to getting it filled and will give you a hard time if you are from out of town.
We aren't opioid addicts abusing the system and putting a strain on tax payers, we need this stuff to be a functional and contributing member of society because our brains don't produce enough dopamine for myriad reasons. Why subject us to this hell every 30 days, we need medical reform NOW!
> Every month I end up playing the game of "will they have my medicine?" and regularly have to drive around different pharmacies to find one that can fill the prescription that day (because they only fill one every thirty days, and there is exactly a thirty day supply given, so there is zero buffer)
This is an utterly absurd situation - surely the people coming up with this stuff must realise this?
If anything, stupidity like this could actually cause more people to go to the black market.
What is genuinely enraging however, is when my son runs out and we can’t get him his medicine. His symptoms are honestly pretty bad and he is aware of them but can’t do anything about it. Hearing him ask “daddy, why can’t I have my medicine?” is both heartbreaking and enraging.
In the end, we asked the doctor, who agreed to issue us a slightly different prescription for him a few days after we filled the first one. This let us get the second prescription Refilled immediately so we thankfully have a small buffer for him now.
This reminds me of Gabe Newell's famous quote, "Piracy is a service problem." If you could buy your medicine illegally as easily as people pirate digital goods, you absolutely would.
Why do they have to make this such a pain in the ass? They are trying so hard to restrict abusers that it makes it almost impossible to get treatment if you actually have ADHD. Do you know what people with ADHD do? Forget to make appointments because they got distracted. Essentially the system is set up to be hostile to ADHD sufferers to actually get help . I ended up having to pay concierge mental health to consistently be able to fill this script. The doctors would sometimes refuse to see me because of this diagnosis, and the pharmacies would lie to me that they were out of the medication and to come back on x date. If I do this they just repeat the same statement and choose a different random day. This was so much trouble that I spent years without treatment and it affected my life terribly. I did things like cause 10s of thousands of dollars in damages to apartments due to Inattention, almost getting myself fired, driving extremely poorly, almost failing out of school. This condition is preventing me from doing things I really want to do with my life because theres a wall of motivation I have to get over, even for things I enjoy.
I sometimes forget to take my ADHD medication on several days and only realize after the fact that I was very unproductive. My friends will also notice that my mind was more cluttered again. I dive from tangentially related thing to the next, only connected in my mind by emotion. Eventually I reach a stack overflow - I'll have no idea how the conversation started or what the real topic or task were.
You can still suffer from the same, every day normal forgetting of things on ADHD medication. It doesn't instantly make you superhuman. You still need systems to remember things effectively, ADHD or not.
It’s funny 90% the time people throw out the claim “blockchain is a good solution for this”, what they really have in mind is just an append-only database controlled by trusted parties. (Before someone tells me the story of Coca Cola’s supply chain, thanks, I’ve heard dozens of times.)
I don't know if it's because you're talking about a psychiatrist or not, but my wife takes Vyvanse for ADHD, prescribed by her family doctor. Ours just retired, and while he wasn't allowed to do more than give her a paper prescription to pick it up each month, the NEW doctor can, because she is set up to send it electronically.
Most other prescriptions he could call in, but I think in WA there's a special system you have to get set up with to do it yourself.
Now my wife doesn't need to physically pick it up anymore. If it would be useful to you, I can find out from my doctor's office what system they had to be part of to allow them to call in prescriptions like that.
Uh what? This seems like the kind of thing solvable with routine electronic authenticated messages from doctor to pharmacy. The problem there is mandating the dubious paper method as the only way.
> ...with routine electronic authenticated messages from doctor to pharmacy.
These are professions that still use fax machines. The concept of sending scrips between random doctors and pharmacies over electronic means is too daunting (HIPPA, privacy lawsuits, child protection laws etc). They would rather stick them in envelopes. Giving it to the post office won't get them sued.
Perhaps for some, but for the last 5-10 years all my doctors have had me specify a pharmacy and the prescriptions gets sent their directly without me having to hold anything physical.
This isn't the case in NY from my understanding as I've seen psychiatrists send ADHD prescriptions digitally to both physical pharmacies and delivery pharmacies (Capsule). So it might be a restriction imposed by your state.
This makes sense because information about controlled substance prescriptions are stored in a central registry so law enforcement or other government agents can review them easily. The federal regs only apply to controlled substances, so the e-script systems 'probably' direct controlled substance scrips to the DEA registry. But, the health providers, insurance companies, health systems, pharmacies networks/chains, and so on, are probably keeping a copy of everything.
So from my understanding, most prescriptions are handled over the phone/fax, and regulated drugs require some kind of verifiable signature that a fax does not comply with. I believe mail works fine though, as none of this makes sense.
There is an e-signing program that I think lets the pharmacy watch the signature being made or something that is now fixing this issue, but I hear it is both expensive and rather difficult to use.
Look for a pharmacy that offers delivery, they can make the trip to your doctors office for you as again these regulations are ridiculous.
Physical signatures are nearly worthless a digital signature ensures that the prescription is valid unless the doctors computer or the pharmacies is compromised.
This would presumably be no worse than keeping people from forging paper prescriptions.
It would logically be based on a public private key pair like gpg.
I was a bit mistaken, the law requires a full written prescription, not just signature, and it can't be a copy. The system in place allows for electronically writing prescriptions so they will still comply with the written requirement.
There are more security requirements like what you describe, but much of this is about making a new standard comply with laws from the 70's.
This is what my doc told me, that prescriptions had to be via paper in my state. Another doc said he sent electronically but had to pay a high fee to set up a system to do it for him.
During covid, my doc all of a sudden started sending electronically.
I’m not sure if my doc was wrong, or lying, or just didn’t understand the stupid regulations around some meds.
Lots of small clinics that don't write lots of prescriptions use paper. (I do some IT for one.) It's not regulation, it's cost. As long as it's cheaper to buy the paper and take the time to print on it than to pay monthly fees to the appropriate online clearinghouses, some doctors will do exactly that.
Lots of prescriptions that don't see "abuse" can be communicated to the pharmacy with a phone call. Amphetamines are not such a drug.
I find this post interesting because the OP lept to blaming "The Feds" and specifically the FDA and DEA (two frequent targets of popular ire) even though subsequent replies make it clear the OP has no factual basis for any claims made.
This is not true anymore, Adderall can be sent electronically to the pharmacy. It makes things so much easier since I don’t have to find time to get into the office to pick up the paper prescription.
I did a quick search and found that Washington State Senate Bill 5380 [0] that was signed into law in May of 2019 says that Schedule 2 substances can be prescribed electronically in 2019. There are exceptions to that and your prescriber may not participate in it.
It definitely depends on the state. Something to possibly check into, if you have a primary care doctor you can ask them to conference with your psychiatrist so your primary can prescribe it through normal means. I don't know Washington regulations for that, so it might not help.
In PA, my doctor's only been able to send Adderall prescriptions directly to the pharmacy within the past couple years. If yours doesn't, check that it's not a rule from your insurance. My insurance makes me sign a form to choose the only pharmacy location I can use for those meds, amd I need an appointment with my doctor every 6 months.
It's hard to tell what's a federal law, a state law, or my insurance company judging me as a likely junkie.
It would be enforced by the DEA, but as far as I remember, the requirement that only paper prescriptions are accepted for C-IIs is written into the law itself. So only Congress could change it.
There is actually a way to e-prescribe, but there are strict security requirements and I think it varies by state. IDK why blockchain is needed though, an ordinary digital signature ought to be enough and that's what the e-prescribing rule requires.
I don't understand why it has to be so complicated. In most of Europe you go to a pharmacy with your health insurance card and 30 seconds later you walk out with the drug you have been prescribed. On the rare occasions when it is out of stock you can come back later (usually it takes only a few hours) or go to another pharmacy around the corner where the chances are they will have it.
A odd, underdiscussed, difference I noticed between the US and Germany (and presumably other European countries) is around packaging. In Germany pretty much any medication comes packaged for retail in a cardboard box with tablets on one of these bubble sheets. Similar to most over the counter stuff in the US. In the US the pharmacist puts the tablets into an orange container with the precise counts requested by the prescription and with an individualized label. I wonder how much of the logistics issue in the US is from the individual packaging work required.
Yes, I have seen that in American sitcoms and films. In Europe, as you say, they come in cardboard boxes. The pharmacist will cut out and keep the barcode in the case of prescription drugs.
> I know it's a running joke to throw out the term Blockchain, but this really is where Blockchain might be a good solution.
Why so complicated? Most use cases for Blockchain could be solved by public-key cryptography, technically backed by using a national government issued, RFID capable ID card (drivers license, passport, whatever) and it's trust chain.
I know this is only dealing with a tiny portion of your comment, but why do people think digital prescriptions require a proof of work database, when matching a UDID and changing a 0 to a 1 would suffice?
Short of overhauling personal identification in the U.S., I don’t see a simple solution. Making unemployment benefits more tedious to claim is politically risky.
"Callously cutting benefits for a miniority of the populat is populist for the selfish majority."
The beauty of this argument is that it works for any level of welfare at any given time. Dems could award unemployment benefits of 100K per year and when Reps point out this is crazy, unsustainable, and unfair to tax payers you can trot out the "Callously cutting benefits". Is there any form of welfare reduction you wouldn't call callous? What about the "Callous theft of the incomes from hardworking taxpayers"?
-"Poor minority" demand free medical care ? Steal it from the middle class
-"Poor minority demand" ..paid vacation, paid sick leave, paid maternity leave, 4 day work week, free childcare, free whatever.... Steal it from the middle class
And before you say "The middle class gets to benefit from it too!!!" Thats a bunk argument because if they wanted those services they would pay for them like every other service. All of this is just wealth redistribution from those are creating value to those who arent for the market.
Just to add a little to the fire: When you go to the airport do they check your ID before you get on the plane or after?
IMHO implementing a 2FA or a ID verification wouldnt be a burden on anyone but the bumbling bureaucrats. This problem isnt limited to UI, its a major problem (10's of billions) at the IRS. Who will send a refund before they even check the return or the income.
They send the refund to the first filer, with no verification! But when it comes to collecting the funds, they will hunt you down if your EIN doesnt match your entity name on the most obscure forms...
I'm guessing people only tell the story when they fly a commercial mainline airline out of a commercial airport, simply because "yeah my buddy has a Cessna 172 and we flew to California" just isn't a very good story.
This is an assertion without evidence. Numerous states have intentionally made unemployment benefits more tedious to claim. Florida is particularly famous for this at the moment with hundreds of news articles about it. All their changes to the system came with essentially zero controversy or political risk. (No doubt there were a handful of ineffective local organizations that complained at the time but no one's reelection was remotely threatened.)
There are various attempts on county and state level to implement forms of (blockchain) based personal identification systems that would be flexible and reveal only the necessary information based on the recipient and issued by the state (Florida / Seminole county is working on such a system). But one big issue is definitely the lack of technological literacy in the ranks of government officials.
It is a simple solution, it’s just that some states don’t want strong ID laws. They are willing to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration for votes. As much as I find that unconscionable, it is up to the states to design their IDs and ID laws.
This misrepresents the reasons. Technically, the US Federal government has no authority to issue a mandatory unique ID. Furthermore, many States that don't even pretend to pander to fringe Christians have rejected it on civil liberties grounds. Complicating this even further, a significant percentage of Americans have no documentation of their birth for a variety of historical reasons only partly related to the above, having a paper trail of their existence materializing out of thin air in adulthood e.g. Americans born in other countries. Another percentage of the population has no paper trail at all even if they were born in the US.
All of this makes it very difficult bootstrap a mandatory national identity system, even if there was legal authority. Any scheme will generate several million false positives or false negatives with significant consequences for those affected. This reality has stopped/slowed the rollout of mandatory government identity systems even in more limited contexts.
There are fewer undocumented or marginally documented Americans than there used to be but there are still millions of them, like my mother, and State governments make allowances for the existence of these people in their processes because they need to in order to do their jobs. This unavoidably creates loopholes that can be exploited because people legitimately need to be able to bootstrap valid identities in the absence of any documentation.
People say this every time national id comes up, but I've never seen any evidence for it, and it doesn't sound particularly plausible. The US manages to pass all sorts of legislation that angers fundamentalists. Why is this one in particular a step too far?
Because it's only half the story; states rights people are against national IDs because it's over-reach, and path to citizenship people are against national IDs because of ICE.
> states rights people are against national IDs because it's over-reach
States also generate massive revenues from ID programs. That produces a motivated lobbying force. And in politics, a motivated minority can usually outmaneuver an unmotivated majority.
I don't see what would change under a national ID. Here in Canada the provincial government is still the controller and printer for your national passport; and everything below passports (e.g. birth certificates, driver's licenses, etc.) is handled entirely at the province level, where it can be delegated to private/crown corporations (e.g. here in BC, ICBC—a province-majority-owned insurance company—handles issuing both driver's licenses and "BCID" cards.)
These provincial documents have unique identifiers on them, but those identifiers are only required to be provincially unique, not nationally unique. But that number is still registered in a national database; they just have use a compound key consisting of the province-of-record plus the number as the primary key.
In other words, it works exactly like state license-plate registration works in the US. The state makes/issues the plates, with identifiers from its own numerical namespace; and then there's a national registry with the key (state, plate number). Nothing breaks. Works just fine.
>I don't see what would change under a national ID. Here in Canada the provincial government is still the controller and printer for your national passport; and everything below passports (e.g. birth certificates, driver's licenses, etc.) is handled entirely at the province level, where it can be delegated to private/crown corporations (e.g. here in BC, ICBC—a province-majority-owned insurance company—handles issuing both driver's licenses and "BCID" cards.)
The federal government cannot require a citizen to have a national id and cannot force states to require their residents to have one. I am not even sure if the federal government can force the states to issue birth certificates (all states do so its not an issue).
>In other words, it works exactly like state license-plate registration works in the US. The state makes/issues the plates, with identifiers from its own numerical namespace; and then there's a national registry with the key (state, plate number). Nothing breaks. Works just fine.
Pretty sure in the US there is no national registry of license plates. Each state gives access to their own database to the other states and the fed (for law enforcement purposes). There also isn't a namespace for each state. Each state could have the exact same plate numbers. The name of the state is on the plate but is not part of the actual number.
I meant my statement "I don't see what would change..." in the context of the GP post: I don't see what would change about the current business model where states make money by issuing their own IDs.
As in, I don't see how making the state ID documents into "valid US-federal identification documents" (in some cooperating shared-distributed registry) would make it any harder for the states to make money issuing IDs.
I don't think your reply really addresses that. Sure, some people wouldn't have IDs. There are always some people without government-issued identifiers. So what?
> Each state gives access to their own database to the other states and the fed (for law enforcement purposes).
Functionally equivalent, insofar as a state government opting out of this sharing program would screw everything up and get that state government in trouble with both national agencies, and with all the other state agencies that rely on the system.
Of course, there are practical differences at implementation time, e.g. that the individual states don't have to adhere to any standard, but instead everyone has to just program against 50 individually-designed APIs.
But politically, this system of registries is essentially nationalized. In the same sense that politically, the US only has one central bank; just one that has branches that each call themselves a "central bank." But they all, necessarily, coordinate; and defecting from said coordination would break the entire system. It's one of those "monolith masquerading as microservices" distributed systems, so tightly coupled that it may as well not be distributed at all.
> There also isn't a namespace for each state. Each state could have the exact same plate numbers.
I think you're misunderstanding; this property (that states can have the same plate numbers) is precisely what it means for states to have "separate namespaces." A namespace is something that prevents identifier collisions within itself. If you have one shared namespace, there are no collisions. If each state has its own namespace, then keys (license plate numbers) can collide between states, because each namespace only validates uniqueness within itself.
You might be thinking of a "namespace prefix", which is not the same thing as a namespace.
But there is a standard synthetic compound key, one that is nationally unique; and that key is the state of issuance plus the license plate number. This isn't printed on the license plate itself (i.e. the state of issuance is not a "namespace prefix"); it's something you figure out by recognizing the design of the license plate. That's why, when you hear e.g. a police BOLO, it's phrased as "[state] plates, number [XYZ123]." That phrase is the common English-language encoding of the nationally-unique license-plate identifier.
Not in my province (PEI) we have to go to another (NS) to get a passport, our mail is sorted there (Halifax), and our driver's licenses are now made in Ontario.
That doesn't imply that this was done via federal mandate, though, no? I assume the PEI government—whose duties those nominally are—just asked the other provinces to lend it a hand using their existing infrastructure. A peerwise-negotiated arrangement, rather than a result of central planning.
I know many Republicans (the “states rights” people) who have no problem with a National ID. Granted, some of them have their beliefs based on an unfounded belief of “illegals can vote and the Democrats want that.”
Its important to know that the origin of this stems from the authoritarian actions of many governments during WWII. Especially Germany... Remember, Jews were tattooed with their ID#.
Interestingly, it was somewhat common for Americans to have their SSNs - our now de facto national ID scheme - tattooed prior to WWII.
Now, of course, we still have a de facto national ID scheme, but it is encumbered with a complex set of regulatory and security problems related to the odd legal insistence that it is not a national ID scheme despite all appearances.
> Interestingly, it was somewhat common for Americans to have their SSNs - our now de facto national ID scheme - tattooed prior to WWII.
I am extremely skeptical of this claim. Do you have any sources indicating anything other than a few isolated instances? Not only were tattoos in general distinctly unpopular for most of American history, the Social Security Act was not signed into law until 1935, just six years before the US's entry into WWII. Not only was it controversial (though popular) at the time (being one of the reasons for FDR's dramatic showdown with the Supreme Court, where he bullied them into letting him have his way by threatening to pack the court), the effect of the Social Security program wasn't realized for decades afterwards, and at the time, SSNs had no other purpose.
It's really difficult to say how common it was, but besides the few surviving photos of individuals who had done this, there are contemporaneous reports of tattoo artists seeing a significant increase in business after the passage of the social security act.
In newspaper archives, we can find references to this practice fairly frequently in the 1937-1940 time period, including headlines like "social security law boon to tattoo artists" and some fun ones like "victim is identified by social security tattoo."
Of course I'm sure the practice was relatively fringe, but newspaper archives show us that it was not, on the other hand, especially isolated. Newspapers report on the practice occurring locally in nearly every state (that existed at the time).
I also think you somewhat underestimate the popularity of tattoos at the time. While they were regarded as fringe and somewhat antisocial, they were widely available and particularly popular in some circles, as they are today.
I think young people don't really understand how quickly (and recently) tattoos went from something really fringe to something fairly socially acceptable. I remember cops occasionally harassing my (white) dad because he had a few forearm tattoos back in the early to mid 90s.
I concur, have never heard of this practice. It was extremely rare for anyone to have tattoos even sixty years ago.
SSNs were definitely less protected -- I remember mine showing up on my student ID in the 80s, on school rosters in the Navy in the 90s, etc. But tattoos? No.
It isn't odd at all. It's written right into the law.
The fact everyone ignores it isn't really an excuse. National ID #'s for many are the top of a slippery slope. Once you start going down that path, that's it. You opened the door to surveillance nirvana. It is part of the reason I'm not terribly fond of driver's licenses; as even those are so damn networked the police don't even need your insurance to know whether you're insured or any of a myriad of other things. In the absence of a network integration, these concessions to traceability were fine. Now, the potential for abuse is just way to prescient. It isn't even about State's rights to me. It's about keeping the abuse enabled by a highly organized bureaucracy in check.
If the government of the last couple decades hadn't continually escalated the erosion of civil/constitutionally guaranteed rights, I'd be more amenable to giving a bit of slack to the idea. That isn't how it has worked out though. Do I think a unique identifier can be used benevolently? Yes. Do I think the society I share my life with can be trusted with such a thing? Not demonstrably.
I would much rather have national coordination about some sort of ID, with strong privacy stipulations attached to it. I would like a national ID that cannot be used by local police, cannot be used by national investigative agencies, cannot be sold, cannot be vacuumed up by tech companies.
That'd be much preferable to me than leaving it to the states to preserve the privacy of the people they register, because they don't really.
The cat is already out of the bag, imho, if nothing else via ways of tracking phones, stuff online, social media, etc.
Realistically unless we become a society of digital luddites that isn't gonna, change, so I see the question as more of a technical / political one of how do we _manage_ both the risks and benefits of an increasingly connected world.
Not sure I'd be a fan of national ID's, but, I think the way you describe it paints an incomplete picture.
I painted the complete picture as far as my point of view was concerned. I don't tend to draw or characterize the picture beyond that (or even describe it out loud to anyone) more and more because I've seen people run off with descriptions of things I don't ever want to see and make businesses out of them. You can never take it back, as it were.
I do not under any circumstance care to make it any easier for yet another network integration of yet another database to be implemented by yet another private agency that as a condition of working with them forces users (including governments) to sign an NDA and briefs users on ways to respond to inquiries in ways that don't reveal the company's existence or mission, which is nothing less than tracking and making consumable every last bit of information on movements and actions by $THAT_GUY_IN_PARTICULAR because whether it is illegal, quasi-legal or otherwise, we have done horribly at staying on top of the edifice of executive power and keeping abuse of these capabilities under control. Again, demonstrably.
I don't want anyone's descendants to have to suffer that. Maybe the sibling posters are right, and the cat is already out of the bag... That doesn't mean I have to leave the door open for further increasing the efficiency and magnitude with which systematic civil right infringement and erosion can be executed.
It could change. If society showed even the least little indication that they realized they were going too far, and had a conscious recognition of just how destructive to the American way of life the lengths we've already gone to are; perhaps I could muster up enough faith and confidence in the system to become a supporter. That hasn't happened, and in fact, in cases of when things were implemented with controls, there is significant evidence that those controls aren't the most reliable over time. So... Yeah. Guess I'm a speed bump on other people's road to progress. I hate it. I never set out to be that. I want to stop feeling the way I currently do everyday. Nevertheless, no matter how much I sift through what is going for the merest sign of a reversal of the trend, I keep coming up empty.
We should mot endeavor to hand down a world where what liberties there were when we entered are foolishly squandered. That is all that seems to have happened in my lifetime. I may be powerless to stop it, but I'm not powerless in regards to ensuring the process isn't unintentionally accelerated by my hand.
I don't think this kind of characterization is helpful. There are plenty of reasons to oppose state-mandated identifiers without resorting to this kind of anti-Christian scapegoating.
Can you not imagine a single abusive use of identifiers by the government upon the people?
Of course it could be abused by the government, but that can't be the only standard we use to decide on state-mandated identifiers, or really anything else for that matter, because it's not realistic to create a system that simultaneously impacts lives in a fundamental way (as IDs do) while not being susceptible to abuse. We make this tradeoff all the time as a society.
This is equivalent to arguing that government mandated lockdowns could potentially be abused and used to oppress citizens, therefore we shouldn't allow the government to mandate lockdown orders, no matter how many people will die as a result.
You cannot give an entity like a government power without the potential for abuse, which is why elections exist. If we don't like what government is doing, we vote them out of office.
You were doing so well! Then you appealed to voting. Is any American happy about either of the currently proposed candidates for President? They are both confused loudmouth old men from the Northeast who grab pussies! If voting could change government, it would have done so by now.
This just isn’t true. Only one state in the 2020 primaries showed increased turnout among young voters, Iowa, while big states like New Hampshire and Michigan saw sizable declines[0].
There was just no way that a candidate like Bernie Sanders was going to overcome the momentum of the DNC without huge turnout, which never materialized. If the citizens don’t vote, we’re gonna be stuck with people who’ve amassed political power and likely done some terrible stuff along the way in their personal lives. Participation is critical, and mass movements have taken hold many times in American history. The issue facing us now is figuring out how to overcome the passive entertainment that is social media and traditional media and actually participate in the political process.
You weren't around for the whole South Carolina-Super Tuesday week? Remember, Sanders was the clear leader after Nevada. Biden was an also-ran. How did that change so quickly? How, indeed.
Blaming the voters is easy. The national news media corporations don't report on the many hours that urban and minority voters waited to vote in Texas, California, Michigan, Georgia, etc. since numerous polling places and voting machines were removed. They don't report on "provisional ballot" shenanigans. They don't report on the double-digit percentage differences between exit polls and results, when the UN considers 4% differences to be clear evidence of vote-rigging.
But we don't have to get bogged down in pesky details. They can't report around the obvious fact that while this system might be working for someone, it ain't working for us. We've failed as hard on Covid-19 as we've failed on "spreading democracy" and "The Drug War", and the whole world can see it. We'll reelect Trump because he's on TV all day, which is why we elected him in the first place. Sure, we could ask why voters are so dumb that they'll vote based on that sort of thing. Or, we could just not have him on TV all day. Could we try that? While we're at it, could we not have as his opposition someone who is worse than him by pretty much any measure?
I'm not sad that Bernie isn't the nominee. As feckless as he's been for the last month, it's clear Trump would have abused him in the debates just as thoroughly as he will abuse Biden. The point is, we shouldn't expect that the function of voting in this nation will just miraculously change from how it has been for 70 years, just because we really want it to. The flawed system will not fix the flaws in the system. When the opportunity for a real change appears, it will be attacked by defenders of the status quo on precisely these terms: it's not democratic like voting! Those attacks won't come because they want a real change.
The immediate problem isn't government abuse per se, but rather that there is no political willpower for the government to prevent abuse by private companies. The only constraint on abuse of the current identity system is people's vague worry about their identifiers being used fraudulently. If we fix the fraud problem before fixing the abuse problem, that constraint goes away.
> The immediate problem isn't government abuse per se
The Snowden leaks proved that this isn’t true. The NSA dragnet surveillance program originated from the highest levels of our military intelligence apparatus, not private companies. Sure, companies were complicit, but it’s important to remember that those orders originated from the Government, not business.
Can we please stop with this false dichotomy of government surveillance xor corporate surveillance? Arguing against one by implicitly justifying another is a losing game. They're both independent threats, while also feeding off of each other. Power always coalesces, regardless of our categorizations of it.
Specifically, the other half of the subject of your comment is that there would have been no troves of data for the NSA to take from web businesses had web businesses not collected it in the first place. (And just in case it's still not abundantly clear, I'm not validating the NSA for collecting this data simply because it was sitting around!)
Regarding the original topic, I said "immediate" for a reason. I don't think the bona fide government is particularly abusing citizen identification right now, regardless of what it could end up doing in the future.
I'm not justifying either of them, I'm pointing out that the government is just as capable of abusing citizens rights as private companies are. I still believe the government is capable of acting in a positive and responsible way, but we have be honest and forthright about their transgressions or else history repeats itself. I don't believe in perpetuating a false dichotomy here, one is not better than the other.
> Specifically, the other half of the subject of your comment is that there would have been no troves of data for the NSA to take from web businesses had web businesses not collected it in the first place.
This is an oversimplification as well, since NSA wasn't just collecting internet data. The initial scandal was around phone metadata collection, which was conducted at the behest of the government and had been alleged by whistleblowers for years before Snowden leaked his documents.
> I don't think the bona fide government is particularly abusing citizen identification right now, regardless of what it could end up doing in the future.
Part of this comes down to your political preferences and whether or not you believe that immigrants should be treating differently by government, as they have been for a few years now. There are numerous reports that stimulus checks aren't going out to immigrant families as consistently as they are for others. Profiling is very much in the conscience of this administration, and that comes back to identification.
> I'm pointing out that the government is just as capable of abusing citizens rights as private companies are
Your comment that I initially replied to was downplaying the possibility of governmental abuse of stronger identification. I replied pointing out that apart from direct government abuse, the current identification system is already rife with abuse by private actors.
In response, you switched to pointing out how the government does indeed commit abuse (which you had been downplaying), and invoking the dichotomy by saying "not private companies". This is detracting from discussing corporate abuse, by pushing the topic right back to focusing on government abuse.
> Part of this comes down to your political preferences and whether or not you believe that immigrants should be treating differently by government, as they have been for a few years now
I'm willing to entertain whatever perspective your argument requires.
> There are numerous reports that stimulus checks aren't going out to immigrant families as consistently as they are for others
You're going to have to be specific about what you mean technically. I feel like we have an inversion here, because stimulus checks are only going to people who can be identified to begin with. So yes, the profiling relies on having an identity - but the identity is already necessary for the bona fide government function, to prevent someone filing multiple claims (Sybil attack). It's not the same situation as say a hypothetical bread line where being a person who has waited for hours is good enough proof, but now ID is being requested solely so you can be profiled. It's also not like a situation where someone with a green card claiming a stimulus check has that fact used against them when applying for citizenship (at least I hope not).
There's an abstract argument to be made that identification in general is a cornerstone of the ever-growing government (legibility of humans), but I think that ship has mostly sailed, especially in a thread about unemployment compensation.
That's why its essential to limit the power of government, and to make sure it doesn't creep into areas where it has no business being (like pandemic management).
> to make sure it doesn't creep into areas where it has no business being (like pandemic management).
If it shouldn't be the government's responsibility to manage pandemics, a fundamental public health issue, then who should take that charge? Why can't we bestow responsibilities on the government and vote them out if they don't fulfill those responsibilities? What's the alternative?
If you believe that the government doesn't have business being in public health, I'm curious to know what area you believe the government has business being in.
The state is already perfectly capable of tracking our identities between systems. I would view the assignment of an identifier as a method for citizens to gain a degree of control and visibility into this system, instead of the current state where it is ad-hoc, secretive, and prone to errors that government agencies are not inclined or even capable of fixing.
Tons of countries have had a national ID system for decades and they didn't become tyrannical states. Take, for example, the Scandinavian countries; they even excel at any metric of freedom and democracy there is.
I definitely can, but lots of things can be abused by the government. I haven't seen anything in the United States receive quite as much pushback for quite so many irrational reasons as the idea of a national identifier, which a lot of nations already have.
This is in the context of the social security number already serving as a de facto national identifier, because in the 21st century information age it's almost impossible to make functional systems without some way of uniquely identifying individuals.
Most of them willingly accept SS and DL numbers. I think it's when you get to subdermal identity solutions that the "mark of the beast" scenario you describe is triggered.
I have also observed people with objections to lists in general, and this massive fraud is just one manifestation of what those people perceive as the inherent problem with lists. I don't think there is any getting around a list by its existence carrying the threat that it could be used to target individuals for nefarious acts.
On the same coin, there are those saying that requiring id to vote is racist because of an extremely low bar of expectations that they have set for that demographic. No one wins. Everyone loses in this argument.
The problem is that IDs aren’t free, therefore requiring one is the equivalent of a poll tax. Even if poll taxes didn’t have a racist history, it still seems wrong to charge to vote. I don’t think people are generally opposed to IDs for voting if they are free (voters registration cards currently serve this purpose).
Making it directly free doesn't solve all the issues.
8 years ago I was in a state I grew up in, but wasn't born in. Real ID was started, and I needed to renew my license.
Even though I have had a license for 25 years in this state, they required me to verify by identity again to meet the Real ID requirements. This required a birth certificate.
The state I was born in, at the time, didn't allow mailing of birth certificates. For $12, I could pick one up locally. The two states were 1700 miles apart. My only option, other than a road trip or flight, was LexisNexis. The cheapest option, at the time, was $75.
I did what I had to do to comply, other folks may have had a harder time or been entirely unable to solve that problem quickly, or at all. A corporate tax on peoples identity is only one of the possible hurdles in obtaining a "free" ID.
Nobody is saying it would be easy, or that there wouldn't be edge cases where people would get screwed. I argue that the current situation where it's an edge case to find people who aren't screwed is worse.
I further argue that your whole issue, and many like it, are caused because you didn't have a national ID, granted at birth or naturalization, which all State ID programs are required to recognize.
I actually think that we need a constitutional amendment for a national ID system. Add lots of "the government shall not" language to it for CR/CL, and require States to recognize it as a source of truth by itself that you are you.
Real ID is the current form of national ID. Some states fought it, and still haven't implemented it. The current state I'm in will be going live with Real ID in the next two years.
I took a friends kid to the DMV to get them their first license here about 6 months ago. My out of state license expires in a few months from now. I asked, since I have a current Real ID, how I should go about renewing my license. I was told that I would need to get a state license, without Real ID, until their system was upgraded to support it. Then return to get a new license with Real ID, and that would require the Real ID verification again. Even though I already have a Real ID. That's $35 per license.
I agree there should be a completely free national ID program, but the list of "shoulds" is infinite, and not worth much. No cap, like I said I agree, it's just damn near impossible to change this kind of structure from our level.
Never said that they would be. I'm arguing that we shouldn't poison the well with unfounded complaints about how a system which doesn't exist might or might not work.
That example is also apples and oranges. Given that a passport is much more expensive to make, has a ton of infrastructure mandated by international agreements, treaties, and standards, and is decidedly optional for the majority of people and it makes total sense to me that it would not be free. None of that is true about SSNs, and none of it would necessarily need to be true about a national ID.
SSNs are apples to oranges as well. I can't see a national ID not being a photo ID, so it'd be more akin to a driver's license--and those do cost money. And the cost will almost surely be higher than randomly generating a number.
The name for this logical fallacy is "strawman". We have an existing nationally issued identification card which is free and doesn't have a photo. That's an excellent reason to believe we could make a better one and have it be free as well.
I get free photo IDs all the time when I visit cloud data centers and they print me off a photo+QR code badge for the time I'm there. Drivers licenses are expensive because they are made to be extremely durable. They're made that way because they are constantly needed, not because of the photo printed on them. There's absolutely no reason whatsoever why a national ID card would have to be like a drivers license and not like a social security card. In fact, if they were legally required to be free they would very likely be just a name and a QR code. Leave all the photos to the back end, it's 2020.
The term "Voter ID" is somewhat complicated as it can refer somewhat separately to two different eras and types of policy.
Historically, many states, municipalities, and etc. had instituted legislation or policy requiring that voters provide some form of identification, better referred to as "evidence of identity" to avoid confusion with the concept of a state ID, in order to register to vote. This was intended to deter fraudulent identification, but requirements are very lax. For example, my state has a voter ID law as does my municipality, but these are part of a "first wave" and are extremely lax. ID is required only once. Nearly any document bearing name and address and, in many cases, a simple sworn statement signed before an election official are sufficient. Voters who register to vote with a county clerk or certified voter registration agent are not required to provide ID at all, as completing the form before an election official is considered a sworn oath. In general, the only case in which a voter is required to show ID is if they register by mail and decline to provide a DL number or last four digits of SSN on the form. In such a case, they may show any suitable document the first time they vote and the requirement will be removed for all future elections. Election officials are trained to err on the side of accepting identification documents. Things like school report cards or phone bills are often used by people with less access to government services due to poverty or rural residence. The definition of "address" is even quite lax, for individuals living in rural areas, written directions or a drawn map depicting their residence are acceptable.
This is considered a "voter ID" law, but is fairly different in origin and burden on the voter than the modern sense of a "voter ID" law, which may be as strict as requiring a photo ID issued by the federal government or motor vehicle administrator at the polling place for all elections. Because requiring payment for such a document prior to voting would likely be considered an illegal poll tax, many jurisdictions with such laws have instituted something called a "voting-only identification card" or similar which can be obtained from the motor vehicle administrator with no fee. However, waiving the fee on applying for a motor vehicle administrator's 'state ID' is largely missing the point. The true burden that people with limited access to government services face is less the fee and more the difficulty of obtaining the evidence of citizenship required for these documents. For people who were born in an impoverished, rural, or otherwise challenging context may have significant difficulty and face significant expense in obtaining a birth certificate, or no such birth certificate may exist. Historically, alternate documents attesting to the context of birth (for example, issued by a Catholic diocese on baptism or by a sovereign indigenous nation as documentation of membership) have been accepted to handle these situations, but modern voter ID laws often exclude such alternate documents. Further, under federal policy evidence of birth is often not the only document, and other documents are required as well.
The summary is that there is, for the last decade or so, a "second wave" of voter ID laws which are more stringent and difficult to satisfy than nearly any historical identification scheme. In some cases obtaining a state voting-only ID is even more difficult in terms of documentation than obtaining a US passport, even aside the relatively high fee and long processing time for a passport. This is what leads to these laws being widely interpreted as intended to reduce access to the polls rather than to address fraud.
Further complicating matters, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 imposed federal-level voter ID requirements. However, the federal government is not able to "override" voting legislation put in place by the states, which are solely responsible for administering elections. The result is that in some states, such as this one, there are two simultaneous paths for voter registration: the "state form" and the "federal form." The federal form actually imposes stricter ID requirements than the state form. For reasons I am not entirely clear on, HAVA requirements are interpreted as applying to all by-mail registration, with the result that some voters have to choose between obtaining additional ID documents (such as an SSN) to register by mail, or traveling to a county seat or other location where voter registration agents are available, where they can register to vote without these documents. Fortunately, there has long been a good deal of effort in getting librarians and other "prominent members of the community" certified as voter registration agents to make this route more accessible - in addition to the political parties often having their volunteers certified so that they can conduct door-to-door campaigns and be available at community events, although of course they often do this in ways that leads to the resulting registration turnout being party-biased.
In addition to adding more friction for individuals legally entitled to vote to exercise that right, the situation is frankly just confusing, which creates a big window for disinformation that even discourages people from registering when they would have an easy time doing so.
Just adding slight confusion to the whole matter is the fact that, due to a long-running aversion to citizen ID programs, the responsibility of tracking and identifying citizens has been de facto imposed upon the social security administration and motor vehicle administrators (DMV, MVD, etc). This creates a lot of confusion among especially people with limited government access - is it possible to vote without having an SSN? without being able to drive?
I'm not sure where you live, but my state doesn't require an ID to register. You can use:
"a copy of a utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that is current and shows your name and residence address."
You have to look at the most rural and poor communities in the nation to understand why it can be both expensive and difficult. Birth certificates for instance, are often not present or available, nor are the agencies that provide the necessary documents accessible. Many times they are hundreds of miles from the person in need and the costs, and necessary steps can be extreme to a person with very little funds or resources.
To make them free enough that they don't impose a burden on people's right to vote, we'd probably need to collect an amount of identifying information in a central location rivaling anything attempted previously by the US government.
Enough biometrics to recognize a person regardless of whether they have any paperwork, paired with a system to update those biometrics when people's situations change (If you identify people by fingerprint for example you can't deny their right to vote if they lose both arms).
You should check out how DHS/TSA can do boarding pass checks now. Swipe your drivers license, passport, or DoD CAC smart card, all can auth in under 10 seconds, no boarding pass required. The data sources already exist.
I’d assume any digital credential system would accommodate biometric updates the same at my Global Entry interview went; you speak with a government rep in person when they take a digital representation of your biometrics.
I guess we can't escape the cost to implement that, even if that cost is subsided by the government. However, once it is in place there should be enough saving from increased efficiency to compensate that cost.
It doesn't stop there, though. To vote you need to be alive, and to stay alive you need food and drink, neither of which is free. You need some means of getting to the polling place, which also costs money. Even if you walk, you need shoes, which aren't free. In fact, if you don't want to be stopped by the jackbooted goons of the state while you're on the street, you better be wearing clothing, which you also need to pay for.
Really, the entire economy is a poll tax meant to keep the poor voter down.
It's not just the ID having a cost, like someone else mentioned, it's things that, without context, sound innocuous yet have a disparate impact on certain communities.
Like, I've read about in some southern states, where the state will, as a cost-cutting measure, close DMV branches (i.e. the places where you'd go to get an ID for voting) but close mostly branches in majority-black communities. So, while the nearby white community still has their 5 DMV offices, the majority-black community now has 1. The result? Much longer lines, less availability of services.
Thing is, this kind of impact is hard to draw connections to, but it's a pattern you see played out again and again: 1) Require certain IDs to vote, 2) Make it harder for certain communities to get those IDs, 3) Make it cost something for those poorer communities to get IDs, 4) Now you've got an effective kind of voter suppression without there being one single act that does it.
Like that guy said, "you can't say n-word, n-word, n-word anymore," so you drape it in a series of actions that, taken individually, seem benign or can be easily argued for.
Here's the solution you won't see implemented: if you want to require an ID to vote, make it free and make it something you can obtain at anywhere, i.e. post offices, grocery stores, convenience stores, without requiring hard-to-obtain documents like birth certificates.
AFAIK, showing an ID to vote is uncontroversial in most or all western democracies, including the nordic welfare states the left sees as a model in so many ways.
I agree, and I'm even fairly liberal. Showing proof of who you are, to be allowed to vote in the most fundamental process in a democracy is not a dumb idea. Why would you not want the most rudimentary election security?
The only reason that it's a ridiculous situation here is that (and you can debate whether widespread or not, or believed or not) some people use it as a means to make voting difficult for others. And we tolerate / compromise on the situation because we have no good (or widely believed) stats to document the frequency of the risks.
My question there is, why don't we simply make getting an ID easier for everyone and this will no longer be an issue. Take one year to have roaming DMV offices, voter ID, licensing stations, and take care of this stupid problem once and for all. No more arguments or patches to look the other way.
And I will say also, it's a fucking sad situation when the people you want to be voting can't get it together in their lives to get an ID renewed once every 5 years. You don't even have to go in person in most cases. If that's the issue, I don't think you would've gotten their vote even if they had ID.
> I agree, and I'm even fairly liberal. Showing proof of who you are, to be allowed to vote in the most fundamental process in a democracy is not a dumb idea. Why would you not want the most rudimentary election security?
Because in America, voter fraud is so low that it is a non-issue. Personally, the only cases I know of are people committing voter fraud to prove how easy voter fraud is. The other point against Voter ID is that it is also a tool to keep people certain people from voting.
Voter ID is just really a tool to keep "those people" from voting.
So why is it that in other advanced countries that also don't have much voter fraud, they feel they should have some kind of ID as a requirement to vote? Why is that unreasonable?
Because the constitution bans any form of poll tax. Requiring someone to got out and get an ID is considered a poll tax. Even if the ID itself is free, there is still time and travel involved.
I pay taxes that pays for all of the expenses required to administer voting administration (booths, paper, pens, etc). Why can't our taxes fund the administration required for people to get IDs?
This is another example of where the US' unwillingness to look at what other countries do, bites it in the ass.
Same thing with birthright citizenship (yes, I know it's in the constitution). The US is just one of a handful of Western countries that give citizenship to anyone born within it's borders. Pretty much all of Europe does not offer it, the child basically has whatever status the parents do.
Yup. The first time I voted 15 years ago I didn't have to show any ID and was quite puzzled. A friend of mine actually considered voting under my name when he found out :)
The OSCE (? not quite sure) vote observers commented on this in their election monitoring report, and the next election the government had acted on the advice and you had to show ID
What makes you think so? IDs cost here too and yes you have to go bigger centrums usually to pick them up. Unless you're English the whole dance around anti ID and voting sounds insane to Europeans and most likely large parts of the developed world. It's common sense.
You need to verify you identity at time of registration which includes photo Id and other documents to verify where you live. This is all governed at the federal level with the "Help America Vote Act". Why do I need to show an ID at the polls every time i vote? They have my signature on file and can check that but there isn't a problem with people voting with someone's registration.
Voter ID is all about voter suppression, in Texas you don't need an ID to vote if you over 65. Only in person voting in Texas requires ID but you can do mail-in if your over 65.
Nobody argues that requiring IDs to vote is “racist,” but that the availability of such IDs is implemented in a patchwork, uneven fashion, with the result being the disenfranchisement of many eligible voters, were new, stricter laws put in place.
Were identification to be provided universally and freely, with corresponding automatic voter registration, none of this debate would exist. Strangely enough, those who like to go on and on about voter IDs tend to oppose such universal access to them.
I argue that it's clearly racist. The intent is to disenfranchise one the poorest communities in America. The GOP knows that the more people who vote, the worst their results are.
I think you missed his point. Requiring ID to vote is not inherently racist, what is racist is requiring ID while knowing IDs are hard to obtain for some groups.
Most countries require ID to vote, but in those countries almost everyone has an ID.
You still need to renew it every 8 yrs or so, pay a small tax and no you can't get it from a small rural place. Talking of Europe here, I believe both types or Americans have distorted view how things are arranged here.
That's a bit of whataboutism in my opinion. A vote isn't a lethal weapon.
If the underlying intent of requiring an ID for a firearm purchase from a gun dealer was to limit or discourage minorities from buying, then yes it would be racist.
I would argue that because government is predicated on force, a vote is nothing more than an act of delegation - asking others to use force on your behalf.
Less complex would be the legal argument, though: in the US, personal possession of arms is an enumerated Constitutional right. There is no such enumerated right to vote. From a purely legal perspective, why would it be racist to place an ID requirement on an act that is merely generally understood to be a right but not racist when applied to an act that is explicitly protected by the state’s charter itself?
No they don’t. The 14th gives consequences for disenfranchisement, and the 15th restricts the reasons someone may be disenfranchised.
There’s also the 14th’s “Privileges and Immunities” clause, but that has been weakened greatly through case law.
To my knowledge, there is no legal barrier to passing a law stating that only landowners can vote, or only people who are employed, or only people who have a net worth of greater than some arbitrary threshold.
There are lots of instances where a person may legally vote in one state, but not another. Virginia’s recent changes with regards to felons is a good example of this.
What do IDs solve? Voter fraud is negligible. And getting an ID, even if it's free is a pain for some people. Plus the ID of paying everyone to vote is a non-starter.
That doesn't scale well for a country the size of the US, where local voting is determined by residency. For national elections, sure, no registration would be fine. But how would you keep people from voting for elections outside of their region?
This is not really a hard problem to solve as is evidenced by literally every other country. Moreover, in almost every country it is possible to vote even outside of the country.
I can't comprehend why people try to insist that ID is racist and impossible to implement. It is so bizzare my only explanation is propaganda.
The US, unlike many other countries, doesn't have a national ID card issued to citizens. So to obtain an ID, citizens need to usually have either a passport, which costs $85, or a certified birth certificate, which can cost up to $45. And ironically, you often need valid ID to request a birth certificate.
So for lower income citizens, the cost can be prohibitive. This then becomes the equivalent of a poll tax, which historically was used to disenfranchise minorities.
So I'm not saying it's impossible to implement. If the Federal government wants to start issuing free national ID cards, then that would be acceptable in my opinion. However, this would trigger a huge part of the population that doesn't want government tracking etc.
Most studies of voter fraud have shown it's negligible. Compared to the disenfranchisement of minorities and the poor caused by requiring voter ID, I'll take that risk.
This is the same argument being wielded against Vote by Mail. Yet fraud in VBM is rare as well, and VBM works extremely well for servicemembers deployed overseas. And Trump even votes by mail...
The GOP just knows that if more people vote, the GOP candidates will do worse.
I regard it casually because it's statistically negligible. I usually post this link in threads about vote-by-mail where people bring up fraud, but it applies here too:
The (elected, republican) secretary of state audited the 2016 election and found 54 cases -- out of 2+ million votes cast -- of what's generally called "voter fraud," most of which were people voting in Oregon and in another state.
Oregon is entirely vote-by-mail, so there's no way to show an ID.
Remember, how you voted is anonymous, but who voted is known to the government agencies. They can and do analyze that. Voter fraud is not a meaningful problem.
Not even an American but this number is convicted people for voter fraud. It's not even a study or some intelligence agency estimate, so you're dishonest here.
It's not undetectable. There are many ways to determine if a vote is fraudulent. In person voter fraud (the only type that would be prevented by Voter ID) is the most difficult, and unlikely fraud to pull off. It doesn't scale well, is easily detected due to signature cross-checking, and according to the Dept of Justice, only 13 cases occurred between 2000 and 2010. In that time period, there were over 649M votes cast in the US.
Signature cross-checking just checks the signature with the voter registration. It doesn't tell you if the registration is fraudulent. Don't you recall the articles about thousands of people being allowed to register in California that shouldn't have?
>and according to the Dept of Justice, only 13 cases occurred between 2000 and 2010
Again, how would they know? You appear to think voter fraud is only a mismatch signature on the ballot and signature in voter registration.
No, I don't recall the articles you mention. Do you have any links?
You're asking me (and the authorities for that matter) to prove a negative.
Can you show me any evidence that supports your fears of voter fraud in the US? Other than a few rare cases, I haven't seen any evidence.
The reason I believe the system is working fine without Voter ID is that voter fraud just doesn't scale, either with manual paper ballots cast in person, or via absentee ballots and VBM. It's just too much work, too high a chance of being caught for the reward.
Now what does worry me in regards to vote integrity is electronic voting systems. I will never trust those.
[We can't have nice things] because there's a non-trivial quantity of the voting population that literally believes straw-man arguments about other people's views.
They're not right, but they're not wrong either. The actual problem is that there is no political will to reign in the ongoing abuses of the identity system that we already have. For instance, many businesses demand your driver's license number simply to return a purchase even though you have a receipt. This information is then backhauled to private surveillance companies to sort you into their model of social classes, permanently stored with no accountability or ability to opt out. If a technically-better identification system were implemented, feeding the surveillance industry would become mandatory for even more basic transactions - for example supermarket cards.
I would say more so that unique identifiers have proven to be exploitable in a hugely damaging way, i.e. SSN, governmental and business level surveillance, stalking, identity theft. We just live in a nasty world with nasty people.
I honestly have never seen this line of argumentation anywhere. My impression is that people close to Christianity support such measures, while its opponents claim that it is racist.
No, not at all, a broad number of groups of people oppose a national ID for many different reasons, some of which are Christian because they believe it to be the mark of the beast. Additionally, I've personally talked to co-workers who oppose a national ID for religious reasons.
For example, look at the list of organizations that opposed REAL ID
>The Bush administration's Real ID Act was strongly supported by the conservative Heritage Foundation and by many opponents of illegal immigration.[101] However, it faced criticism from across the political spectrum, including from libertarian groups, like the Cato Institute;[102] immigrant advocacy groups; human and civil rights organizations, like the ACLU; Christian advocacy groups, such as the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ);[103] privacy advocacy groups, like the 511 campaign; state-level opposition groups, such as North Carolinians Against Real ID[104] and government accountability groups in Florida;[105] labor groups, like AFL-CIO; People for the American Way; consumer and patient protection groups; some gun rights groups, such as Gun Owners of America; many state lawmakers, state legislatures, and governors; The Constitution Party;[101][106] and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, among others.
>Highlighting the broad diversity of the coalition opposing Title II of the Real ID Act, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), founded by evangelical Christian Pat Robertson, participated in a joint press conference with the ACLU in 2008.[107]
Well there is one group in America that’s much more concerned about the issues of voter and welfare fraud than the other, but it’s exactly the reverse of what you’re describing here. These issues represent some of the most controversial elements of Trump’s platform.
The issue of voter id has a weaker legal basis than any of the issues relating to welfare reform. In the past it’s been argued to violate the 14th and 15th amendments, but this line of reasoning hasn’t been upheld by recent supreme count decisions [0].
More contemporary arguments against it tend to center around the 24th amendment, and arguing that it represents a polling tax. But this argument hasn’t had much success either [1], though I’m not sure if it’s been fully explored by the Supreme Court.
all sides have their issues, some of the very same people pushing for national id flip out if you suggest voter registration require proof of eligibility. One person's identification is another person's suppression. Then you can toss in the privacy advocates who will give you an earful about the susceptibility of any system.
what turns all of this, politicians, exploiting the fears of different voting bases to their own ends. this is where the real problem is. by keeping a permanent state of exploitation of fears, unfounded and real, politicians can keep their position indefinitely as well as the wealth they gain for themselves, friends, and family. In the end it all comes down to money
> some of the very same people pushing for national id flip out if you suggest voter registration require proof of eligibility.
Those are two very different situations - just because both share the element of identification doesn't mean that an apples-to-apples is fair or accurate. It's not.
> In the end it all comes down to money
As I heard it put once, Cash Rules Everything Around Me ;)
EDIT: Updated to include updates from the WA governor as pointed out. Remove details for clarity.
In Washington State, Phase 2 of opening up the economy initially was requiring restaurants to track all guests dining in. This has been changed to be optional. You should see some of the people in my Seattle neighborhood being extremely concerned.
Meanwhile other countries have required restaurants to track all guests from the moment they imposed social distancing many weeks ago.
I don't understand the concern. Perhaps someone can explain this to me.
I can't really blame them, there was an article posted here a few days ago about a woman in New Zealand who was stalked based on the contact tracing info she was required to give up at Subway.
What if the tracking system were a government website and the guest only needs to show confirmation to the waiter / waitress? Would that make things better or worse?
I personally don't think there should be any government involvement with tracking individuals, I think it's too ripe for abuse. It makes me think of the Patriot Act where the government used a tragedy as a way to "temporarily" exapand its power, then keeps voting to not repeal it. I think it would be fine to ask people for the zip code they live in, that way if there was an outbreak in an area, the government could get an idea of where those residents were shopping. People could give false info, but I've seen enough people unquestioningly give up their phone number when asked, that I don't think it would be a big issue.
The fear for many likely doesn't even come from the book of Revelation but rather from a popular Christian series of novels based on one person's interpretation of Revelation. I'd bet most people afraid of the mark of the beast haven't even read Revelation.
> The fear for many likely doesn't even come from the book of Revelation but rather from a popular Christian series of novels based on one person's interpretation of Revelation.
If you are referring to the Left Behind series by LaHaye & Jenkins, they are two people, and the fear was widespread in the community before that series became popular; the relevant interpretation in the book is based on what were already widespread concepts.
> I'd bet most people afraid of the mark of the beast haven't even read Revelation.
I dunno, the segment in which the fear is concentrated is pretty much the same segment that fetishizes personal reading of the Bible, so I suspect you'd be surprised.
OTOH, I don't think for most of them there is a relationship between independent reflection on the source material and it's context and the fear being discussed, it's definitely something that is usually taken on the same type of top down interpretive authority that the Protestantism was in significant part a reaction against existing in Catholicism.
"The second beast [...] forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads."
Revelation 13:15-16
> there's a non-trivial quantity of the voting population that literally believes giving people unique identifiers
There is also a non-tribal quantity of the voting population that believes requiring people to verify their identity to vote equates to disenfranchisement.
And we already have a de facto unique identifier — the social security number.
> I find it ridiculous that you cannot buy pseudoephedrine without the pharmacy checking whether you've purchased any quantity of the OTC medicine in any other state via a inter-agency, multi-state networked solution
Not defending the practice, but the supposed reason for this is because pseudoephedrine can be used in cooking methamphetamine [1], and supposedly the 'cooks' had mules going around buying up stock everywhere to use in their labs.
The 'check' was supposedly to catch the mules buying large quantities across plural pharmacies/states to use in the cook's labs.
Sadly the unintended consequence is every time one has a head cold and buys original formula Sudafed, some government tracking database somewhere knows one bought that product.
In the state of Oregon, you can't get the 'real' stuff without a prescription. So you get to pay for a Dr visit, to get decent cough medicine. Or you stock up when you are near Washington. :-)
In the UK they seemingly just removed all the active ingredient. I couldn't understand how it wasn't working for me, Sudafed had been an almost miraculous way to clear a head cold (mucus blocked sinuses); then it just didn't work anymore. Of course they put caffeine in to try and make it feel like it was working ...
Recently, after careful analysis I found they do still make it (or they make it again), but it was a definite bait-and-switch.
I think parent understands this, and is comparing the controls around pseudo vs the inefficiency of the unemployment system. It’s just the conversation swerved to everyone checking in about whether their doctor can call in their adderall prescription.
The difference here is that one system has federal “war on drugs” muscle behind it, and the other... very much doesn’t.
People say this on message boards all the time but I have literally never had a problem buying pseudoephedrine. I just walk up to the counter and ask for it. It's faster than buying a steak at the meat counter.
It's not as if any of us are unclear on why sudafed is controlled.
I'm not sure what you are trying to argue here. It's not difficult to buy pseudoephedrine but it is tracked by the ID you provide. And if you go over the limit you can't purchase it anymore. Is this what you are disputing?
You're missing the point. It's the fact that our government created / mandated this multi-agency, multi-state, multi-private/public process and it was implemented in a matter of months. All to prevent people from buying too many boxes of decongestant at one time... The scale of that particular problem pales in comparison to the 100's of billions being tossed to thieves via flawed IRS and UI claims processes.
You lost me at "all to prevent people from buying too many boxes of decongestant at one time". Obviously, nobody --- including the government --- cares how much "decongestant" you need. The problem is that pseudoephedrine is extraordinarily close to methamphetamine and the meth synthesis process is trivial. You can't buy sudafed without an ID for the same reason that you can't buy codeine off the shelf.
It seems that the two of you are talking past each other.
The earlier comment is pointing out that it’s “ridiculous” that the government isn’t able to solve the problem from the article, given that they’ve clearly been able to build a system to track pseudoephedrine sales. They don’t seem to be making any claims about it being ridiculous that they need to talk to a pharmacist to get it, which is what your reply implies they said.
White collar crime is treated very differently from street crime or other kinds of lower class crime. I'd almost say it's not prosecuted at all. You have to be pretty flagrant or step on the wrong "third rail" to go to jail.
Make a few grams of meth? Go to jail. Launder billions in drug money at a major financial institution? Get a small fine and probably keep your job.
The current president of the United States is a borderline white collar criminal, though most of his past scams are of the "greasy" sort that are just barely on the right side of the law.
It's basically all about the social class of the criminal. The word "villain" comes from the same root as "villager" and means a person of lower social class.
A while back I found a fascinating crime map of white collar crime. It showed the inverse of what you see for street crime, with huge white collar crime hotspots in richer more upscale neighborhoods. In Compton (Los Angeles area) you are more likely to have your wallet stolen. It's safer to walk around in Santa Monica or Newport Beach, but the person you pass on the street is more likely to be stealing your pension.
Probably not not helpful, but meanwhile just a little bit north in Canada they sell excellent otc allergy medicine with pseudofed. Just wild what we choose to prohibit.
Meanwhile banning coffee roasts and pieces of outerwear because they sound vaguely like the name of scary-looking guns.
I feel like there's just so much in the state now, we need mandatory sunset on anything like this.
Review of legislation and rules/regulation should be routine, rather than boutique, and each time we should be called upon to make a positive case for each rule.
Okay okay, technically it didn't apply since there was no authority, though it shows the haste involved in producing the list. It also appeared to include a plastic toy-grade BB gun, because a PMC once imprinted a similar name on a private batch of firearms that were never sold or imported into Canada.
Furthermore, apparently the firearm used in the shooting that prompted this sweeping ban was never sold on the Canadian market. It was illegally purchased, illegally smuggled into Canada, and you know, illegally discharged to kill people.
There is no connection between the Canadian domestic market for semi-automatic rifles and the shooting, and yet the resultant rules target only the Canadian domestic market for semi-automatic rifles.
Legal or not there is no need in Canada for a person to own a semi-automatic rifle. Even with the guns there is no need for supersonic bullets and large grain/large mass bullets.
If anything would help it would be heavily restricting access to ammo. I don't understand how people with illegal handguns can even find the ammo for them.
> Legal or not there is no need in Canada for a person to own a semi-automatic rifle.
I struggle with statements like this. I’m in the prairies. You know what semi-automatic rifles are great for? Predator control. As an easy example from two weeks ago, a pack of coyotes came into my in-laws farm yard and started attacking the sheep. Would a bolt action rifle work? Sure, but significantly less effectively.
> Even with the guns there is no need for supersonic bullets and large grain/large mass bullets.
Are you referring to the 10kJ rule? Or just in general? It’s always tough to tell where someone’s actual understanding of these things is, versus misconceptions. Supersonic bullets are absolutely necessary for hunting game, as are “large mass” bullets (although 10kJ is not generally necessary for the game you’ll encounter around here).
The vast majority of the rifles that were recently prohibited fired low-mass high-velocity bullets. In many provinces, those bullets were not allowed for hunting because they did not have sufficient energy to reliably kill wild game.
> If anything would help it would be heavily restricting access to ammo. I don't understand how people with illegal handguns can even find the ammo for them.
You’re talking about people who are already in possession of a smuggled handgun, and you can’t conjure up a way for them to get ammunition?
Ammunition is currently regulated the same way firearms are: you have to have a firearms license, after having taken a course and been vetted by the RCMP. The people who are causing the vast majority of (non-suicide) firearms death in this country are not people who give a crap about the firearms licensing regime.
> Even with the guns there is no need for supersonic bullets and large grain/large mass bullets.
Even assuming you could make it such that criminals only get ahold of small subsonic ammunition, that would not have a marked effect on the lethality of criminal acts committed with firearms, and likely would have no impact on the rate of wrongful homicide.
> I don't understand how people with illegal handguns can even find the ammo for them.
Manufacturing and/or smuggling ammunition is easy, and most criminals do not go through a lot of ammunition. In places where smuggling is restricted successfully, criminals find other ways to kill and intimidate people, including manufacturing firearms and explosives; which, it may surprise you, is pretty easy, and pretty easy to do without getting caught. If you want to commit the resources to monitor every machine shop in the Americas and build a trillion dollar system of fences and surveillance outposts between jurisdictions, be my guest though.
> Legal or not there is no need in Canada for a person to own a semi-automatic rifle
Why do you think you know that?
In a free society, the law should not be concerned with defining what is permitted, but with determining what is impermissible. To determine what the law should prohibit, it is not sufficient to ask yourself whether the law would inconvenience you.
When you make laws, you have to be ready to put people in prison for disobeying them, you have to be ready to look their families in the eye and say “I think your father/son/mother/daughter should not be free for the next ten to fifteen years because he possessed the wrong shaped metal object”.
There are many, many people in Canada who are guilty of no malum in se conduct, yet illegally possess firearms simply because they would rather risk the legal ramifications of keeping them than destroy them simply to satisfy the law.
You're going to have to tell me that every time the law sends such a peaceful person to prison and destroys their property, it is worth it. It is no more just to imprison people who possess firearms for their own lawful purposes than it is to imprison people who possess drugs for the same.
Not sure why you are being downvoted. I thought down voting because of viewpoint disagreement was discouraged on HN.
The recent CA gun rules are a knee jerk reaction that will not make anyone safer. It will however further Trudeau's goal of disarming law abiding citizens.
>There is more than enough way to solve these problems, but for some f'n reason there is no will...
Because the point of the unemployment bureaucracy is to prevent the utilization of unemployment insurance. The easiest and cheapest way to do that is to just make the whole thing suck, which also, as a side-effect, makes it vulnerable to malicious actors.
To the contrary, this sort of thing is beneficial to the political class because each side can point to it and blame the other side.
In fact, the worst case scenario for the political class is a well-functioning society with no urgent-seeming problems to be solved because in a situation like that people will start to wonder why we need the political class at all.
Isn’t that what I just said? There’s no upside. The political class would rather have fraud (real or imagined, as is the case with election fraud) to use as a hammer with which to bludgeon the other side.
"There is no upside [to fixing it]" is not quite the same as it being actively beneficial to those tasked with fixing problems to have the problem remain unfixed.
My one and only foolproof strategy to getting a bureaucracy to take security seriously: wait for a giant breach and tell them "I told you so." If you've got a remediation plan on hand and ready to fire, that's your chance to get funding.
> There is more than enough way to solve these problems, but for some f'n reason there is no will...
It's pretty straightforward. Most people are simple-minded or dishonest enough that they can't understand or admit that policies they like can be inefficient or flawed. In the case of pseudoephedrine, the public conversation doesn't have too many advocates for meth dealers or trivially inconvenienced shoppers. By contrast, any inkling that a government program could be run more efficiently is immediately met with howls of outrage that reform proposals are just cover for the real goal of forcing poor people to starve.
Once you know what to look for, you'll see this for _almost literally every topic_ of this type, from infrastructure to public schools.
I have no idea whether or not to trust frontline because they've seemed on the wrong side of things for certain topics I know more about but, at least that made it clear to me why that stuff might be a controlled substance
Lots of the solutions involve something like a national citizen ID program (for an efficient implementation). Done right it fixes tons and tons of problems that cost normal people piles of time and money every year, plus whatever the costs are to businesses and government. But a few political factions—mostly on the right, if you go looking for them, like religious folks who see such IDs as end-times related (yes, seriously), some stripes of libertarian, and the very much real group of people who don't want government to work well—are very against solutions of that sort.
Usually not if coupled with a mandate that the government provide everyone such an ID at no cost (yes, yes, "nothing's free", but everyone knows what that means). The breakdown is that one side wants to require ID to vote, and the other side is OK with that if there's a program such that every citizen is issued ID for basically no effort, cost, or hassle, and is registered for voting and residency with similar ease (so there must not be renewal crap, problems sorting out issues at the polling place if there's a discrepency, that kind of thing—cannot make voting harder, and if done right should make it easier)—but that's a non-starter because of the things already mentioned (plus some others reasons, but stating the public and explicit, not inferred, positions of certain political factions in my first post apparently rubbed some people the wrong way, so I'll refrain from mentioning those).
If 100% of citizens for-sure had an ID there wouldn't be disagreement on the issue. Using such an ID and whatever residency registration program was associated with it would save money and hassle over maintaining voting rolls, overzealous purging of which is another thing the left doesn't like, would allow automatic voter registration, and so on. This would broaden franchise, in practice.
I agree, and I'm even fairly liberal. Showing proof of who you are, to be allowed to vote in the most fundamental process in a democracy is not a dumb idea. Why would you not want the most rudimentary election security?
The only reason that it's a ridiculous situation here is that (and you can debate whether widespread or not, or believed or not) some people use it as a means to make voting difficult for others. And we tolerate / compromise on the situation because we have no good (or widely believed) stats to document the frequency of the risks.
And with your point above, why don't we simply make getting an ID easier for everyone and this will no longer be an issue. Take one year to have roaming DMV offices, voter ID, licensing stations, and take care of this stupid problem once and for all. No more arguments or patches to look the other way.
And I will say also, it's a fucking sad situation when the people you want to be voting can't get it together in their lives to get an ID renewed once every 5 years. You don't even have to go in person in most cases. If that's the issue, I don't think you would've gotten their vote even if they had ID.
> Why would you not want the most rudimentary election security?
Why would I want a solution with negative trade offs for a problem I'm not convinced exists? Even if I believed it was a problem, I wouldn't just accept a solution that was "rudimentary" without considering the trade offs and alternative solutions.
Why do you put locks on your car or your house? I bet you've never been broken into. There's not a high chance of it either. Why do you want your email encrypted? No one's sniffing around your personal life, so why do you want a solution to a problem that doesn't exist?
Remarkable how people distort their principles when it gets in the way of a political symbol.
Concerted coordination between countless conspirators is required to commit the kind of vote fraud an ID requirement corrects and is quite certain to be detected and can be corrected.
A single burglar can change my life forever regardless of the fact that it will be detected.
> Remarkable how people distort their principles when it gets in the way of a political symbol.
Which principles and what symbol? You seem to have me shoehorned in to some political pigeonhole. I'm used to that, but I'd be curious which one it is this time.
Maybe that's your standard, but I rarely hear people on the left argue that easily and freely issued ID would make ID-to-vote requirements acceptable to them. If that really were the case, wouldn't you think that during times when Democrats controlled congress or the white house, they would try to push through legislation to enshrine easy and free to get federal ID?
It may be easy to engage in Tax and UEI fraud, and they get away with it because the money has already left the country, but they do get detected, regularly. To follow your metaphor out, if this were happening with voting records, we'd have lots of people reporting that they went to vote and their vote was already cast. That is not the case.
The way to commit voter fraud is to determine non-voting registered voters in a given jurisdiction and submit ballots on their behalf.
In some jurisdictions there may be 1000s of non-voting registered voters who have moved away, died, or never voted at all (automatically registered voters, etc.)
Pulling that off for thousands of non-voting registered voters would require hundreds of conspirators, assuming generously that one conspirator could physically vote in ten voting locations in a day, and if you have any errors which cause double voting you're very likely to be busted.
Nevertheless, voter fraud happens. While I agree it doesn't effect the outcome of that many elections, I think the loose handling of voter rolls and voter identification, contribute to a distrust in the integrity of US elections.
Interestingly, vote by mail may be more secure than polling stations, because vote-by-mail often requires signature matching (matching signature on ballot cover with signature on registration). But the ACLU is fighting tooth and nail against signature matching.
All true, but not anywhere in line with your previous claim:
>In some jurisdictions there may be 1000s of non-voting registered voters who have moved away, died, or never voted at all (automatically registered voters, etc.)
The database you mentioned consists of a grand total of 1,285 proven instances of voter fraud over 4 years. Nearly all of them are for single individuals voting twice, usually by submitting a absentee ballot, then voting in-person. There are vanishingly few instances of someone manipulating an election on a significant scale, by tens or hundreds of votes.
So which is it? Are there thousands of instances in multiple jurisdictions per election that we've completely failed to detect, or just a few thousand nation-wide over multiple elections and four years?
Did you actually read through those? They're either local elections, or single instances. Neither of which would be considered impactful or even of scale to change much of anything... But
It's rather strange that they left out the most recent and egregious instance of fraud. It just happened in NC. Funny how quiet the right gets when its one of their own...The GOP busted for fraud. Election invalidated. Just more projection from the party of projection. You can do better.
The NC case was related to ballot harvesting which is illegal in NC and is discussed in detail in the link below.
Ballot harvesting is a practice celebrated and embraced by progressive democrats. Recent changes in California law make ballot harvesting easier and more susceptible to fraud. Now, according to headlines at least, the GOP is ramping up their efforts to get more into the ballot harvesting game too.
This comments demonstrates a willful ignorance to actual facts and shows a bit of gas lighting. So cite the stats, the studies or any meaningful article that shows there is what you claim. False voting records.
There is more than enough way to solve these problems, but for some f'n reason there is no will...