US President Donald Trump, on Friday, February 13, threatened to try to bypass Congress and force new voting laws ahead of the November midterm elections, where his Republican Party fears losing control of the legislature. Trump said he would soon issue an executive order attempting to impose the rules if Congress does not pass a law requiring photo identification to vote and other nationwide reforms.
Any attempt would likely be met by a legal challenge that could ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court. “There will be Voter ID for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “If we can’t get it through Congress, there are Legal reasons why this SCAM is not permitted. I will be presenting them shortly, in the form of an Executive Order,” he wrote.
While many jurisdictions across the United States require photo ID to cast ballots, not all do, with Trump and many Republicans arguing without evidence that those areas have permitted significant voter fraud.
The Trump-backed “SAVE America” election reform act passed in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives this week. However, it is expected to fail in the Senate, where the Republican majority is too slim to pass the law without Democratic support.
In addition to requiring a photo ID to cast a ballot, the bill would also require proof of citizenship to register to vote. There is no evidence of meaningful fraud in US elections and critics say that the bill’s measures would instead push millions of people away from casting ballots, because they don’t have a passport or a paper copy of their birth certificate.
Can anyone explain to someone who’s not from there why is it a bad thing to require photo ID?
In my country, you don’t have to register to vote. You need to register your residence (aka: where you live) and that gives you access to all the services of the area and also let’s you vote assigning you an electoral area where you cast your ballot.
Still, when you are voting, you need to go there with your ID (which has always a photo) and it’s checked before voting. Why in the US that’s a problem so big? Why are they fearing this could be used to manipulate the elections?
Our voting laws are a hodgepodge of Federal and State laws. The current Federal voter registration form (which States are obligated to accept) asks you to simply affirm (under penalty of perjury) that you are a citizen. Conservatives point to this as “proof” that the voter rolls must be filled with non-citizens, probably because they are so comfortable with lying.
In fact, some Conservative states impose their own documentation requirements, and if someone comes with that Federal form they accept it, but only let them vote in elections with Federal positions on the ballot (President, Senator, Representative). If there are Federal and non-Federal positions on the same ballot, they hand that citizen a different ballot, with fewer choices, only because they didn’t fill out the right form when registering in the first place.
But a non-citizen would be nuts to sign that form, because if they are found out then they could be prosecuted for a crime, and likely deported. And for what? The chance to offer a tiny bit of influence in our politics? Most people here illegally are looking to keep off of the governments radar, not to hand them a form that says “please arrest me!”
Furthermore, Trump’s ramblings are triggering some people because of his emphasis on names matching exactly. Yes, they prove citizenship, but many voting age citizens have changed their name in adulthood. Many women look at Trump’s rants as a direct attack on the right of married women to vote, because their original citizenship documents have a different name on them. And, sure enough, there is a push for Household Voting in some Conservative circles these days.
TL;DR: Requiring ID (vs. simply asking for a sworn affirmation) causes more problems than it solves, and people are concerned about this administration using it to push the country backwards.
In the US, issuance of a photo ID is neither guaranteed nor free for all citizens. There is no simple registry for citizens within the US (unless you count the Social Security number which is incredibly flawed). While things such as driver’s licenses and passports serve as defacto identification, they are not universally held by everyone (fees are required for both, not everyone owns a vehicle, not everyone travels internationally). This also applies to home addresses and other proxies for voter identification, since they are generally insufficient in restrictive states.
Additionally, things such as voter roll purges and additional burdens placed on the participant (such as removing mail-in opportunities, since election day is not a holiday) tend to have the effect of excluding voters from participation, especially in lower-income communities who are unable to afford to take time off or go through the additional hurdles.
Throw on top of that the surveillance state apparatus and general distrust from the public regarding further extending our personal lives to the federal government since (and perhaps before) the 2001 Patriot Act, and you can see why a lot of people are not a fan of this push. The Real ID fiasco in the 2010s is a good example of outspoken pushback throughout implementation.
sidenote: a lot of the requirements for registration are put in place by GOP leaders to fuck over democratic party voter bases. An automatic registration system would be awesome, but no red tie would fuckin’ vote for it because it would doom their ability to have selective representation in their districts.
For those in poverty and without cars, trying to get somewhere to get an ID made can take a large amount of time and non-zero amount of money (even if just in trying to get to a DMV/BMV/DPS office) that they may not otherwise have.
Exactly.
One of the big issues is that IDs aren’t free. So those that don’t have IDs are generally low income. So you essentially disenfranchise poor voters. It’s basically seen as a poll tax.
As to the proof of citizenship, many more do not have proof of citizenship, much less carry it on them.
I don’t know if this is still a thing in certain places but they used to physically take your driver’s license if you got a speeding ticket and then give it back to you when you paid the ticket.
its voter suppression, the fact that you need an extra layer of ID to even vote. besides the gop doing this in red states are doing it in good faith, it requires fees and time to get the id. which most people wont likely have time to get. plus they can also shuttle or saddle DMVs with nonsense. Also proof of citizenship can be arbitrarily denied by a dmv or other worker simply if they dont believe its an actual copy. Also they are unlikely to saddle red districts with this kind of problem.
in blue states its pretty much just registering to vote like place of residency or citizenship, no extra proof needed