Please don't take this thread or any HN thread into even more of a political flamewar hell. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Edit: it looks like your account has been using HN primarily for political battle. That's a line at which we ban accounts, regardless of what your politics are or aren't. See https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for past explanations.
If you'd please revert to using HN as intended, we'd appreciate it.
a) Republicans did the math and figured out that a lot of people who vote Democrat didn't have IDs. Old black people, in particular, were not likely to have IDs. Republicans also did stuff like accept fishing and hunting licenses for voting, but not university ID. None of this is a secret. A think-tank called ALEC came up with it. In-person voter fraud, the only kind of election rigging that voter ID laws prevent, is next to impossible in the US system and basically never occurs on more than a one-off basis.
b) A lot of those people who didn't have IDs have either gotten IDs or died off by now, so the Republican advantage of voter ID laws has faded.
c) Given (b), Republicans have moved on to other tactics like voter purges, shutting down registration offices and polling stations to create long lines in urban districts, gerrymandering, and limiting early voting and mail in voting. One of their favorite tactics is limiting early-voting mailboxes to one per precinct, whether that precinct has 1,000 voters or 1,000,000. You can guess which way the crowded urban precincts tend to vote.
The whole idea is just to put their thumb on the scale enough to discourage some small % of voters in the swing states that determine our president every four years. If you live in California, no one cares how you vote for President.
Can we have some numbers/citations on the proportion of democrat and republican voters without ID? Because I've heard that it will benefit Democrats and is a Reoublican own goal.
With how many top tech CEOs lining up behind Trump, I wonder how much of Californian democratic support backed by staunch belief, rather than political expediency.
As a French I used to think too, "what's the big deal", "it has never been an issue here". But that's because we are used to it and getting an ID is easy and almost automatic. Whereas in a country like the US, it means missing several days of work, driving potentially hundreds of kilometers, and their geographic segregation means it's easy to make getting an ID harder for black people than for whites.
As a European I also find insane elections are held on workdays (in France it is always on Sundays), that you may have to wait in line for hours to vote, that voting stations may be hours from where you live, etc.
> As a European I also find insane elections are held on workdays
That's not really an issue, if you have enough polling stations. Denmark typically have elections on a Tuesday (but can technically be any day of the week). We have 80%+ turnout, one of the highest in the world, for countries without mandatory voting. The day of the week doesn't matter, IF you ensure that it sufficiently easy for people to vote.
If you actively try to make it inconvenient/impossible for people to vote, then it doesn't matter if it's on a Sunday. My take is that part of the US political system need as few voters as possible to turn up in order to have a chance of winning, so they will make it as complicated and inconvenient as they need it to be.
In canada, if you don't have an id, you can get someone who knows you (and has an id) to swear an oath you are who you say you are. You can also register at the same time you are voting.
Seems to work fine. I dont think we have ever had any issues with that system.
Most states where voter id is mandatory also have policies where you can get a free ID and even a free ride to a location to get your ID. They implemented that in South Carolina and after the first few years, nobody used it.
Because you have to have an ID to do almost everything else in the country so everybody already has an ID and opposition to voter ID makes no sense.
This makes no sense. You can literally register to vote at the DMV and I know very few adult Americans, of one ethnicity or another, who don't have a driver's license.
I'm French too but I disagree a bit: first, voting if important to people, should be a good reason to get an ID, voting without an ID does seem insane, so what are they doing. Second, why black people ? Are they not human too ? They can read, they can work, they can complain, they can... get an ID card right ?
Simplest answer is they don't care, wash their hands off of the whole thing and then democrats complain that it's the requirement to identify voters that block them. But it's not a strange requirement, it's as you say, a completely normal part of being a citizen to get an ID, and a duty for a voting citizen to do what they need to do to get that ballot in.
And even if black people were somehow disenfranchised from getting IDs, it doesn't prevent the non-black people to vote rationally, in the end. So no excuse.
I'm from Pakistan, and the solution to 'it's difficult for people to get ID' was so simple even 3rd world poor illiterate country could do it: just go to them instead.
Our ID department has buses with computers and cameras/fingerprint machines on them, they go to remote villages and stuff and take everyone's bio data, then return a few weeks later and give everyone their cards.
There is literally NO valid excuse for NOT implementing voter ID.
NONE.
If we can do it, the richest country in the world can do it.
Such a pathetic hill for American Democratic party to die on.
>Whereas in a country like the US, it means missing several days of work, driving potentially hundreds of kilometers
Where did you hear this? When I lived in Pennsylvania, it was really easy to get a state ID. Just go into the DMV, show them your documents, pay the fee ($42 now), and you have your ID within the hour. They had centers all around the city, and they're open on Saturdays. Personally, I think this is an extremely weird hill for Democrats to want to die on. Most independent and swing voters think its a reasonable requirement.
That would make sense if driver licences were difficult to obtain in US in any way shape or form, and they just aren't - almost everyone has one and it's not a big deal to get one.
That's because you live someplace where the things described in the various links in this comment [1] do not happen or happen way less than they do in the US.
I don't, but we have a functioning citizen registration system; every voting eligible citizen gets sent a voting card when elections come up. That can only work if you're registered and have a known address. "Illegal aliens" don't have that, so they can't vote. Foreign nationals that are registered / stay here legally also don't get voting rights so they simply don't get the voting card mailed to them.
But also because of that registration, getting a kind of ID involves making an appointment at the county house, filling in a form and handing over a recent portrait photo. It's a bit of a hassle but nothing extreme.
You've fallen victim to GOP propaganda. They use 'Voter ID' as a reasonable sounding shorthand for a lot of policies that just make it harder to vote. The other responders highlighted many of them.
It's a different culture, one which is not used to have and use a national ID, which is completely common in the EU (with the exception of Ireland perhaps?)
That’s not true. I lived there for nearly a decade and you use driving licenses for id and there are other forms for id as well that don’t include the passport.
You need ID to do a lot of stuff just like any other country.
There is no national id (other than passports; but most people don't carry theirs on themselves in their own country) because driver's licenses (issued by states) serve the same purpose. We don't have a non-DL id (that's popular at least).
Anyway, this is sort of by-the-by. Most adults have driver's licenses, and no one in Alaska is going to reject your Tennessee-issued DL so it is a de-facto national id.
Driver's license is the defacto ID used everywhere. Which kind of makes no sense but that's the way it is. Just about everyone has one and arguments that requiring an ID to vote would disenfranchise citizens don't sound believable to me.
If it makes you feel any better the UK Conservatives tried this under the "we have to stop voting fraud" excuse. Turns out it backfired because the oldies couldn't figure out the new requirements leading to this scandalous quote from pantomime villain Jacob Reese-Mogg:
> Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding that their clever scheme comes back to bite them, as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections.
> We found the people who didn't have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative, so we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well.
This whole thread is gold. People just casually discussing why it is necessary for America to enslave the world AND it is beneficial for the world. The color revolutions were successful in other countries until the DeepState decided to bring that "social engineering technology" to home. Somehow people think they can contain such moral corruption just as plasma is contained using electromagnetic coils in fusion reactors.
On the scale of concern, voter ID is way down there. You've already had both "prosecute main political opponent" and "storm the legislature".
Voter ID is very common and sensible. The UK introduced it recently and while it did disenfranchise people this was not to the benefit of the party in power when the law was introduced.
The theory here is democrats on average are more educated, wealthier, and in more of a position to prove they are citizens. Don’t have an opinion on that. But it’s something I know many democrats around me have said.
Because of educational polarization and race depolarization, Democrats now overperform Republicans in low-turnout elections. It's been true in every cycle starting in 2018 (and in the special elections before that).
The demographics of the parties have shifted quite a bit with Trump's second term. The Republicans lost much of their educated elite but made up for it by gaining a lot of the poor folks that have hitherto been the Democratic backbone and who are most hurt by voter ID.
Trump lost the $30k–$50k democraphic by 9 points in 2016, but turned around and won it by 6 points in 2024—a 15-point swing! Meanwhile he won the $100k–$200k and $200k+ demographics by ~2 percentage points in 2016, but lost it by 5+ points in 2024 even while winning the popular vote.
It's possible that this was a one-off and not a major permanent realignment, but it's definitely not as clear cut as it used to be.
That Democrats have held both the white house and congress several times over the last decades, and didn't try to put in place some reasonable voter ID laws is really sick.
Basically the law they would need is "states can do whatever voter ID they want, if it's free and easy to get ID and 9X% of voters not just _can get it, but actually actually have it, otherwise they can't". Or they could have made a federal ID and ensured everyone gets it.
But Democrats always felt that even going ner voter id laws were a bit dangerous. It always rang like "voter suppression" to them (and in many ways it probably was). But they missed the chance to make it impossible for Republicans to abuse it as voter suppression - and here we are now, worrying that there will be voter ID laws despite many lacking ID. It's infuriating.
Why the idea of "we'll just make sure people have ID" is so unimaginable is just completely impossible to understand. It doesn't matter that there is no actual in-person voter fraud. Voter ID laws are a good thing anyway - if everyone actually has ID. It adds trust to the process and god knows the US needs a process where people actually believe it's secure, not just one that IS secure.
Please don't take this thread or any HN thread into even more of a political flamewar hell. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: it looks like your account has been using HN primarily for political battle. That's a line at which we ban accounts, regardless of what your politics are or aren't. See https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for past explanations.
If you'd please revert to using HN as intended, we'd appreciate it.
As a EU citizen, I think this voter ID argument is absolutely insane.
a) Republicans did the math and figured out that a lot of people who vote Democrat didn't have IDs. Old black people, in particular, were not likely to have IDs. Republicans also did stuff like accept fishing and hunting licenses for voting, but not university ID. None of this is a secret. A think-tank called ALEC came up with it. In-person voter fraud, the only kind of election rigging that voter ID laws prevent, is next to impossible in the US system and basically never occurs on more than a one-off basis.
b) A lot of those people who didn't have IDs have either gotten IDs or died off by now, so the Republican advantage of voter ID laws has faded.
c) Given (b), Republicans have moved on to other tactics like voter purges, shutting down registration offices and polling stations to create long lines in urban districts, gerrymandering, and limiting early voting and mail in voting. One of their favorite tactics is limiting early-voting mailboxes to one per precinct, whether that precinct has 1,000 voters or 1,000,000. You can guess which way the crowded urban precincts tend to vote.
The whole idea is just to put their thumb on the scale enough to discourage some small % of voters in the swing states that determine our president every four years. If you live in California, no one cares how you vote for President.
Tory party did this in the uk. Old people bus pass is allowed. Student id card isn’t.
2 replies →
Can we have some numbers/citations on the proportion of democrat and republican voters without ID? Because I've heard that it will benefit Democrats and is a Reoublican own goal.
2 replies →
With how many top tech CEOs lining up behind Trump, I wonder how much of Californian democratic support backed by staunch belief, rather than political expediency.
1 reply →
As a French I used to think too, "what's the big deal", "it has never been an issue here". But that's because we are used to it and getting an ID is easy and almost automatic. Whereas in a country like the US, it means missing several days of work, driving potentially hundreds of kilometers, and their geographic segregation means it's easy to make getting an ID harder for black people than for whites.
As a European I also find insane elections are held on workdays (in France it is always on Sundays), that you may have to wait in line for hours to vote, that voting stations may be hours from where you live, etc.
> As a European I also find insane elections are held on workdays
That's not really an issue, if you have enough polling stations. Denmark typically have elections on a Tuesday (but can technically be any day of the week). We have 80%+ turnout, one of the highest in the world, for countries without mandatory voting. The day of the week doesn't matter, IF you ensure that it sufficiently easy for people to vote.
If you actively try to make it inconvenient/impossible for people to vote, then it doesn't matter if it's on a Sunday. My take is that part of the US political system need as few voters as possible to turn up in order to have a chance of winning, so they will make it as complicated and inconvenient as they need it to be.
2 replies →
You need an ID to do basic tasks in USA as well, everyone with a normal life has them.
27 replies →
In canada, if you don't have an id, you can get someone who knows you (and has an id) to swear an oath you are who you say you are. You can also register at the same time you are voting.
Seems to work fine. I dont think we have ever had any issues with that system.
1 reply →
Most states where voter id is mandatory also have policies where you can get a free ID and even a free ride to a location to get your ID. They implemented that in South Carolina and after the first few years, nobody used it.
Because you have to have an ID to do almost everything else in the country so everybody already has an ID and opposition to voter ID makes no sense.
1 reply →
This makes no sense. You can literally register to vote at the DMV and I know very few adult Americans, of one ethnicity or another, who don't have a driver's license.
35 replies →
I'm French too but I disagree a bit: first, voting if important to people, should be a good reason to get an ID, voting without an ID does seem insane, so what are they doing. Second, why black people ? Are they not human too ? They can read, they can work, they can complain, they can... get an ID card right ?
Simplest answer is they don't care, wash their hands off of the whole thing and then democrats complain that it's the requirement to identify voters that block them. But it's not a strange requirement, it's as you say, a completely normal part of being a citizen to get an ID, and a duty for a voting citizen to do what they need to do to get that ballot in.
And even if black people were somehow disenfranchised from getting IDs, it doesn't prevent the non-black people to vote rationally, in the end. So no excuse.
5 replies →
I'm from Pakistan, and the solution to 'it's difficult for people to get ID' was so simple even 3rd world poor illiterate country could do it: just go to them instead.
Our ID department has buses with computers and cameras/fingerprint machines on them, they go to remote villages and stuff and take everyone's bio data, then return a few weeks later and give everyone their cards.
There is literally NO valid excuse for NOT implementing voter ID.
NONE.
If we can do it, the richest country in the world can do it.
Such a pathetic hill for American Democratic party to die on.
39 replies →
>Whereas in a country like the US, it means missing several days of work, driving potentially hundreds of kilometers
Where did you hear this? When I lived in Pennsylvania, it was really easy to get a state ID. Just go into the DMV, show them your documents, pay the fee ($42 now), and you have your ID within the hour. They had centers all around the city, and they're open on Saturdays. Personally, I think this is an extremely weird hill for Democrats to want to die on. Most independent and swing voters think its a reasonable requirement.
Do you have a more precise exemple of a state in which it is that difficult ? And a source ? I really find it hard to believe.
1 reply →
That would make sense if driver licences were difficult to obtain in US in any way shape or form, and they just aren't - almost everyone has one and it's not a big deal to get one.
2 replies →
That's because you live someplace where the things described in the various links in this comment [1] do not happen or happen way less than they do in the US.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42116609
I don't, but we have a functioning citizen registration system; every voting eligible citizen gets sent a voting card when elections come up. That can only work if you're registered and have a known address. "Illegal aliens" don't have that, so they can't vote. Foreign nationals that are registered / stay here legally also don't get voting rights so they simply don't get the voting card mailed to them.
But also because of that registration, getting a kind of ID involves making an appointment at the county house, filling in a form and handing over a recent portrait photo. It's a bit of a hassle but nothing extreme.
You've fallen victim to GOP propaganda. They use 'Voter ID' as a reasonable sounding shorthand for a lot of policies that just make it harder to vote. The other responders highlighted many of them.
It's a different culture, one which is not used to have and use a national ID, which is completely common in the EU (with the exception of Ireland perhaps?)
That’s not true. I lived there for nearly a decade and you use driving licenses for id and there are other forms for id as well that don’t include the passport.
You need ID to do a lot of stuff just like any other country.
1 reply →
The UK also has strong opinions about ID.
7 replies →
There is no national id (other than passports; but most people don't carry theirs on themselves in their own country) because driver's licenses (issued by states) serve the same purpose. We don't have a non-DL id (that's popular at least).
Anyway, this is sort of by-the-by. Most adults have driver's licenses, and no one in Alaska is going to reject your Tennessee-issued DL so it is a de-facto national id.
8 replies →
Driver's license is the defacto ID used everywhere. Which kind of makes no sense but that's the way it is. Just about everyone has one and arguments that requiring an ID to vote would disenfranchise citizens don't sound believable to me.
6 replies →
If it makes you feel any better the UK Conservatives tried this under the "we have to stop voting fraud" excuse. Turns out it backfired because the oldies couldn't figure out the new requirements leading to this scandalous quote from pantomime villain Jacob Reese-Mogg:
> Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding that their clever scheme comes back to bite them, as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections.
> We found the people who didn't have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative, so we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well.
Even Boris Johnson was turned away from a polling station because he didn't have his ID with him.
https://x.com/yishan/status/1906592890845028405
This whole thread is gold. People just casually discussing why it is necessary for America to enslave the world AND it is beneficial for the world. The color revolutions were successful in other countries until the DeepState decided to bring that "social engineering technology" to home. Somehow people think they can contain such moral corruption just as plasma is contained using electromagnetic coils in fusion reactors.
On the scale of concern, voter ID is way down there. You've already had both "prosecute main political opponent" and "storm the legislature".
Voter ID is very common and sensible. The UK introduced it recently and while it did disenfranchise people this was not to the benefit of the party in power when the law was introduced.
Voter ID helps Democrats in 2025, it doesn't hurt them.
How do you figure?
The theory here is democrats on average are more educated, wealthier, and in more of a position to prove they are citizens. Don’t have an opinion on that. But it’s something I know many democrats around me have said.
1 reply →
Because of educational polarization and race depolarization, Democrats now overperform Republicans in low-turnout elections. It's been true in every cycle starting in 2018 (and in the special elections before that).
The demographics of the parties have shifted quite a bit with Trump's second term. The Republicans lost much of their educated elite but made up for it by gaining a lot of the poor folks that have hitherto been the Democratic backbone and who are most hurt by voter ID.
Trump lost the $30k–$50k democraphic by 9 points in 2016, but turned around and won it by 6 points in 2024—a 15-point swing! Meanwhile he won the $100k–$200k and $200k+ demographics by ~2 percentage points in 2016, but lost it by 5+ points in 2024 even while winning the popular vote.
It's possible that this was a one-off and not a major permanent realignment, but it's definitely not as clear cut as it used to be.
That Democrats have held both the white house and congress several times over the last decades, and didn't try to put in place some reasonable voter ID laws is really sick.
Basically the law they would need is "states can do whatever voter ID they want, if it's free and easy to get ID and 9X% of voters not just _can get it, but actually actually have it, otherwise they can't". Or they could have made a federal ID and ensured everyone gets it.
But Democrats always felt that even going ner voter id laws were a bit dangerous. It always rang like "voter suppression" to them (and in many ways it probably was). But they missed the chance to make it impossible for Republicans to abuse it as voter suppression - and here we are now, worrying that there will be voter ID laws despite many lacking ID. It's infuriating.
Why the idea of "we'll just make sure people have ID" is so unimaginable is just completely impossible to understand. It doesn't matter that there is no actual in-person voter fraud. Voter ID laws are a good thing anyway - if everyone actually has ID. It adds trust to the process and god knows the US needs a process where people actually believe it's secure, not just one that IS secure.
Does that matter as much as citizens united?
Assuming citizens united isn't going anywhere (it's not, with the current SC), then yes.