Comment by piva00
15 days ago
91% of adults have a driver's license, leaving 9% of potential voters without a DL.
In a properly functioning democracy barring 9% of your voting population from voting because they lack an unrelated document (why should a driver's license be linked to ability to vote?) would be considered a major flaw.
In a properly functioning democracy ... nobody without proof of citizenship should ever be allowed to cast a vote.
You don't get it.
You may elect to have your DL as a voting document as a convenience. It doesn't mean you have to have one in order to vote. A state's Board of Elections will issue you a voting document.
>>why should a driver's license be linked to ability to vote?
It's not, it's just one of many acceptable forms of id - along with a passport, birth certificate, and probably few others.
>>In a properly functioning democracy barring 9% of your voting population
Unless they are stopped from obtaining any document then they aren't barred from anything. Most Americans don't have a passport either but no one would argue that they are barred from travelling internationally, they just have to go and get a passport issued.
> Unless they are stopped from obtaining any document then they aren't barred from anything. Most Americans don't have a passport either but no one would argue that they are barred from travelling internationally, they just have to go and get a passport issued.
Making it difficult (as the article states, this 9% do not have ready access to documents proving their citizenship) is essentially barring with extra steps.
I hate this semantics/loophole game Americans like to play, seems to be quite common in your society to use the "akshually, technically" and going completely against the spirit of something. The spirit is: this makes it more difficult to vote, it will inevitably bar some people from voting, it's just salami-slicing...
>> seems to be quite common in your society
I'm not American and I don't know why you'd assume I am - to me the fact that americans don't have ID requirements to vote is insane.
>>as the article states, this 9% do not have ready access to documents proving their citizenship
Again, do they simply not have them because they never bothered to get them, or are they unable to obtain them? That's quite a big difference.
I also hope we're not saying that if someone turned 18 and just simply never bothered to obtain any kind of acceptable ID(and there are usually many) then it's somehow unfair to not let them vote - because I really struggle to see how that would be true.
1 reply →
40% of the eligible voters sit out every election. No one who wants to vote is being barred from anything. They don’t lack an unrelated document, they lack the proof that they are allowed to vote. We have freedom of expression and yet to purchase alcohol you must be able to prove you are allowed to buy it. We have the freedom to bear arms and yet in many states you must prove you aren’t a nut job to own and carry a gun.