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Comment by xwolfi

16 days ago

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.

6 comments

xwolfi

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UncleMeat  16 days ago

The issue is not that the barrier is insurmountable. The issue is that small amounts of friction become meaningful at scale in elections. Place the friction in the right spots and some people experiencing that friction choose not to bother. If the people who choose not to bother disproportionately vote for one side then there's a small electoral benefit to the other side.

CapricornNoble  16 days ago

>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 ?

As a black American who had crackheads in my family, I don't know anyone who was totally incapable of getting an ID card. I only ever see the argument brought up by white people on the Internet. Tyranny of low expectations. Heaven forbid that black adults be expected to shoulder some personal responsibility and figure out how to meet the basic requirements to exercise their civic duties, same as white people.

"The white liberal is the worst enemy to America, and the worst enemy to the black man." -- Malcom X

  • xwolfi  5 days ago

    Oh thanks, as a French, it's my feeling also that this is a "white people" thing in the US, to infantilize black people. I come from a country where we try to be color blind, it's very rude to tell someone his skin color (last time I checked, we were now saying "ke-bla" if we really wanted to tell that some guy was black, a verlan reversal of the English word black because it's hard to even say it in French, like Japanese have trouble to say penis lol) and we force ourselves not to "overly help them" but to "overly ignore they're different".

    So it always blew my mind Americans split themselves in random colors (especially the hispanics, like, why) and enrages me the self-described "whites" are so dismissive of the ability of "black people" to be, like, completely normal and boring and able to get whatever form is needed to vote...

  • aredox  16 days ago

    You should look a little bit closer to actual circumstances of people over the country.

    https://youtu.be/rHFOwlMCdto?si=OjoxCfE1noxvw3Fz

    • CapricornNoble  16 days ago

      What aspect of this video do you think supports your position, specifically?

      My mother's side of my family is from North Philadelphia, same state as the first black woman featured in this video.

      I spent three weeks in the US in 2021 when my mother had a psychotic breakdown and I had to put her life back together on short notice. She had lost her wallet and all ID. I got her a brand new birth certificate in Philadelphia and a NJ State ID to replace her Driver's License. This required setting up some appointments either online or via phone, and bringing some documents along, but it was manageable.

      Expecting someone to have original birth certificate, SSN proof, and spouse's death certificate is....normal adult document management. I deal with a similar "burden of proof" every time I go to my local Japanese city office, or to immigration to renew our residency.

      The next anecdote in the segment blasts Sauk City, Wisconsin for the ID center being closed on most days. According to Copilot, Sauk City is 96% white, with a median household income over $78,000 and a population of less than 4000. So a small middle class town of white people rarely has the ID office open? How is that supposed to support the argument that mandatory ID requirements disproportionately affect minorities again?

      The second half of the John Oliver clip focuses on the voting events not the identification acquisition problem so I don't consider that part relevant and won't dissect it.