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Huh. I had to do that to get my non-real-ID New Jersey license -- was actually pretty funny as I was forewarned that they were extremely picky so I brought a shitload of documentation, I'd put something down, they'd say "no", and I'd move on to something else. But most of my financial stuff has been done with no ID at all, just giving over my totally-not-for-identification-purposes-LOL SSN.
I think a passport card would work under the new law -- it's a Real ID which shows citizenship. I have one because it was easier to get that from the Feds (by mail) than to get a real-ID NJ license (which requires an appointment in person at one of a few centers)
Why am I not surprised that NJ has a completely dysfunctional setup?
I had a several year stint in NJ years ago, I tried to change my license like a good citizen, showed up with as much paperwork I could gather - after waiting months and driving an hour to the only DMV with appointments. They told me I didn't have the right stuff, despite me researching heavily beforehand.
I kept my old DL for the rest of that Jersey stay.
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Hah! I'm intimately involved with that licensing absurdity. Through my various duties I get to overhear the woes of state licensing supplicants; I am also a passport acceptance agent. From this I've come to learn that for most of my fellow citizens they'd have an easier time getting a passport card for the sake of RealID than bothering with the state's licensing apparatus.
To bring it back to the topic of discussion, I concur with @asdasdasdasd: my qualm with voter ID is the Kafkaesque (it's trite because it's true) task of getting ID in the first place. It's incongruous that I help issue RealID documents that provide more travel opportunities and have fewer and better-defined documentation requirements than state-issued RealID licenses do.
Almost everyone in the US has jumped through the hoops to get a government photo ID, you can’t survive without it.
Even this leftwing think tank admits that only 9% of voting age American citizens don't have proof of citizenship "readily available". Note the weasel wording with readily available. This is also assuming that the self-reporting of citizenship in the survey was accurate and not a bunch of illegals lying:
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/millions-americans-dont-have-documents-proving-their-citizenship-readily
I mean why would illegals lie about citizenship on a survey? They’ll just not take it. Ain’t nothing suspicious in not having time for a survey.
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I agree that "readily available" is weesel wording, but 9% is a lot! Even 1% could swing an election. I went through this myself once when I let my driver's license expire while moving. I had to go through an annoying 3 step process: first buy something online with my new address, then use that to get a cell phone bill at my new address, then use that to get a new Drivers license. All of which involves hassle and waiting.
I've gone through that same process, repeatedly. In fact I moved last year, and was unable to vote in my local primaries because I didn't get my paperwork taken care of fast enough, I didn't feel like my rights were being infringed on as a result though.
It's 2026, it's okay to expect that government could process this stuff quickly.
I can order a burrito to a ridiculous % of the world's addresses, they can figure it out
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Even?
That legitimately sounds like a lot to me.
Like, how many would you think is a lot? 50%?
Like 20% or so? With a number as low as 9%, that sounds to me like the overwhelming majority of people that want proof of citizenship are able to get it without issue, and as a result it seems likely to me that that 9% could get it with relative ease if it became required for voting and they actually wanted to vote.
Though I would also have zero issue adding a law requiring ids to be completely free (i.e. taxpayer funded) if we made them mandatory for voting.
20% does seem reasonable. I guess this is just difference of intuitions. If I had to justify mine, I could point to driver’s license numbers or something, but I have to admit I’m going off vibes.
I would support a free, mandatory ID too. We accrued all these goofy workarounds for something that shouldn’t actually be difficult.
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At least 25%.
But really, it's more of a fundamental belief about the value of voting and what citizenship even means.
I don't think it's too uncharitable to say Dems are the Party of Vote Maximization- that anyone in the country should be able to vote with no verification whatsoever. 500 hobos voting from one building in Philly or whatever it was is apparently the pinnacle of democracy. Cynically, this has historically benefited Dems, and they drank their koolaid long enough to believe it.
I, on the other hand, think "competent enough to obtain a birth certificate or similar documentation at least once in their lifetime at or after age 18 and have an address that isn't an NGO office" is not so much friction as to be concerning for the foundations of democracy.
I think that is a bit uncharitable. Do Republicans mean no one should vote, ever?
Voter ID is one of the many, many issues where the parties usually take incremental positions. Democrats are the party of fewer restrictions and verifications. They have been since the Southern Strategy realignment. Their current planks are such radical statements as “expand the VRA”. I think most Democrat voters would endorse bringing all states up to the basic ID requirement. Maybe even a national ID, if it was free.
But that’s not what Trump is offering. He’s throwing shit at the wall in hopes that it benefits his team.
It's not a perfect parallel of absurdism. You can't remove voters from rolls. You can't require ID. You can't oppose ballot harvesting. You can't be skeptical of hundreds of homeless people voting from an NGO office. Et cetera and so forth.
I'm originally from a state with a notoriously corrupt election history, so maybe I'm a little more primed than average to take concern here.
I am comfortable being a bit uncharitable when believing my lying eyes. Likewise, I'll acknowledge that the DHS twitter account is proof enough that for at least some in the administration, the cruelty is the point. Less than maximal charity does not require throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Do we really think elections would be improved by making the Catch-22 navigating between the CRA and VRA even worse?
Maybe we should just disenfranchise white people altogether. Taps head Can't gerrymander the minority when there's no majority! For some reason I doubt the Dems would be satisfied then, either. I wonder how all these laws blow up in 2060 or if history just keeps the charade going.
Not a relevant category. What voters want and what politicians do is poorly correlated, and prior to the Iran brouhaha I would've said it was especially poorly correlated on the left.
But you can! Every state does voter roll maintenance. 36 states require ID. The most lax states tend to check signature and address against their rolls. They also allow challenges from poll watchers and other registered voters. It’s not the Wild West.
Ballot harvesting is more complicated, and I didn’t want to tally up every state’s laws. Did you know that only Texas and California ban paying people for ballots? Suffice to say that such liberal states as New Jersey are absolutely willing to combat ballot harvesting.
And if you can’t be skeptical…what are you doing? I think mass homeless voting absolutely raises eyebrows, even among state politicians. And they’re the ones who control these laws. The SAVE act is an attempt to centralize election control in a less responsive, less stable body, one that’s very honest about its partisan aims. I think that’s more likely to bite us in the ass by 2060.
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