
Could non-citizens decide the November election? - lsh123
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/10/24/could-non-citizens-decide-the-november-election/
======
jawns
To sum up the researchers' proposal for preventing non-citizens from voting:

Demanding photo ID is ineffective, because many non-citizens nonetheless do
have a valid photo ID.

A better way to prevent them from voting, the researchers suggest, is to
merely let everyone know as they present themselves for voting that you have
to be a U.S. citizen to vote. (It appears that less-educated non-citizens are
more likely to have cast a vote, possibly because they didn't realize they
weren't allowed to.)

~~~
soneil
There's many more shades of grey than that, unfortunately.

People are genuinely uncomfortable about challenging your residency status. In
a number of situations, it's illegal to do so, and this seems to lend
discomfort to situations where it's acceptable, or even expected.

I lived in the US (legally) for 5 years. In that time I held three jobs,
opened a bank account, got a loan for a car, etc. The topic of my residency
only came up once - at the airport on the day I arrived.

When I got my 2-year card renewed for a further 10, I made a point of letting
my employer know ('mom & pop' shop, so I had some feel for their concerns). He
looked genuinely uncomfortable - like he wasn't sure if he should even look at
it. I had to tell him; don't worry man, you didn't ask.

So I can quite easily imagine that on both sides (I've read that, eg, first-
generation cubans tend towards democrat, and second-generation tend towards
republican - this isn't unique to one side), when trying to make sure that
all-important minority vote are all registered and savvy, this topic may not
come up. They may not feel entitled to ask, or be afraid of offending, etc.
When you're going door to door trying to squeeze every vote you can out of
them, you don't want to be that guy that comes off as "are you meant to be in
my country?" Trust me - we really don't like that guy.

I guess what I'm getting at is that you can have a perfectly innocent scenario
where someone they can assume to know what they're talking about, has come to
their door and reminded them to register - and then we try to fault them for
not knowing better.

All in all, it is clear as mud. I'm not sure I'd even say "less-educated", as
I don't obviously consider myself in that category - but I was never clear on
which elections I was, and wasn't (local/state/national?) allowed to vote in.
I gather I'm allowed to vote for the county sherif, but not for the president.
And everything in between is just one big grey area.

~~~
cowsandmilk
> I lived in the US (legally) for 5 years. In that time I held three jobs,
> opened a bank account, got a loan for a car, etc. The topic of my residency
> only came up once - at the airport on the day I arrived.

You didn't have to fill out a W-9 and/or I-9?

~~~
soneil
So here's an awkward story. I worked in a hotel for a year. It was a roughly
50/50 mix of housekeeping & handyman. Not exactly the 'american dream', but it
was smalltown-nowhere, and I'd rather work than hold my nose high.

I'd been working there a while, when my greencard happened to come up in
conversation. It did happen from time to time, mostly because I found it (and
still do) to be a complete novelty. It's an interesting bit of kit, with a
whole bunch of different things in one big kinda hologram on the back. From
one angle you can see my face, from another angle, madame Liberty, etc.

(It also came up when a gas station wouldn't accept it as proof of age for
smokes. They wanted An American ID. How do you argue with that?)

At the end of said conversation, my boss turned around and said .. well I
guess you'll have to pay tax then. It seems they'd just assumed up until that
point.

That was an interested realization that the world of "under the table" labour
is a whole lot less clandestine than you might like to think. Which kinda goes
back to my original point - That was not an intentional act on my part. The
way other people approach the subject has a huge impact.

(The forms you mentioned, I took a google - I don't recognise the I-9 at all.
The W-9 looks familiar, but that might be because of its striking resemblance
to my stack of W-2's, which I dragged back to europe with me for some unknown
reason. This isn't to say no to either of them, just that this was 10 years
back - I remember human interactions much better than paperwork.)

------
RexRollman
I personally don't have a problem requiring photo-ID to vote, but when it is
required, then a basic photo-ID should be provided for free to everyone.
Otherwise, it will adversely affect low income voters.

~~~
NoMoreNicksLeft
If such a system is implemented where everyone gets a free id, then it will
end up used for everything. This was the fear with social security numbers way
back when, and they wrote laws to prevent it being used except for official
SSA purposes. Even those laws eventually eroded, first letting credit agencies
and the IRS use them, and later on just about everything else.

I'd rather that the friction here lead to people killing the voter id laws,
rather than universal ids being issued.

~~~
pessimizer
Photo ID is already used for everything.

~~~
tobinfricke
Where, in the United States, "Photo ID" is basically synonymous with "Drivers'
license".

A strange state of affairs, indicative of our car-dependent society.

~~~
elektronjunge
You can get a state issued photo id that is not a driver's license. It just
happens that nearly everyone has a driver's license, which is also government
issued, so its convient to combine the two cards. Though state issued ids
prove different things. For instance, states conforming to the REAL ID laws it
says that you are a legal resident. For other states it just means that the
state issued you an id card.

~~~
NoMoreNicksLeft
Real ID is just another attempt to create the id nightmare. There's been some
minor backlash against it, but...

------
bryanlarsen
The standard counter argument against voter ID laws is not that non-citizens
don't affect the election, but it's that voter ID laws are a cure worse than
the disease. In other words, voter ID laws add enough friction to the system,
especially for those that don't already have one of the approved ID's, that
some people who would otherwise have voted, don't.

Do voter ID laws disenfranchise more legitimate votes than illegitimate ones?

~~~
owenmarshall
> Do voter ID laws disenfranchise more legitimate votes than illegitimate
> ones?

Almost certainly.

Remember that voter ID laws only tackle one type of potential fraud: I go to
the polls and impersonate someone else. That's it. Absentee overvoting, over-
registration, ballot stuffing - these aren't addressed by requiring an ID.

So now, some numbers: in a paper put together by Justin Levitt, a con-law
professor, he was able to find 31 instances of in-person vote fraud that
would've been prevented by requiring ID at the polls.[1] Even if we assume
we're undercounting dramatically, there's still no real evidence to indicate
that requiring an ID would make a real impact.

DOJ estimates are that between 600,000-700,000 registered voters in Texas
alone lack an ID[2].

So yeah, there's no real evidence that indicates requiring a registered voter
to have a photo ID does anything but "place a burden on lots of registered
voters that don't have IDs".

\--

[1]:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/06/a...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/06/a-comprehensive-
investigation-of-voter-impersonation-finds-31-credible-incidents-out-of-one-
billion-ballots-cast/)

[2]: [http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/how-
vote...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/how-voter-id-
laws-are-being-used-to-disenfranchise-minorities-and-the-poor/254572/)

~~~
anigbrowl
Citing the Atlantic article from 2 years ago while ignoring the results of
this new study is disingenuous at best. Up to last week I also thought that
the number of illegal voters was negligible, but after looking at this study
and establishing the quality of the CCES dataset on which it is based, I have
to revise that opinion. Ignoring data that you don't like is fundamentally
self-defeating.

 _More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples
indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-
citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of
the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in
2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010._

The number of non-citizens in the US is about 30 million - ~12m legal
permanent residents, ~12 million who have immigrated illegally, and ~6m on
various non-permanent visas. So you're looking at ~600k who voted illegally in
2010 and maybe ~1.7m who did so in 2008. That's a hell of a lot of people.

Now, I agree that overall this is less than the number of citizens who don't
have ID, although I have serious doubts about the genuine political engagement
or desire to vote of anyone who is entitled to a US ID and doesn't get one. So
numerically it's less of an issue. But it's a problem because it corrupts the
political process in 2 ways; it bring results into question, and it allows
people who don't like a result to cast aspersions on it by appealing tot he
general principle, even in places where the numbers don't support a claim of
being swung by illegal voters.

It's also a problem for the people who vote illegally (who are likely to be
less educated, as the article points out); voting illegally is treated as a
major federal crime and can lead to permanent, no-appeal and no-expiration
deportation, and even retroactive cancellation of US citizenship if a
naturalized citizen is later discovered to have voted illegally, with no
statute of limitations as far as I can recall.

~~~
dllthomas
_" Ignoring data that you don't like is fundamentally self-defeating."_

I agree.

FTA: _" We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by
conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly
three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide
photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted."_

Just because "X is a genuine problem", which I agree we should regard more
likely in light of this study, doesn't mean "Y, which supposedly addresses X"
is a good idea. In this case, we seem to need better matching of voter
registration to citizenship or suffrage for resident aliens - neither of which
has anything to do with producing an ID at the polls.

~~~
anigbrowl
I'm not sure why you are bringing this up, since I'm not claiming that photo
ID is a panacea for the problem of illegal voting. I'm taking issue with the
other poster's claim that the extent of such voting is a non-issue. Now, it's
true that a lot of people who are exercised about the issue of illegal voting
are also loud proponents of photo ID as a solution to that problem, but I am
not one of those people.

~~~
dllthomas
I don't see where owenmarshall said that "illegal voting" was a non-issue.
They said that there was no issue with _" one type of potential fraud: I go to
the polls and impersonate someone else"_, that there were few _" instances of
in-person vote fraud that would've been prevented by requiring ID at the
polls"_, and that _" there's still no real evidence to indicate that requiring
an ID would make a real impact."_ All of that seems to jive with the article.

I see how your comment may not have been advocating voter id, but then I don't
see what you were actually objecting to. I apologize for reading more into
your comment than was there, but I'd welcome clarification.

~~~
anigbrowl
Well, I said in the very first sentence that relying on the data in a 2012
article to articulate the scope of illegal voting was pointless. The previous
conventional wisdom was that the known instances of illegal voting were in the
mere dozens, which is negligible compared to the hundreds of thousands known
to lack ID who might be unjustly disenfranchised by ID requirements. But this
new evidence suggests that the incidence of illegal voting is several orders
of magnitude greater than previously thought.

In passing (which I should have mentioned earlier) _Remember that voter ID
laws only tackle one type of potential fraud: I go to the polls and
impersonate someone else._ is incorrect. It can also act as proof that someone
who registered without being entitled to vote did in fact vote. Registering to
vote when you're not entitled to do so is a federal offense, as is actually
voting, but obviously only the latter affects the outcome of elections (which
is why it's such a political football). Well, registering indirectly affects
elections insofar as it affects the way congressional districts are organized,
but the marginal impact of illegal registration is much lower than the
marginal impact of illegal voting.

~~~
owenmarshall
> In passing (which I should have mentioned earlier) Remember that voter ID
> laws only tackle one type of potential fraud: I go to the polls and
> impersonate someone else. is incorrect. It can also act as proof that
> someone who registered without being entitled to vote did in fact vote.

That shouldn't be "in passing" \- that's the whole thrust of your argument!

It's also a bit odd, because once again, voter ID plays a negligible part in
it. If I, owenmarshall, was born in Notamericastan and am not a citizen, yet I
register and vote in an election, the act of me actually voting is sufficient
proof that I, a citizen of Notamericastan, committed voter fraud.

How does requiring an ID provide any additional proof that the person voted?
The fact that I signed my name and received a ballot is prima facie sufficient
to demonstrate that.

> But this new evidence suggests that the incidence of illegal voting is
> several orders of magnitude greater than previously thought.

It demonstrates that requiring photo ID to vote is ineffective:

"Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to
provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted."

(from the article we are literally discussing now.)

> The previous conventional wisdom was that the known instances of illegal
> voting were in the mere dozens, which is negligible compared to the hundreds
> of thousands known to lack ID who might be unjustly disenfranchised by ID
> requirements.

It's also important to note this isn't the case: the conventional wisdom has
always been that the known instances of illegal voting _which could be
reasonably addressed through voter ID requirements_ were in the mere dozens,
negligible compared to the much larger body of legal voters who risk
disenfranchisement.

\--

So conventional wisdom indicates illegal voting of a form that can be
addressed by requiring photo ID is incredibly rare. This research indicates
that requiring photo IDs is not a sufficient barrier to prevent illegal voters
from voting - illegal voters apparently _have a photo ID anyway_. And the
number of voters who risk disenfranchisement from photo ID requirements is
still very high.

So we agree that photo ID requirements are useless, right? ;-)

~~~
anigbrowl
_That shouldn 't be "in passing" \- that's the whole thrust of your argument!_

No it isn't. IT's a completely separate observation. With all due respect, you
don't get to decide what my argument is.

 _It 's also a bit odd, because once again, voter ID plays a negligible part
in it. If I, owenmarshall, was born in Notamericastan and am not a citizen,
yet I register and vote in an election, the act of me actually voting is
sufficient proof that I, a citizen of Notamericastan, committed voter fraud._

No it isn't. If challenged about this, in many states where the registration
requirements are quite loose you could reasonably say 'some other person
registered to vote using my name,' and it's difficult to prove otherwise. As
you can see, registration requirements aren't consisitent from state to state
and it's questionable how good of a job states do at verifying the citizenship
status of registrants:
[http://www.eac.gov/assets/1/Documents/Federal%20Voter%20Regi...](http://www.eac.gov/assets/1/Documents/Federal%20Voter%20Registration_6-25-14_ENG.pdf)

 _How does requiring an ID provide any additional proof that the person voted?
The fact that I signed my name and received a ballot is prima facie sufficient
to demonstrate that._

Depends on how distinctive your signature is.

 _It 's also important to note this isn't the case: the conventional wisdom
has always been that the known instances of illegal voting which could be
reasonably addressed through voter ID requirements were in the mere dozens,
negligible compared to the much larger body of legal voters who risk
disenfranchisement._

That's not true. You're rewriting the historical argument in order to avoid
addressing new information. The conventional wisdom has been that known
instances were in the mere dozens. Adding 'which could reasonably be addressed
through voter ID requirements' is a misrepresentation of the anti-voter-ID
position.

 _So we agree that photo ID requirements are useless, right? ;-)_

No we don't, and I don't find your rhetorical contortions funny. While I don't
think photo ID requirements are a remedy for the problem of illegal voting
(for the reasons laid out in the article, with the primary problem being that
many illegal voters aren't aware they're breaking the law and may even think
they're doing the wright thing, the reason I'm arguing for consideration of
voter ID is that it addresses the obviates the argument of people who argue
that the electoral process is deliberately corrupted.

I'm getting tired explaining this so I'm going to stop now. As I said earlier,
Democrats would save themselves an awful lot of political capital if they
stopped trying to rationalize the abundant flaws of the electoral registration
system and instead focused their efforts on ensuring that disadvantaged
citizens who lack valid photo ID were provided with it, which would bring
disenfranchised people many significant benefits beyond that of exercising
their electoral franchise.

------
mhorton
It is more likely that non-citizens in foreign countries through the use of
PAC donation can decide and influence our electorate than illegal fraudulent
voting. What is so scary is that anonymous PAC money is legal!

------
tedchs
Warning, the outcome of all those words seems to be "We tried to find out, but
we still don't know if there has been or could be an impact".

------
ewoodrich
There are a number of problems with this article and the cited study. This, in
particular, is highly questionable:

 _We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to
prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of
the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification
at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted._

A majority of non-citizens in Voter ID states self-report that they were
required to show photo ID (which they could not have had) and subsequently
voted successfully? I don't think Voter ID is very effective, but that
statistic just doesn't make any sense.

The study is based on self-reporting from only about 500 non-citizens, from a
larger pool of about 30,000 voters, by the way.

EDIT: My point is a bit unclear, but I am not suggesting that non-citizens
cannot have any sort of photo ID, only that the photo ID would not correspond
with an existing citizen's voter registration.

~~~
danpat
I've just moved to the US, and I was curious as to what the process was. I'm
not eligible to vote. I'm in Idaho where photo ID is required at the polling
place.

As far as I can see, all I would need to do would be show up on polling day,
show my Idaho drivers license, fill out the registration form, and vote.

The only proof of US citizenship required is that I would tick a box that says
that I'm a US citizen.

I can very easily see that being fraudulently exploited, or just plain
misunderstood by new immigrants.

I grew up in Australia, where voting is mandatory and has been for nearly a
century. The system seems solid, and there is very rarely talk of vote fraud.
The history of voting in the US is so full of change and diversity that I'm
hardly surprised there are opportunities for exploits like this.

~~~
tsotha
The theory is if you use your ID even though you're allowed to cast a vote
your vote could be invalidated later. Technically you could be jailed as well.

The reason conservatives want voter ID is to prevent voting under other
peoples' identity. Without ID there's no way you can even know that's
happening. Which, we suspect, is why the Democrats are fighting so hard
against it.

It's less of an issue in Australia because you have far fewer illegal
immigrants and the system is set up such that the people who do immigrate to
Australia tend to be more highly educated. In the US prior to 2008 we had
something on the order of a million illegal immigrants per year stretching
back almost twenty years.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Without ID there's no way you can even know that's happening.

Untrue. If you have voter rolls and a system that records the identities used
in voting so that only one person can vote under a given identity, and go
further and make those lists public so that everyone can know which identities
voted in any given election, its quite possible to identify cases of people
voting under other people's identities without voter ID requirements. In fact,
unless you have IDs that can never be forged or stolen by people who can pass
for the identified person, you _still_ need all those features to catch people
trying to vote under someone else's identity _even with_ voter ID.

I mention that because the _status quo_ system in all US jurisdictions I am
familiar with already has these features.

The particular problem that "voter ID" is supposed to address is (1) a problem
that the status quo is set up to detect, (2) a problem for which there is no
evidence that it exists in any significant way in the status quo, and (3) a
problem for which voter ID is not much of a solution even if it did exist.

~~~
tsotha
> If you have voter rolls and a system that records the identities used in
> voting so that only one person can vote under a given identity, and go
> further and make those lists public so that everyone can know which
> identities voted in any given election, its quite possible to identify cases
> of people voting under other people's identities without voter ID
> requirements.

How? How do you know when someone has voted under someone else's name?

------
dllthomas
This is all quite interesting, but to me the most interesting piece is that
Arkansas had suffrage for aliens until 1928.

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
Personally I would guess that systemic voter disenfranchisement has a much
bigger impact.

------
gambiting
Could someone please give me a quick explanation on how voting works in the
US? Do you just turn up and vote? Where I live you need to bring your national
ID with you(it looks like a driving licence), staff at the voting office
checks the number to see if you haven't voted already, and then you are given
a sheet to put your vote on. How could non-citizens even register to vote in
the US?

~~~
djur
I'm going to answer a question implied by your question first.

There is no single effective record of citizenship in the United States, nor
is there any kind of national ID program. Social Security numbers are
frequently used as proof of identity but it is possible not to have one. They
are not proof of citizenship.

To give you an idea of what this looks like, to get an official photo ID from
the State of Oregon you need to provide proof of state residency (generally
this takes the form of a utility bill, bank correspondence, etc. with your
name and an in-state address on it), identity (a social security card, another
state ID, a passport), and legal presence in the US -- which either means
legal residency or citizenship.

In the case of naturalized citizens, this is simple: you're issued paperwork
when you gain citizenship. Proof of natural citizenship is more
complicated[1], because there's a lot of ways to be born a US citizen, some of
which don't automatically result in documents being filed.

People who drive will get a state driver's license, which generally has the
same requirements in addition to a driving test and the like. State ID cards
are frequently just driver's licenses with an indication added that they
aren't actually a license to drive!

That all leads to the actual answer to your question: every state handles
voting differently. Some require you to register in advance, others don't;
some require photo ID, others don't. My state and a few others conduct voting
by mail. Eligibility standards are also allowed to vary by state, with a few
constitutional limitations introduced by amendment. That's a whole topic in
itself, but the brief summary is that there is no constitutionally defined
positive right to vote in the US, only a set of criteria that states are not
allowed to use to exclude voters (age if older than 18, sex, race).

Any major reform of this system would require a constitutional amendment,
which is a very high bar to jump in the US.

[1]:
[http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/DMV/pages/driverid/idproof.aspx#l...](http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/DMV/pages/driverid/idproof.aspx#legal_presence)

~~~
PeterWhittaker
Excellent reply. I confess to finding the US system mind boggling. The whole
concept of "voter registration" and its being controversial and source of
discrimination just boggles my mind - as does how ridings are determined.

We have pretty much a single voter's list: We have a federal organization
responsible for maintaining the federal list, and it shares information with
its provincial counterparts, and vice versa, and they each cross-check their
information for integrity purposes.

When you file your income tax, which is done exclusively federally, except for
in Quebec, you can check a box to share your name and address info with
Elections Canada for purposes of maintaining the federal list. The provincial
agencies use all available provincial and municipal sources of information to
cross-check their lists with data obtained from the federal agency. Door-to-
door enrollment is pretty much never done, except when there are major changes
in an area that have yet to be reflected in the various sources of
information.

That same independent federal agency sets federal riding boundaries based on
population; it was created about 50 years ago to prevent jerrymandering and
works pretty darned well: The government does not get any say in setting
riding boundaries (we have a pretty transparent auditing system, which helps).

In fact, in Southern Ontario, the provincial ridings are aligned with the
federal boundaries, so the independent federal agency is scrutinized by the
government of the most populous province, as well as by the federal auditing
arm.

Several weeks before an election, each registered voter gets a card in the
mail with their polling place and, in the case of municipal elections, at
least in Ontario, their ballot colour (we have four independent school
systems, don't ask, sigh, and the ballot ensures you get the correct school
board candidates).

You arrive at a poll with your card (optional, really, if you know what you
are doing, they have all the same info) and a piece of photo ID and you are
checked against the published list. If you aren't on it, you can register at
the time, but I don't know the details, never had to do it.

This morning as my name was being crossed off the list by the volunteer at my
table, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the names of my wife (out of the
city today, voted early) and my daughter (in school downtown all day, voted
early) were crossed off in the actual printout provided to the polling place,
not crossed off by hand.

Oh, and in Ontario, at least, we pretty much use the same ballot and
tabulation system for all elections. No hanging chad, no arms to pull, no
electronic screens. A piece of paper, a marker, and a "privacy screen": you
mark your ballot, slide it into the screen, take it to the returning officer
who inserts the open end from which the ballot protrudes into a scanner, which
pulls in the ballot, scans it, tabulates it, and slides the ballot into a
locked box, available for hand recounting afterwards.

Nice and simple and effective and completely non-controversial. The Bush-Gore
election honest-to-god boggled our minds.

~~~
djur
The difficulties in the US can be traced to three facts about the United
States: elections (including eligibility standards and voting processes) being
constitutionally the responsibility of the states, citizens having free
movement between the states, and jus soli citizenship. (I would personally say
the latter two are good things about the US, but not the first.) Add to that
the difficulty in getting the states to go along with the federal government
without being compelled, and you have an intractable problem.

------
robomartin
It's very simple: Voting is a privilege reserved for US Citizens. Naturalized
or Native. It is a travesty not to have a mechanism ensuring that only
citizens vote.

This has nothing whatsoever with economic circumstance or political party. The
vast majority of US citizens can more than afford whatever might be required
to confirm their citizenship.

Everyone is walking around with cellphones, iPhones, watching satellite and
cable TV, using DSL at home, etc. Those who truly don't have the means ought
to get help from the rest of us.

If you have a cellphone, cable TV and DSL at home you can damn well spend $150
or so every ten years to obtain voting documentation. We can even make that
expense tax deductible.

You want to vote? Prove that you are entitled to doing so. Present a valid US
passport. Simple as that.

Don't have the money to pay for a US passport? There's an app for that:

[http://www.uscis.gov/feewaiver](http://www.uscis.gov/feewaiver)

So, there, those without the means or those experiencing hardship can get a US
passport for free. I'm confused. What's the problem?

~~~
lsiebert
A passport is not necessarily enough. A passport doesn't prove that you are a
resident of the state or that you have lived in your current location for a
period of time, which may be a requirement. You probably don't realize this,
but living in the same place every month, or even every night, is not
necessarily something everyone can say, much less prove.

Know any legally blind people? How easy is it for them to find a birth
certificate to get a passport?

Also many states have attempted to change voting requirements close to
elections. That's one of the many reasons the Justice Department has gotten
involved.

You can also look at the rules for tribal IDs for native americans.

Plus even if every requirement is free, that doesn't necessarily mean that the
person is savvy enough and committed to know how to navigate the system. Free
doesn't mean easy, it doesn't mean that it doesn't take time. Remember, it's a
lot easier to take time off to get passport photos taken, or go down to the
DMV, or request a fee waiver if you aren't working two jobs and taking care of
kids on your own.

Go ask five friends if they know about the fee waiver, and then ask yourself,
is a poor person more or less likely to have the education and cultural
literacy that your friends have?

Or you can just trust people when they tell you there is a problem.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
> _Know any legally blind people? How easy is it for them to find a birth
> certificate to get a passport?_

I'm legitimately curious about this because it strikes me as an odd pairing.
For a legally blind person, is "finding a birth certificate" or "getting a
passport" significantly more difficult than finding/getting anything else in
life?

------
eevilspock
They already do. It's called corporate personhood and free speech, where by
"speech" we mean unlimited amounts of money given to the PACs and candidates
of their choice. So says the Supreme Court.

~~~
ende
They actually don't. Citizens United and similar cases are not actually
grounded in corporate personhood, though it is a common misconception that
that's the case. The ruling in CU merely states that the government is denied
the ability tO regulate speech, irrespective of what the object that speech
emanates from is.

~~~
eevilspock
I beg to differ. Firstly, I did not reference Citizens United, but the Supreme
Court.

But regardless, since you bring it up, the majority opinion in Citizens United
rests on the idea that corporations are protected by the First Amendment and
Fourteenth Amendments.

It is simplistic and naive to treat corporations as just "an association of
people", or even that their political interests align with their
shareholders'. The vast majority of shareholders are simply looking at their
return on the dollar, with little understanding of or the time and resources
to look into a corporations political financing and lobbying activities, much
less have access to the behind the scenes of what is really going on. A
corporation takes on a will and "conscience" of its own, not necessarily in
sync with its shareholders or even employees.

The other basis of the ruling, that monetary contributions are protected as
"free speech", is a problem because money is not anywhere near evenly
distributed, and so overwhelmingly undermines the idea of "one-person, one
vote". This problem would still exist without corporations having "money as
free speech" rights, but it is even worse if corporations have it.

I agree with Justice Stevens that "A democracy cannot function effectively
when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold."

~~~
ende
>>the majority opinion in Citizens United rests on the idea that corporations
are protected by the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendments

This is false. Go read the ruling yourself. It says nothing about corporate
personhood. Not a single word. The entire ruling rests purely on the fact that
the government is expressly prohibited from infringing on speech. The subject
of speech is completely irrelevant. If rocks and trees suddenly started
speaking, the government could not infringe on that speech, not because the
right of speech for trees and rocks is protected by the first amendment, but
because the first amendment denies the government the power to infringe upon
speech, period.

It is absolutely astonishing how much fuss has been generated over such a
widespread ignorance of basic legal fact.

