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Boris Johnson turned away from polling station after forgetting to bring photo ID
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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As a person with no horse in the grinder, why is requiring ID a good thing in England/EU a good thing, but bad in the USA?
I’m very confused.
As someone who comes from a country where we do require photo ID for voting, not requiring one feels absurd, so I asked the same question. Apparently in the US, there is a part of the population that doesn't normally get photo ID and that part is mostly poor people and minorities and photo ID laws are used as means of disenfranchisement, similar to having the voting days during business days (when many people can't come to vote) or having voting stations far away in an area with limited public transport options.
Where I live in Finland, the police will actually grant you a temporary photo ID only for voting if you don't have one, although most people have passports. There are early voting stations in basically every post office for a week and the main voting day is always on a Sunday. No excuse to miss voting.
I've only missed one voting during my life, at a time when I was living in another country and there was no consulate in the part of the country I was in. Nowadays there's also the option of mail-in voting when outside the country, I don't know if it wasn't a thing back then or I just didn't know.
That's not to say I didn't want some improvements in our system: I'd like to see ranked choice voting or something similar here, there are some smaller parties I've been voting and it seems they seldom have a chance.
We've never really needed to use photo ID in England and never had problems with fraud. You can only visit one polling station one time, the system worked fine. The Tories changed it to deliberately disenfranchise the poor who are less likely to have these types of ID, and they did this because they're scum.
I feel like there's a simple solution: Government issues free photo IDs to everyone, you need to pay for it if you destroy/lose it while it's still valid.
There was an ID card system in the works in the UK a few years ago, but it was scrapped. There was a lot of opposition to it ok the grounds of civil liberties and privacy.
There’s a lot of wariness about a “paper’s please” society in the country, there hasn’t been a national ID system since just after WW2. Driver’s licenses and passports are used a sort of substitute, but even the UK drivers license doesn’t have to be carried to actually drive.
The proposed ID card system was also attached to an identity database system that was considered to have a lot of features creep and be too invasive.
A free, simple ID card system would probably make a lot of sense (the existing drivers license system could be repurposed/expanded for it), but there’s just a lot of uneasiness about it among the British for better or worse.
That's where you guys draw the line? With automated facial recognition vans, CCTV everywhere, among other things, the UK is certainly not a country that comes to mind when I think "civil liberties and privacy".
To be fair when they say recently they mean about 20 years ago. It was the Blair government that were looking to do this when I was at school in the early 2000s.
France does this.
That really brings into perspective. Thank you. This is WILD.
Quick edit; how is voting not work time off for fucking EVERYONE
Ranked choice voting would make sense maybe in the presidential elections, but otherwise all elections in Finland are D'Hondt method proportional representation, with open lists. Ranked choice would bring nearly zero benefits, and lots of complication to the vote counting process.
Voting ID requirements have not been universally seen as a good thing in the UK, there’s been a lot of opposition to it.
There is no national ID in the UK, instead there is a patchwork of secondary ID systems such as passports, drivers licenses, travel cards etc. In most cases they have a monetary cost or are not universally available.
It’s been seen as an attempt at voter suppression as many poorer British people may not have suitable ID. The rules also reject many forms of ID commonly held by younger voters, while accepting a wider range of ID held be older voters. There is supposed to be a free voting ID available but implantation has been left to local councils and has been criticised as hard to access.
This is so wild.
It's never been a problem until now.
If Blunkett had got his way we'd all have ID cards. Though if that had happened the Tories wouldn't have introduced ID cards for elections as it wouldn't have given them advantage.
Your National Insurance number is as close as it gets. Similar to Social security number in America. Receive it at 16 and it doesn't change except in cases of fraud. A record of all taxe and National Insurance contributions you make. Goes towards pension.
Seriously? They made voting ID a council issue? Northern Ireland has had voting ID for a while and it's dead easy to get one, only thing I needed to pay was postage on a 2nd class stamp. Pretty good as well as it basically makes a free photographic ID available
So, you had it mailed? Wouldn't that leave houseless people on the short end of this "dead easy" stick?
You can get stuff mailed to a sheltered accomodation or homeless shelter
You generally needed the polling card and an address to register to vote before this system, so I don't see how it makes a difference.
True, but it also isn't really answering the parent comment's question, as there is also no national ID in the US.
Did you only read the middle paragraph? They said it's not seen as a good thing by some people and set out the problems with it.
Even the paragraph you highlighted is part of explaining why it's not it's not seen as a good thing in the UK.
I read that. I also read the first sentence in the parent's question. He was asking why there was a difference between the US and the UK.
The comment I responded to was saying that not everyone does see it as a good thing, but that doesn't mean that the fact that there is no national ID explains a difference.
The comment you were replying to was saying there isn't a difference between the US and UK. It's a divisive issue in both with some people pushing for it and some thinking it's a bad thing.
The US (mostly the trending fascist party) does whatever possible to make sure the least amount of people possible get the opportunity to vote and for the people who do vote, make sure their vote does not count as much as possible. It also varies per state.
not giving out a national identification card, but then requiring an identification card to vote
voting districts with crazy borders to make absolute certain that the far right gets the most representatives possible https://www.maproomblog.com/xq/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wapost-gerrymander-1024x687.jpg
reducing the amount of voting centers every year in areas like major cities that vote more left so that the people would have to travel an hour or more to vote and without a car, it is almost impossible
Voting is not a public holiday and many states do not allow voting by mail. Combined with the before point removes many poor people's ability to vote at all
there is a right wing effort to remove as many left leaning votors as possible from registration for minor errors
Armed party members at elections recently to intimidate voters, especially if they "look like the left demographic"
the "electoral college" which can just decide to not cast the vote that actually decides elections for the candidates that the citizens voted for
It is really batshit crazy over there. It seems like the right gets away with all of this crazy stuff and then when the left is back in power, almost nothing is done to change it back with regards to voting.
It's bad in the USA because they have an aversion to all forms of registration.
It's unnecessary in most of Europe because they already have functional registries.
I don't know enough about UK election procedures to figure out why they thought it was necessary. It's probably not, but it's easy points for someone wanting to signal that they're doing something against the fictional illegal immigrants who are supposedly voting en masse whenever the right wing politicians don't get their way..
That is...not why it's bad in the USA. It's bad in the USA because it's used as a tool for voter suppression historically against black and brown people.
But sure, we're all afraid of registration, when you have to do that to vote either way 🙄
Yeah, that's basically it.
It isn't. There was no evidence of voting fraud but it does reduce the number of people who vote, and specifically older people who vote conservative are more likely to have photo ID via bus passes, etc, while younger voters in poor areas are likely to have none.
You can apply for ID free, but that requires effort that a lot of people can't be bothered with, especially when they constantly being told that "both sides are as bad as each other".
It's a very USA specific thing and people in other countries are often surprised this is such a big deal, because in many countries it's a non-issue. Mostly because having an ID is so ubiquitous in many places. People are often surprised that many Americans don't possess ID.
There's a lot of stuff about the US elections that's surprising to e.g. Europeans. Why do so many not have ID? Why do you so often have to wait in line for hours? Why do some areas apparently have not enough polling places? Why do I need to register to vote, sometimes repeatedly? Why is it so hard to get time off work to go vote? A lot of these seem like basic requirements for a functioning democracy.
The US election system has a bunch of historical quirks. And also to my eyes there seems to be a conscious effort from some government officials to make people not go vote.
The chief one seems to be "why provide all those voting booths for blacks, when only their plantation owner needs to vote?" and then never updated it.
It probably works fine in countries where the government issues everyone with ID cards. But in countries where you don't have to have ID cards (UK, USA etc) it just acts as a form of voter suppression.
The Tories who were in power pushed it based on right wing conspiracy theories about immigrants because vulnerable populations least likely to have government documentation vote overwhelmingly labour.
It didn't really work though because old people also often let their passport and driving license lapse, department of work and pensions also already uses heavy handed documentation requirements as a way of fucking over people with mental health issues, criminal records, poverty etc who are less likely to have ID so the amount of people with ID in those groups is uncharacteristically high.
So yeah it's a bit of a nothing really, reduces voters on all sides but mostly the left and doesn't really seem to do much else.
One of the rights many mottos is "if it hurts everyone terribly, but hurts the left even a little bit more, then it's a good plan and we should do it".
In Europe, people have an ID since they are born. And, you need it to go to your neighboring countries which are never far away. Not having an ID is quite rare. You even have countries delivering it for free.
Also note that passports are valid IDs.
The thing is, in the US it's used to suppress voting because getting a valid ID that's recognized requires things like having a home with a permanent address, or the ability to drive, things that lower income households or the homeless are unable to provide.
In America, it's intended to disenfranchise the minority class.
Same in the UK.
And people forget how much of a PITA it is to get. Waiting in line for 4 hours to get an ID is something I'll do once a decade for my driver's license because I need it to drive and I drive several hours a day.
For people who don't have car, they may not consider the inconvenience worth it just to have the privilege of waiting a few more hours to vote.
"Motor Voter" laws that allowed people to register to vote while renewing their license were designed to make it harder for the poor to vote by making them go through a different process than drivers. Voter ID requirements took it to the next level by requiring them to ALSO go get a license to vote.
Can't speak for the UK/EU, but in the US, there's a long history of state governments trying to disenfranchise minority voters, especially in the South where slavery was legal for longer. This was accomplished in the past with so-called "literacy tests," and more recently by closing certain polling booths or understaffing them. Since millions of Americans don't have IDs that fit strict standards, many see these voter-ID laws as another form of disenfranchisement.
It's a bad thing everywhere. The Tories brought it in because they thought it would suppress voters who were likely to vote against them.