Large Majority of Americans Want Voter ID Laws

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The Democrat push on HR1 to undermine voting integrity and erode State rights under the Constitution is not supported by the public, nor should it be.

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A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 75% of Likely U.S. Voters believe voters should be required to show photo identification such as a driver’s license before being allowed to vote. Only 21% are opposed to such a requirement. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

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Background

Voter identification laws are a part of an ongoing strategy to roll back decades of progress on voting rights. Thirty-four states have identification requirements at the polls. Seven states have strict photo ID laws, under which voters must present one of a limited set of forms of government-issued photo ID in order to cast a regular ballot – no exceptions.

Voter ID laws deprive many voters of their right to vote, reduce participation, and stand in direct opposition to our country’s trend of including more Americans in the democratic process. Many Americans do not have one of the forms of identification states acceptable for voting. These voters are disproportionately low-income, racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, and people with disabilities. Such voters more frequently have difficulty obtaining ID, because they cannot afford or cannot obtain the underlying documents that are a prerequisite to obtaining government-issued photo ID card.

Voter ID Laws Deprive Many Americans of the Right to Vote

  • Millions of Americans Lack ID. 11% of U.S. citizens – or more than 21 million Americans – do not have government-issued photo identification.1
  • Obtaining ID Costs Money. Even if ID is offered for free, voters must incur numerous costs (such as paying for birth certificates) to apply for a government-issued ID.
    • Underlying documents required to obtain ID cost money, a significant expense for lower-income Americans. The combined cost of document fees, travel expenses and waiting time are estimated to range from $75 to $175.2
    • The travel required is often a major burden on people with disabilities, the elderly, or those in rural areas without access to a car or public transportation. In Texas, some people in rural areas must travel approximately 170 miles to reach the nearest ID office.3
  • Voter ID Laws Reduce Voter Turnout. A 2014 GAO study found that strict photo ID laws reduce turnout by 2-3 percentage points,4 which can translate into tens of thousands of votes lost in a single state.5

Voter ID Laws Are Discriminatory

  • Minority voters disproportionately lack ID. Nationally, up to 25% of African-American citizens of voting age lack government-issued photo ID, compared to only 8% of whites.6
  • States exclude forms of ID in a discriminatory manner. Texas allows concealed weapons permits for voting, but does not accept student ID cards. Until its voter ID law was struck down, North Carolina prohibited public assistance IDs and state employee ID cards, which are disproportionately held by Black voters. And until recently, Wisconsin permitted active duty military ID cards, but prohibited Veterans Affairs ID cards for voting.
  • Voter ID laws are enforced in a discriminatory manner. A Caltech/MIT study found that minority voters are more frequently questioned about ID than are white voters.7
  • Voter ID laws reduce turnout among minority voters. Several studies, including a 2014 GAO study, have found that photo ID laws have a particularly depressive effect on turnout among racial minorities and other vulnerable groups, worsening the participation gap between voters of color and whites.8

Voter ID Requirements are a Solution in Search of a Problem

  • In-person fraud is vanishingly rare. A recent study found that, since 2000, there were only 31 credible allegations of voter impersonation – the only type of fraud that photo IDs could prevent – during a period of time in which over 1 billion ballots were cast.9
  • Identified instances of “fraud” are honest mistakes. So-called cases of in-person impersonation voter “fraud” are almost always the product of an elections worker or a voter making an honest mistake, and that even these mistakes are extremely infrequent.10
  • Voter ID laws are a waste of taxpayer dollars. States incur sizeable costs when implementing voter ID laws, including the cost of educating the public, training poll workers, and providing IDs to voters.
    • Texas spent nearly $2 million on voter education and outreach efforts following passage of its Voter ID law.11
    • Indiana spent over $10 million to produce free ID cards between 2007 and 2010.12
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Thanks for those speaking points

Dunno if that’s sarcastic or not but facts always make discussions better.

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Wasn’t being sarcastic, appreciated the facts

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The problem isn’t generally requiring id per se (although that can be somewhat problematic for some demographics); the problem is that specific Republican (currently - the winds shift on these issues) proposals are so often meant to keep it easy for their voters to vote and reduce (legitimate) voter turnout that’s disadvantageous to them at the polls.

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Its ridiculous that official ID’s needed to vote are not free. At least the 1st one should be issued free, then replacement ID’s would require a fee but can be done through mail, then they should require ID’s with photos to vote.

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90% of Americans want background checks on all gun sales.
74% of Americans want a 2% wealth tax on the rich.
70% of Americans do not want to see Roe v Wade overturned.
America is not governed by opinion polls.
.

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Right. It’s governed by spoiled elite boomers who, like Joey, don’t share food.

Article I, Section 4 US Constitution:

“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

Emphasis mine.

The horse’s mouth: Easy to vote; hard to cheat.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?510309-1/georgia-governor-delivers-remarks-signing-elections-legislation

From Powerline:

To make matters worse, both are peddling a false claim. The Jim Crow era extends from the mid-1870s, following the abandonment of Reconstruction by President Hayes, to 1964, when landmark civil rights legislation finally was enacted.
The filibuster predates that era. It was used before the civil war and on issues unrelated to race. For example, Democrats employed the filibuster in 1841 when they opposed legislation to create a national bank. That same year, there was a filibuster over the firing of the Senate printers.
Four years earlier, Whigs had used the filibuster against Democrats who moved to expunge from the record a Senate resolution censoring Andrew Jackson.
In reality, the filibuster was very rarely used against civil rights legislation until near the end of the Jim Crow era. It wasn’t needed for that purpose because only in the late 1940s did Congress muster much enthusiasm for passing such legislation.

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Careful, someone is gonna accuse you of being a Bernie Bro.

Harder to vote than the rules currently in place (put in place by Republicans when absentee ballots were seen as favoring republicans), and hard to cheat… even though there’s almost no cheating now, and they just spent months saying the election was fair and had no issues. Huh. Al.oat like there’s another reason for the new restrictions. What could it be, what could it be…

The 25% that said no probably had no ID’s.
It seems really really basic that some kind of ID be required like when you go to pick up a parcel from 7/11 or need to show your drivers license when renting a car. :thinking: voting being way more important the those mundane things.

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I don’t know who “they” are, but surely it can’t be the same people who are trying to push a fundamental change to how elections are operated and floating the idea of fundamentally changing how laws are passed in order to ram it through by the slimmest possible margin, because that would be really inexplicable.

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The horse who just signed the new restrictions saying it’s for election security would be the primary one. Yes, it’s inexplicable… except they don’t give a fuck, other than to wring every advantage possible from.

I liked Bernie until he capitulated to the DNC.

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What did the Gov say? I watched the video. Did you?