… and I honestly do not know how many times I have had to renew it since I was 15, when I got it first.
WTF am I babbling about?
Well, I am not a US citizen, and the ID is not exactly a voter ID; it is just that, as I was picking up my government-issued piece of plastic with my picture on it today, it reminded me again of the voter ID controversy that has been brewing in the USA over the last decade or so. A controversy that was completely incomprehensible to my european mind at first, and still is, to be honest.
When an average European who is not overly informed about the minutiae of US politics hears that laws are being proposed in some states in the USA to require voters to provide picture ID when casting a vote, in all probability their first reaction will be profound befuddlement. “What? They do NOT have such requirements already? And why would anybody oppose such laws?” And the more said European learns about the voting systems in the USA, the more said befuddlement will probably grow, until they throw their hands up in the air and say something along the lines, “The US so called “Democracy” is completely idiotic, undemocratic, and the voting laws and systems make no sense whatsoever”. That was my reaction, and it was also the reaction of at least two of my friends. I admit that a sample of three is not particularly representative, but a plural of anecdotes is still data (it is just not conclusive data).
Here is how the system works in CZ, which, AFAIK, is relatively representative of how things work in EU countries:
At 15 years of age, every citizen is required by law to apply for a citizen’s ID at a local district office. There, they will be issued a picture ID, free of charge, that is valid for a fixed period (said period gets longer with each iteration). When the ID is close to its expiration, the citizen is then required to apply for a new one, and they are officially reminded of that requirement. As long as they do so within a reasonable time period, it is renewed free of charge. The only time a fee is charged is when someone loses their ID and needs to apply for a new one outside of the regular renewal period. The fees are high enough that people do not want to pay them frivolously, but not so big as to punish someone for having their wallet stolen – 8-40€, depending on how fast one wants to have a new ID issued.
Registering for voting is nonexistent, or to be more precise, it is automatic. By applying for an ID, one confirms their formal residence and citizen status. Whenever a vote is due, local, state, or EU-wide, voting ballots are delivered by post to said residence in advance, so everyone can read them and decide at their leisure.
Voting lasts two days – Friday and Saturday – so everyone who wants can cast their vote no matter what work they do and what shift they are assigned. People with mobility issues can request to have their vote collected at their residence. There is a system for voting by mail, but I never looked into it since I did not need it.
When casting the vote at the county office, every person shows their picture ID, and a clerk checks their name and address against a list. If someone forgets to bring their ballots from home, they can get a new set at the office. Then they go to a voting booth where they can choose and fill out their chosen ballot, put it in a grey envelope, and then cast it in the ballot box.
The votes are usually counted within hours and known to the public the next day.
If you are a USAmerican, you can now imagine the depth and width of the cultural chasm here. In the EU, the system is set up to make voting as easy and convenient as possible, although in my opinion, it would be greatly improved by making voting mandatory, at least for state-wide and EU-wide elections. In the USA, the system is set up to make voting confusing, difficult, and the system is for many people downright impossible to navigate.
Yet the American Mango in Chief, his Vice Couch-Fucker, and his minister Kegsbreath have the audacity to lecture us in the EU about freedom and democracy. To which I say, fuck’em.
Yeah, those of us in the US also say fuck ’em. And everyone else in The Orange Turd’s administration, and all the fucking republicans who are kissing that orange ass and making life as difficult and painful for anyone who is not rich. Fuck ’em all!
In the US, part of the confusion is that elections are handled by the various states, not the federal government. It’s written into the Constitution that way. Congress sets the dates for elections, but that’s all.
This turns out to be a good thing this time because there’s little Trump can do to alter the election short of something that’s actually illegal (not that Trump cares about the rule of law, but that’s another discussion).
@billseymour, in the EU, the elections are handled by individual states and not from Brussels, too. And some states occasionally do a mess of things (Hungary). Still, I think that 1) on average, the EU has much better electoral systems and 2) the US has the capacity to do better; there just is not the political will to do so.
I got my first picture ID when I turned 18. The official Government “office” was a liquor store.
(At the time, in Alberta, the only places it was possible to buy alcohol was at Government-run liquor stores. So they issued the IDs.)
I have used it many thousand times in the subsequent 50+ years for everything from voting to getting a passport to getting through security at the airport, etc., etc., etc. (and buying booze)
It is as normal as putting on clothes when you go outside.
I have always found the Yankee resistance to ID cards to be utterly baffling.
re chigau@4: One of the major problems with obtaining and requiring an ID in the US is that a lot of people don’t have the necessary documentation (birth certificate, etc) that are required for verification of identity. And the fucking republicans want to make it as hard as possible for some people **cough, black people, cough** to get IDs so that they won’t be able to vote. Their aim is to make it so only white people who think like them are able to vote. Just look at the extreme lengths they employ to gerrymander the districts in the states so that republicans have an unfair advantage. In multiple states, the vote numbers may be near equal between democrats and republicans, but the gerrymandered districts favor the republicans such that they end up with 2/3 or more of the representatives. It doesn’t represent the will of the people and should be illegal, but the fucking Supreem Kangaroo Kort has declared it legal for states to do so.
I do wish voting here in the USA was handled like it was in many European countries (or Canada closer to home). Still, I’m lucky, living in Massachusetts it is pretty easy to get registered to vote and to actually vote, compared to some other places.
In the US, the most common government-issued ID with a photograph is a drivers’ license, but of course many people don’t have one. People who live in urban areas are less likely to have drivers’ licenses, and I’m sure it’s no coincidence that these people are less likely to vote for the Republicans who insist that everyone who votes should need photo ID. The problem could be solved by having free universal photo IDs for citizens separate from licenses, like in Europe, but that would make things too easy when it is in the interest of many politicians to keep it more difficult and exclusive.
Yup, minor differences, but similar to how it works in the Netherlands. Everyone is registered to vote, ballots are sent by mail, and come election time votings centers are *everywhere* (closest one for me is set up in the gym hall of the elementary school just around the corner.)
I’ve never had to wait in a line to vote, although I imagine that at certain hours there might be a couple of people ahead of you. (For example, I suspect a lot of people will drop off their kids at school, then get in line to vote…)
Weirdest thing I heard about the US is that, not only do you have to register to vote, you also have to give your party affiliation at the same time. What happened to votes being anonymous?
robert79, that varies from state to state. In Missouri where I live, for example, there’s no need to declare a party preference to register. Indeed, one doesn’t even need to be a member of a party to vote in the party’s primary election: when you get to the polling place, you just tell the official which ballot you want.
I’ll tell you what the problem with government ID is. I’m an immigrant to a country where I’m in the racial minority, and the institutionally racist police come round when you’re on the beach with friends and demand you show them your ID card. So you go open the coin locker at the foot of the beach (which is the waste of a coin), show them the card… and then two minutes later they come back and say they’re not satisfied and you have to show them the card again (another wasted coin). Then they come back again, and again, and again… until you give up and leave the beach. This way they can enforce apartheid (only people of the “right” skin colour allowed!)
Of course, if you’re in the racial majority of a country, you’ll never knowwhat it’s like.
@tonykehoe, I am sorry you had to experience that, but your answer is logically complete nonsense. There might be an argument for why free-of-charge government-issued picture ID is bad for democracy, but this definitely isn’t it.
Your argument can be reduced to a syllogism:
Premise 1 -- people in country X have government ID
Premise 2 -- racist cops in country X use the ID to harass people
Conclusion -- government ID is a bad thing.
That conclusion does not follow from the premises. There is no logical link there; the whole argument is a non-sequitur through and through.
The problematic premise in your argument is not “government ID”, but “institutionally racist police”. Institutionally racist police will harass minorities with or without government ID.
It could just as easily be argued the exact opposite, that in the scenario you describe, the government ID actually helped, because it deprived the cops of employing much harsher methods of harassment. In fact, I deem that conclusion to be on stronger footing in light of recent developments in the US. Examples of US citizens being arrested without probable cause and held in ICE custody, oftentimes resulting in great harm, are not difficult to find, and said citizens have no readily available and easy-to-obtain ID to prove their bona fides.
The only logical conclusion that can be confidently drawn from your stated anecdote is “government ID on its own does not solve institutionalized racism in policing.” I did not propose it does such a thing anywhere, ever; thus, your comment is unrelated to the OP and is completely off-topic. That would not be a huge problem if it were at least internally logically consistent and could prompt some sort of sensible discussion. It is not, and it cannot.
I have worked in a few places where all employees had company-issued picture ID.
When on the job-site, everyone had their ID card on a lanyard around their neck or a pocket clip.
.
If I *lived* in a place where I knew I could be asked to show ID at any time, that ID would never leave my body.
Pretty similar in Germany, only that you have to pay for the ID and voting is only on Sundays but you can apply for a mail in ballot fuss free
There seems to be a couple of threads going on, the one I’m going to address is the weird election rules in the US.
Oddly enough, a lot of the weird requirements for voting in the US are the results of attempted reforms. Take the entire primary system. Primary elections did not use to exist. Originally candidates were selected under a convention system, I think Nebraska still uses this system. Local parties selected a person to attend the state-level convention and at that convention a candidate was chosen by those delegates, who also sent some members of the state convention to the national convention. At the national convention all the state delegates were wined and dined by the various candidates and party bosses in the back rooms selected the national presidential candidates. No primaries, and the general public didn’t get to vote on who the parties wanted to offer for presidential candidates. Lower offices worked the same, although usually at a different level, the level of the state.
However, there was a lot of discontent among candidates who wanted to run for office, but couldn’t get recognized by the major parties, and even citizens who were not happy with the selections made by the parties. This was somewhat related to the suffragette movement where women were not getting recognized by the major parties even in states where they had gained the right to vote. So there were lawsuits and a lot of discontent, until finally the parties in many states agreed that instead of delegates at a convention, all party members would vote to select the candidate. The national parties agreed. But each state implemented that slightly differently, based on what the party in each state wanted. And many states have changed their laws over time. In most cases the original requirement was that a person show their party registration card (not a photo ID, but still identity papers), before being given a ballot. But in many states the parties in these states decided that they would get candidates which were more popular (and thus more likely to be elected) if the requirement was relaxed to a party declaration. Some states have gone further and require no party declaration at all. Which leaves us with a patchwork of processes, different in just about every state. Most of these are due to the requests by the state parties not the state legislatures. Even if the legislatures enacted the laws, it was due to the requests by the parties.
I’ve mulled over the idea occasionally that maybe we should go back to the convention style selection of candidates. Let the parties internally select people who the party leaders feel represent the party. But there are downsides to that as well, the party leaders are generally going to be wealthy people and in all parties they may only select candidates who promote the interests of the party leaders and not the country. Of course, we have that problem now too. Which is better? A popularity contest where the candidate with the best media presence wins, or a candidate selected by a wealthy minority and no accountability to other citizens? That seems to be the two styles US democracy has tried. I’m open to suggestions for other processes.