The Bar Wanted My ID, Why Doesn’t Uncle Sam?
I turned 21 on Sunday. It was awesome.
To celebrate turning 21, I hit the bars with my friends and had a few drinks. To get into the bar, I was asked to show an ID to prove that I was actually of legal age—in spite of the blinking, fuzzy, pink birthday tiara and sash proclaiming my newly-acquired age. They needed real, definitive proof I was legal to enter the bar—and a sash wasn’t going to cut it.
I’ve had to show an ID at many different places: the movie theatre, Walmart, the pharmacy, airports, convenience stores, using a credit card, entering buildings in DC, filling out tax forms at work, donating blood, enrolling at school, going to the bank, and entering nightclubs. One place I haven’t had to show an ID, however, is the voting booth. This is wrong.
It’s nearly impossible to exist in today’s world without some form of photo identification. Although opponents of voter ID claim that safeguards exist to protect against voter fraud, they really don’t. Unless the person at the voting booth actually knows you (which I’ll admit is decently plausible in very small towns), there’s nothing stopping a person from saying somebody’s name and getting their ballot. I was not asked for my address when I went to vote—an address was given to me to confirm. I did not have to sign anything, which is required in some states. I could have claimed I was my mother, my neighbor, or any random name. Nobody would have known any different. The only thing the poll workers could take me on was my word. Voting is too important to trust people on just their word.
The claim that requiring some form of ID will “disenfranchise” younger voters is preposterous. In my 21 years of living, I have yet to meet a person (young or old) without some form of photo identification. I mean, every young person hitting the bars with me on Sunday had an ID! I got my first passport when I was 15 years old. My brother was 12 when he got his. A visually-impaired girl in my dorm freshman year had a state ID card (obviously being ineligible for a driver’s license). Anyone who drives to the polls has a suitable ID. Anyone who’s enrolled in college classes has a photo ID. Anyone who has a job must have some form of photo ID, or else they wouldn’t be legally employed.
Additionally, my state, Maine, is the only state in the country that uses the SAT for its standardized testing in 11th grade. What’s required to take the SAT? A photo ID. If every Maine 11th grader (or at least 93% of them by the 2010 SAT rate) can produce an acceptable photo ID for the College Board, why are opponents to voter ID continually claiming that young people don’t have them? It doesn’t make sense. The evidence is not there.
The fee for a photo ID in Maine is a whole five dollars—which isn’t breaking the bank. Heck, if you can’t afford that, I’ll personally wire you the money for it. Photo ID is required to get MaineCare—but not to vote. This is mind-boggling.
I can’t think of a rational reason why a person would be against requiring an ID to go vote—unless, of course, they plan on casting fraudulent votes. Most countries require some form of voter ID—including our neighbors to the north and south. Canada’s voter ID law is stricter than any law in the United States. Mexico has a compulsory voter ID that is issued to every citizen and serves as a national ID card. If a person doesn’t have one, they can’t vote that day. End of discussion.
Ensuring secure votes is necessary for any functioning democracy. Unfortunately, we live in a society that is more concerned with making sure people are legally able to see R-rated movies or enter bars than confirming that people are legally able to vote.
Christine Rousselle | Providence College | @CRousselle
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
Nobody likes you Christine. I hope you know that.
It doesn’t matter anyway… popular vote means very little in the grand scheme of things
I will never understand why the right complains about spending on “entitlment” programs that keep people alive but are alright with spending time and tax dollars to stop nonexistant voter fraud.
Or why supporters of the right don’t see the contradiction and call them out.
Both of you make some good points. Christine,your essay is well done;it lacks the right-wing “smirk” most of these essays have. At least you are thinking rationally…and not just following some stupid Christian/Right ideology. Yes, everyone in the perfect world should have some form of ID.The problem is what type of ID and why? Is there any proof there is any really serious voter fraud or is it just that certain groups don’t like the election results? It is mostly those on the right who are leading the charge. Here’s my take on it: The right clearly wants to STOP voting by those who vote in ways they don’t like. The right wants to suppress the poor and minority vote. HOWEVER,those poor and minority people need to get basic picture ID ( should be required to access governmental services) so it is available when asked.But, this does not mean we should require everyone to show ID just to jam up the system when there is no indication of voter fraud. As you can tell I find this a tough issue which is at the forefront because the right doesn’t want EVERYONE to vote.
“As you can tell I find this a tough issue which is at the forefront because the right doesn’t want EVERYONE to vote.”
You are quite correct. They do not want non-citizens, felons or the dead to vote. Why would you have a problem with that?
No, by trying to slow down the line, add 30 to 60 minutes to a line by checking IDs, they are trying to make people who have to rush to work or to rush home to their kids less likely to vote. If they were to write legislation that specifies that no wait could be more than 40 minutes or so and if it did occur, the state would be required to provide additional machines at the site and additional workers, then we would know that the real goal was to check IDs. But there is no such attempt. The objective is obviously to slow down the voting process as much as possible and to make it less likely that people who have to rush to their second job or to rush to pick up their kids at school will wait to vote.
The two must go hand in hand. If you really want to check IDs, then pay the money necessary to guarantee that no one has to wait more than 40 minutes (30 would be better) to vote. Unless you are willing to pay for those additional machines and workers to make everyone not have to wait in long lines, we know that your real motive is to slow down the lines–and we know who is less likely to vote when the lines are slow.
Ellen, what kind of moonbat are you anyway? The people in the polling place will look at the picture and the name on the ID. Not the birth date, not the address or the driver’s license number. That should take about 5 seconds to do after the first few ID cards are checked. While we are at it, lets put an end to the idle chit chat between the poll workers and the voters. That probably takes up way more time than a simple ID check. No saying “hello”, and forget about “how are you?”. That’s 3 syllables, and it could result in a four or five syllable reply. My God, will I ever get to cast my vote?
John said: “Ellen, what kind of moonbat are you anyway? The people in the polling place will look at the picture and the name on the ID. Not the birth date, not the address or the driver’s license number. That should take about 5 seconds to do after the first few ID cards are checked. ”
Answer: That is nice to say. But it is not necessarily true. You are ASSUMING that the official was not informed by her or his boss to “take a good long time checking the birth certificates.”
Don’t make that assumption. The fact is that giving officials the ability to check birth certificates gives them the ability to take a long time doing it. Some, who want to serve the people on line, will check as quickly as possible. Others will check as slowly as possible, if they feel that it will do their party some good.
And once every 100 voters or so, someone will not have his or her id card out and available immediately, so the whole line would have to wait while the person gets the card out of his pocket or purse. So 5 seconds is highly optimistic.
But say it only takes 5 seconds, and there are 400 people on line, which can happen in some city districts. That is 2000 seconds in addition to the time that it already takes for 400 people to vote.
Now, you may not know it, but sometimes the lines run outside the building and sometimes people have to wait in the rain to vote. And currently several conservative states have been cutting down on absentee voting. Wonder why?
I should add that checking on voter IDs does not protect against multiple voting, only against someone who is not eligible. So, to protect against both someone who is not eligible you have to both check the ID AND check the person off of the list.
It is usually considered sufficient simply to ask where the person lives and then check the name off of the list. That deals both with multiple voting and ineligible votes, since an ineligible voter is not likely to have a residence that is on the list.
Doing both doubles the checks and may more than double the time, in particular if an official has been given the word to “slow down the line.”
I want to add: I think if a zombie entered a polling place with the intention of voting I do not think anyone would be there long enough to object.
Ellen,
How would, as you describe it, showing a birth certificate at the polls be positive proof if the IS of the person presenting it? Last time I looked at my birth certificate, it didn’t have my baby picture on it.
Typical liberal. It’s really simple. Present an ID to the poll workers and get a ballot. Even a moonbat like you could figure out how to screw that up. Do you have a hard time buying alcohol too? Maybe you should take conservative lessons and learn how to become self sufficient. Your argument stinks. I would never hire you as my legal counsel.
I am sorry, when I said “take a good long time checking the birth certificates” I erred. I should have said: “take a good long time checking the IDs.” I presume that the IDs would have photos on them.
Sorry about the mistake.
I stand by the possibility that the checkers would have the right to take as long as they wanted to determine whether someone was who was eligible to vote, and that if a party official said “slow down the line,” then the checkers could and in some cases would slow down the line.
And I stand by the obvious fact that checking an ID does not prevent double voting. You have to check the voter off of the list to do that, and that is already a form of ID. Your desire for a photo ID means that two forms of checking would be done.
Moreover, it is extremely odd for a conservative, with the right’s natural distrust of the impartiality and efficiency of the bureaucracy, to call for another layer of bureaucracy over the voting process. Let us suppose that in a state with one million voters the checkers had an error rate of only one tenth of one percent.
That would be ten thousand people who would be disenfranchised. To be sure, they could appeal, and the problem would ultimately be solved with them filing provisional ballots. But still, imagine your reaction if some checker looked at your ID and said: “you don’t look like this at all.”
So, not only does ID checking slow down the line, it gives additional powers to bureaucrats–other chances for them to make mistakes.
The rational reason for not requiring an ID to vote is that it slows down the line. That seems like nothing, but say that it takes only 15 seconds for someone’s idea to be checked (and that is probably very low) and there are only 200 people in line. That’s 30 minutes.
A lot of people will not wait an additional 30 minutes (on top of say 30 minutes already), and they are particularly the kind of people who should vote. People who have two jobs and have children waiting for them at home. They cannot afford to wait 30 minutes or an hour or an hour and half to vote. They should, but they won’t.
People who are retired or own their own businesses or have good jobs and money in the bank may be able to wait. So slowing down the line benefits these well off people over poorer people.
This situation could be rectified IF the people who back checking IDs were to insert a provision in the legislation guaranteeing that no line would take more than, a specified arbitrary time, say 40 minutes, and if it did additional voting machines and ID checkers would be brought in to fix the situation. But this has never been proposed. (It would cost money, of course, a good deal of money).
It is obvious from this that the backers of ID checking WANT to slow down the line and know that doing that will be an advantage to their side.
That’s rational? “Checking ID slows down the line, and poor people are impatient?”
That has got to be one of the most ridiculous arguments against providing ID to vote I have heard to date.
IF you were to say “we guarantee that no polling place will take more than 45 minutes wait, and if it takes more than that we will provide additional machines and additional workers,” then we would believe that you care about checking and do not really want to slow down the line.
But slowing down the line has a Republican bias. We know that and you know that. And, if your goal is to slow down the line, then this is one obvious way to do it. The effect of slowing down the line is to make it less likely that poor people will vote.
If it takes 30 seconds to check each ID, and the line is 200 persons long, the checking will add another hour to the existing wait, which is probably already a half hour or more. Do you think that a person with two jobs, who has to rush to her next job will wait an hour and a half to vote?
We know that your real motive is to slow down the line so that people like this will not vote. And we will oppose you until you deliver the goods in terms of a guarantee that checking IDs will not slow down the line. Without such a guarantee we know that your intent is really to slow down the line and to make it less likely that poor people will vote.
30 seconds is a very long time to check an ID. As we all know, I used to be a cashier. I had to check IDs. Nobody spends 30 seconds staring at an ID, unless you cannot find the birthdate (on an out of state ID). A poll checker would spend about five seconds max confirming an ID, as it’s just pictures.
Then what’s the point? Because how do you stop fake ids if no one is actually looking at the id?
That is nice to say. You are assuming that the official was not informed by her or his boss to “take a good long time checking the birth certificates.”
Don’t make that assumption. The fact is that giving officials the ability to check birth certificates gives them the ability to take a long time doing it. Perhaps some, who want to serve the people on line, will check as quickly as possible. Others will check as slowly as possible, if they feel that it will do their party some good.
Let us say that we have 200 people on line, waiting in the rain outside the polling station. It is already taking 30 minutes for the end of the line to reach the polling booth just due to the time that it takes to vote.
Now if it takes an additional ten seconds a person on average (and every once and a while a person will not have his ID ready and will have to dig into a pocket or a purse to get it), that adds 20 minutes to the time that the people who are already waiting in the rain for 30 minutes will have to spend.
Your solution is quite simple. No ID checking unless and until you are willing to pay to guarantee that no line in the state will take more than a 40 minute wait (30 would be better). If such a wait were to occur, the state would be responsible for providing additional voting machines and ID checkers.
Of course, that costs money. But after all, catching one fraudulent vote in every million or so ought to be worth spending a million or two million or whatever on additional voting machines and staff.
Spot on. The opposition to ID for voting has nothing to do with disenfranchisement. It has to do with suppressing fraud suppression.
Amazing article, as usual, Christine. Nice meeting you today
Nice meeting you too!!
Good job on this Christine. Love you, DAD