No. of Recommendations: 17
To exist in society, you have to have valid photo ID. That’s the world we live in. And only one party believes that verified ID is anathema for voting…all the while shouting about how they’re “protecting democracy”.
It's certainly possible to exist in society without photo ID. There are many things that you need to have a photo ID to do, of course. But those things are (mostly) privileges. For the most part, you don't need to have a photo ID to simply live an ordinary life.
If it were only "the 105 year old man born in a lot cabin in the woods who never had a birth certificate because the courthouse burned down in the Great Fire of 1901," it would be one thing. But many people - about 10% of the population - do not have either a passport or a certified copy of their birth certificate. Another large tranche of people - married women - do not have access to such documents that match their current legal names. That's a very large number of people.
There's clearly an asymmetry here. Republicans are worried about a vanishingly small number of people who aren't allowed to vote actually voting. Democrats are worried about a large number of people who are allowed to vote being prohibited from voting. The GOP frame regards a person who shouldn't vote casting a ballot as far, far worse, than a person who should be allowed to vote being wrongly prohibited from voting - even though in the abstract they have exactly the same impact on the election results. The GOP can't understand why Democrats don't prioritize maximally keeping prohibited folks out of the ballot; Democrats can't understand why Republicans aren't concerned about all the voters they might wrongfully exclude, given that the latter vastly outnumbers the former.
What do you think, Dope? Which would be worse for the integrity of an election - taking 10,000 citizens who are allowed to vote and excluding them from casting a ballot, or allowing a single non-citizen to wrongfully cast a vote?
