Symmetry wrote:BigBallinStalin wrote:In the ideal world, I shouldn't have to pay anything in order to prove my identity! (In the ideal world, I shouldn't have to pay anything to eat, and I should be paid $1,000,000 per year for writing on CC!) But that's being unrealistic because some people lie; therefore, you need to require that proper identification must be shown in order to vote. Otherwise, it would be easy to further corrupt the elections.
Which is why I don't understand the OP because LA already requires you to bring some form of identification in order to vote.
How's that working for providing ID to purchase alcohol? I understand that it merely fuels a booming trade in fake IDs. If the problem is that people are voting fraudulently, as you suggest, would they not be able to vote with fraudulent IDs?
What would be next? Registered fingerprints and iris scans?
All for a problem that is largely theoretical.
The answer is "good enough" to your question. Now, you do raise some good points, and of course, more could always be done, but ID cards in comparison to iris scanners is a good enough tradeoff given the current outcomes.
:et's examine the empirical data on incidents of voter fraud in LA given its current policies in enforcing the Election Code. Then, we'll use the economic way of thinking on this problem.
Louisiana Voter Fraudhttp://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/L ... vote_fraudPast incidents of fraud in Louisiana: 1997, "more than 1,400 cases in which two voters used the same Social Security number."
Dead people voting in Louisiana (since 2008): 0.
Incarcerated felons voting in Louisiana (2008): 0
October 14, 2008: "Over 50% of the 8,600 voter registrations turned in by the national group Voting Is Power (which has been associated with ACORN) were incomplete or incorrectly filled out."
"They turned in about 8600 applications, out of that number 1400 new ones, sorted out the new and then we had around 1400 address changes, the rest of them were non existent."
Disenfranchised districts:
Some poll staff were discouraging people from voting.
Etc., it seems that voting in LA has some problems, but it's not rampant. It's "good enough" given the identification policy which is supplemented with other means of enforcement.
Suppose that all laws for requiring identification in order to vote were dropped--which is what you say
should happen because voting is a basic right. Would you expect an increase in voter fraud and other forms of cheating?
I would. Why?
Because the price of committing illegal actions would be significantly reduced through the means of voting in person at the ballots. Enforcement through the requirement of voter identification imposes a transaction cost. On the margin, as the price of voting in increased, then fewer and fewer people will commit that crime (because the costs become higher than the benefits of cheating). This price is also influenced by other means of enforcement, like the FBI and other bureaucrats, who level fines and jail time.
Now, of course, people can seek substitutes by finding fake IDs, but that endeavor has to be subsidized by some organization in order to be effective, so you'd need some means for laundering money for such activities. Then, you'd have to find and pay enough willing people (who risk the jail time) to commit fraud. Since this hardly happens, given the current system, then the possible substitute of fake IDs is not too much of concern.
What's more effective is having dead people vote, or sending in votes en masse using fake addresses. And those substitutes go beyond the identification requirements; however, this would not justify dropping the ID requirement because the ID requirement is a relatively cheap means to impose a cost-effective enough price on committing voter fraud at the ballots.