11 ms·

This would probably be considered “disenfranchising” because people would have a hard time keeping track of their public key and the process to recover it would

This would probably be considered “disenfranchising” because people would have a hard time keeping track of their public key and the process to recover it would involve having to take off work, transportation, etc.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 14d ago
That could alternatively be seen as a reason we should make employment less hostile to workers and encourage less car-centric city designs.
Spooky23 14d ago
[flagged]
- kspacewalk2 14d ago
  Conservatives seemingly went from the libertarian extreme where everything under the sun is a "threat to liberty" straight to cheer-leading global authoritarianism, skipping the middle altogether.
thephyber 14d ago
Ah yes, a facetious jab at legitimate criticisms of Voter ID laws. It's worth pointing out that the point of contact for state IDs is the DMV, which is the butt of every government inefficiency complaint. If, instead, it was done at USPS offices or even by postal workers on their routes, no one would complain. It's entirely about whether the burden is placed on the citizen to maintain their Constitutionally guaranteed rights or whether political agents can use the state to selectively burden neighborhoods, especially ones with no / badly performing DMV offices.
- packetlost 14d ago
  > which is the butt of every government inefficiency complaint I always find DMV (or whatever your state's equivalent) inefficiency arguments to be hilarious. They're run extremely efficiently for the government. They suck use because of that (long wait times, most important stuff gets shipped by mail weeks later).
  - bigbuppo 14d ago
    I live in Misissippi. The last time I had to go in-person for a license renewal I was in and out in less than 10 minutes because they had automated kiosks. Then again, Mississippi is a progressive state.
    - mulmen 14d ago
      Given the voter suppression history I’m curious if that experience is consistent across location and racial dimensions.
    - thephyber 14d ago
      Yes, I'm sure every person in Mississippi has the same super expedient interaction as a HNer when they have to visit to get their ID documents. I bet you even live next door to the DMV so your travel time was negligible. The point of the government doing it is that it has to be able to service those people who live maximally far from a DMV (say 60 minutes each way by car), who can't drive there, who have to weigh losing pay to take the time to travel there, who have below average intelligence, who are functionally illiterate (because Mississippi created A LOT of those before their recent education reforms), who "can't use technology", who forgot to bring whatever specific document qualifies for Real ID, etc.
      - what 14d ago
        The idea that people are unable to get IDs is an absolute myth. You need it to for basically everything a normal adult does.
        thephyber 13d ago
        You are just repeating the same meme that every Republican says. There is a huge difference between a guaranteed Constitutional right that this country fought a Civil War for... and a privilege such as getting on a plane or driving a car. Assume that I know everything you know about this topic and still arrived at a different conclusion.
  - 14d ago
- freedomben 14d ago
  > If, instead, it was done at USPS offices or even by postal workers on their routes, no one would complain. You must have had better luck with post offices than I have. Having lived in a dozen states and used many different post offices, the vast majority is an utter nightmare. Between the rudeness and the apathy, I would much prefer the DMV (depending on the state)
- sidewndr46 14d ago
  This has to be a joke right? The USPS is the group that cut down my mailbox, then left it a blank slab for 6 months. After replacing it, I had an employee state that under no circumstance would they be able to provide me a key to my mailbox.
- LorenPechtel 14d ago
  Voter ID laws aren't about fraud. The amount of fraudulent voters required to sway an election would be a massive operation that could not be kept secret. But it's a distraction from the real issue: vote fraud by improperly denying people access to the ballot box. Sure, you can get an ID cheap. Most of the time. But if all of your ID is lost (which can easily happen to the victim of a purse snatching) it's going to take time and money to fix the problem. And voter registrations are not supposed to be permitted to be challenged too close to the election. Not supposed to be doesn't mean it doesn't happen repeatedly, though. This scales much, much better than sending in fraudulent ballots. We find a handful of fraudulent ballots, often by Republicans trying to prove fraud is easy. 2016 and 2024 both had more people denied access by ID laws, challenges and the like than the margin of victory. And those missing votes would have skewed heavily Democrat. Almost forgot: SAVE puts a very onerous paper trail on divorced women. They'll need copies of the paperwork changing back to their maiden name--something an awful lot of them don't have. I've already seen a variation on this with RealID. A mistake was made at my wife's naturalization, a hyphen crept into her name that didn't belong, went unnoticed for years. Even when it was discovered it was a so-what. Social security had an errant hyphen, everything else was as intended. No problem. Then RealID came along--and she had to do a legal name change in order to change her name to what her ID and passport said. Weeks and hundreds of dollars. Denying legitimate voters is just as much fraud as permitting fraudulent ones. A system in which the the former happens at least 10,000x as often as the latter is not a good system.
seniorThrowaway 14d ago
it would likely be built into the ID, like a PIV/CAC card. I thought about this same thing many years ago, the state DMV's could be in a PKI web of trust with a federal signer/issuer/cross-signer above them. Proving your identity online would mean inserting your ID into your computer so it could be crypto-graphically validated. Yes there are genuine privacy and other concerns, but we'll probably end up there anyway and could have avoided all the mess of having these crappy third party for profit companies involved. The tech already exists, and has existed for some time.
- Teknomadix 14d ago
  This is essentially how my Estonian ID card works. The ID card is inserted into a USB smartcard reader and grants access to identity verification an thus access to services.
  - Sabinus 14d ago
    But the American public is petrified of systems like that because of the leftovers of frontier settler culture and fear of communism. They're apparently far more comfortable with the similar but worse systems being set up by corporations.
    - selicos 13d ago
      Government is wasteful and could never run an efficient [Industry]. Instead, private companies that can be efficient should run [Industry]. They will be more efficient [and turn the surplus into private profits instead of public savings].
  - sam_lowry_ 13d ago
    Why on Earth does everyone speaks about Estonian ID cards? Same ID-1 sized eID cards are now issued in many EU countries. Estonia wasn't even the first, Belgium was.
    - cromka 13d ago

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 14d ago

That could alternatively be seen as a reason we should make employment less hostile to workers and encourage less car-centric city designs.

Spooky23 14d ago

[flagged]

kspacewalk2 14d ago
Conservatives seemingly went from the libertarian extreme where everything under the sun is a "threat to liberty" straight to cheer-leading global authoritarianism, skipping the middle altogether.

thephyber 14d ago

Ah yes, a facetious jab at legitimate criticisms of Voter ID laws. It's worth pointing out that the point of contact for state IDs is the DMV, which is the butt of every government inefficiency complaint. If, instead, it was done at USPS offices or even by postal workers on their routes, no one would complain. It's entirely about whether the burden is placed on the citizen to maintain their Constitutionally guaranteed rights or whether political agents can use the state to selectively burden neighborhoods, especially ones with no / badly performing DMV offices.

packetlost 14d ago
> which is the butt of every government inefficiency complaint I always find DMV (or whatever your state's equivalent) inefficiency arguments to be hilarious. They're run extremely efficiently for the government. They suck use because of that (long wait times, most important stuff gets shipped by mail weeks later).
- bigbuppo 14d ago
  I live in Misissippi. The last time I had to go in-person for a license renewal I was in and out in less than 10 minutes because they had automated kiosks. Then again, Mississippi is a progressive state.
  - mulmen 14d ago
    Given the voter suppression history I’m curious if that experience is consistent across location and racial dimensions.
  - thephyber 14d ago
    Yes, I'm sure every person in Mississippi has the same super expedient interaction as a HNer when they have to visit to get their ID documents. I bet you even live next door to the DMV so your travel time was negligible. The point of the government doing it is that it has to be able to service those people who live maximally far from a DMV (say 60 minutes each way by car), who can't drive there, who have to weigh losing pay to take the time to travel there, who have below average intelligence, who are functionally illiterate (because Mississippi created A LOT of those before their recent education reforms), who "can't use technology", who forgot to bring whatever specific document qualifies for Real ID, etc.
    - what 14d ago
      The idea that people are unable to get IDs is an absolute myth. You need it to for basically everything a normal adult does.
      - thephyber 13d ago
        You are just repeating the same meme that every Republican says. There is a huge difference between a guaranteed Constitutional right that this country fought a Civil War for... and a privilege such as getting on a plane or driving a car. Assume that I know everything you know about this topic and still arrived at a different conclusion.
- 14d ago
freedomben 14d ago
> If, instead, it was done at USPS offices or even by postal workers on their routes, no one would complain. You must have had better luck with post offices than I have. Having lived in a dozen states and used many different post offices, the vast majority is an utter nightmare. Between the rudeness and the apathy, I would much prefer the DMV (depending on the state)
sidewndr46 14d ago
This has to be a joke right? The USPS is the group that cut down my mailbox, then left it a blank slab for 6 months. After replacing it, I had an employee state that under no circumstance would they be able to provide me a key to my mailbox.
LorenPechtel 14d ago
Voter ID laws aren't about fraud. The amount of fraudulent voters required to sway an election would be a massive operation that could not be kept secret. But it's a distraction from the real issue: vote fraud by improperly denying people access to the ballot box. Sure, you can get an ID cheap. Most of the time. But if all of your ID is lost (which can easily happen to the victim of a purse snatching) it's going to take time and money to fix the problem. And voter registrations are not supposed to be permitted to be challenged too close to the election. Not supposed to be doesn't mean it doesn't happen repeatedly, though. This scales much, much better than sending in fraudulent ballots. We find a handful of fraudulent ballots, often by Republicans trying to prove fraud is easy. 2016 and 2024 both had more people denied access by ID laws, challenges and the like than the margin of victory. And those missing votes would have skewed heavily Democrat. Almost forgot: SAVE puts a very onerous paper trail on divorced women. They'll need copies of the paperwork changing back to their maiden name--something an awful lot of them don't have. I've already seen a variation on this with RealID. A mistake was made at my wife's naturalization, a hyphen crept into her name that didn't belong, went unnoticed for years. Even when it was discovered it was a so-what. Social security had an errant hyphen, everything else was as intended. No problem. Then RealID came along--and she had to do a legal name change in order to change her name to what her ID and passport said. Weeks and hundreds of dollars. Denying legitimate voters is just as much fraud as permitting fraudulent ones. A system in which the the former happens at least 10,000x as often as the latter is not a good system.

seniorThrowaway 14d ago

it would likely be built into the ID, like a PIV/CAC card. I thought about this same thing many years ago, the state DMV's could be in a PKI web of trust with a federal signer/issuer/cross-signer above them. Proving your identity online would mean inserting your ID into your computer so it could be crypto-graphically validated. Yes there are genuine privacy and other concerns, but we'll probably end up there anyway and could have avoided all the mess of having these crappy third party for profit companies involved. The tech already exists, and has existed for some time.

Teknomadix 14d ago
This is essentially how my Estonian ID card works. The ID card is inserted into a USB smartcard reader and grants access to identity verification an thus access to services.
- Sabinus 14d ago
  But the American public is petrified of systems like that because of the leftovers of frontier settler culture and fear of communism. They're apparently far more comfortable with the similar but worse systems being set up by corporations.
  - selicos 13d ago
    Government is wasteful and could never run an efficient [Industry]. Instead, private companies that can be efficient should run [Industry]. They will be more efficient [and turn the surplus into private profits instead of public savings].
- sam_lowry_ 13d ago
  Why on Earth does everyone speaks about Estonian ID cards? Same ID-1 sized eID cards are now issued in many EU countries. Estonia wasn't even the first, Belgium was.
  - cromka 13d ago