Senate Democrats defeat amendment to require photo ID to vote

Sort of. Still looks like they will be set via supreme Court to drastically reduce mail in voting by not allowing votes post marked before election day but received after to be counted. Also the US postal Service is set to run out of money in October just before the midterm elections.

Hear me out... Why is it always the SHIT bills that are not passed but somehow are adapted after slight changes? Why is it NEVER something that works out for the general public. I'm in my mid 40s and we have been screwed every which way from Sunday.

And citizens united needs to be reversed

That was just an amendment to the proposed bill

Excuse my ignorance what other voter suppression bill the have on the table now?

That might end up thrown into a reconciliation though, then there's no way to stop it unless a couple R's grow a spine... And fetterman doesn't defect again

These are republicans. No doesn’t mean no to them. They will only get more desperate as we draw nearer.

The wild thing to me is that I’m in Ohio and a woman. When I got my ID - where I registered to vote, I had to show my birth certificate, social with old name, social with new name, marriage license and 2 forms of address verification. They know I’m a US citizen. And when I go vote, I already have to show them my valid ID. So there is no valid reason for Husted to push for this and he knows it. I emailed him all this before their vote this week because he is my representative! Like WTF. These people are nuts.

And yet every f****** headline today just says "voter ID". Including this one. What bullshit

how I yearn for a little more fire and brimstone from dems show people that this isn't just another dime a dozen misdirection and fuckery from the GOP, this is a direct attack on the heart of the foundation of the nation! This is an affront to the very idea of the USA, an idea that these cushy senators swore to uphold, and dedicate their lives to! I get keeping to facts and keeping emotions out of politics, but there's something to be said for standing for something. To actually believe in it with your heart, to be moved. In this battlefield of rhetoric and popular opinion, you can't only be right on paper, you have to show people you care. You have to lead by example to convince them its worth caring. "In my opinion this is illegal" vs "This is an atrocity to the fiber of our country and I, along with every good person who believes in this nation, will fight you, to grind this anti-american garbage into dust"

Oh so this was an attempt to make their “lists”

This has not been publicized well enough. That is scary. Guess what happens when they have a database of who voted for what…

kinda feels like requiring bars to check id at the door, and when a drink is ordered, and every time a patron goes to drink it. (and people would rightfully think they were trying to destroy bars)

> The people proposing it couldn’t pass a citizenship test. Heh. That goes for most Americans regardless of their political affiliations. "Civics? Who dis?" Suffice it to say. Ignorance is a key component. >Civics in the U.S. focuses on teaching the rights, responsibilities, and functions of government, yet only nine states require a full year of study. Courtesies of Google. Yikes!

There are 176,000 voting precincts in the US and according to the Heritage Foundation's own research there are a grand total of 150 fraudulent votes per election - 1382 convictions since 1993 out of 1.5 billion ballots cast. The Donald wants a bill that will disenfranchise 18 million voters (hopefully in demographics mostly favorable to the Democrats) to prevent 150 illegal ones. They are claiming massive fraud based on 1 vote out of every million or so spread out over 176 thousand precincts. The GOP's own architects of Project 2025 list the evidence on their website which is a percentage of .0000025%. That is miniscule compared to the gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics required for the GOP to maintain power.

They're gonna bring voting exams back, you just wait

Yeah, but this amendment is not that. It's just a requirement to show (or include a copy of in a mail ballot) a drivers license, state id card, military id, or tribal id, with photo and expiration date.

The article is not about the SAVE Act. Read it again.

Huh? Not disagreeing just wondering what you mean exactly.  What commercials?

The save act is wildly unconstitutional anyways. States get to decide who they send to Congress and the Electoral College. Period. They were sovereign States and for giving up some sovereignty they were granted all rights not explicitly in the constitution. What IS in the constitution is very clear, it specifically calls out states running elections as they see fit- it's the last safeguard of democracy because it's so hard to rig 50 states elections. Now if we could get enough states to agree to the popular vote, we might get somewhere.

How are people supposed to be scared of illegals voting if they don't even know it's an issue? /s

The point is to win, and this is how they are going to do it. 

No. Stop saying this garbage. Seriously. It doesn't NEED to be done. There is negligible voter fraud (as in 0.0000000000001%). This isn't something to be concerned about. Stop being agreeable in any form to this bullshit. And by that, I mean let's say they try passing it immediately after voting. Even then, it's still not needed. It's all bullshit.

True, it's pointless, but that complaint from Schumer is the stupidest thing all week. The outer envelope you've always mailed the ballot in has *always* included your name and address and signature. Nothing about including a license copy changes anything about voting privacy.

Something else

Did you read the Constitution? >" The Times , Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but **the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of choosing Senators**."

Most people support implementing id requirements. But Republicans want a proof of citizenship requirement.

We unfortunately use to have “Jim crow laws” which were adopted in the Deep South that were nonsensical tests to prevent black people from voting. However, not everyone has easy access to a DMV due to their operating hours being like 8am-5pm, we had to pay to renew our IDs, and not every state allows the IDs to be mailed. Sure these are small things however it’s a slippery slope. It’s also not even that we need IDs but passports which not everyone here gets.

This amendment is not the SAVE act. It's just a requirement to show (or include a copy of in a mail ballot) a drivers license, state id card, military id, or tribal id, with photo and expiration date.

There’s no free, easy way to get the ID. The argument is that Republicans are making an effective poll tax. Or, making it more difficult for poor and working people to do the things needed to vote. So if it takes work hours time to get the ID and it costs money, the argument is some voters are effectively disenfranchised. Given some of the other Republican shenanigans, like limiting polling sites in some areas on purpose, it’s a pretty believable argument.

Because every single Republican bill they try to say is "just" about having an ID to vote is bundled with nonsense. Like this one, a normal driver's license most people have isn't enough. Or state level bills that "just" require a photo ID...and for *some* reason also shutter every place you'd get one in predominantly black counties. Traditionally, you pre-register to vote. On election day, you state your name and address you're registered at. The back end is actually quite sophisticated and tends to catch fraud quickly. Also, these GOP congressmen are functionally admitting their state laws already existing for this aren't doing the job. Like, in Arkansas I do have to show a photo ID. Part of the problem is they refuse to include an easy way for every citizen to freely get a sufficient ID...we do have a constitutional amendment about poll taxes to vote from old racist bullshit. So, strictly speaking, if there's a hurdle that even costs a single cent to vote it's outright illegal. But this one is also pretty sketchy for provisions that sorta screw over women more than men.

Because it's worded as a common sense legislation with lots of little hooks that would make actually registering for voting difficult. If we wanted to do this right, we COULD require a voter ID but said IDs should be provided by the government at no cost. There's no realistic way to ensure that every state government does it's due diligence and gets every ID to every voter. That's the real problem. A state like TX could pass a law like this and then conveniently "forget" to deliver 2-3% of those IDs to Democrats in advance of an election and effectively rig it. If we had a trustworthy authority to manage and deliver those IDs it could be a discussion, but right now there's no state or federal institution that i would trust to be the manager of such a system

You provide identification to register to vote already. And you need 6 points of ID to get a drivers license.  The whole bill is fake bullshit meant to muddy our electoral process. 

Bc morons lap it up and believe the GOP lies that voter fraud is a huge problem, despite having zero evidence to support it. Also, you need ID to register to vote. Just to clear up any confusion. Basically the entire issue is rooted in lies and is an effort to suppress the Democrat vote. Reason being, lots of democrats live in cities, and democrats vote by mail far mote often than Republicans. By forcing almost everyone to vote in person, it's going to mean more congessed polling places, longer times, and what they're hoping for is disenfranchised voters who won't have the time to spend what will likely be hours in some areas, to vote. If republicans actually cared about getting people to vote, they would've also made voting day a national holiday in this bill, or extended the amount of days for voting, being as there's decibel going to be more busy polls without mail in voting. What they're doing is essentially trying to cheat.

>As someone quite unfamiliar with US Election Day formalities - how is identification currently done? Why is this such a hotbutton issue?  It starts well before election day. You have to register to vote before you vote on election day. To do that you have to provide multiple forms of identification which confirm your address and identity. This is also the same identification that most people use to get their driver's license so its often done at the same time. After you register, if you ever move you have to fill out a new form to say you offically changed your address. This is important because you can only vote in person at the voting location tied to your voting district address. When you vote in person, your name is already on a list only at that singular voting location. Often only in a specific section of that voting location. You provide your name to the relevant election volunteer (community members not bussed in from the outside) and you sign the voter list next to your name and they hand you your ballot. Then you go to the voting booth and fill out your ballot in secret. What is controversial is a requirement to show photo id at registration and at the voting booth. Something like 10% of American adults dont currently have a photo id, so any requirements for a photo id will exclude about 10% of american eligible voters. Voters who are overwhelming poor, urban, and members of minority groups because they are the people most likely not to have a car and thus dont need the main form of photo ID used in the USA. A Driver's license. And because of the history in America, poll taxes (requiring people to pay for access to voting) are unconstitional per the 24th admendment. Hisotrically, such poll taxes and the loopholes around them were purposely used to deny the poor and minorities the right to vote so many people think requring people to get photo id which costs money and not given out free is just a modern poll taxes to stop poor minorities from voting. And considering some states that passed voter id laws actively closed ID offices in poor urban minority almost exculsively neighborhoods, many people think its very obvious an attempt to suppress votes rather than actually deal with election security. Especially when the political groups pushing the law often refuse to create programs to make access to government photo id free to all voters which would eliminate the comparisons to poll taxes. This debate has been happening for decades, and sometimes the courts actively block these laws because of the illegality and sometimes they dont. But its all been handled at the state level because the American elections are handled by the state, not the federal government. But the overall rate of voter fraud in the last 80 years is widely measured to be less than 0.00001% of votes cast, so while its widely pushed as an answer to voter fraud, there is so little voter fraud that its critics say its basically worthless regulation at best Now there is a new push to do this at a federal level. The new twist is that the SAVE act has even stricter requirements than ever proposed before. So strict that about 90% of photo drivers licenses dont qualify as valid ID for voting. And so strict that any name changes (like from marriage or transitioning or just normal name chnages) require much stricter documentation. Documentation that many people dont have access to. And it would automatically kicks people off the voter registry without telling them and make same day registration illegal so many people would not be able to know there was an issue and they would be unable to fix it and vote. It would also severely restrict voting by mail and early voting days. Most critics consider it a power grab to deligatmize the next election and reject the results of they favor the opposition and solidifying authoritarian power of the ruling party. Its supporters say the opposition is only popular because of illegal voting and therefore thats why they want to block strict voting requiremnts.

>how is identification currently done You give your name and other info, swear you're eligible, and the state (or county) verifies you're eligible.  >Why is this such a hotbutton issue?  The save act shifts the burden of proof to people registering, defines narrowly what that proof looks like (things like real id are usually not sufficient), and defines who can review it. A common tactic in elections is to purge voter rolls a couple of months before an election. Nominally this is to remove people who are ineligible (moved, died, etc) but in practice it is done to make certain folks less likely to vote.  The barrier to re-registering under the save act would mean people purged could almost certainly not re-register before the election.  If all the people who are eligible to vote but are not currently registered, it would take years to process.  Many states have mail in voting, some are only vote by mail. The goal of in person id is to make all voting in person. A common tactic to suppress votes in certain areas is to close all polling locations in that area, or not give them enough ballots or staff. Save would make that easier.

The state and cities get to completely decide. This is not something the federal government is supposed to touch.

It's not about voter ID. It's about political posturing. This is really all about the "SAVE Act" being debated in the Senate right now, which would potentially disenfranchise millions of voters under the guise of stopping non-citizen voting, which is a fake issue. Non-citizens don't vote in US elections in meaningful numbers. Even the Republicans know this, but they push the lie anyway to generate public pressure to pass voter reforms. The question is, why are they pushing the lie? It's not about illegal voting. They are trying to do something else. What? Democrats don't oppose requiring ID to vote. They rejected this particular political maneuver (the provision is already in the SAVE Act) to deny Republican leverage against them. That's all. The public doesn't understand this. About 30 to 40% of them are profoundly gullible idiots. So they will b**** and scream now that Democrats don't even support voter ID because they need illegal votes in order to win. It's nonsense. But again, what it's really about is stopping Republicans from f****** with voter rolls under the umbrella of a lie. Nobody should trust that. Not even Republican voters since plenty of them will have their voting rights fucked with as well, and have their voter data shared with the federal government and checked against notoriously outdated and incomplete citizenship databases (generating false positives), in an emerging age of AI-powered mass surveillance concerns and blurred lines between government and private interests. Democrats shouldn't even give them a f****** inch in these negotiations. So they didn't.

May take a bit of background, so bear with me. US Elections are administered by each individual state, even for federal offices. Our states kept a lot more sovereignty for themselves (vs. ceding to the national federal government) than I think exists in other countries. Each state gets to define its own criteria for voter verification, though there are some broad federal rules that all must follow. The basics for voter eligibility are: US citizenship, age over 18, and residence in the jurisdiction the person is voting. With some states adding bits like "convicted felon loses right to vote", mental competence, etc. And for more confusion, a small number of cities have **loosened** criteria for local elections (cannot change anything for state/federal office), allowing non-citizens with legal status the ability to vote for, say, mayor or city council or school board. Another key fact: no single government form of identification exists that really covers all those eligibility criteria. And identification is also state-run, we have no national ID. Social security numbers are kind of the closest we get, but that got shoe-horned into a system that wasn't designed for personal identification. Voters register with a state agency for whatever jurisdiction they live in, providing various things as proof that they're allowed to vote. But since a person's situation can vary around availability of certain forms of documentation, many alternates are accepted, varying by state. We want eligible voters to have an easy time to go through this process, while always catching ineligible individuals attempting to register. Those two needs tend to act against each other, especially as your desired accuracy level approaches 100%. Ultimately the "verification" boils down to a bit at the end of the registration where the person signs their name under legal affidavit that the information is true and accurate, with penalty of criminal charges if they lie. On election day, poll workers need to determine that the person coming in is registered for that jurisdiction. This can (but does not always require) include glancing at a photo ID and matching the name on that ID against the voter rolls built up from all the voter registrations. Again, states have made different choices about balancing easy access to the polls for legitimate voters against disqualifying the ineligible, with the same trade-off as during registration. The hubbub going on now is that some states are accused of not doing a good enough job at that verification. So the federal government is trying to step in to "fix" that. Most opposition stances is that the additional hurdles that would be implemented from this would impose more harm to legitimate voters than any "benefit" from catching a few extra fraudsters. Voter fraud (including by citizens which this does nothing to address) is already statistically insignificant. So the existing harm is extremely low, and the marginal difference of additional checks is likely minimal.

Note this varies by state. But in mine, you present identification when you register to vote, which includes your residential address so they know which voting location(s) to assign you too. Historically, you have not needed an ID to show up to vote at that location as your name is already registered there. The last couple years an ID has been required. The issue is that common ID’s are not free and that lack of an ID, when you already presented one to even be assigned a voting location, is an unnecessary burden. Notably, it’s a poll tax. The left also consider it absurd from a practical standpoint because no one is showing up to vote in place of someone else. And this doesn’t permit non-citizens to vote. And while they could potentially vote for someone, once that actual person showed up the crime would be identified and the person would then be a felon. Or if the actual voter showed up before the hypothetical non-citizen… The intent is to make it as hard to vote as possible as voting is heavily skewed towards older citizens who have the time and income to clear multiple hurdles and vote easily.

The better question to ask is, what problem does this solve? Voter fraud is extremely rare, almost non-existent. So the next question is, if it isn't to "secure the vote" what is it for. The answer, is bag of racism and class warfare.

Because that's not what's being asked in this bill. This is just the headline seasoning, the bill actually says nothing short of your birth certificate or passport would be acceptable for voting purposes. Driver's License isn't acceptable, Real ID isnt acceptable, despite having as rigorous criteria to even get on its own.

This was an attempt to get a foot in the door for the SAVE act. If that passes, photo ID is not enough. You’d need a passport or other higher, more expensive forms, of ID to prove your identity. The thing is though, you already need an ID to register to vote. So it’s redundant. It would needlessly complicate an issue and cause many people to pay for the required forms of ID (a poll tax - which is illegal) or more simply, disenfranchise millions of citizens from being able to participate in arguably the most fundamental aspect of our country.

Because it’s not being put forward in good faith. It’s like when Alabama passed a law requiring voter ID and then closed the DMVs (locations to get a drivers license ID) in nearly every majority black area in the state. It’s just voter suppression, they don’t really care about fraud otherwise they would be ok just passing basic ID requirements (which already exist in a bunch of states, and is needed to register to vote in the first place).  They’re also packaging in a bunch of stuff that takes away the secrecy of your vote, and allows the federal government to do the job of managing each states voter rolls (which the states already do, no reason to change this other than trying to give Trump more power to rig the midterm).  Beyond that, we constitutionally cannot have a poll tax. We don’t have free government issued IDs, and the costs are not negligible when you get to passports like being required in some of this legislation.  They’re basically trying to cram in a bunch of stuff to game the elections in their favor and aren’t solving any real problems. 

It's actually just a drivers license, state id card, military id, or tribal id, with photo and expiration date. This particular amendment made no statement about it proving citizenship.

Propagandists. Definitely not journalists.

It’s really about the federal govt trying to seize control of elections from the states for nefarious purposes. We already show ID to vote

Because its not just photo ID, it requires proof of citizenship and driver's licenses in the US don't count for that.