good thing it's completely illegal for the federal government to interfere with state voting proceedure
> For instance, the Postal Service has what the whistleblower claims is a "zero percent failure rate."
> Mail workers would scan a sample of a batch of mail ballots — about 400 out of a batch of 10,000 or more — to verify it matches what is in the federal mail ballot portal.
> Under the policy, if even one barcode on a single ballot in the batch doesn't scan properly or the information does not match, the entire batch would be rejected and returned to state election officials so the problem ballot could be addressed, and then the verification process would have to be started again.
This is not the job of the postal service, but of the government. There is zero reason to outsource verification, and the postal service ought to vehemently reject this attempt to shift responsibility. Though I guess they won't, seeing as they are gleichgeschaltet.
Fallacy of composition. It would be factual to say that the USPS is part of the federal government, but then the statement becomes completely irrelevant.
And no, the USPS is not in the Constitution. Article I Section 8 gives Congress the power "To establish Post Offices and post Roads". They executed that power via legislation. The USPS didn't come into being until 1970, replacing the United States Post Office Department, a branch of the cabinet. The legislation creating the USPS says that it "shall not make any undue or unreasonable discrimination among users of the mails" -- what Trump has tasked it to do is in direct violation of that law.
Assuming they check 400 out of 10k, and assuming someone would want to cause any meaningful discrepancies >= 1% of the ballots, meaning 100 problematic ballots per 10k batch.
This system would catch it 98,3% of the time. Pretty good, I'd say.
1 million ballots at 10,000 per batch means 100 batches. It seems they will use 400 ballots from each batch as a sample, and if anything is wrong for one of those 400 sample ballots, then the entire batch of 10,000 is sent back. Some nefarious actor could find 100 messed up ballots and include one in each sample of 400, and viola! 100 ballots invalidates 1 million votes. That's quite a system they got there.
Everyone wants a winner on the day, and if the votes are pushed back it goes into 'hanging chad' time, which some appointed judge can just decide if the votes are included / the winner.
I'd wager most of us are OK with it taking a few days. There's a (relative) few weirdos that get upset if they see the numbers change as votes continue to be tallied.
No, the verification they're doing is on the sending side, not receiving. The state sends people ballots, the USPS intercepts them and sends them back to the state if they find an issue.
IF this cycle of delays lasts long enough, then some people never receive a mail-in ballot, or receive it too late
They only tested 400 out of 10,000, so there’s every chance when it goes back there’ll be another reason to reject it. You’re also assuming that the government’s data is accurate and the rejections are not disingenuous. If the ballots were actually accurate the state now needs to go through the process of proving that particular voter is eligible. Do state elections departments have the time and manpower to do all of that for however many get rejected? The goal is clearly to waste as much time as possible so the ballots don’t arrive on time.
> Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems
Yes. That's the point. The administration doesn't care about fixing whatever hypothetical mail ballot fraud may or may not exist; they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end.
So a party calling for voter id is following the will of the people, while politicians opposing the will of the people are justifying the need for a fix, right?
> politicians opposing the will of the people are justifying the need for a fix, right?
That's a funny way of saying that they support the status quo, which has never been provably linked to large-scale voter fraud.
If you want voter ID, here's the procedure: establish evidence showing that its need outweighs its disadvantages, then pass a bill in Congress, then implement the bill. Signing an Executive Order that demands illegal overreach without justification is not the American way.
No, they do not. Getting an ID card in most places requires a fee, as well a trip to the DMV or equivalent, and providing documentation such as a birth certificate, which also requires a fee. You take this process for granted because you live a privileged life, but for many people, taking a day off work and paying $50 to get an ID is an insurmountable obstacle, especially when it offers no immediate tangible benefit in their daily lives.
If voter ID advocates feel so strongly about their position, they would support mandatory ID. The fact that they don't support mandatory ID shows their real agenda: they don't care about securing elections, they care only about excluding the undesirable class from elections.
>Getting an ID card in most places requires a fee,
False, there are no fees for voter IDs. Please find a state where you believe this is true.
>as well a trip to the DMV or equivalent
Not always.
>and providing documentation such as a birth certificate, which also requires a fee.
False. Many (all?) states provide free birth certificates for voter IDs.
>You take this process for granted
I don't take this process for granted, it's the same process across the first world.
>because you live a privileged life, but for many people, taking a day off work and paying $50 to get an ID is an insurmountable obstacle,
Nice soft bigotry of low expectations. You're so privileged that you actually believe this objectively false propaganda. The fact that you've repeated it to multiple times to virtue signal which may dissuade people to vote is a luxury belief [0]. Who believes luxury beliefs? Privileged peopled.
>If voter ID advocates feel so strongly about their position, they would support mandatory ID.
They do.
>The fact that they don't support mandatory ID
False, they do support free IDs.
>they don't care about securing elections, they care only about excluding the undesirable class from elections.
Okay, we're at that level of argument, I see. Well, you forgot to bring your evidence. A drivers license in New York costs between $64.25 and $107.5
>>as well a trip to the DMV or equivalent
> Not always.
Please explain how a an ID issued without an in-person visit is supposed to securely represent a person's citizenship status? That is the point, after all, right?
> False. Many (all?) states provide free birth certificates for voter IDs.
Absolutely not true. Even if it were true, it's still friction, which is ~10% of the American population lacks an ID that would be required to vote. If you're trying to convince me that getting an ID is free and easy, you'll need to explain first why everyone who needs such an ID doesn't already have one.[1]
> I don't take this process for granted, it's the same process across the first world.
European countries in the "first world" have automatic, mandatory IDs, which the US does not.
> virtue signal
Republicans always accuse liberals of "virtue signalling" when liberals try to do anything supporting justice. To whom am I virtue signalling? My massive Instagram following (which I don't have)? Maybe you falsely accuse other people of chasing clout because the idea of pursuing justice for its own sake is completely foreign to your own morality.
>>If voter ID advocates feel so strongly about their position, they would support mandatory ID.
>They do.
Please check your facts. Free, mandatory ID was offered as amendment by Democrats to the recent voter ID law and was voted down by Republicans. [2]
>>The fact that they don't support mandatory ID
>False, they do support free IDs.
That's not what I said. In order for voter ID laws to be fair, IDs must be not only free, but mandatory for everyone and issued automatically. Republicans have consistently voted against such a law.
>they don't care about securing elections, they care only about excluding the undesirable class from elections.
Do you really disagree with that statement? Can you then explain why the GOP has systematically disenfranchised voters? Just a few recent examples:
I absolutely agree with this statement. Somebody should tell Donald Trump (and his rabid followers), who despite your exhortation insists on lying about election fraud.
>Okay, we're at that level of argument, I see. Well, you forgot to bring your evidence.
So did you.
>A drivers license in New York costs between $64.25 and $107.5
This is about voter IDs (which are free), not drivers licenses. Now you're moving goalposts.
>Please explain how a an ID issued without an in-person visit is supposed to securely represent a person's citizenship status? That is the point, after all, right?
Many states have mobile DMV offices that are stationed within walking distance during the year, special programs where DMV employees go to the homes of those in need to verify documentation, etc.
>Absolutely not true. Even if it were true, it's still friction, which is ~10% of the American population lacks an ID that would be required to vote.
It's absolutely true. Yes, if you lose documentation such as birth certificates, you may be required to acquire them. Same as any first world country.
>European countries in the "first world" have automatic, mandatory IDs, which the US does not.
The US has this via the states, not federally.
>Republicans always accuse liberals of "virtue signalling" when liberals try to do anything supporting justice.
You're not supporting justice, you're regurgitating false propaganda.
>To whom am I virtue signalling? My massive Instagram following (which I don't have)?
Like Karens virtue signaling in the town square about being good Christians.
>Maybe you falsely accuse other people of chasing clout because the idea of pursuing justice
You're not "pursuing justice" you're regurgitating BlueSky brainrot to feel morally superior.
>Please check your facts. Free, mandatory ID was offered as amendment by Democrats to the recent voter ID law and was voted down by Republicans.
Free voter ID is provided by every Republican state. The link you posted literally states that Democrats blocked the bill LOL!
>That's not what I said. In order for voter ID laws to be fair, IDs must be not only free, but mandatory for everyone and issued automatically. Republicans have consistently voted against such a law.
That is exactly what every state has. Every Republican state has this. Find a state that does not have this.
>Do you really disagree with that statement? Can you then explain why the GOP has systematically disenfranchised voters?
Stop moving the goalposts. Your claims about voter ID are fake propaganda. Voter IDs are free in every state, you cannot deny this fact.
Did you not see the links to factual evidence that I included?
> This is about voter IDs (which are free), not drivers licenses. Now you're moving goalposts.
Most people get their in the form of a driver's license, not as a pure voter ID. If a tiny minority of people get the free option, then how is it relevant?
> Many states have mobile DMV offices that are stationed within walking distance during the year, special programs where DMV employees go to the homes of those in need to verify documentation, etc.
This makes no sense. "Walking distance" to what? I have never heard of or seen such a program. If they exist, they are not terribly effective, given that 10% of the population still lack a valid ID.
> It's absolutely true. Yes, if you lose documentation such as birth certificates, you may be required to acquire them. Same as any first world country.
That's not how it works in Europe (at least in Netherlands and Czech Republic, where I have experience). In that case, the government already has your birth cert, so they don't force you to acquire it and then give it back to a different part of the government. Only the US sets up these additional obstacles. Which, again, is why 10% of Americans don't have a valid ID, a fact that you refuse to address.
>>European countries in the "first world" have automatic, mandatory IDs, which the US does not.
> The US has this via the states, not federally.
Can you please name a single US state that automatically issues ID to all voters? I can't.
>>Republicans always accuse liberals of "virtue signalling" when liberals try to do anything supporting justice.
> You're not supporting justice, you're regurgitating false propaganda.
What about "making sure that eligible voters and vote" is not about justice?
> Like Karens virtue signaling in the town square about being good Christians.
Not an answer to my question.
> You're not "pursuing justice" you're regurgitating BlueSky brainrot to feel morally superior.
You already said that, but you are just making baseless accusations. You don't know my mind. Let me ask you this: do you categorically refuse the possibility that anyone pursues justice for its own sake? Were MLK Jr, Ghandi, the Sufragettes, the abolitoinists all just "virtue signalling", or do you think that some people actually care about making the world a better place?
It's really hard to take your argument seriously when doubt the good faith of arguments made with support facts that help people and support democracy. Clearly no one in the MAGA camp could be accused of "virtue signalling" because they have no virtues. On the contrary, MAGA members publicly signal their devotion to groupthink by willfully blocking out unpleasant facts and pledging fealty to a prodigious liar.
> Free voter ID is provided by every Republican state. The link you posted literally states that Democrats blocked the bill LOL!
You keep on ignoring important words in my comment. In this case, you specifically edited out "automatic" and "mandatory." The absence of those words is why Democrats blocked the bill.
> That is exactly what every state has. Every Republican state has this. Find a state that does not have this.
Literally no state has this. I live in a red state and I have to go in and request a voter ID, using appropriate evidence. They are not issued automatically. I challenge you to find any evidence supporting the idea that any state automatically issues ID.
> Stop moving the goalposts. Your claims about voter ID are fake propaganda. Voter IDs are free in every state, you cannot deny this fact.
Calling it propganda doesn't make it untrue. You have failed to address the many examples of disenfranchisement at the hands of the GOP.
My conclusion, based on the evidence presented in this thread: Either you are a t...
>Did you not see the links to factual evidence that I included?
You did not link to any factual evidence that made any claim contrary to the facts: Every state has free voter IDs. This is a fact.
>Most people get their in the form of a driver's license, not as a pure voter ID. If a tiny minority of people get the free option, then how is it relevant?
So not only do you now admit that free options exist, you're trying to claim they're irrelevant. Millions of people get free voter IDs, they're not irrelevant. This is a fact you just admitted to, which was my original claim. I accept your defeat.
>This makes no sense. "Walking distance" to what? I have never heard of or seen such a program. If they exist, they are not terribly effective, given that 10% of the population still lack a valid ID.
"I haven't heard about it so it doesn't exist."
>That's not how it works in Europe (at least in Netherlands and Czech Republic, where I have experience). In that case, the government already has your birth cert, so they don't force you to acquire it and then give it back to a different part of the government.
That's exactly how it works in Europe, Czech Republic. If you don't have a copy, you request a new one.
To acquire the machine-readable version of the card, a citizen must present either a currently valid card (in case of renewals), or a currently valid passport, or a birth certificate and proof of citizenship.[0]
>so they don't force you to acquire it and then give it back to a different part of the government.
That's not how it works in the US, you do not give away your birth certificate to a different part of the government.
>Which, again, is why 10% of Americans don't have a valid ID, a fact that you refuse to address.
That's not why 10% don't have ID nor did I fail to address it. School is mandatory in the US yet 15% of Americans are illiterate.
>Can you please name a single US state that automatically issues ID to all voters? I can't.
Not every European country has mandatory IDs. Like Europe, every state in the US has free voter IDs. Every single state, you cannot deny this fact.
>Not an answer to my question.
You don't need a known audience to virtue signal to.
>do you categorically refuse the possibility that anyone pursues justice for its own sake?
You're not pursing justice, you're spew false propaganda and fighting a problem that doesn't exist.
>Clearly no one in the MAGA...
Whataboutism.
>You keep on ignoring important words in my comment. In this case, you specifically edited out "automatic" and "mandatory." The absence of those words is why Democrats blocked the bill.
That's not why they blocked the bill.
>Literally no state has this. I live in a red state and I have to go in and request a voter ID, using appropriate evidence. They are not issued automatically.
No country issues an ID automatically to anyone who makes a request. The ID is issued to you automatically after proving who you are. You don't need to petition the state or pay a fee. It's automatic.
I'll say it again, every state in the US has free voter IDs. EVERY state, red and blue.
QED.
>Calling it propganda doesn't make it untrue.
Your statement was false, untrue. You finally admitted above that you were wrong.
>My conclusion, based on the evidence presented in this thread: Either you are a terrible debater who consistently disregards evidence
Poor conclusion. Find a single state that does not have free voter IDs.
>intentionally ignoring evidence that disagrees with your preconceived conclusion.
No evidence disagrees with my original statement of fact:
Every US state issues a free voter ID cards. Even Republican strongholds.
> You did not link to any factual evidence that made any claim contrary to the facts: Every state has free voter IDs.
You keep on repeating that. Your brain is hyper-focused on "every state has free voter ID card". Meanwhile you are consistently ignoring the context: 10% of Americans don't have voter ID of any kind. No state issues voter ID automatically. Those Americans will be disenfranchised under a Republican voter ID law. Until you can solve the disenfranchisement issue, voter ID requirement cannot be supported.
> So not only do you now admit that free options exist, you're trying to claim they're irrelevant.
Whether or not they cost money is not the point. The point is whether getting them is an obstacle that will disenfranchise legal voters.
> I accept your defeat.
Lol are you literally 13 years old? You definitely act like it.
>>This makes no sense. "Walking distance" to what? I have never heard of or seen such a program. If they exist, they are not terribly effective, given that 10% of the population still lack a valid ID.
> "I haven't heard about it so it doesn't exist."
You didn't actually address my question. I asked "walking distance to what" because that obviously matters. And I didn't say they don't exist, I said that they aren't effective.
> That's exactly how it works in Europe, Czech Republic. If you don't have a copy, you request a new one.
No. In the Czech Republic, they are issued automatically because the government already has your birth certificate. Because IDs there are universal, there is a much lower barrier to entry. You dont know what you are talking about.
> That's not how it works in the US, you do not give away your birth certificate to a different part of the government.
You don't "give it away" and I didn't say that you did. You need to acquire your birth cert, then show it to the DMV. I don't even know why you would even argue this. You're just arguing to be argumentative. Again, you have the mind of a 13 year old.
> That's not why 10% don't have ID nor did I fail to address it. School is mandatory in the US yet 15% of Americans are illiterate.
Completely irrelevant comparison. In European countries, everyone has voter ID because the IDs are issued automatically, which does not happen in the US.
> You don't need a known audience to virtue signal to.
You are sad, pathetic person.
> You're not pursing justice, you're spew false propaganda and fighting a problem that doesn't exist.
Sad, without morals. Your low estimation of your fellow man reflects the weak state of your own conscience. You assume (falsely) that everyone is as self-interested as you are. I hope you find someone who can show you beauty and kindness in the world.
> That's not why they blocked the bill.
Citation needed.
> No country issues an ID automatically to anyone who makes a request. The ID is issued to you automatically after proving who you are. You don't need to petition the state with an attorney or pay a fee.
That's not what I said. Stop putting words in my mouth. At the point I can only include that you are intentionally misinterpreting me in order, I don't know, win internet points or just fill up your vacuous life.
Debating someone who is not interested in actually understnading the world but just incessantly repeating themselves like a dying insect is not rewarding for me or educational for you. So please grow up. Until then, I won't continue this conversation.
This statement as written is false. If you disagree, please show me where Massachusetts has a free ID card of any sort.
Yes, MA has other options for proving identity for voting purposes. But it does not have a free ID card. If you’re going to be argumentative, please make sure you’re correct before posting.
If they gave a crap about the will of the people then why is marijuana still illegal? When you defy the will of the people 99% of the time, claiming your motivation is the will of the people when it is convenient rings pretty hollow.
We just spent a year hearing from some asshole about how the government was spending too much money and couldn't afford frivolities, yet we're supposed to spend money on security theatre to fix a problem that doesn't actually exist, all because some other assholes are butthurt about losing an election fair and square?
Remember the people leading the charge for this are insurrectionists. They don't care about protecting voting or the concept of democracy at all.
> If you were writing software, would you overlook a problem like that?
They didn't overlook it. They fixed the error.
If you are asserting that this error was a partisan, intentional attempt to change the outcome of the election, you're going to need to provide a lot more evidence before injecting USPS into election policy makes sense.
I am asserting that errors happened. Invalid votes were cast, thousands more potentially could be cast. Just in one state. What about the rest? Clearly, there is potential for more problem areas.
The American public overwhelmingly wants voter ID, as other countries have, but this is a topic not entertained by one side of the political aisle. Or rather, by the party leaders—- the majority of their voters want voter ID, but the party won’t pursue it!
We can’t just shrug these things off. They are real.
I’d say there is enough to see here that more scrutiny is warranted. It should be bipartisan.
Errors are not fraud. The current push by the Trump administration is (allegedly) about fraud.
> The American public overwhelmingly wants voter ID, as other countries have, but this is a topic not entertained by one side of the political aisle.
It's entertained if you can do it fairly. "Fairly" means everyone gets an ID automatically. Why do Republicans oppose given legal voters ID so that they can vote?
I don’t oppose that. What makes you think all Republicans would?
I want every single voter to have access to their vote, and I want strict proof that every vote cast was the knowledgeable will of that voter ( and only that voter. I’m thinking of ballot dumps at collection boxes here. )
The distinction between fraud and error doesn’t matter to me. The system has problems, ineligible voters have been casting votes. Nobody should oppose efforts to fix it.
> I don’t oppose that. What makes you think all Republicans would?
Because your elected GOP representatives consistently vote against it, when universally available ID is presented by Democrats as a condition for voter ID laws. Do you have a plausible explanation for why GOP Congressmen would reject that proposal? I sure do.
> Nobody should oppose efforts to fix it.
First you have to prove that there is a problem to fix. Fraud, as we've covered, has never been shown to be a significant issue, and software bugs, as I noted, are not cured by invasive and illegal USPS tactics. So what in your view could possibly be fixed by this latest move?
It doesn't matter when the guy leading the charge is an actual insurrectionist, who was caught trying to twist the arm of Georgia's governer to throw the election for him. What's even the point of voting if the President is just going to call up the governor and threaten to investigate him if he doesn't get his way? The people pushing this have a massive credibility problem and it's never going to go anywhere until more credible people, like you, are writing the bills and making the case you're making here from the Senate floor.
> The distinction between fraud and error doesn’t matter to me. The system has problems, ineligible voters have been casting votes. Nobody should oppose efforts to fix it.
There's a huge actual distinction between the two in that you can't fix all errors. Moreover, every system is going to have some amount of fraud; it's impossible to reduce fraud to zero without increasing costs to infinity. So at some level you have to make a choice between a flawed system and a system that's intractable. I know I prefer my systems to actually function.
And oh would you look there's even more proof that the system is working as intended:
The audit estimated that no more than 0.1% of voter registration records would have allowed someone to vote despite an unverified identity, invalid address, or citizenship-related issue.
So that's what we've talking about really, driving a 0.1% down to some other smaller infinitesimal number which cannot be 0, because even the perfect system would be subject to human errors.
It isn't just injecting chaos, but instead is trying to engineer an outcome. Find every mechanism and group that is likely to vote against you, and do everything possible to disenfranchise those voters. They've already gotten a ruling that ballots received after a cutoff do not count, regardless of the reason, so now they're engineering assurances that they get to choose from where ballots can be selectively delayed.
“He had told me [before the election] he was going to unleash the ‘anomaly in the matrix,’ ” St. Clair says in championed documentarist Alex Gibney’s film, Musk"
> They've already gotten a ruling that ballots received after a cutoff do not count
Watson v. Republican National Committee seems to be the opposite of what you state: ballots received after election day can be counted provided they were postmarked on or before election day.
You're right, the 5-4 SCOTUS ruling this summer reversed the appeals court ruling, preserving states' rights to set laws that permit counting postmarked ballots -- if postmarked in time.
Curiously, the USPS changed when it postmarks mail this year, resulting in postmark delays. In Washington state, the number of ballots rejected for being late is up 32% compared to 2024.
This is a kind of comment I would expect on Reddit and not hn.
If you took off your partisan hat, put on your red team hat, and wanted to hack the election, what kind of problems would you find. And be honest.
If I take a look, through a security lens, of the existing mail in process from registration to recording votes, it’s quite shocking.
Yes, it’s a mad scrambling process so close to an election to plug the holes. It also seems like many people have a vested interest in keeping it bad, with little to no profess over the years. With my non-partisan hat on, it looks like the only way to do anything is to shove an executive order through the post office to prevent mail fraud. This is not unlike how people patch security holes in big tech because they can’t get the 12 other directors and interests to cooperate and make security a priority.
> If you took off your partisan hat, put on your red team hat
A humorous double meaning, almost like taking the hat off and putting it back on again.
But seriously I would expect a stronger argument in favor of these changes from proponents like you, something sourced, especially given the trial runs of these encroachments that've been run in a number of red states that haven't found any significant security issues and just turned out to be a waste of taxpayer dollars, time, and trust.
Do your readers a favor and bring something at least as substantive as the article you're commenting on.
You supplied nothing to back up your extraordinary claims. Your claims are extraordinary given the almost non-existent issues with mail-in voting. But if you'd like to prove otherwise, be my guest.
From my perspective this just looks like voter suppression. Your hypothetical edge cases operate at a scale that doesn't matter in the slightest, a fundamental rookie security mistake.
Which "side" has been fighting tooth and nail for unverifiable mail-in ballots and resisting all investigations of voting integrity? Though both sides are also embracing totally insecure and insane digital voting systems that have been caught doing things like duplicating votes and enabling fractional voting in general elections.
> Which "side" has been fighting tooth and nail for unverifiable mail-in ballots
Mail-in ballots are currently accepted in 23 states [1], including Utah, Kansas, and Florida. Which "side" is that? Please note Donald Trump personally uses the terribly unsecure and unverifiable method of mail-in ballot, so either he thinks it's secure enough, or, uh, is not being totally honest with us.
> resisting all investigations of voting integrity?
Which investigations, specifically, are you referring to? As far as I know, Trump formed a voter integrity commission in his first term which was unable to find any evidence of voter fraud and was therefore subsequently disbanded [2]. Since then, the only source of information on the allegedly widespread voter fraud is from Donald Trump's own mouth.
at some point how much more money do you want to burn on investigations w/o any particular new cause?
"unverifiable" ain't exactly true either where i live. you might think there should be more or different verification, sure, start some discussions in your local area. don't bring the federal government into everyone else's after the administration shows a long history of crying wolf and pre-seeding conspiracy theories with "i can't possibly lose" stuff. if you're convinced the states and local municipalities can't run stuff, it should be easy to prove.
And when it all goes to shit, they can just use that as evidence that mail-in voting shouldn’t have been allowed in the first place.
It is the same tired but sadly effective Republican playbook: take a mostly functioning if imperfect system, break it beyond repair under the guise of fixing or reforming it, use the ongoing disaster to argue that it should be dismantled, rinse and repeat until it’s unsalvageable.
That's the crazy thing about the US. Our postal service is, for some reason, not funded by taxpayer dollars, but also not allowed to run a profit, they are not allowed to change prices without congressional approval, and they must fund their pension for 75 years - well beyond any requirement anyone else in the US faces, to include both federal agencies and private orgs. If they didn't have that last requirement, they'd be solvent.
No tax funding, no profit and price controls are normal for a state owned company. In other countries the postal service is not expected to pay for itself all the way but subsidies are limited by law. The prices are supposed to be lower than market as a public service.
These aren’t state-owned companies, they’re federal services. It’s also, as stated, not how it works for any other org or business in the US. Maybe everyone else in the world has some kind of problem similar to this, but it appears to at least be a somewhat unique situation in the US.
Exactly. It's incredible how partisan some peoples information bubbles must be to not see this for what it is.
All of these changes are based on the president making comments like the following:
> "the cheating on mail-in voting is legendary,"
Which he has attempted to prove going back years. And every time it's been found that it essentially doesn't happen. And I believe, the few instances of voter fraud that have been found have been majority republicans and not democrats as has been accused.
So to begin with, anyone arguing for these changes need to acknowledge the well established fact that there is effectively zero voter fraud at all levels throughout the country in anyway impacting elections. As has been investigated and shown time and time and time again. If they aren't beginning with the well established state of the world then they are in fact are the one entering with an extremely partisan hat.
Now if their argument is "yes it's true voter fraud has been investigated countless times, and continuously shown to effectively be smaller than a rounding error, does not impact elections, is know to not be a problem, but I still want to make sweeping changes right before an election." Then sure that's a point of discussion. Then I think the simple question then becomes "why"? But if they aren't willing to begin with an accurate discussion of the facts and state of the situation (there is no voter fraud problem), then any comment they make following that has little credibility.
Why is he pushing to outlaw mail-in voting when there is no issue with mail in voting? Is it because one party votes by mail more than the other?
Or the change in the date mail can receives a postmark? Previously mail was transported to the facility to the same day so would get postmarked that day. Now, as this year, mail won't get post-marked the day it's dropped in a mail box - so any zipcode's mail boxes can now be marked as being sent too late to count, even if they were dropped off before election day.
> While we are not changing our postmarking practices, we have made adjustments to our transportation operations that will result in some mailpieces not arriving at our originating processing facilities on the same day that they are mailed. This means that the date on the postmarks applied at our processing facilities will not necessarily match the date on which the customer’s mailpiece was collected by a letter carrier or dropped off at a retail location.
If the administration actually cared about getting an accurate vote, why aren't they opening more voting locations? Why don't they mandate one voting location per every x number of citizens? Why would the Department of Homeland Security decide who is allowed to get ballots via the mail?
If it's so bad, why has the administration failed time and time again to produce any evidence it's actually bad? If it's so horrible, and wide spread why is it impossible to find evidences that supports this? Or shows it overturning elections or anything close?
It's the same scheme. Make a bunch of baseless assertions, repeat them frequently enough and people in an information bubble will begin to believe it. And that's clearly what's happening here. Just like "we've won the war in Iran" 20 times now. And "Iran has agreed to peace deal where they surrender" 15 times now. And how every weekend for months there were claims about the work on Friday that somehow magically fell apart by Monday. And yet somehow there are still people who give these false claims, and the people claiming them, any amount of credibility.
Voter fraud is not a problem in this country. It does not rig elections, it does not sway elections. So sudden last min drastic changes in the voting process right before an election, by someone who has previously attempted a coup (not the protest on the capital but the actual coup attempt), has said they admire the leader o...
Another reason is that if people only have one day to vote, it’s much easier to disenfranchise their vote just by delaying or inconveniencing them. Texas recently tried this by changing where people were allowed to vote, causing mass confusion.
In Georgia they passed a law making it illegal to hand out bottles of water to people in line to vote while simultaneously reducing polling stations in certain areas to ensure long lines.
He's spent years telling his supporters not to vote by mail. So during the election when there are problems with the mail, those will primarily affect the other party. That's enough to steal an election without more steps.
> imagine if in The Netherlands you can waltz in and say you are this person or that person
That's not at all how it works. Typically, you do need to present ID to register. You also need to verify your address on the day of voting. If someone does commit fraud, it's easy to detect: as soon as the real voter tries to vote, the system will detect a "double vote." The fact that this almost never happens suggests that there is not much fraud, if any. And the amount of fraud required to actually change an election result with this method would require a concerted effort of tens of thousands of people, all risking federal prosecution.
> that is literally the American system.
No. Please stop misrepresenting the facts.
> But why not just... require ID to vote?
There are lots of good reasons, which you are probably already aware of, including the fact that many people eligible to vote do not have the requisite ID and are unlikely to get it. My litmus test for supporting voter ID is that it is accompanied by (a) free, mandatory, and automatic national ID cards, and (b) national holiday on election days. Republicans won't support part A for their own ideological reasons, and moreover their purported effort to support voter integrity is not sincere: the goal is simply to prevent undesirable (i.e. non-Republican) voters from voting.
Canadian here, so take with a grain of salt. Both Canada and the US don't have a national ID system, at all (short of a passport). A state/province issued driver's license is the default form of ID. If you don't have a driver's license it is very possible you don't have an ID.
Most (if not all?) states and provinces will have some form of "non driving" ID available if needed. However, it is optional, costs money and requires other documentation to get it, such as an original copy of a birth certificate.
It's not that uncommon for an adult to not have an official ID. Either they never had one or have lost theirs and they haven't bothered/can't afford to get a new one.
The argument is that Republicans are exploiting the fact that this will disproportionately affect Democratic voters. Would some Republican voters be turned away? Of course. Would more Democratic voters be turned away than Republicans? Very very likely, and that's the point. It's a net win for one party to enforce voting ID laws while also not supporting some sort of free/cheap universal identity system.
> It’s not that uncommon for an adult to not have an ID
It’s extremely uncommon.
You need an ID to buy beer, open a bank account, prove you are eligible for employment, pick up a prescription at the pharmacy, book a hotel room, the list is very long. You cannot function in society without some form of ID.
The idea that a large number of Americans are being disenfranchised because they don’t have ID is farcical.
34 million people [1] or about 10 percent of the US population lack a form of ID that would be required under a voter ID law.
The fact that you assert otherwise, without evide, shows that you live in a privilege bubble. None of your friends lack an ID, so you conclude it's rare.
>Most (if not all?) states and provinces will have some form of "non driving" ID available if needed. However, it is optional, costs money and requires other documentation to get it, such as an original copy of a birth certificate.
False. Every state in the US has a free voter ID option.
Even if there is no financial cost, it requires documentation and time to get voter ID. It is not issued automatically. That's why 10% of the US population doesn't have form of ID that could be used to vote and will be disenfranchised under Republican voter ID requirements. Until that issue is fixed, voter ID is not something I can support.
>and will be disenfranchised under Republican voter ID requirements.
Can you explain this further?
A person who can legally vote today, but in the future cannot vote because of election restrictions, will be disenfranchised. You are supporting election restrictions that disenfranchise 10% of the US population.
>>That's why 10% of the US population doesn't have form of ID that could be used to vote
>Correlation != causation
I never made a claim of causation. I just said that 10% of legal US voting-eligible citizens don't have ID and will therefore be disenfranchised by your proposal.
> They are issued automatically after proving eligibility.
Many who were born before segregation ended in the mid-1960s were not granted birth certificates, as their mothers were forced to use midwives during birth because local hospitals were whites only and turned them away.
The comparison to western European countries doesn't hold up. Speaking from Norway: yes, it's true you have to provide ID to vote, both in national and local elections. The difference is that obtaining ID is trivial, to the point where essentially everyone here legally has ID. I wouldn't be surprised if the most common way for someone not to have ID would literally be "all of it was in my luggage and the airline lost it", or some similar very temporary state. In the US, the people who do have ID do not even form a representative sample of the population as far as I understand
I can't speak for the Americans, but I would imagine there'd be far less liberal pushback against voter ID if everyone could trivially obtain it.
How's this for a compromise: republicans get voter ID laws, in return for a national, bipartisanly monitored program to ensure that anyone who wants it can trivially obtain ID. Once that's realized, the voter ID laws can kick in?
This is not true. For example not every citizen can vote (people under guardianship or criminals) and not citizens can vote in local elections in the EU, if they came from another EU country.
The point I tried to make is that with the system we have here it's much less of a hassle to prove you're eligible to vote. The system wants you to be able to vote, and to be able to do that easily.
Yes, but a driver's license can be accepted as ID.
Just because a driver's license isn't proof of citizenship doesn't mean that it isn't sufficient, since it will have some identifier connected to the identity of the voter. You would show the driver's license, then the registrars would find your name on the list, strike it out, give your voting envelopes, and then you go wait for a private booth to become free and then you go into that booth and put your votes in those voting envelopes.
A Swedish driver's license doesn't mean Swedish citizenship. It can still be used to check somebody's identity. Citizenship is checked by seeing whether the person is on the voter rolls, not by their identity card.
Some of the Republican proposals would require a proof of citizenship at registration time. You would still be able to register without a passport but you need to take your birth or naturalization certificate. Not everyone has them at home so you might need to go to your parents place in another state or risk getting it mailed. Good luck.
The point is not making registration impossible, just harder and more complicated. When you combine it with voter roll purges the play is clear.
Get a biased commission to remove everyone named Jackson or Hernandez a couple months before the election because "there's too many people with that last name and officials might confuse them" or purge a whole district that just happens to be an opposing party stronghold based on a single voter fraud conviction.Do it silently without informing voters, and when they realize they need to register again they have to go through a complicated process designed to make them give up.
Rejecting IDs at the poll booth is actually pretty rare because it's so obvious. Real schemes are a bit more creative.
> Yes, but a driver's license can be accepted as ID
So what would that accomplish? The Trump playbook asserts that there is a massive conspiracy involving noncitizen voting. Their proposals involve proving citizenship to vote. And now your argument is to use ID that doesn't prove citizenship. Brilliant.
Actually you need a REAL ID to board a plane now. 20% of americans don't have them. They're pointless, take a lot of time and effort to aquire and are needlessly expensive.
> Actually you need a REAL ID to board a plane now.
If you don't have a REAL ID or passport, you can just pay a $50 fee and get on the plane anyway. So whatever the REAL ID proves cannot be essential to security.
In much of Europe you don't need ID for those, except a driving license, which happens to be an ID but primarily exists to prove you are qualified to drive. If you look young you are asked to prove your age if buying cigarettes or alcohol but the requirements for that are relatively low.
Until recently in the UK you did not need any ID to vote, that was introduced recently as an echo to the US stolen election conspiracy, as demagogues love to steal ideas from each other.
> imagine if in The Netherlands you can waltz in and say you are this person or that person, without any ID check whatsoever. Europeans might not realize this but that is literally the American system
This is of course not true, why say clearly incorrect things?
First, there is no "American system" as such, because every state is responsible for running elections, so there are 50 state systems in the US.
More importantly, I get my ballot in the mail only because I'm registered to vote at the DMV, you know the same agency that issues the very ID they check to make sure I'm elegible to vote.
You don't just "waltz in" to the post office or whever to get a ballot.
Voting systems in Europe differ by country, but for example here in Switzerland I just get my ballot in the mail, fill it in and send it back to get counted.
And of course Swiss Post just processes this as a regular piece of mail, routing it to the address written on the envelope, without any weird cross-tabulation against voter registers or barcodes…
The GOP and Trump supporters have so far spent millions of dollars trying to prove voter fraud. Mike Lindell of my pillow has lost his fortune trying to prove it.
They didn't prove any of their claims, and several even went to prison for contempt because they refused to substantiate their claims in front of a judge.
HN rules says to be kind and not call names, but you are either willfully ignorant or a liar, and in both cases you are complicit in a soft coup attempt.
> One third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail
Sounds like BS. Or if it isn't, it's alarming.
Most voting should be in person, on election day. Absentee ballots for those who cannot do that, as we have done for decades. Early voting, unchecked mail-in voting, are all additional avenues for fraud or simply problems such as lost or damaged ballots or delayed processing.
While I think that making it a national holiday would be a good idea because it would maximize the number of eligible voters, it would still disenfranchise some people. There are jobs that have to be done 24/7/365 (mostly safety jobs), therefor there will be someone who is stuck at work that day. There are people who work at power companies on Christmas Day just to make sure the lights on Christmas trees light up.
I think the best approach is what Georgia has done. No-excuse mail-in for those who want that. And 3 weeks of early voting including Saturdays. And for those who just enjoy standing in lines, there is the official Election Day. If a redneck state can get it done without issues, then we all can do it.
Functionally, a literal handful per season which are typically caught and prosecuted.
The right leaning Brookings and Heritage foundations dug into the numbers and found this
"Across the entire country, and utilizing a maximally inclusive estimate, between six and 46 cases of mail voting fraud were identified in each general election"
Table:
Year Total mail voting fraud percentage (out of total mail ballots cast)
2016 0.000089%
2018 0.000024%
2020 0.000051%
2022 0.000010%
Average 0.000043%
The entire state of Oregon has done vote-by-mail for the past ~30 years and it seems to have gone fine for them for decades. Then again, their voting by mail wasn't being challenged by an actively hostile Federal government for much of that time.
That's just fear mongering. Absentee voting by mail has been a thing for centuries. Attempting to limit it to people who are unable to vote in person doesn't do anything to make it more secure, and is a very weak control. It's not like they're going to check up on every single person who claims to have a specific reason they can't get to the polls. Beyond that, no-excuse absentee ballots have been a thing in many states for decades. Three states have been mailing absentee ballots to every voter automatically for a decade or more. Despite this long history, there is no evidence of widespread fraud or other problems resulting from it.
Agreed. I can't even recall any point in my life when an allegation of fraud was made before Trump came on the scene. I've seen requests for recounts when the margins were close, but never an allegation of malicious intent.
So these rules by the Federal government were implemented to stop mail in voting from being abused as it has been for some time. The US Postal Inspections Service was being heavily abused by the government in times past in ways that were blatantly illegal. Hardly a peep was had about that, but everyone being up in arms about this tells me that the same people who were abusing the US Postal Inspections Service are probably upset that they won't be able to abuse mail in ballots the same way as they were that service.
Over and over and over and over again it has been shown that there is no meaningful voter fraud whatsoever. Stop watching Fox News or as I see below reading yahoo news lol
Yes - USPS should behave like a layer 3 network: moving mail pieces to destination addresses independent of source & destination.
Where elections probably matter to postal services is that they represent a particular shape of mail volume and network usage that may require management to reorganize pickup/delivery resources to meet delivery commitments.
Regardless what anyone thinks about the security of voting in the US. I'd hope that they could see how massively upending multiple state's voting systems 2 months before the midterms is a really bad idea. Even with the best intentions, implementing such a sweeping untested change so rapidly is a horrible idea.
(No, I don't support it regardless, but surely even if you do you could recognize that the timeframe is way too short).
There is something incredibly cancerous when a certain party abhors democracy, and does everything they can to undermine the voting rights or access to groups they think won't vote for them.
I would expect most Americans would see this as grotesquely anti-American, and absolutely against the principals of the country. Instead it barely makes news and is just another "get whatever advantage you can" tactic.
"Abhors democracy" isn't necessarily the right phrase for the on-the-ground majority. The leadership, sure. But not the average folk.
"Has such a small imagination that they can't imagine they wouldn't be the majority" is more like it.
For all the old fears of "we need the senate so big cities don't run the country" they have a massive blind spot of there being less diversity of thought, and more of a monoculture, in suburban and rural areas. And they don't realize that because of this they shouldn't be surprised if not everyone agrees with them.
There's a sizable part of the group that truly believe that cities get more representation than they do, that there are more rural Americans than urban.
And that they are the “real Americans” who make all the money and all of their tax dollars go to pay for lazy city people. Never mind that counties which vote democratic account for over 70% of the GDP. Their entire existence is subsidized by the actual tax payers in cities and they resent us for it.
Ever so slightly, definitely not as bad as the senate.
I'm all for doubling the size of the house, but that's more to combat gerrymandering. The larger the size of the house, the harder and less impactful it is to gerrymander. Though before that I'd definitely push for federal anti-gerrymandering legislation.
You'd be surprised what hate is capable of. Once you paint a side as the enemy and convince half of the population of that, it becomes easy to carryout acts even if they're detrimental to the your side too. Look at the US economy and inflation caused by the tariffs and wars for instance. It's the 'our side is winning' mentality shortsightedness that destroys nations and institutions. By the time people realize this, it's often too late.
After hanging out on Trumper forums to try and understand their point of view, I realized that they have a VERY narrow view of who they want in their "ideal democracy": Pure White Conservative Christians, No browns or blacks, No voting women (their place is in the home and the kitchen), No gays, Must love guns, must support everything that their GEOTUS says even if he contradicts himself. GEOTUS is playing 5-D chess.
It's strange though, because Trump's elderly voters are the ones who vote by mail. Some observers say he would have won the incredibly close 2020 race if he hadn't discouraged mail in voting.
I did hear a lot of people claim this, and it seemed mostly like unqualified schadenfreude and fantasy.
In the most recent analysis, about 37% of Democrats use mail in voting, versus 24% of Republicans. This is why Republicans often take the lead in vote counting, and then because of Republican-imposed rules mail in ballots are counted later in the process, suddenly turning the tide. Which then yields lots of "the fix is in!" undermining of democracy -- at least in every race they don't win (the ones they win are 100% fair, of course) -- because the GOP of 2026 absolutely hates democracy, and they'll do everything they can to destroy it.
If you genuinely don't understand what's happening - it's the same reason that political discussion on Reddit became completely detached from reality. On these sort of topics you have a relatively small number of hyper partisans that aim to censor discussion through the abuse of flagging, and they're mostly successful. So all that's left is a circle jerk which has no meaningful connection to views in the actual world, or even on e.g. Hacker News. I'm not really sure why anybody would want this outcome; I suppose that in their mind it's some sort of attempt at manufacturing consent.
Anyhow, there's plenty of rich discussion to be had, but you increasingly need to do it in the real world, or on smaller forums/channels. This will likely be an even bigger issue in the future as LLMs will enable full automation of this sort of abuse that will ultimately probably be impossible to stop. In the grand scheme of things we're likely at the tail end of the era where having genuine political discussion online was possible, if not already slightly beyond it.
> So all that's left is a circle jerk which has no meaningful connection to views in the actual world,
I don't see that at all. I am engaging with many voices on the other side [1] [2]. Those comments are voted down, yes, but not because "HN hates freedom" or some such, but rather because (a) those opinions are not well informed and (b) HN is broadly upper-class and educated, and therefore not tolerant of uninformed opinions. The only widespread bias I see here is towards constructive and intelligent commenting; and in the current political atmosphere, it's simply not possible to be both intelligent and Republican.
> I suppose that in their mind it's some sort of attempt at manufacturing consent.
What I see in your comment is you are upset that you are on the losing side of an argument and so you're accusing the other side of cheating. Hey, that sounds familiar!
> In the grand scheme of things we're likely at the tail end of the era where having genuine political discussion online was possible, if not already slightly beyond it.
You are probably right, but for reasons entirely unrelated to dumb comments getting downvoted on HN.
Everything you're saying can be true and co-exist with the reality, which is the current administration has been so vindictive, short-sighted, and nakedly serving the billionaire class, that its own supporters have had to completely disengage with everything The Executive Branch is doing.
If you talk to Trump supporters in real life, they are not having nuanced discussions about the state of our country, they are completely tuned out to what is going on. They have to be. It's embarrassing. Instead, they are still talking about trans people and wokeness, because that is evergreen territory that can forever be raged about but never "solved," because it never affected them in the first place.
You accuse HN of being in an echo chamber that you've disregarded an even simpler explanation: The cognitive dissonance of voting for someone who immediately backed out of everything he promised (no wars, releasing Epstein files, serving the middle class) that it has broken some people's perception of their own judgement, and they can't engage with it anymore.
There's really no other reason to be suddenly quiet. This isn't 2021, just after Jan 6th. This is almost two years into Republicans having total control of the government. It's just been such a disaster people don't want to publicly root for them anymore.
I think GP is right: this place has become an echo chamber. Even if someone posted a thoughtful rebuttal, it would not be seriously considered, or worse, flagged. And why would anyone waste their time when they know their efforts will be immediately dismissed and memory holed?
You could easily test this by posting a thoughtful rebuttal.
I've been posting actively on this thread and I haven't yet seen a thoughtful rebuttal, although there have been several comments in favor of the current administration's approach to voter enforcement via the USPS. Unfortunately, literally all of those comments were based on misinformation or make sweeping assertions, unsupported by evidence, about voter fraud in the US.
The thread is about general echo chamber / liberal bias though, not specifically on USPS/voter fraud.
Any/Every discussion that makes the top page on HN about politics will flood out most of the conservative discussion, further most of the comments are echo chamber 'me too, Trump fascist' that adds very little to the conversation.
> Any/Every discussion that makes the top page on HN about politics will flood out most of the conservative discussion, further most of the comments are echo chamber 'me too,
I keep waiting for all these well-thought-out, factually-based, good-faith arguments offered by conservatives but for some reason they never appear. It seems that the only comments written by conservatives are knee-jerk, xenophobic, semi-literate arguments based in half-truths and GOP talking points. Maybe we scared off all the "good" conservatives?
> Trump fascist' that adds very little to the conversation.
I agree that it adds little to the conversation, but it's not clear to me what else you'd like to hear. If you think that a federal takeover of state elections in absence of any real election crisis is not fascist behavior, feel free to make that argument here and I will respond in a temperate and measured tone.
> Are you able to say one positive change current administration has purposefully done?
Not sure what kind of test this is supposed to be, but okay, I'll bite. He's done some things that could be good, but because of his unique pathology, he makes even good things bad. Look at the Trump Accounts. Creating a savings account for children is potentially a good thing. Here are the problems with it: during his presidency, he has single-handedly doubled the national debt, so this isn't a great opportunity to give away money; the move is ideological incoherent, coming from a guy who thinks that wealth redistribution is un-American; and of course he's a narcissist, so he's incapable of doing anything with stamping his name on it. It's hilarious that MAGAs decry "partisanship" but for some reason love obviously partisan, and likely Hatch Act-violating, nonense like this.
> Do you think those comments should be flagged and [deleted] or they add value here and should be kept around?
Some of those comments are flagged because they express non-constructive, hyper-partisan, anti-immigrant sentiment. They deserve to be flagged. Some are flagged because they are just unpopular on HN; those should not be flagged. I'd never claim that HN doesn't lean left, and it's always hard to be a minority in a community. The appropriate response from conservatives like you, in order to prevent your comments from being flagged, is to comment better: use factual evidence, logical arguments, and non-partisan language. Unfortunately, the few HN conservatives around here aren't doing that.
In this thread you said "...they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end." Try to imagine how that would read to somebody who wasn't already sharply biased in the same direction as yourself. What would you assume?
It reads as the exact sort of evidence free, misinformation driven, conspiratorial and sweeping assertion that you're now complaining about. The reality is that most political discussion online has been trending towards sewer level content, and I think a huge part of it is the echo chamber issue. You don't get any pushback from stuff like this online when the only people engaging with you are themselves already heavily biased in a similar direction. Oh sorry, you actually did get several people pushing back, including one merely asking for evidence. Perhaps you didn't see that because those comments were all flagged and buried.
There are currently 20 root level comments. 8 have been flagged. Which is again starting to look a lot like Reddit.
Some of those flags are quite reasonable, but some are not. And this happens every single time you have a thread that brings out the partisan flaggers, which will discourage future conversation from those that did bother to try to discuss and got hit by them. Absent the flaggers existence, you'd have a ratio of discussion that is probably at least approximately comparable to what we see in things like support polls or more broadly - voting.
But with it, you end up with an echo chamber that is not only uninformative, but malinformative because you now have absolutely no clue what people are thinking, why they're thinking that, what their relative numbers may be, or any opportunity to try to change their mind. So you just end up with polarization and both sides radicalizing themselves as they end up in echo chambers where a partisan view is taken as the baseline for normal.
If the quality comments that have been flagged are like what you see on /r/conservative , it might be that you subjectively see quality where others see something else.
Can you point at the well thought out rebuttal that have been victim of flagging?
You don't get it, or are not following through. The thread started with why a Conservative wouldn't post here. It's simple, it's not worth getting comments downvoted or flagged for having an unpopular opinion [not nationally but here].
You will say it's not a reasonable opinion, it's hate or fear and should be downvoted/flagged, but that is incorrect and exactly what leads to echo chambers. Which is ironic because HN is usually very pro-speech/thought... or used to be.
I can assure you plenty of conservative views get shared on HN, all the time. Saying otherwise means you must not be on here much.
It's just that defending the current administration, at this state, does take a level of bad faith that people on all sides of the political spectrum are sick of hearing. To imply it's only hardcore liberals flagging these comments is wishful thinking
"If you talk to Trump supporters in real life, they are not having nuanced discussions about the state of our country, they are completely tuned out to what is going on."
Really, where exactly? I'd say 100% polar opposite. I live in a county that has voted for a R president almost every election, and the conversations are very different. There is a lot of disagreement, but it's usually the disagreement on the HOW not the WHAT.
Oh I'm sure they're having conversations. Those conversations are about how evil immigrants are, how tariffs are not taxes, what color MAGA hat to buy, and why Trump is the most honest billionaire in history. Conversations not tethered to reality.
Nope not embarrassed, it's a waste of time being a conservative on HN or Reddit. There is no room for discourse or nuance.
If you voted for Trump you are a fascist and a pedo and nobody wants to hear your thoughts.
I've said this before and the replies are usually about the topic or opinion but it's not. Some opinions that would have been demonstrably in the Clinton/Obama administration would be considered MAGA now.
> Some opinions that would have been demonstrably in the Clinton/Obama administration would be considered MAGA now.
Interestingly there's been a few party shifts. It's not just one direction.
For example, Reagan was pretty pro immigration and pro vaccination. Before 9/11 Republicans were the party of immigration. Even Trump in 2016 was the pro-LGBT candidate, that's certainly shifted dramatically. "Donald Trump said I could take a pee anywhere in the Trump facility, so I am going to go take a pee in the ladies' room."
One thing I'd give republicans is they are far more responsive to their base vs the democrats.
> it's a waste of time being a conservative on HN or Reddit.
But yet here you are.
> There is no room for discourse or nuance.
Try me!
> If you voted for Trump you are a fascist and a pedo and nobody wants to hear your thoughts.
On the contrary, there have been endless articles and discussion about Trump supporters' opinions, to the extent that "New York Times Interviews Twelve Trump Supporters" [1] [2] is a bit of a cliche. I think that your (collective) thoughts have been well expressed and understood by the other side, it's just that most people find those opinions unimpressive, mostly couched in a sort of hero-worship credulity or open hostility to people who are different from you.
> Some opinions that would have been demonstrably in the Clinton/Obama administration would be considered MAGA now.
Sure, public opinion shifts. For example, Republicans used to be the party of limited government and law-and-order. Then they elected a felon who flagrantly violates the Constitution (14th amendment, separation of powers, emoluments clause, etc) and has worked tirelessly to extend the power of the federal government, in the present case to intervene in the Constitutionally-mandated state right of operating elections. Of course "people used to feel differently" is not, on its own, an argument in support for the administration's policies, so I hope you can do better.
You should have seen how it was after most Americans could no longer deny the Nixon Malfeasance.
People started getting embarrassed real fast and even before he rode off into the sunset it was not easy to find somebody who would admit to voting for him.
And he got elected twice himself.
Basically it was so disgraceful that in less than a year you couldn't find anybody who ever admitted to voting for Nixon at all. Most voting Republicans actually had, at least the first time, but if anybody even indicated their tendency after that they were ridiculed by other Republicans like "how could you ever support such a crook?", not just from the Democrats. It was just too uncomfortable for a nation of overwhelmingly honest-to-the-bone Americans regardless of which party, nature took its course almost immediately and it was swept under the rug as completely as could be. Not everybody is honest to the bone of course, what you would sometimes hear instead of crickets was "No, I actually didn't vote that time" from some Republicans who still had the bumper sticker that said "Nixon's the One."
It was very much like a mass "suspension of disbelief" for at least a decade after which people acted something like "it was only the very elderly and uninformed who voted for Nixon and they're all dead now so no wonder you can't find someone who was proud to vote for him either time."
The primary motivation for Rupert Murdoch's creation of Fox News was to prevent the Republican party from ever suffering an embarrassing resignation like Nixon again.
Present the Republican base with an alternate reality where every accusation against a Republican is a witch hunt, no matter its veracity, and the base no longer has to feel ashamed supporting a crook. Instead, they can stand proud, knowing they support someone the "libs" hate.
Unlike the times Republican presidents have said it, this is truly a case of Mission Accomplished.
> Trump supporters used to speak up on this site. Surely they still exist but all I hear is crickets
They are here. But their contributions are, let's say, not motivated by fact-based reasoning. Not surprising: it's very hard to defend what's going on in this country right now.
#2 isn't really addressing the argument being made.
> The fact that reputable sources were not provided to justify the need for fixes has been reputable source enough.
The the question wasn't "what do people prefer" it was "what's the evidence this is a problem."
People wanting a thing doesn't necessarily mean the thing is is a problem. But further, what the Trump admin is doing isn't the thing being polled.
What's wrong with it is that it's a non-sequitur to the conversation at hand.
What's happening is new restrictions on mail in voting. A federal registry of citizens which the post office uses to decide who does and does not get a ballot and who's ballot is allowed to arrive to the elections office.
A more responsive link would be one that shows evidence of a large amount of mail in voting fraud or even a poll that shows the majority of people support federal checks and restrictions on mail in voting (though, I'd think that's not a good reply because it isn't actually evidence).
It's clearly a nuanced topic that requires debate in good-faith, no?
So why is it flagged and not debated? If all counter points are flagged, then there is no discourse. The only discourse is all the people who agree with each other.
It's not good faith to mott and baily, gish-gallop, and non-sequitur.
I've not seen a comment yet that is actually responsive to points being raised about why this action by the administration is a bad idea. Instead it's "Well, people want voter ID" and "Well because there's unlimited fraud in mail in voting and early voting".
What a lot of the flagged comments are (but I don't speak for all the flagging, I personally avoid downvoting or flagging myself unless something is very egregious) are bad faith.
It's not one sided, I've gotten into arguments about Biden/Harris when throwing critiques their way with diehard supporters. But frankly, from what I've observed it's a lot worse when it comes to Trump's actions. When he does something indefensible, like this incomplete citizen registration 2 months before an election, instead of addressing the action he just did, his supporters try and change subjects rather than justify this action.
The most charitable reading I have from one of his supporters is that this will stop non-citizens from voting in federal elections. But the issues with this they don't address, like the fact that a citizenship list doesn't currently exist and that the process of creating such a list is completely opaque, are simply never addressed. And even when "Ok, if it's such a problem, where's the evidence?" is asked, the only response is to change subjects.
That's not a good faith argument. That's not nuance. That's "I have an unfounded belief and rather than defend it, when questions get uncomfortable I'll rely on bad faith debate tactics to try and win the argument".
1 was not yet flagged at the time that I wrote that. Nevertheless, you can reconstruct what was written from the quotes in its responses.
> Which "side" has been fighting tooth and nail for unverifiable mail-in ballots
> resisting all investigations of voting integrity?
Basically, the comment asserted that Democrats are "pushing" for mail-in ballots, despite the fact that many Republican-controlled states (notably Mississippi, which recently defended its mail-in voting law) also allow mail-in voting. The comment cast aspersions on the accuracy of mail-in voting, citing no evidence. The comment was apparently informed solely by partisan bias without any basis in the reality of the situation.
In short, it was not a good comment. Did it deserve to be flagged? Probably not. But it was certainly not a thoughtful, well-reasoned defense of the current administration's flagrantly illegal overreach. If this is the kind of comment that you want to see more of on HN, then we'll have to agree to disagree.
> Do I want to see more of them, probably not. Does it deserved to be flagged, absolutely not.
That's fine, but please don't play the martyr. You're supporting a president who is deporting people for constitutionally protected free speech. I think you'll survive a little flag here on HN.
How does that contradict my point? 10 percent of Americans do not have acceptable ID and would be disenfranchised by Republican voter ID laws. Even free ID doesn't make the operation frictionless, as you still have to provide a birth cert or citizenship doc.
Don't tell me I'm "unfactual" while presenting this kind of weak sauce non sequitur.
There's a voted-into-oblivion reply to this from someone trying to both-sides things "I don't want to hear about it when it was changed quickly for Covid too".
but it doesn't work...anything then was done under literally the same President we have today?
That's pretty damn hilarious: *don't complain to me about the Trump admin fucking with the voting system on short notice in 2026 since the Trump admin also fucked with the voting system on short notice in 2020!"
(At least there was a major national emergency going on that time...)
---
It's a point in favor of the "malicious" theory, though. Here's arguably the person who would have the most reason to not fuck with things last-minute, who complained at no end about the results, is now making his own last minute changes... hmmmm.... must still believe he got cheated, and is intentionally trying to cheat instead.
"I can't believe Obama did this to us while we were in the middle of fighting Joe Bidens war in Iran! It's almost as bad as Bill Clinton's darn Tariffs!" - Future Trump, probably
it's not a "bad idea", it's intentionally disruptive -- that's the point of it
not surprised that Trump Admin is trying to do this; it's a page out of their play dirty, break the law now and sort it out later once the courts catch up, approach to politics
but the fact that SCOTUS didn't shut it down is beyond the pale -- unconscionable
Only people willing to physically go to the polls and vote, unless physically unable to do so, should be voting. Mail in ballots also enable ballot harvesting.
In California's last election, there were 2,758 drop-box locations and 3,546 polling locations. In cities, these are often within walking distance. In rural areas, they might not be so convenient.
So it seems like any USPS snafus would affect rural voters (which skew Republican) more than urban?
No, the procedures are designed to reject more votes in blue areas, just like the procedures that somehow conclude that people named Williams, John, or Washington should be dropped from the rolls for being similarly named as other people named Williams, John, or Washington.
the procedurse are not designed to reject more votes in blue areas lol being involved at the organization forr 15+ years its always so funny to hear what ppl on this site cook up; i get a good 'what are they saying now on orange site' with my co-workers
Oh, I see, you are posting the same misleading comment on multiple threads here. I'm sure you are doing so in good faith, so here is a link to my other comment explaining why it is misleading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49546715
> The United States Postal Service has spent months developing a U.S. Federal Ballot Mail Portal to provide election officials with a simple, secure, and efficient way to share lists of individuals receiving ballots by mail in their respective states.
Why? Your job is to transfer pieces of mail from one place to another. Just continue that. Everything else is manufacturing a problem where there was none.
Their job is whatever the government tells them it is, things like this don't just spawn out of thin air, there's usually rationale for it[0].
The post office already does way more than you think it does. Like identity verification on behalf of the government and tracking which houses are considered "vacant" or not.
It would be nice to focus the USPS, but all these extra services have to be done by _some entity_, otherwise you can't have the final result. In this case, the result is a functional, auditable mail in ballot system
Given that they are dedicated to causing chaos in the midterms, how is it best countered? Whisper campaigns to tell all your friends to vote in person? When he loses, what stops him from putting troops in the streets? Is the recourse just wait until he goes? We all see what's happening, how do we meet the moment?
Voting doesn't work in a low-trust society.
You can't trust the custodian of the digital system who tallies the votes. The problem is intractable.
The president, who is ultimately decided by the owner of the voting system, is not going to order an audit of the owner of the voting system which made them president in the first place as that would paradoxically cast doubt on the president's legitimacy in the first place. There is a negative incentive to do so.
So the one who is entrusted to tally the vote can unilaterally decide who is going to be the president for any election.
The only way they might get audited is if a president loses an election and then wins the next one; then they might demand an audit out of revenge... but that doesn't even guarantee an audit; such president would have enormous leverage to demand that the next election be rigged again; but this time, in their favor. Certainly a better alternative to jail time for the owner of the tally system.
Our elections are beyond broken and untrustworthy. The fix is easy, but nobody will go for it:
Nothing but in-person paper ballots, except for demonstrated necessity, and in those cases they must be hand-delivered by a relative or caretaker. Ballots can be optical scan, but we MUST audit 0.1% of all ballots (by random selection after the election) by hand. If ANY discrepancy exists, a full hand recount must be done.
Here's the skinny: voting should have a barrier to entry. Your freedoms are important - people died for them. If you can't be bothered to fight a little for them with something as basic as putting on a pair of pants to head the the polls in person, you don't deserve your freedom, and you certainly shouldn't be voting on my freedoms.
Agree with the idea that maybe, in a nation of brainwashed and stupid people who can't trust each other, we need paper ballots to make things easy to understand.
I disagree that people only vote by mail due to laziness or that the administration is taking away voting rights for the good of democracy.
Mail in ballots don’t get rid of secrecy, unless the system has been tampered with, which you could also do with illegal cameras at in-person voting etc. Anonymous envelope-within-envelope is a pretty standard way to keep secrecy, and many states do it, like mine.
Is that really a problem? Since there will be lots of evidence and criminals tend to fuck up quite a bit this should be well documented. Unless you think that those election fraudsters that buy tons of votes from civilians have better opsec than drug dealers and the like.
For people who really believe current system is preventing fraudulent voting, just go and try to register yourself as a voter in California [0]. All you have to say is "I pinky promise swear I'm a citizen", and you get registered and a ballot is mailed out to you.
1. Why send ballots until verified.
2. There's no document verification. Anybody can enter someone's name and social security number and get a ballot delivered anywhere.
3. I still don't trust the ballot gets thrown out if there's a mismatch.
In order to be 100% safe, there should be only in person voting with a voter id. Anything else is open to abuse.
> One third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail
Damn, never thought it was this much! I thought postal voting was mostly for people living abroad and less-abled ones that couldn’t physically go to a voting station.
Voting by mail is, in the absolute, a bad idea, not because of fraud but because it enables vote buying: you can show someone who you are voting for, and thus receive a bribe for it. The "normal" way of voting in a booth removes that verification step and makes vote buying a fool's errand.
Hopefully, in a twisted way, the fact AI enables convincing fake pictures and videos makes this vote buying scheme unpractical now, but it was a vector of attack until very recently, especially with encrypted communication and cryptocurrencies.
Don’t you guys have many more referendums than other countries by nature of your direct democracy? At that point streamlining the process becomes crucial.
Yes, that's true, and we go to the polls on average four to five times per year. Indeed, this leads to making the process lean and efficient. However, this trusted process too is under pressure to change. Recently, voting via internet has been discussed, which could potentially undermine its trustworthiness.
The very sad state of the US democracy, especially how they do elections, was even fodder to a german language book "König von Deutschland" (King of Germany) by Andreas Eschbach.
In the fictive story, it is the year 2000. Some get the job to write a software to manipulate vote computers. Later, the same programmer was asked to manipulate also voting computers in Germany. This time, he tries to resist. They create a joke-party for the re-erification of the Monarchy and manipulate the vote computers so that this joke-party gets the majority. And that works. But no one believes him that the computers were manipulated and he really gets to be the new king of Germany.
That's all very fictive ... it's just that in the text you have lots of footnotes giving reference to ACTUAL problem with US voting devices ...
Also: in Germany the Chaos Computer Club once demonstrated that they could run chess on an already "certified to be safe for election" voting computer. That brought the end to these devices ... so now Germany is back to a state where your Aunt Mary can sit down with the paper ballot sheets, can recount and can inform herself that everything was right. Without the need of a CS degree, without knowledge about IT security, hacking, etc. Which is IMHO a general win to the democracy. Lay people must be able to verify results!
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 122 ms ] thread> For instance, the Postal Service has what the whistleblower claims is a "zero percent failure rate."
> Mail workers would scan a sample of a batch of mail ballots — about 400 out of a batch of 10,000 or more — to verify it matches what is in the federal mail ballot portal.
> Under the policy, if even one barcode on a single ballot in the batch doesn't scan properly or the information does not match, the entire batch would be rejected and returned to state election officials so the problem ballot could be addressed, and then the verification process would have to be started again.
And no, the USPS is not in the Constitution. Article I Section 8 gives Congress the power "To establish Post Offices and post Roads". They executed that power via legislation. The USPS didn't come into being until 1970, replacing the United States Post Office Department, a branch of the cabinet. The legislation creating the USPS says that it "shall not make any undue or unreasonable discrimination among users of the mails" -- what Trump has tasked it to do is in direct violation of that law.
This system would catch it 98,3% of the time. Pretty good, I'd say.
It gets sent back, it gets investigated and fixed, and back it goes.
Am I missing something?
IF this cycle of delays lasts long enough, then some people never receive a mail-in ballot, or receive it too late
Oh yeah that'll stop them.
Yes. That's the point. The administration doesn't care about fixing whatever hypothetical mail ballot fraud may or may not exist; they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end.
Provide reputable sources, we can discuss it.
Bullshit is produced for the effect saying it will have.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/28/politics/video/the-odds-voter...
So a party calling for voter id is following the will of the people, while politicians opposing the will of the people are justifying the need for a fix, right?
That's a funny way of saying that they support the status quo, which has never been provably linked to large-scale voter fraud.
If you want voter ID, here's the procedure: establish evidence showing that its need outweighs its disadvantages, then pass a bill in Congress, then implement the bill. Signing an Executive Order that demands illegal overreach without justification is not the American way.
If voter ID advocates feel so strongly about their position, they would support mandatory ID. The fact that they don't support mandatory ID shows their real agenda: they don't care about securing elections, they care only about excluding the undesirable class from elections.
Yes they do.
>Getting an ID card in most places requires a fee,
False, there are no fees for voter IDs. Please find a state where you believe this is true.
>as well a trip to the DMV or equivalent
Not always.
>and providing documentation such as a birth certificate, which also requires a fee.
False. Many (all?) states provide free birth certificates for voter IDs.
>You take this process for granted
I don't take this process for granted, it's the same process across the first world.
>because you live a privileged life, but for many people, taking a day off work and paying $50 to get an ID is an insurmountable obstacle,
Nice soft bigotry of low expectations. You're so privileged that you actually believe this objectively false propaganda. The fact that you've repeated it to multiple times to virtue signal which may dissuade people to vote is a luxury belief [0]. Who believes luxury beliefs? Privileged peopled.
>If voter ID advocates feel so strongly about their position, they would support mandatory ID.
They do.
>The fact that they don't support mandatory ID
False, they do support free IDs.
>they don't care about securing elections, they care only about excluding the undesirable class from elections.
Repeating propaganda doesn't make it true.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxury_belief
Okay, we're at that level of argument, I see. Well, you forgot to bring your evidence. A drivers license in New York costs between $64.25 and $107.5
>>as well a trip to the DMV or equivalent > Not always.
Please explain how a an ID issued without an in-person visit is supposed to securely represent a person's citizenship status? That is the point, after all, right?
> False. Many (all?) states provide free birth certificates for voter IDs.
Absolutely not true. Even if it were true, it's still friction, which is ~10% of the American population lacks an ID that would be required to vote. If you're trying to convince me that getting an ID is free and easy, you'll need to explain first why everyone who needs such an ID doesn't already have one.[1]
> I don't take this process for granted, it's the same process across the first world.
European countries in the "first world" have automatic, mandatory IDs, which the US does not.
> virtue signal
Republicans always accuse liberals of "virtue signalling" when liberals try to do anything supporting justice. To whom am I virtue signalling? My massive Instagram following (which I don't have)? Maybe you falsely accuse other people of chasing clout because the idea of pursuing justice for its own sake is completely foreign to your own morality.
>>If voter ID advocates feel so strongly about their position, they would support mandatory ID. >They do.
Please check your facts. Free, mandatory ID was offered as amendment by Democrats to the recent voter ID law and was voted down by Republicans. [2]
>>The fact that they don't support mandatory ID >False, they do support free IDs.
That's not what I said. In order for voter ID laws to be fair, IDs must be not only free, but mandatory for everyone and issued automatically. Republicans have consistently voted against such a law.
>they don't care about securing elections, they care only about excluding the undesirable class from elections.
Do you really disagree with that statement? Can you then explain why the GOP has systematically disenfranchised voters? Just a few recent examples:
* Georgia improperly purged legitimate voters https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/19/georgia-gove...
* Tarrant County, Texas dramatically reduces polling sites in Democrat-leaning areas, despite population growth https://fortworthreport.org/2026/09/01/advocates-demand-incr...
* Tennessee (among other states) gerrymanders its districts to disenfranchise minority voters https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-memphis-voters-fee...
> Repeating propaganda doesn't make it true.
I absolutely agree with this statement. Somebody should tell Donald Trump (and his rabid followers), who despite your exhortation insists on lying about election fraud.
[1] https://voteriders.org/article/who-doesnt-have-an-id-in-amer...
[2] https://apnews.com/article/save-act-senate-voting-bill-trump...
So did you.
>A drivers license in New York costs between $64.25 and $107.5
This is about voter IDs (which are free), not drivers licenses. Now you're moving goalposts.
>Please explain how a an ID issued without an in-person visit is supposed to securely represent a person's citizenship status? That is the point, after all, right?
Many states have mobile DMV offices that are stationed within walking distance during the year, special programs where DMV employees go to the homes of those in need to verify documentation, etc.
>Absolutely not true. Even if it were true, it's still friction, which is ~10% of the American population lacks an ID that would be required to vote.
It's absolutely true. Yes, if you lose documentation such as birth certificates, you may be required to acquire them. Same as any first world country.
>European countries in the "first world" have automatic, mandatory IDs, which the US does not.
The US has this via the states, not federally.
>Republicans always accuse liberals of "virtue signalling" when liberals try to do anything supporting justice.
You're not supporting justice, you're regurgitating false propaganda.
>To whom am I virtue signalling? My massive Instagram following (which I don't have)?
Like Karens virtue signaling in the town square about being good Christians.
>Maybe you falsely accuse other people of chasing clout because the idea of pursuing justice
You're not "pursuing justice" you're regurgitating BlueSky brainrot to feel morally superior.
>Please check your facts. Free, mandatory ID was offered as amendment by Democrats to the recent voter ID law and was voted down by Republicans.
Free voter ID is provided by every Republican state. The link you posted literally states that Democrats blocked the bill LOL!
>That's not what I said. In order for voter ID laws to be fair, IDs must be not only free, but mandatory for everyone and issued automatically. Republicans have consistently voted against such a law.
That is exactly what every state has. Every Republican state has this. Find a state that does not have this.
>Do you really disagree with that statement? Can you then explain why the GOP has systematically disenfranchised voters?
Stop moving the goalposts. Your claims about voter ID are fake propaganda. Voter IDs are free in every state, you cannot deny this fact.
Did you not see the links to factual evidence that I included?
> This is about voter IDs (which are free), not drivers licenses. Now you're moving goalposts.
Most people get their in the form of a driver's license, not as a pure voter ID. If a tiny minority of people get the free option, then how is it relevant?
> Many states have mobile DMV offices that are stationed within walking distance during the year, special programs where DMV employees go to the homes of those in need to verify documentation, etc.
This makes no sense. "Walking distance" to what? I have never heard of or seen such a program. If they exist, they are not terribly effective, given that 10% of the population still lack a valid ID.
> It's absolutely true. Yes, if you lose documentation such as birth certificates, you may be required to acquire them. Same as any first world country.
That's not how it works in Europe (at least in Netherlands and Czech Republic, where I have experience). In that case, the government already has your birth cert, so they don't force you to acquire it and then give it back to a different part of the government. Only the US sets up these additional obstacles. Which, again, is why 10% of Americans don't have a valid ID, a fact that you refuse to address.
>>European countries in the "first world" have automatic, mandatory IDs, which the US does not. > The US has this via the states, not federally.
Can you please name a single US state that automatically issues ID to all voters? I can't.
>>Republicans always accuse liberals of "virtue signalling" when liberals try to do anything supporting justice. > You're not supporting justice, you're regurgitating false propaganda.
What about "making sure that eligible voters and vote" is not about justice?
> Like Karens virtue signaling in the town square about being good Christians.
Not an answer to my question.
> You're not "pursuing justice" you're regurgitating BlueSky brainrot to feel morally superior.
You already said that, but you are just making baseless accusations. You don't know my mind. Let me ask you this: do you categorically refuse the possibility that anyone pursues justice for its own sake? Were MLK Jr, Ghandi, the Sufragettes, the abolitoinists all just "virtue signalling", or do you think that some people actually care about making the world a better place?
It's really hard to take your argument seriously when doubt the good faith of arguments made with support facts that help people and support democracy. Clearly no one in the MAGA camp could be accused of "virtue signalling" because they have no virtues. On the contrary, MAGA members publicly signal their devotion to groupthink by willfully blocking out unpleasant facts and pledging fealty to a prodigious liar.
> Free voter ID is provided by every Republican state. The link you posted literally states that Democrats blocked the bill LOL!
You keep on ignoring important words in my comment. In this case, you specifically edited out "automatic" and "mandatory." The absence of those words is why Democrats blocked the bill.
> That is exactly what every state has. Every Republican state has this. Find a state that does not have this.
Literally no state has this. I live in a red state and I have to go in and request a voter ID, using appropriate evidence. They are not issued automatically. I challenge you to find any evidence supporting the idea that any state automatically issues ID.
> Stop moving the goalposts. Your claims about voter ID are fake propaganda. Voter IDs are free in every state, you cannot deny this fact.
Calling it propganda doesn't make it untrue. You have failed to address the many examples of disenfranchisement at the hands of the GOP.
My conclusion, based on the evidence presented in this thread: Either you are a t...
You did not link to any factual evidence that made any claim contrary to the facts: Every state has free voter IDs. This is a fact.
>Most people get their in the form of a driver's license, not as a pure voter ID. If a tiny minority of people get the free option, then how is it relevant?
So not only do you now admit that free options exist, you're trying to claim they're irrelevant. Millions of people get free voter IDs, they're not irrelevant. This is a fact you just admitted to, which was my original claim. I accept your defeat.
>This makes no sense. "Walking distance" to what? I have never heard of or seen such a program. If they exist, they are not terribly effective, given that 10% of the population still lack a valid ID.
"I haven't heard about it so it doesn't exist."
>That's not how it works in Europe (at least in Netherlands and Czech Republic, where I have experience). In that case, the government already has your birth cert, so they don't force you to acquire it and then give it back to a different part of the government.
That's exactly how it works in Europe, Czech Republic. If you don't have a copy, you request a new one.
To acquire the machine-readable version of the card, a citizen must present either a currently valid card (in case of renewals), or a currently valid passport, or a birth certificate and proof of citizenship.[0]
>so they don't force you to acquire it and then give it back to a different part of the government.
That's not how it works in the US, you do not give away your birth certificate to a different part of the government.
>Which, again, is why 10% of Americans don't have a valid ID, a fact that you refuse to address.
That's not why 10% don't have ID nor did I fail to address it. School is mandatory in the US yet 15% of Americans are illiterate.
>Can you please name a single US state that automatically issues ID to all voters? I can't.
Not every European country has mandatory IDs. Like Europe, every state in the US has free voter IDs. Every single state, you cannot deny this fact.
>Not an answer to my question.
You don't need a known audience to virtue signal to.
>do you categorically refuse the possibility that anyone pursues justice for its own sake?
You're not pursing justice, you're spew false propaganda and fighting a problem that doesn't exist.
>Clearly no one in the MAGA...
Whataboutism.
>You keep on ignoring important words in my comment. In this case, you specifically edited out "automatic" and "mandatory." The absence of those words is why Democrats blocked the bill.
That's not why they blocked the bill.
>Literally no state has this. I live in a red state and I have to go in and request a voter ID, using appropriate evidence. They are not issued automatically.
No country issues an ID automatically to anyone who makes a request. The ID is issued to you automatically after proving who you are. You don't need to petition the state or pay a fee. It's automatic.
I'll say it again, every state in the US has free voter IDs. EVERY state, red and blue.
QED.
>Calling it propganda doesn't make it untrue.
Your statement was false, untrue. You finally admitted above that you were wrong.
>My conclusion, based on the evidence presented in this thread: Either you are a terrible debater who consistently disregards evidence
Poor conclusion. Find a single state that does not have free voter IDs.
>intentionally ignoring evidence that disagrees with your preconceived conclusion.
No evidence disagrees with my original statement of fact:
Every US state issues a free voter ID cards. Even Republican strongholds.
QED.
[0] https:/...
You keep on repeating that. Your brain is hyper-focused on "every state has free voter ID card". Meanwhile you are consistently ignoring the context: 10% of Americans don't have voter ID of any kind. No state issues voter ID automatically. Those Americans will be disenfranchised under a Republican voter ID law. Until you can solve the disenfranchisement issue, voter ID requirement cannot be supported.
> So not only do you now admit that free options exist, you're trying to claim they're irrelevant.
Whether or not they cost money is not the point. The point is whether getting them is an obstacle that will disenfranchise legal voters.
> I accept your defeat.
Lol are you literally 13 years old? You definitely act like it.
>>This makes no sense. "Walking distance" to what? I have never heard of or seen such a program. If they exist, they are not terribly effective, given that 10% of the population still lack a valid ID. > "I haven't heard about it so it doesn't exist."
You didn't actually address my question. I asked "walking distance to what" because that obviously matters. And I didn't say they don't exist, I said that they aren't effective.
> That's exactly how it works in Europe, Czech Republic. If you don't have a copy, you request a new one.
No. In the Czech Republic, they are issued automatically because the government already has your birth certificate. Because IDs there are universal, there is a much lower barrier to entry. You dont know what you are talking about.
> That's not how it works in the US, you do not give away your birth certificate to a different part of the government.
You don't "give it away" and I didn't say that you did. You need to acquire your birth cert, then show it to the DMV. I don't even know why you would even argue this. You're just arguing to be argumentative. Again, you have the mind of a 13 year old.
> That's not why 10% don't have ID nor did I fail to address it. School is mandatory in the US yet 15% of Americans are illiterate.
Completely irrelevant comparison. In European countries, everyone has voter ID because the IDs are issued automatically, which does not happen in the US.
> You don't need a known audience to virtue signal to.
You are sad, pathetic person.
> You're not pursing justice, you're spew false propaganda and fighting a problem that doesn't exist.
Sad, without morals. Your low estimation of your fellow man reflects the weak state of your own conscience. You assume (falsely) that everyone is as self-interested as you are. I hope you find someone who can show you beauty and kindness in the world.
> That's not why they blocked the bill.
Citation needed.
> No country issues an ID automatically to anyone who makes a request. The ID is issued to you automatically after proving who you are. You don't need to petition the state with an attorney or pay a fee.
That's not what I said. Stop putting words in my mouth. At the point I can only include that you are intentionally misinterpreting me in order, I don't know, win internet points or just fill up your vacuous life.
Debating someone who is not interested in actually understnading the world but just incessantly repeating themselves like a dying insect is not rewarding for me or educational for you. So please grow up. Until then, I won't continue this conversation.
Yes, MA has other options for proving identity for voting purposes. But it does not have a free ID card. If you’re going to be argumentative, please make sure you’re correct before posting.
Remember the people leading the charge for this are insurrectionists. They don't care about protecting voting or the concept of democracy at all.
If you were writing software, would you overlook a problem like that?
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/30/new-jerseys-nonciti...
They didn't overlook it. They fixed the error.
If you are asserting that this error was a partisan, intentional attempt to change the outcome of the election, you're going to need to provide a lot more evidence before injecting USPS into election policy makes sense.
The American public overwhelmingly wants voter ID, as other countries have, but this is a topic not entertained by one side of the political aisle. Or rather, by the party leaders—- the majority of their voters want voter ID, but the party won’t pursue it!
We can’t just shrug these things off. They are real.
I’d say there is enough to see here that more scrutiny is warranted. It should be bipartisan.
Errors are not fraud. The current push by the Trump administration is (allegedly) about fraud.
> The American public overwhelmingly wants voter ID, as other countries have, but this is a topic not entertained by one side of the political aisle.
It's entertained if you can do it fairly. "Fairly" means everyone gets an ID automatically. Why do Republicans oppose given legal voters ID so that they can vote?
I want every single voter to have access to their vote, and I want strict proof that every vote cast was the knowledgeable will of that voter ( and only that voter. I’m thinking of ballot dumps at collection boxes here. )
The distinction between fraud and error doesn’t matter to me. The system has problems, ineligible voters have been casting votes. Nobody should oppose efforts to fix it.
Because your elected GOP representatives consistently vote against it, when universally available ID is presented by Democrats as a condition for voter ID laws. Do you have a plausible explanation for why GOP Congressmen would reject that proposal? I sure do.
> Nobody should oppose efforts to fix it.
First you have to prove that there is a problem to fix. Fraud, as we've covered, has never been shown to be a significant issue, and software bugs, as I noted, are not cured by invasive and illegal USPS tactics. So what in your view could possibly be fixed by this latest move?
It doesn't matter when the guy leading the charge is an actual insurrectionist, who was caught trying to twist the arm of Georgia's governer to throw the election for him. What's even the point of voting if the President is just going to call up the governor and threaten to investigate him if he doesn't get his way? The people pushing this have a massive credibility problem and it's never going to go anywhere until more credible people, like you, are writing the bills and making the case you're making here from the Senate floor.
> The distinction between fraud and error doesn’t matter to me. The system has problems, ineligible voters have been casting votes. Nobody should oppose efforts to fix it.
There's a huge actual distinction between the two in that you can't fix all errors. Moreover, every system is going to have some amount of fraud; it's impossible to reduce fraud to zero without increasing costs to infinity. So at some level you have to make a choice between a flawed system and a system that's intractable. I know I prefer my systems to actually function.
And oh would you look there's even more proof that the system is working as intended:
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/potential-non-citiz...
So that's what we've talking about really, driving a 0.1% down to some other smaller infinitesimal number which cannot be 0, because even the perfect system would be subject to human errors.“He had told me [before the election] he was going to unleash the ‘anomaly in the matrix,’ ” St. Clair says in championed documentarist Alex Gibney’s film, Musk"
Watson v. Republican National Committee seems to be the opposite of what you state: ballots received after election day can be counted provided they were postmarked on or before election day.
Curiously, the USPS changed when it postmarks mail this year, resulting in postmark delays. In Washington state, the number of ballots rejected for being late is up 32% compared to 2024.
If you took off your partisan hat, put on your red team hat, and wanted to hack the election, what kind of problems would you find. And be honest.
If I take a look, through a security lens, of the existing mail in process from registration to recording votes, it’s quite shocking.
Yes, it’s a mad scrambling process so close to an election to plug the holes. It also seems like many people have a vested interest in keeping it bad, with little to no profess over the years. With my non-partisan hat on, it looks like the only way to do anything is to shove an executive order through the post office to prevent mail fraud. This is not unlike how people patch security holes in big tech because they can’t get the 12 other directors and interests to cooperate and make security a priority.
We have had secure elections for a long time, how is it that the only 2 that Trump has presided over are the ones that are a security concern?
A humorous double meaning, almost like taking the hat off and putting it back on again.
But seriously I would expect a stronger argument in favor of these changes from proponents like you, something sourced, especially given the trial runs of these encroachments that've been run in a number of red states that haven't found any significant security issues and just turned out to be a waste of taxpayer dollars, time, and trust.
Do your readers a favor and bring something at least as substantive as the article you're commenting on.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
You supplied nothing to back up your extraordinary claims. Your claims are extraordinary given the almost non-existent issues with mail-in voting. But if you'd like to prove otherwise, be my guest.
Mail-in ballots are currently accepted in 23 states [1], including Utah, Kansas, and Florida. Which "side" is that? Please note Donald Trump personally uses the terribly unsecure and unverifiable method of mail-in ballot, so either he thinks it's secure enough, or, uh, is not being totally honest with us.
> resisting all investigations of voting integrity?
Which investigations, specifically, are you referring to? As far as I know, Trump formed a voter integrity commission in his first term which was unable to find any evidence of voter fraud and was therefore subsequently disbanded [2]. Since then, the only source of information on the allegedly widespread voter fraud is from Donald Trump's own mouth.
[1] https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/table-18-states...
[2] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/disb...
Huh? Survival of what? Are you claiming that Democrat fraud was not found only because the perpetrators are all dead?
what have they found, exactly?
at some point how much more money do you want to burn on investigations w/o any particular new cause?
"unverifiable" ain't exactly true either where i live. you might think there should be more or different verification, sure, start some discussions in your local area. don't bring the federal government into everyone else's after the administration shows a long history of crying wolf and pre-seeding conspiracy theories with "i can't possibly lose" stuff. if you're convinced the states and local municipalities can't run stuff, it should be easy to prove.
and yet. you haven't yet.
It is the same tired but sadly effective Republican playbook: take a mostly functioning if imperfect system, break it beyond repair under the guise of fixing or reforming it, use the ongoing disaster to argue that it should be dismantled, rinse and repeat until it’s unsalvageable.
None, since the USPS is not government-funded.
All of these changes are based on the president making comments like the following:
> "the cheating on mail-in voting is legendary,"
Which he has attempted to prove going back years. And every time it's been found that it essentially doesn't happen. And I believe, the few instances of voter fraud that have been found have been majority republicans and not democrats as has been accused.
So to begin with, anyone arguing for these changes need to acknowledge the well established fact that there is effectively zero voter fraud at all levels throughout the country in anyway impacting elections. As has been investigated and shown time and time and time again. If they aren't beginning with the well established state of the world then they are in fact are the one entering with an extremely partisan hat.
Now if their argument is "yes it's true voter fraud has been investigated countless times, and continuously shown to effectively be smaller than a rounding error, does not impact elections, is know to not be a problem, but I still want to make sweeping changes right before an election." Then sure that's a point of discussion. Then I think the simple question then becomes "why"? But if they aren't willing to begin with an accurate discussion of the facts and state of the situation (there is no voter fraud problem), then any comment they make following that has little credibility.
Why is he pushing to outlaw mail-in voting when there is no issue with mail in voting? Is it because one party votes by mail more than the other?
Or the change in the date mail can receives a postmark? Previously mail was transported to the facility to the same day so would get postmarked that day. Now, as this year, mail won't get post-marked the day it's dropped in a mail box - so any zipcode's mail boxes can now be marked as being sent too late to count, even if they were dropped off before election day.
> While we are not changing our postmarking practices, we have made adjustments to our transportation operations that will result in some mailpieces not arriving at our originating processing facilities on the same day that they are mailed. This means that the date on the postmarks applied at our processing facilities will not necessarily match the date on which the customer’s mailpiece was collected by a letter carrier or dropped off at a retail location.
If the administration actually cared about getting an accurate vote, why aren't they opening more voting locations? Why don't they mandate one voting location per every x number of citizens? Why would the Department of Homeland Security decide who is allowed to get ballots via the mail?
If it's so bad, why has the administration failed time and time again to produce any evidence it's actually bad? If it's so horrible, and wide spread why is it impossible to find evidences that supports this? Or shows it overturning elections or anything close?
It's the same scheme. Make a bunch of baseless assertions, repeat them frequently enough and people in an information bubble will begin to believe it. And that's clearly what's happening here. Just like "we've won the war in Iran" 20 times now. And "Iran has agreed to peace deal where they surrender" 15 times now. And how every weekend for months there were claims about the work on Friday that somehow magically fell apart by Monday. And yet somehow there are still people who give these false claims, and the people claiming them, any amount of credibility.
Voter fraud is not a problem in this country. It does not rig elections, it does not sway elections. So sudden last min drastic changes in the voting process right before an election, by someone who has previously attempted a coup (not the protest on the capital but the actual coup attempt), has said they admire the leader o...
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/el...
Among other things, consider https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
> The lack of verification is the exact reason why the lies continue
I think the evidence suggests they are not particularly constrained by reality? Recall "They're eating the cats and dogs."
That's not at all how it works. Typically, you do need to present ID to register. You also need to verify your address on the day of voting. If someone does commit fraud, it's easy to detect: as soon as the real voter tries to vote, the system will detect a "double vote." The fact that this almost never happens suggests that there is not much fraud, if any. And the amount of fraud required to actually change an election result with this method would require a concerted effort of tens of thousands of people, all risking federal prosecution.
> that is literally the American system.
No. Please stop misrepresenting the facts.
> But why not just... require ID to vote?
There are lots of good reasons, which you are probably already aware of, including the fact that many people eligible to vote do not have the requisite ID and are unlikely to get it. My litmus test for supporting voter ID is that it is accompanied by (a) free, mandatory, and automatic national ID cards, and (b) national holiday on election days. Republicans won't support part A for their own ideological reasons, and moreover their purported effort to support voter integrity is not sincere: the goal is simply to prevent undesirable (i.e. non-Republican) voters from voting.
Just trying to understand as a non-American: which people are eligible to vote, but are unlikely to get an ID?
Most (if not all?) states and provinces will have some form of "non driving" ID available if needed. However, it is optional, costs money and requires other documentation to get it, such as an original copy of a birth certificate.
It's not that uncommon for an adult to not have an official ID. Either they never had one or have lost theirs and they haven't bothered/can't afford to get a new one.
The argument is that Republicans are exploiting the fact that this will disproportionately affect Democratic voters. Would some Republican voters be turned away? Of course. Would more Democratic voters be turned away than Republicans? Very very likely, and that's the point. It's a net win for one party to enforce voting ID laws while also not supporting some sort of free/cheap universal identity system.
It’s extremely uncommon.
You need an ID to buy beer, open a bank account, prove you are eligible for employment, pick up a prescription at the pharmacy, book a hotel room, the list is very long. You cannot function in society without some form of ID.
The idea that a large number of Americans are being disenfranchised because they don’t have ID is farcical.
34 million people [1] or about 10 percent of the US population lack a form of ID that would be required under a voter ID law.
The fact that you assert otherwise, without evide, shows that you live in a privilege bubble. None of your friends lack an ID, so you conclude it's rare.
[1] https://voteriders.org/article/who-doesnt-have-an-id-in-amer...
False. Every state in the US has a free voter ID option.
Even if there is no financial cost, it requires documentation and time to get voter ID. It is not issued automatically. That's why 10% of the US population doesn't have form of ID that could be used to vote and will be disenfranchised under Republican voter ID requirements. Until that issue is fixed, voter ID is not something I can support.
No I'm not.
>Even if there is no financial cost, it requires documentation and time to get voter ID.
Yes, you must prove your eligibility to vote.
>It is not issued automatically.
They are issued automatically after proving eligibility.
>That's why 10% of the US population doesn't have form of ID that could be used to vote
Correlation != causation
>and will be disenfranchised under Republican voter ID requirements.
No they won't.
>Until that issue is fixed, voter ID is not something I can support.
There are no issues to fix.
Can you explain this further?
A person who can legally vote today, but in the future cannot vote because of election restrictions, will be disenfranchised. You are supporting election restrictions that disenfranchise 10% of the US population.
>>That's why 10% of the US population doesn't have form of ID that could be used to vote
>Correlation != causation
I never made a claim of causation. I just said that 10% of legal US voting-eligible citizens don't have ID and will therefore be disenfranchised by your proposal.
> They are issued automatically after proving eligibility.
That's not what "automatic" means.
Many who were born before segregation ended in the mid-1960s were not granted birth certificates, as their mothers were forced to use midwives during birth because local hospitals were whites only and turned them away.
See: https://atlantablackstar.com/2025/05/07/florida-woman-real-i...
See: https://chicagodefender.com/black-woman-born-during-jim-crow...
See: https://academic.oup.com/north-carolina-scholarship-online/b...
And which of the two people are lying? Would you have to... verify ID to figure that out?
As in, please be more specific with your claims that we don't require identification to vote.
Because it strikes me as a very low effort Fox News talking point, not any reality.
Most states allow you to cast a provisional ballot on polling Day without an ID, but require that you return and present an ID to accept it.
But no state is accepting votes without identifying the voter. They just vary somewhat in what alternatives they accept.
Compare your statement to the info here and come back with something better: https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_state
I have never voted without being required to present gov issued ID. Ever.
I can't speak for the Americans, but I would imagine there'd be far less liberal pushback against voter ID if everyone could trivially obtain it.
How's this for a compromise: republicans get voter ID laws, in return for a national, bipartisanly monitored program to ensure that anyone who wants it can trivially obtain ID. Once that's realized, the voter ID laws can kick in?
In Europe, you can't get a regular ID without being a citizen. So having an ID automatically means you're eligible to vote.
The point I tried to make is that with the system we have here it's much less of a hassle to prove you're eligible to vote. The system wants you to be able to vote, and to be able to do that easily.
Just because a driver's license isn't proof of citizenship doesn't mean that it isn't sufficient, since it will have some identifier connected to the identity of the voter. You would show the driver's license, then the registrars would find your name on the list, strike it out, give your voting envelopes, and then you go wait for a private booth to become free and then you go into that booth and put your votes in those voting envelopes.
A Swedish driver's license doesn't mean Swedish citizenship. It can still be used to check somebody's identity. Citizenship is checked by seeing whether the person is on the voter rolls, not by their identity card.
The point is not making registration impossible, just harder and more complicated. When you combine it with voter roll purges the play is clear.
Get a biased commission to remove everyone named Jackson or Hernandez a couple months before the election because "there's too many people with that last name and officials might confuse them" or purge a whole district that just happens to be an opposing party stronghold based on a single voter fraud conviction.Do it silently without informing voters, and when they realize they need to register again they have to go through a complicated process designed to make them give up.
Rejecting IDs at the poll booth is actually pretty rare because it's so obvious. Real schemes are a bit more creative.
So what would that accomplish? The Trump playbook asserts that there is a massive conspiracy involving noncitizen voting. Their proposals involve proving citizenship to vote. And now your argument is to use ID that doesn't prove citizenship. Brilliant.
Your eligibility to vote and have your name entered into the poll book is determined by providing a Social Security number or birth certificate.
So yes, a driver’s license is sufficient ID to vote in many states.
At the moment, yes. Under Republican voter ID proposals that require proving citizenship, no. Having an SSN does not imply US citizenship.
I don't have one because I have a passport.
If you don't have a REAL ID or passport, you can just pay a $50 fee and get on the plane anyway. So whatever the REAL ID proves cannot be essential to security.
Until recently in the UK you did not need any ID to vote, that was introduced recently as an echo to the US stolen election conspiracy, as demagogues love to steal ideas from each other.
This is of course not true, why say clearly incorrect things?
First, there is no "American system" as such, because every state is responsible for running elections, so there are 50 state systems in the US.
More importantly, I get my ballot in the mail only because I'm registered to vote at the DMV, you know the same agency that issues the very ID they check to make sure I'm elegible to vote.
You don't just "waltz in" to the post office or whever to get a ballot.
And of course Swiss Post just processes this as a regular piece of mail, routing it to the address written on the envelope, without any weird cross-tabulation against voter registers or barcodes…
They didn't prove any of their claims, and several even went to prison for contempt because they refused to substantiate their claims in front of a judge.
HN rules says to be kind and not call names, but you are either willfully ignorant or a liar, and in both cases you are complicit in a soft coup attempt.
Sounds like BS. Or if it isn't, it's alarming.
Most voting should be in person, on election day. Absentee ballots for those who cannot do that, as we have done for decades. Early voting, unchecked mail-in voting, are all additional avenues for fraud or simply problems such as lost or damaged ballots or delayed processing.
If so, how is that not clearly discriminatory for those who can't afford the time to go.
I think the best approach is what Georgia has done. No-excuse mail-in for those who want that. And 3 weeks of early voting including Saturdays. And for those who just enjoy standing in lines, there is the official Election Day. If a redneck state can get it done without issues, then we all can do it.
Functionally, a literal handful per season which are typically caught and prosecuted.
The right leaning Brookings and Heritage foundations dug into the numbers and found this
"Across the entire country, and utilizing a maximally inclusive estimate, between six and 46 cases of mail voting fraud were identified in each general election"
Table:
Year Total mail voting fraud percentage (out of total mail ballots cast) 2016 0.000089% 2018 0.000024% 2020 0.000051% 2022 0.000010% Average 0.000043%
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/mail-voting-in-the-us-dat...
The fact that the USPS would notice elections were being conducted is perverse.
Where elections probably matter to postal services is that they represent a particular shape of mail volume and network usage that may require management to reorganize pickup/delivery resources to meet delivery commitments.
Well. Who could possibly have predicted this. /s
(No, I don't support it regardless, but surely even if you do you could recognize that the timeframe is way too short).
I would expect most Americans would see this as grotesquely anti-American, and absolutely against the principals of the country. Instead it barely makes news and is just another "get whatever advantage you can" tactic.
"Has such a small imagination that they can't imagine they wouldn't be the majority" is more like it.
For all the old fears of "we need the senate so big cities don't run the country" they have a massive blind spot of there being less diversity of thought, and more of a monoculture, in suburban and rural areas. And they don't realize that because of this they shouldn't be surprised if not everyone agrees with them.
I'm all for doubling the size of the house, but that's more to combat gerrymandering. The larger the size of the house, the harder and less impactful it is to gerrymander. Though before that I'd definitely push for federal anti-gerrymandering legislation.
Up to and including causing illness death to oneself and one's loved ones:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_of_Whiteness
In the most recent analysis, about 37% of Democrats use mail in voting, versus 24% of Republicans. This is why Republicans often take the lead in vote counting, and then because of Republican-imposed rules mail in ballots are counted later in the process, suddenly turning the tide. Which then yields lots of "the fix is in!" undermining of democracy -- at least in every race they don't win (the ones they win are 100% fair, of course) -- because the GOP of 2026 absolutely hates democracy, and they'll do everything they can to destroy it.
Anyhow, there's plenty of rich discussion to be had, but you increasingly need to do it in the real world, or on smaller forums/channels. This will likely be an even bigger issue in the future as LLMs will enable full automation of this sort of abuse that will ultimately probably be impossible to stop. In the grand scheme of things we're likely at the tail end of the era where having genuine political discussion online was possible, if not already slightly beyond it.
I don't see that at all. I am engaging with many voices on the other side [1] [2]. Those comments are voted down, yes, but not because "HN hates freedom" or some such, but rather because (a) those opinions are not well informed and (b) HN is broadly upper-class and educated, and therefore not tolerant of uninformed opinions. The only widespread bias I see here is towards constructive and intelligent commenting; and in the current political atmosphere, it's simply not possible to be both intelligent and Republican.
> I suppose that in their mind it's some sort of attempt at manufacturing consent.
What I see in your comment is you are upset that you are on the losing side of an argument and so you're accusing the other side of cheating. Hey, that sounds familiar!
> In the grand scheme of things we're likely at the tail end of the era where having genuine political discussion online was possible, if not already slightly beyond it.
You are probably right, but for reasons entirely unrelated to dumb comments getting downvoted on HN.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545694
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545156
If you talk to Trump supporters in real life, they are not having nuanced discussions about the state of our country, they are completely tuned out to what is going on. They have to be. It's embarrassing. Instead, they are still talking about trans people and wokeness, because that is evergreen territory that can forever be raged about but never "solved," because it never affected them in the first place.
You accuse HN of being in an echo chamber that you've disregarded an even simpler explanation: The cognitive dissonance of voting for someone who immediately backed out of everything he promised (no wars, releasing Epstein files, serving the middle class) that it has broken some people's perception of their own judgement, and they can't engage with it anymore.
There's really no other reason to be suddenly quiet. This isn't 2021, just after Jan 6th. This is almost two years into Republicans having total control of the government. It's just been such a disaster people don't want to publicly root for them anymore.
You could easily test this by posting a thoughtful rebuttal.
I've been posting actively on this thread and I haven't yet seen a thoughtful rebuttal, although there have been several comments in favor of the current administration's approach to voter enforcement via the USPS. Unfortunately, literally all of those comments were based on misinformation or make sweeping assertions, unsupported by evidence, about voter fraud in the US.
Any/Every discussion that makes the top page on HN about politics will flood out most of the conservative discussion, further most of the comments are echo chamber 'me too, Trump fascist' that adds very little to the conversation.
I keep waiting for all these well-thought-out, factually-based, good-faith arguments offered by conservatives but for some reason they never appear. It seems that the only comments written by conservatives are knee-jerk, xenophobic, semi-literate arguments based in half-truths and GOP talking points. Maybe we scared off all the "good" conservatives?
> Trump fascist' that adds very little to the conversation.
I agree that it adds little to the conversation, but it's not clear to me what else you'd like to hear. If you think that a federal takeover of state elections in absence of any real election crisis is not fascist behavior, feel free to make that argument here and I will respond in a temperate and measured tone.
"I agree that it adds little to the conversation"
Do you think those comments should be flagged and [deleted] or they add value here and should be kept around?
Not sure what kind of test this is supposed to be, but okay, I'll bite. He's done some things that could be good, but because of his unique pathology, he makes even good things bad. Look at the Trump Accounts. Creating a savings account for children is potentially a good thing. Here are the problems with it: during his presidency, he has single-handedly doubled the national debt, so this isn't a great opportunity to give away money; the move is ideological incoherent, coming from a guy who thinks that wealth redistribution is un-American; and of course he's a narcissist, so he's incapable of doing anything with stamping his name on it. It's hilarious that MAGAs decry "partisanship" but for some reason love obviously partisan, and likely Hatch Act-violating, nonense like this.
> Do you think those comments should be flagged and [deleted] or they add value here and should be kept around?
Some of those comments are flagged because they express non-constructive, hyper-partisan, anti-immigrant sentiment. They deserve to be flagged. Some are flagged because they are just unpopular on HN; those should not be flagged. I'd never claim that HN doesn't lean left, and it's always hard to be a minority in a community. The appropriate response from conservatives like you, in order to prevent your comments from being flagged, is to comment better: use factual evidence, logical arguments, and non-partisan language. Unfortunately, the few HN conservatives around here aren't doing that.
It reads as the exact sort of evidence free, misinformation driven, conspiratorial and sweeping assertion that you're now complaining about. The reality is that most political discussion online has been trending towards sewer level content, and I think a huge part of it is the echo chamber issue. You don't get any pushback from stuff like this online when the only people engaging with you are themselves already heavily biased in a similar direction. Oh sorry, you actually did get several people pushing back, including one merely asking for evidence. Perhaps you didn't see that because those comments were all flagged and buried.
Some of those flags are quite reasonable, but some are not. And this happens every single time you have a thread that brings out the partisan flaggers, which will discourage future conversation from those that did bother to try to discuss and got hit by them. Absent the flaggers existence, you'd have a ratio of discussion that is probably at least approximately comparable to what we see in things like support polls or more broadly - voting.
But with it, you end up with an echo chamber that is not only uninformative, but malinformative because you now have absolutely no clue what people are thinking, why they're thinking that, what their relative numbers may be, or any opportunity to try to change their mind. So you just end up with polarization and both sides radicalizing themselves as they end up in echo chambers where a partisan view is taken as the baseline for normal.
Can you point at the well thought out rebuttal that have been victim of flagging?
You will say it's not a reasonable opinion, it's hate or fear and should be downvoted/flagged, but that is incorrect and exactly what leads to echo chambers. Which is ironic because HN is usually very pro-speech/thought... or used to be.
It's just that defending the current administration, at this state, does take a level of bad faith that people on all sides of the political spectrum are sick of hearing. To imply it's only hardcore liberals flagging these comments is wishful thinking
So every topic regarding current administration is a bad faith argument on the proponent side? Or just this one?
Really, where exactly? I'd say 100% polar opposite. I live in a county that has voted for a R president almost every election, and the conversations are very different. There is a lot of disagreement, but it's usually the disagreement on the HOW not the WHAT.
I'm currently immersed in MAGA world (eldercare, siblings). Their daily media diet is 1984's Two Minutes of Hate all day long on repeat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate
I'm still unsure about the cultish aspects.
Habitual hate and anger are akin to addiction. Which may be sufficient to explain the behavior I'm seeing. (They really hate their perceived enemies.)
In favor of the cult theory, MAGA et al do check a lot of the boxes.
If you voted for Trump you are a fascist and a pedo and nobody wants to hear your thoughts.
I've said this before and the replies are usually about the topic or opinion but it's not. Some opinions that would have been demonstrably in the Clinton/Obama administration would be considered MAGA now.
Interestingly there's been a few party shifts. It's not just one direction.
For example, Reagan was pretty pro immigration and pro vaccination. Before 9/11 Republicans were the party of immigration. Even Trump in 2016 was the pro-LGBT candidate, that's certainly shifted dramatically. "Donald Trump said I could take a pee anywhere in the Trump facility, so I am going to go take a pee in the ladies' room."
One thing I'd give republicans is they are far more responsive to their base vs the democrats.
But yet here you are.
> There is no room for discourse or nuance.
Try me!
> If you voted for Trump you are a fascist and a pedo and nobody wants to hear your thoughts.
On the contrary, there have been endless articles and discussion about Trump supporters' opinions, to the extent that "New York Times Interviews Twelve Trump Supporters" [1] [2] is a bit of a cliche. I think that your (collective) thoughts have been well expressed and understood by the other side, it's just that most people find those opinions unimpressive, mostly couched in a sort of hero-worship credulity or open hostility to people who are different from you.
> Some opinions that would have been demonstrably in the Clinton/Obama administration would be considered MAGA now.
Sure, public opinion shifts. For example, Republicans used to be the party of limited government and law-and-order. Then they elected a felon who flagrantly violates the Constitution (14th amendment, separation of powers, emoluments clause, etc) and has worked tirelessly to extend the power of the federal government, in the present case to intervene in the Constitutionally-mandated state right of operating elections. Of course "people used to feel differently" is not, on its own, an argument in support for the administration's policies, so I hope you can do better.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/series/voters-voices-trump-administr...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/series/voters-voices-trump-2025
People started getting embarrassed real fast and even before he rode off into the sunset it was not easy to find somebody who would admit to voting for him.
And he got elected twice himself.
Basically it was so disgraceful that in less than a year you couldn't find anybody who ever admitted to voting for Nixon at all. Most voting Republicans actually had, at least the first time, but if anybody even indicated their tendency after that they were ridiculed by other Republicans like "how could you ever support such a crook?", not just from the Democrats. It was just too uncomfortable for a nation of overwhelmingly honest-to-the-bone Americans regardless of which party, nature took its course almost immediately and it was swept under the rug as completely as could be. Not everybody is honest to the bone of course, what you would sometimes hear instead of crickets was "No, I actually didn't vote that time" from some Republicans who still had the bumper sticker that said "Nixon's the One."
It was very much like a mass "suspension of disbelief" for at least a decade after which people acted something like "it was only the very elderly and uninformed who voted for Nixon and they're all dead now so no wonder you can't find someone who was proud to vote for him either time."
Present the Republican base with an alternate reality where every accusation against a Republican is a witch hunt, no matter its veracity, and the base no longer has to feel ashamed supporting a crook. Instead, they can stand proud, knowing they support someone the "libs" hate.
Unlike the times Republican presidents have said it, this is truly a case of Mission Accomplished.
Plus the +5 R advantage due to misapportion...
It's a wonder that Democrats ever attain a majority.
And why most criticisms of Democrats (campaigns, messaging, policy, whatever) aren't even wrong.
They are here. But their contributions are, let's say, not motivated by fact-based reasoning. Not surprising: it's very hard to defend what's going on in this country right now.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545694
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545156
2 Is a statement with a link. What is wrong with it? https://news.gallup.com/poll/652523/americans-endorse-early-...
Requiring all voters to provide photo identification at their voting place in order to vote Democrats: 67%
> The fact that reputable sources were not provided to justify the need for fixes has been reputable source enough.
The the question wasn't "what do people prefer" it was "what's the evidence this is a problem."
People wanting a thing doesn't necessarily mean the thing is is a problem. But further, what the Trump admin is doing isn't the thing being polled.
What's wrong with it is that it's a non-sequitur to the conversation at hand.
What's happening is new restrictions on mail in voting. A federal registry of citizens which the post office uses to decide who does and does not get a ballot and who's ballot is allowed to arrive to the elections office.
A more responsive link would be one that shows evidence of a large amount of mail in voting fraud or even a poll that shows the majority of people support federal checks and restrictions on mail in voting (though, I'd think that's not a good reply because it isn't actually evidence).
So why is it flagged and not debated? If all counter points are flagged, then there is no discourse. The only discourse is all the people who agree with each other.
I've not seen a comment yet that is actually responsive to points being raised about why this action by the administration is a bad idea. Instead it's "Well, people want voter ID" and "Well because there's unlimited fraud in mail in voting and early voting".
What a lot of the flagged comments are (but I don't speak for all the flagging, I personally avoid downvoting or flagging myself unless something is very egregious) are bad faith.
It's not one sided, I've gotten into arguments about Biden/Harris when throwing critiques their way with diehard supporters. But frankly, from what I've observed it's a lot worse when it comes to Trump's actions. When he does something indefensible, like this incomplete citizen registration 2 months before an election, instead of addressing the action he just did, his supporters try and change subjects rather than justify this action.
The most charitable reading I have from one of his supporters is that this will stop non-citizens from voting in federal elections. But the issues with this they don't address, like the fact that a citizenship list doesn't currently exist and that the process of creating such a list is completely opaque, are simply never addressed. And even when "Ok, if it's such a problem, where's the evidence?" is asked, the only response is to change subjects.
That's not a good faith argument. That's not nuance. That's "I have an unfounded belief and rather than defend it, when questions get uncomfortable I'll rely on bad faith debate tactics to try and win the argument".
> Which "side" has been fighting tooth and nail for unverifiable mail-in ballots > resisting all investigations of voting integrity?
Basically, the comment asserted that Democrats are "pushing" for mail-in ballots, despite the fact that many Republican-controlled states (notably Mississippi, which recently defended its mail-in voting law) also allow mail-in voting. The comment cast aspersions on the accuracy of mail-in voting, citing no evidence. The comment was apparently informed solely by partisan bias without any basis in the reality of the situation.
In short, it was not a good comment. Did it deserve to be flagged? Probably not. But it was certainly not a thoughtful, well-reasoned defense of the current administration's flagrantly illegal overreach. If this is the kind of comment that you want to see more of on HN, then we'll have to agree to disagree.
Do I want to see more of them, probably not. Does it deserved to be flagged, absolutely not.
That's fine, but please don't play the martyr. You're supporting a president who is deporting people for constitutionally protected free speech. I think you'll survive a little flag here on HN.
Neither are yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49546137
Don't tell me I'm "unfactual" while presenting this kind of weak sauce non sequitur.
Your point was states do not give free IDs. That point is an objectively false point. It directly contradicts your point.
> 10 percent of Americans do not have acceptable ID
Stop moving goalposts.
>Even free ID doesn't make the operation frictionless, as you still have to provide a birth cert or citizenship doc.
No one made the claim the operation is frictionless, stop straw manning.
>Don't tell me I'm "unfactual"
You are unfactual as proved in the thread.
>while presenting this kind of weak sauce non sequitur.
It's not a non sequitur, it dismantles your false statements.
No, it was not. Either you are deeply confused or responding to wrong comment.
> Stop moving goalposts.
This is not moving goal posts. This is precisely the point. Voter ID laws will disenfranchise legal voters. That's it. That's the point.
> No one made the claim the operation is frictionless,
Good. Then you acknowledge that legal voters will be disenfranchised?
Yes, it was.
>Either you are deeply confused or responding to wrong comment.
Stop projecting about being confused. Everyone can see where you poorly attempted to support your objectively false points.
>This is not moving goal posts. This is precisely the point.
The point was you thought IDs for voting were not free. That is false. Stop moving the goalposts.
>Good. Then you acknowledge that legal voters will be disenfranchised?
Non sequitur. Proving you're eligibility to vote is not disenfranchisement.
but it doesn't work...anything then was done under literally the same President we have today?
That's pretty damn hilarious: *don't complain to me about the Trump admin fucking with the voting system on short notice in 2026 since the Trump admin also fucked with the voting system on short notice in 2020!"
(At least there was a major national emergency going on that time...)
---
It's a point in favor of the "malicious" theory, though. Here's arguably the person who would have the most reason to not fuck with things last-minute, who complained at no end about the results, is now making his own last minute changes... hmmmm.... must still believe he got cheated, and is intentionally trying to cheat instead.
not surprised that Trump Admin is trying to do this; it's a page out of their play dirty, break the law now and sort it out later once the courts catch up, approach to politics
but the fact that SCOTUS didn't shut it down is beyond the pale -- unconscionable
https://electionlab.mit.edu/research/voting-mail-and-absente...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/31/us/politics/postal-servic...
So it seems like any USPS snafus would affect rural voters (which skew Republican) more than urban?
0: https://registertovote.ca.gov/
2. There's no document verification. Anybody can enter someone's name and social security number and get a ballot delivered anywhere.
3. I still don't trust the ballot gets thrown out if there's a mismatch.
In order to be 100% safe, there should be only in person voting with a voter id. Anything else is open to abuse.
Requires a bit more work for people but at least where I live there are many places you can drop off your ballot, including most public libraries.
Why? Your job is to transfer pieces of mail from one place to another. Just continue that. Everything else is manufacturing a problem where there was none.
Edit: Spelling.
That's this administrations exact intended purpose for forcing this.
The post office already does way more than you think it does. Like identity verification on behalf of the government and tracking which houses are considered "vacant" or not.
It would be nice to focus the USPS, but all these extra services have to be done by _some entity_, otherwise you can't have the final result. In this case, the result is a functional, auditable mail in ballot system
[0]: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/06/02/2026-10...
Sounds like authoritarianism.
Cue civil war?
The president, who is ultimately decided by the owner of the voting system, is not going to order an audit of the owner of the voting system which made them president in the first place as that would paradoxically cast doubt on the president's legitimacy in the first place. There is a negative incentive to do so.
So the one who is entrusted to tally the vote can unilaterally decide who is going to be the president for any election.
The only way they might get audited is if a president loses an election and then wins the next one; then they might demand an audit out of revenge... but that doesn't even guarantee an audit; such president would have enormous leverage to demand that the next election be rigged again; but this time, in their favor. Certainly a better alternative to jail time for the owner of the tally system.
>And look at the primaries; absolutely rigged.
Any proof? Oh, right, "vibes".
Nothing but in-person paper ballots, except for demonstrated necessity, and in those cases they must be hand-delivered by a relative or caretaker. Ballots can be optical scan, but we MUST audit 0.1% of all ballots (by random selection after the election) by hand. If ANY discrepancy exists, a full hand recount must be done.
Here's the skinny: voting should have a barrier to entry. Your freedoms are important - people died for them. If you can't be bothered to fight a little for them with something as basic as putting on a pair of pants to head the the polls in person, you don't deserve your freedom, and you certainly shouldn't be voting on my freedoms.
I disagree that people only vote by mail due to laziness or that the administration is taking away voting rights for the good of democracy.
They mean voter buying cases, "paying you to confirm a vote for X" and see you check the card.
In ballot cabins the buyer can't come with you inside the booth to confirm, so your vote has verifiable privacy/secrecy.
It doesn't really solve all type of vote buying problems (like clientelism lists, etc), but removes that confirmation step.
0: https://registertovote.ca.gov/
The process is described on the same website you linked to: https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voter-registration/same-day...
In order to be 100% safe, there should be only in person voting with a voter id. Anything else is open to abuse.
Damn, never thought it was this much! I thought postal voting was mostly for people living abroad and less-abled ones that couldn’t physically go to a voting station.
Is this common in other countries?
[1]: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/how-the-world-s-most-f...
Hopefully, in a twisted way, the fact AI enables convincing fake pictures and videos makes this vote buying scheme unpractical now, but it was a vector of attack until very recently, especially with encrypted communication and cryptocurrencies.
In the fictive story, it is the year 2000. Some get the job to write a software to manipulate vote computers. Later, the same programmer was asked to manipulate also voting computers in Germany. This time, he tries to resist. They create a joke-party for the re-erification of the Monarchy and manipulate the vote computers so that this joke-party gets the majority. And that works. But no one believes him that the computers were manipulated and he really gets to be the new king of Germany.
That's all very fictive ... it's just that in the text you have lots of footnotes giving reference to ACTUAL problem with US voting devices ...
Also: in Germany the Chaos Computer Club once demonstrated that they could run chess on an already "certified to be safe for election" voting computer. That brought the end to these devices ... so now Germany is back to a state where your Aunt Mary can sit down with the paper ballot sheets, can recount and can inform herself that everything was right. Without the need of a CS degree, without knowledge about IT security, hacking, etc. Which is IMHO a general win to the democracy. Lay people must be able to verify results!
This is why as much voting in person; on election day; at a polling place; behind a privacy screen; as possible is generally recommended.
Last minute rule changes: redistricting, ballot redesign / reissue, gear swaps, polling locations, etc.
Way bigger than electronic voting, which is what initially motivated by activism.
Source: am a recovering election integrity activist.