And besides, I don’t see how proving that you are who you say you are, also proves that you are registered to vote.

Nobody's saying get rid of the voter rolls. California does it how James said, New York has you actually sign, but neither really knows it is you.

digger, if someone walks into a polling place to cast a vote in the name of a dead person how is having an id check going to stop them?

Clearly the person would have not only the name and address of the dead person but also a fake id.

That is a severe barrier to entry though. Right now they can pick some homeless guy up off the street, give him the name and address and have them walk in and cast a vote under someone else's name, dead or not.

Adding a photo ID requirement would add a severe barrier to making it quite so easy.

In addition with the Real ID Act -- which I'm sure Ken would denounce as a Nazi tactic since it actually requires states to verify that the people they give ID's are legally in the country and they are who they say they are -- creating fraudulent ID's quite so easily would be a thing of the past.

There's always going to be voter fraud, but that doesn't mean you actively stop trying to curb it.

To use a comparison, it's like people who say a fence along our southern border isn't going to stop illegal aliens because they'll sneak in on planes and boats or by digging tunnels. True it won't stop all of them, but it will slow the flow dramatically. Maybe instead of having the current 4,000 illegals a day flowing across the border (more than 1 million a year) you'll cut it to a few hundred or less sneaking in rolled up in mattresses in cars and in cutouts in trunks.

Just because a solution doesn't solve the problem 100% doesn't mean it won't cut it to a manageable number.

I vote in New Jersey. I have also voted in New York. The way I described it is the way it's done here. I agree the system you describe leaves poll workers with no way to know that you are who you say you are, but that can be solved without requiring ID. The way it's done where I live seems to work very well. And besides, I don't see how proving that you are who you say you are, also proves that you are registered to vote.

I've voted in half a dozen states and never done that.

Generally, they just have a list of names and addresses of those registered to vote. You give them a name and they read you back the address. You say "Yep" and they hand you a ballot. They have no clue you are who you say you are.

The reader who said that driving is a privilege, voting is a birthright is correct.

But here is another response to James' comparison of driving and voting:

Voters ARE required to prove that they are registered to vote before they can enter the voting booth. There are election workers in every polling place in America; you go up to them, give them your name, and they find it in their book. Then you sign the book next to (or below) where you signed the previous year. No identification necessary.

Clearly the person would have not only the name and address of the dead person but also a fake id.

Your solution is typical of conservatives: no solution at all.

The preferred solution advocated by liberals is 1) maintain accurate voter rolls, 2) increase the number of registered voters and get them to the polls. This solution is consistent with American values.

It makes any attempt at fraud meaningless as the addition of tens of thousands of legitimate voters will swamp any attempt at having bogus fake or dead people cast 27 ballots. There is no reason why anyone would go to the trouble when it is not going to make any difference to the outcome.

I know already that conservatives will not agree with this as your desire is to make voting more difficult, which is the opposite of what most Americans want.

Earlier this month, chief investigator Duane Pohlman uncovered the names of dozens of dead voters in Cuyahoga County, and thousands of dead people still registered to vote.

...

Edward Wisniewski has been buried since 2002 but records reveal that he voted in this year's May primary.

...

The investigation found 27 votes that were cast by dead people.

According to Ken, that's just perfectly fine. Who cares about the 27 legal citizens of the United States of America who potentially had their vote nullified by these fraudulent voters? A simple ID check would have probably stopped those votes from having been cast in the first place and maybe even put a few of the criminal voters behind bars.

So here is how you think the fraud works?

A guy goes to your neighborhood polling place and tells the poll worker that his name is charles austin and gives your address as his residence.

Is that really what you are worried about?

Sure, it has occurred occasionally, but that's not what really should worry people. What should worry people is fake people, dead people and voters selling their votes. Illegally voting for a candidate that you didn't vote for, thus disenfranchising you from your birthright of having your vote count.

With no verification what's stopping me from selling my vote to someone? I mean I'm on the rolls all they have to do is then walk up and say they're me.

You may think it's far fetched, but with the amount of money and power at stake candidates have gone as far as attempting to murder their rivals and some have even *ahem* bugged their rivals and ransacked hotels called Watergate. What makes you think they wouldn't attempt any other dirty tricks?

Adding a little integrity to the system and voter confidence is not something that should be shrugged off as a simple farce as Ken seems to do repeatedly above.

My experience has been that black voters are very sensitive on this issue (for good reason) and seem to experience being asked for ID differently than I might.

This is ridiculous! There are black poll workers in districts. It's not like there's only white people working the polls and there's some racial issue involved.

Ken said:

It seems to me that once someone is registered to vote, and their name and address is listed on the voter roll in their neighborhood precinct, asking for identification is somewhat of an insult.

This isn't 1950 where everyone knows their neighbors and you'll be insulting little Johnny or old lady Margaret who has lived next to you for 20 years by asking for their ID. In this day and age you'll be lucky if someone even knows two of their neighbors by name.

The only common sense solution is to ask someone to verify that they are actually the one listed on the roll. Otherwise you're just guessing and that's a stupid thing to do when it comes to voting in America. Is that what democracy means to you? Guessing?

Sometimes I wonder if a lot of these people even want America to exist at all. Guessing someone is supposed to be allowed to vote, what a crock!

It's amazing what you can do with a headline. You can turn research data into something that supports your position. That's just what the New York Times did with their headline "Lower Voter Turnout Is Seen in States That Require......

And why producing an ID card constitutes disenfrachisement when ID cards are available at no cost is beyond my ability to understand. Just saying it over and over doesn't make it so. I am sensitive to past injustices, but to so glibly imagine that my only motive is to suppress turnout is offensive and silly.

Yeah, those registered to vote in a precinct. I don't know how the poll worker knows who that is absent identification. It just isn't that hard to produce an ID card.

The decision poll workers should be asked to make is whether or not you really are the person you claim to be on the list provided to them. To claim that this doesn’t help control fraud is just silly and indicative of a either an absence of knowledge about elections in this country or a desire to be intentionally duplicitous.

So here is how you think the fraud works?

A guy goes to your neighborhood polling place and tells the poll worker that his name is charles austin and gives your address as his residence.

Is that really what you are worried about?

I think you guys are nuts.

Driving a car is a privilege, voting is a birthright.

Your analogy is revealing of how conservatives think: you would require testing in order to limit the franchise to those who met your 'standards', and those you 'approved' of.

You are a southern conservative, right? How typically characteristic of you to think like that.