• _number8_@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    i’m very stupid – i’ve never understood this whole registration system at all. why is it not just based on your ID or social security or something? (oh, so prisoners can’t vote? great, i’m glad we introduced more complexity to disenfranchise more people.)

    • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Some Americans, particularly evangelical Christians and libertarians, are vehemently against the idea of a national identification system. To them it’s either the beginning of a New World Order government or the Mark of the Beast or both. So having a national ID card will never fly. Social Security Numbers aren’t even supposed to be used for identification, despite the fact that they’re used that way everywhere.

      There’s also the case that not everyone has an ID. Racist southern states, for example, enact voter ID laws and then remove all places where you can get an ID from majority black areas. Having to show an ID to vote is, therefore, going to disenfranchise some people. You could get around this by broadening valid identification to include simply bringing a piece of mail with your name and address on it.

      • Uprise42@artemis.camp
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        1 year ago

        Actually SSN’s ARE supposed to be used that way now. It wasn’t intended when the system started because it was difficult to get everyone one. But once the system was established they started pushing federal agencies to use them. Then in the ‘60’s when the digital revolution began it just made sense to use them. But the law has been changed since 1943. The new cards don’t even have that line on them anymore.

        https://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/ssnreportc2.html

        • Pieisawesome@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          They are terrible ids, they used to be assigned sequentially and geographically based. So you could figure out the first 3-5 digits from basic information and get in a ballpark number if you had a birthday.

    • Selmafudd@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You know weirdly in Australia it’s mandatory to vote, all government departments exchange information and yet we still need to register to vote… you get fined for not voting and you can’t get a passport if you’re 18+ and not enrolled.

    • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      oh, so prisoners can’t vote

      It seems like not having a polling location inside the prison would also address that concern.

    • neptune@dmv.social
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      1 year ago

      To be fair, voting is handled by the states, so that is one reason it’s complicated.

    • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I don’t know why Republicans wouldn’t want prisoners to vote. The don’t need to avoid consequences’ group and acting overly tough to the point of making life much harder on themselves is their entire base

      • treefrog@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Because they don’t want black people to vote and the majority of people in prison, are black.

        I’d even argue we have laws on the books specifically for this intention. To disinfranchise black voters, by putting them in prison.

        In other words, you’re kinda missing the point of the prison industrial complex.

      • Billiam@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You can’t be Tough On Crimetm if you allow prisoners to vote. What if -gasp!- they vote to abolish all crimes! Our streets would be RAMPANT with undesirables! /s

        Also, think about the demographic make-up of America’s penal system, and you’ll find another reason Republicans don’t want prisoners to vote.

        • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Also, think about the demographic make-up of America’s penal system, and you’ll find another reason Republicans don’t want prisoners to vote.

          Pretty sure that is the actual reason.

          • Lose civil war. Have to free your black slaves.

          • Create laws and law enforcement culture that disproportionately impact black folks.

          • Steadfastly pretend you have done neither of those things.

          • Lock 'em up!

          • Sorry, prisoners can’t vote. Really, our hands are tied. Someone think of the children.

          Closest thing to a confession I’m aware of:

          “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper’s writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.

          “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.”

          “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

          https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html

          https://www.businessinsider.com/nixon-adviser-ehrlichman-anti-left-anti-black-war-on-drugs-2019-7

          Here’s older evidence that goes back to much earlier.

          Marijuana was Anslinger’s golden ticket. He used his office to trumpet the association between weed and violence, so that it could be criminalized. “You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother,” he was known to have said. McWilliams explains that in this effort, “Anslinger appealed to many organizations whose members were predominantly white Protestant.”

          From the beginning, Anslinger conflated drug use, race, and music. “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men,” he was quoted as saying. “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”

          https://timeline.com/harry-anslinger-racist-war-on-drugs-prison-industrial-complex-fb5cbc281189

        • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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          1 year ago

          When one thinks too hard about it, the whole “we can’t trust prisoners to vote, they’ll vote to legalize crime!” argument is pretty ridiculous too. Criminals don’t just universally love crime, like a guy in for having weed isn’t likely to want to legalize murder or something, he doesn’t want to be murdered or see people murdered any more than anyone else, and anyone actually crazy enough to want to legalize that is going to be an irrelevant minority of the vote anyway (prisoners in general will be a minority, unless most of your population is locked up, in which case you either actually do have way too many crimes that shouldn’t be illegal, or your society is so terminally dysfunctional that it’s laws won’t much matter anyway).

          • Cabrio@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Oops, it looks like you tried having a deep thought, unfortunately thoughts deeper than surface level are dangerous to Conservative minds as they are prone to drowning, and have been subsequently banned.