Open Thread

What’s on your mind?

Comments

[santamonica811]

People on the right want mandatory IDs for voting. People on the left oppose this idea, or support it in principle, but can't get behind it as long as it's difficult for poor people to obtain these IDs. The vast vast majority of conservatives who want this are doing this because they want to ensure voting integrity. A tiny-to-small percentage are assholes, who are doing this only to diminish the number of poor people who will cast votes.

My suggestion: Have a rule requiring IDs. Military ID would be fine, student IDs (with photos) would be fine. Plus all the usual accepted types of ID. BUT...if you don't have an ID, you can still cast a vote *if* you leave a fingerprint. It can be part of the legislation that these fingerprints can be used only for the purpose of identification, and may not be used for any general criminal investigatory purpose, civil debt collection like child support, etc.. So, on Election Day, if you don't have an ID, you just wait in line with everyone else, you get to the front, put your thumb on the LiveScan screen, and in 10 seconds, you're on your way to pick up your ballot.

A secondary advantage is that, every election, there are of course a non-trivial number of voters who just lost their wallets within the past day or two, or had wallets/purses stolen, etc. Now, instead of a mad panicked dash to get a replacement ID, you could just show up at the polls, leave your fingerprint, and vote.

The only downside I can see is the initial investment in the hardware. But I presume that conservatives (other than those whose only goal is to reduce Dem voters) would gladly support federal financial support for buying these scanners. And liberals would support it...even if for no other reason than to take this issue off the table.

One side gets excellent verification of a voter's bona fides. The other side gets a way for everyone who's eligible to cast a vote with or without having an ID on hand. Everyone wins. Is there a downside I'm overlooking?

[Jerry B.]

Your error is in thinking that Democrats actually want verifiable voter identification. Consider that one of the first things the new Virginia legislative did was to give introduce legislation to do way with requiring ID to vote.

[Frank Drackman]

And yet I need an ID to buy Recreational Marriage-a-Juan-a, I mean, I've heard you need an ID to buy Recreational Marriage-a-Juan-a.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Put photos on the EBT cards, every poor person has an EBT card.

[Commenter_XY]

SM811...Some people have never been fingerprinted. What database do you propose to run their prints against?

Are their votes provisional votes? Meaning, if citizenship cannot be definitively proven, the vote is not counted.

[Brett Bellmore]

The problem is that not all ID is created the same. Some ID is created by organizations that want to make sure you're really who you claim you are. Others are created by organizations that just want to make sure some benefit is only received by the person who paid for it, but don't really care who you really are as long as they got paid.

So it's inherent in the varying nature of ID that some are suited to this purpose, and some aren't.

Second, not everyone has their fingerprints on file. In fact, most people don't. So, is the proposal to fingerprint everybody who obtains qualifying ID, in case they lose it?

I can't see Democrats approving of that, even if there's a law that says you can't use THESE fingerprints to identify criminals. First, there IS such a thing as 'parallel construction', nobody should assume that such a law would actually be followed.

And, second, what's the objection to identifying criminals? That's where you lose the conservatives for this part of the proposal.

[Sarcastr0]

I'm not sure there's enough trust for the 'may not be used' proviso, but I'd vote for your proposal; it can be tweaked if there are issues.

[Michael P]

Getting good fingerprints requires a trained fingerprinter, expensive special equipment and more than 10 seconds per person. There's no way that we will get that at every voting precinct in the country. Without it, you'll get a lot of unusable smears.

And exactly how does this get used? If a person isn't in databases, they could vote once with ID and once by fingerprint, and there's no way to check eligibility.

The lower technology solution of purple ink on a finger would be much more accessible and better for both preventing repeat voting and catching anyone who wouldn't have voted.

[Brett Bellmore]

I suppose it could be the usual provisional voting thing: You show up without ID, cast a provisional vote by fingerprint, and then have a limited time to show up with qualifying ID and use the fingerprint to prove that, yes, that was you who cast the provision vote.

At that point it gets used. Otherwise it gets tossed.

[Stephen Lathrop]

One upside, and one downside, are missing.

The downside: Voter ID requirements are popular among Rs because they massively suppress voting by black males who have lived disorderly lives. Sometimes that is because they have been criminals, or owe child support, or have piled up unpaid parking tickets. Sometimes it is through no fault of their own. Black males get adverse police records disproportionately because jurisdictions exist where using arrests to harass black males has been covert police policy since forever.

Thus, no amount of reassurance is likely to convince black males. They will not trust that fingerprinting—a customary ceremony attending a police booking—will not be used to their disadvantage.

Also, many people, not just black males, have good reasons which have nothing to do with voting to want to avoid creating official records in places likely to be closely policed. No personal advantage which outweighs such concerns is likely to result from being able to vote. That alone is likely to frustrate your admirable purpose of fair compromise.

Lately we have learned that we live in a world where everyone can see that private records in public custody will remain at risk to be turned over to almost anyone. It takes no more than the say-so of a president, a governor, or a local government executive to do it. Courts demonstrably lack either the will or the ability to prevent that.

Occasions for conflicts of interest and outright voting corruption remain too easy to imagine. A possibility would exist to create an electronic fiddle to link an electronically created fingerprint to an electronically created ballot. Time stamp both documents and every ballot cast by a fingerprinted person during a slow moment at the polls could be linked reliably to its creator.

Many states choose judges by elections. That has obvious implications which point against reliance on promised legally enforced security to guard election integrity.

Ulitimately, the bar your compromise proposal must get over would not be actual security, but public confidence among people who have the most reason to distrust government. I do not see how your proposal could expect to earn that trust.

The upside you did not mention: A remedy for a likely much-larger voter fraud problem than false identity is possible. That problem is multiple voting by folks who can qualify as residents of multiple jurisdictions. But to achieve that you would need universal electronic fingerprinting, and a database to collate for duplicates. Ds and some others might back doing things that way.

I would agree to it. But I do not think you would get Rs to agree. They would fear losing quite a few votes from residents of addresses in multiple voting jurisdictions. I am confident that voting fraud done that way—and favoring rich people for obvious reasons—is far more common than the apparently spurious unqualified voter problems which no one has ever proved.

[Brett Bellmore]

" Voter ID requirements are popular among Rs because they massively suppress voting by black males who have lived disorderly lives."

Got any evidence that voter ID requirements actually massively suppress voting by black males? Because the actual numbers I've seen indicated that voter ID has a negligible effect on turnout.

"This paper documents whether enacting a strict voter identification law could affect voter turnout and election outcomes. It uses historical data on more than 2,000 races in Florida and Michigan, which both allow and track ballots cast without identification. Results indicate that at most only 0.1% and 0.3% of total votes cast in each state were cast without IDs. Thus, even under the extreme assumption that all voters without IDs were either fraudulent or would be disenfranchised by a strict law, such a law would have only a very small effect on turnout and election outcomes."

Let's take Michigan. 5-6% of the electorate there are black males. Even if every one of the 0.3% of Michigan voters who didn't bother providing optional ID were black males, (Highly unlikely!) and every one of them would have avoided voting if they'd had to provide ID, (Also highly unlikely!) is one in twenty what you mean by "massively suppress"?

And, why exactly would somebody be willing to show up at a voting place and assert their identity, but be reluctant to prove it? Does that actually make any sense? No, it does not.

So drop the fantasy justifications for opposing voter ID, already.

[Michael P]

Wikipedia says Michigan's population is about 14% Black in total. Do Black women's votes not count? (And are there really that many more Black women than Black men in the state?)

[AmosArch]

In boring news Real ICE claims 17 people who freeze to death in New York City because of the long known beforehand and allowed and there for for all intents and purposes intentional actions of the mayor. But who cares? Their lives and the lives of everyone else's are meaningless next to the life of Alex Pretti, who is and continues to be the only man who has died in the history of the universe if you go by MSM coverage.

[bloocow2]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/nyregion/nyc-cold-homeless-deaths.html

[Kazinski]

Wow, when I opposed Mamdani I didn't know he had a plan for starting mass harvesting of the homeless.

How much Soylent can you make with just 17 homeless?

[Frank Drackman]

Not to nit picks but Soylent Green was made from People.

[Sarcastr0]

Amos' frustration and straw-grasping is a good sign.

The media, and the American people aren't quickly forgetting like he wants them to.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Nuke China.

Well, not really, but why do we tolerate their poor sanitation and practice of living with chickens in the homes causing the winter flu, academics that the rest of the world has to deal with?

Can you imagine if the US was doing this?

My sinus feel like they will explode, and I was having nightmares about automated snow plows running amuck in construction zones.

[Commenter_XY]

How many violent Leftists like Colin Demarco are there?

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/02/05/maryland-man-charged-with-attempted-murder-of-trump-omb-russell-vought/

Answer: Quite a few. Political violence has become normalized on the Left.

[Martinned]

Why aren't you fighting for American liberty?

[Frank Drackman]

Why didn't your people fight the Nazis?
I mean besides you were Nazis.

Frank

[Commenter_XY]

Fighting for liberty, coming from you Eurotrash, is hilarious. Look to your own history.

[Martinned]

What about my history? Many of my compatriots fought bravely against the fascists when they tried to take over my country. What are you doing to prevent a fascist takeover of yours?

[Michael P]

Arresting commie scum who want to murder bureaucrats IS fighting for liberty, eurotrash.

[Sarcastr0]

The right's the one that's been killing liberals and using state power to not even investigate.
Just about every MAGA poster here has defended that.

So methinks this crying about political violence on the left is projection, or maybe some other personal issue you have.

Do you still avoid attending events outside your home due to being targeted with anti-Jewish violence, Commenter?

[Martinned]

I look forward to hearing why Trump posting an AI video of Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys isn't proof positive that he is a racist piece of shit who needs to be drummed out of the White House asap.

[Frank Drackman]

Link please.

[hobie]

Yikes!

[Brett Bellmore]

Are you some kind of speciest who thinks being compared to a monkey is pejorative? ????

I'm not a big fan of the whole "You can't insult somebody if they're black, that's racist!" genre. Everybody's fair game. Everybody. And, didn't you get the memo?

Bottom line, I don't think it was racist, it was just insulting. Trump insults a lot of people, he's an equal opportunity insulter.

[Martinned]

O wow. I have to say that I didn't expect to get a "comparing black people to monkeys isn't racist" response from you. Maybe from Michael P or ED, although their responses are usually more incoherent, but not from you.

[hobie]

Looks like Brett is turning. We'll have to start calling him Brett_XY.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bellmore — Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics.

You have an emergency personal need to read that essay.

[Martinned]

One of the weird things that happened in my adult life is that having political views that are pretty similar to people like Michael Oakeshott and Karl Popper has somehow made me a "leftist".

[Sarcastr0]

Blacks=monkeys might be the best known racist trope in the world.

I look forwards to Brett defending Jews as goblins next.

[Commenter_XY]

Currently, the Abraham Lincoln and support ships have formed a vast 'armada' in the Arabian Sea. Today, in just a few short hours, talks between Iran and America will happen in Oman. Presumably, if the talks go badly, some very bad things will happen in Iran.

If POTUS Trump strikes Iran militarily, in an act of war, without provocation, is this an impeachable offense?

Answer: Yes.

What level of provocation from Iran would be needed for POTUS Trump to plausibly claim 'self defense'?

[Martinned]

What level of provocation from Iran would be needed for POTUS Trump to plausibly claim 'self defense'?

A missile launch against US territory.

[Michael P]

The question wasn't for antisemitic dhimmis. It was for serious people.

[LexAquilia]

There are only 3 people in all of Congress who do not have an AIPAC person or team assigned to them.

Those 3 people are not enough to impeach Trump over serving their ZOG master.

[Martinned]

I look forward to hearing why Trump having to be convinced to approve of the UK's solution to its Chagos Islands problem after he already approved of it last year isn't proof that he is too senile to be president.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/05/trump-criticism-chagos-islands-starmer

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/27/donald-trump-suggests-he-will-back-uk-in-chagos-islands-deal

[Michael P]

Your story that appears to be your support for "approved of it last year" (a) is from the Grauniad and (b) at its strongest says "strongly hinted that he will back a deal".

This shows that you're a retard far more than anything about Trump.

[Martinned]

I figured you would prefer a non-paywalled source. If you prefer a different newspaper, be my guest.

[Michael P]

I didn't complain about it being paywalled. I pointed out that it doesn't say that you claimed. It's not my burden to show the truth of what you hallucinated.

[Martinned]

While Trump keeps doing crazy shit, the Regime's efforts to make sure it doesn't lose power in November continue apace. It's all fine...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/fbi-state-election-officials-unusual-briefing-midterms-rcna257721

[Michael P]

What's the basis for claiming this is unusual? The Deep State ran much larger scale briefings trying to debunk news about Hunter Biden's laptop in the run-up to the 2020 general election. It also flooded the zone with a lot of stories about all the attempted hacks of election systems during the same time -- until it became viable important to deny that there were any concerns about how the Cauliflower got elected.

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/22/926825699/ongoing-russian-cyberattacks-are-targeting-u-s-election-systems-feds-say

[LexAquilia]

If you made the exact same comment but about Starmer on X, you'd get arrested.

[Kazinski]

I got stopped at an immigration checkpoint today, the officers were checking papers for everyone who looked foreign or didn't speak the local language fluently.

He looked at my papers smiled back at me and told me to have a good time.

They are doing a local immigration crackdown because there are large Chinese scam mills in the area making calls overseas to bilk unsuspecting marks, mainly in China.

Strangely none of the locals were out with whistles are signs warning about the immigration checkpoint ahead.

Its almost like they didn't care or even supprted the crackdown.

[LexAquilia]

Those illegals weren't democrat voters and they didn't need a smokescreen to provide cover from institutional democrat fraud.

[Martinned]

OK, this is pretty funny:

Keir Starmer’s position has not improved, but it has stabilised a bit because Labour MPs have looked into the abyss, and the abyss has looked back and said “you remember that the HMRC investigation into Angela Rayner is still ongoing, right?” Then they’ve looked at the abyss some more and it has continued: “and you do know that Wes Streeting has a much closer personal and political connection to the disgraced Peter Mandelson than Keir Starmer?”

The abyss, growing quite chatty at this point, has added: “and come on, Shabana Mahmood is not going to win a leadership election. Labour members are not going to pick the border-tightening home secretary, are you nuts?”

But seriously, it is quite telling that Sir Keir Starmer, who (as far as we know) never met Epstein, might lose his job over this scandal, while in the US everyone seems to think it is fine that Epstein's good buddy Trump is president, and nobody else important is losing his job either. The sum total of consequences so far is Larry Summers and Brad Karp having to retire from their plushy jobs, doomed to spend the rest of their days in their Hamptons mansions without even the option of going to the opera at the Kennedy Centre.

[Michael P]

Epstein's good buddy Trump

You are hallucinating again.

opera at the Kennedy Centre

I have been told that only bigots use deadnames.