Voter ID cards
I think photo IDs are interesting, in that they themselves aren't a complete verification of someone's identity, much like a copy of a birth certificate likewise is a guarantee that someone was born in the country. It is a document that indicates a government organization has processed your application for a photo ID and was sufficiently convinced at some point in the past that your saying who you are is the truth, and issued you a card.
But the card is not of itself something you can trust 100% of the time to guarantee identity, because they can be easily forged. In order to verify that the wielder of the card is in fact who they say they are, the organization who issued the card needs to verify the identity of the wielder. In most cases, it isn't necessary for the organization to do this immediately; any transaction based on using the card can be performed, and the agency backing the card can at its convenience step in and verify that the card was legit and the user who they said they are. They never seem to be set up to properly perform this step. You never see video cameras, fingerprinting and photographic equipment at voting sites. So I have to wonder how do these voter ID cards actually work, if the way they're being used doesn't guarantee identity either on voting day or afterward? How do they prevent the specific voter fraud of one person voting as another? What problem does such a card actually solve in a timely fashion?
Individual vote fraud, even on what might be a colossal scale, doesn't seem likely to affect a modern election, so I wonder how bad a problem it is, even in Chicago, and how big of a problem it has to be in order to affect an election at any level?
On the other hand, I believe there is the strong possibility that the use of not-very-well designed computer-based voting systems permitted wholesale (in the 10s and 100s of thousands) vote fraud in the 2000 and 2004 elections did affect election results. Someone could easily have added/changed a significant number of votes without showing anyone a voter ID card.
But the card is not of itself something you can trust 100% of the time to guarantee identity, because they can be easily forged. In order to verify that the wielder of the card is in fact who they say they are, the organization who issued the card needs to verify the identity of the wielder. In most cases, it isn't necessary for the organization to do this immediately; any transaction based on using the card can be performed, and the agency backing the card can at its convenience step in and verify that the card was legit and the user who they said they are. They never seem to be set up to properly perform this step. You never see video cameras, fingerprinting and photographic equipment at voting sites. So I have to wonder how do these voter ID cards actually work, if the way they're being used doesn't guarantee identity either on voting day or afterward? How do they prevent the specific voter fraud of one person voting as another? What problem does such a card actually solve in a timely fashion?
Individual vote fraud, even on what might be a colossal scale, doesn't seem likely to affect a modern election, so I wonder how bad a problem it is, even in Chicago, and how big of a problem it has to be in order to affect an election at any level?
On the other hand, I believe there is the strong possibility that the use of not-very-well designed computer-based voting systems permitted wholesale (in the 10s and 100s of thousands) vote fraud in the 2000 and 2004 elections did affect election results. Someone could easily have added/changed a significant number of votes without showing anyone a voter ID card.