This is why as much voting in person; on election day; at a polling place; behind a privacy screen; as possible is generally recommended.

Up to and including causing illness and 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.

The wrong government! Voter rolls etc. are state responsibilities, not a federal ones.

And please, don't spend a second entertaining any crocodile-tears and pearl-clutching from Republicans about how "maybe states don't have rights and need consistent standards" all of a sudden. Nobody with any good-intentions for reform would wait until right before a major election to do something crazy that could disenfranchise millions.

Ex: "Stop being so mean to Bob, he just wanted to help out with platform stability when he stole that SSH key to push an un-reviewed hotfix to prod while betting the company stock would crash on a gambling site."

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.

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.

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%

Neither are yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49546137

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.

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."

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".

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.

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…

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Can you point at the well thought out rebuttal that have been victim of flagging?

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.

So every topic regarding current administration is a bad faith argument on the proponent side? Or just this one?

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.

False. Every state in the US has a free voter ID option.

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.

"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?

Nitpick: E.g. Norwegian ID cards can be had by any legal resident. The card will say that you're not a citizen though, so your point about that stands.

Re driving license: Driving license is a valid form of ID for voting here. All eligible people are on the voting rolls automatically (unlike the absurd american system), and the driving license is merely used to prove you are who you say you are.

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.

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.

So you have, in your own post - misinformation, sweeping assertations, and claims unsupported by evidence. Of course this is the contemporary state of political discourse and so I'm not at all implying there's anything particularly egregious about you in particular. This sort of stuff is ubiquitous, and I think echo chambers are a big part of the reason why. Who cares about making viable or relevant comments when it's largely just a mixture of a signaling circle jerk paired alongside bias confirmation.

[1] - https://youtu.be/iGDTiTfovwI?t=136

Well, we agree on that much.

Sorry, but I have to laugh at the idea of an "implicit admission." Also known as "not an admission." I feel like you have a parasocial relationship with the man, and that you are projecting your own emotions on him.

> You haven't given any evidence.

The evidence I've given is the man's own words. But you don't want to believe that, because you're too deep in the cult. You're at a point where no amount of evidence could possibly reach you because your emotional defense systems won't allow you to accept that you've been conned.

> Partisanship just blinds people, and is something that should be avoided like the plague.

Well, we agree on that much.

There are more-or-less two possibilities: either he believes that the election was stolen despite the total absence of evidence to that effect, in which case he is a fool; or he cynically pretends to believe that for the purpose of personal gain, in which case he is a liar and a con-man. Based on what we've all seen of his psychology, though, I think the more likely case is that he's simply unconnected to reality: he's spent his whole life in a billionaire bubble where everyone tells him what he wants to hear, and he's able to to convince himself that he won in 2020 because he wants to believe that.

> because it's the best way to take on yellow journalism.

What part of the reporting the fact that Biden won the 2020 election is "yellow journalism"?

> 'Why aren't you taking these jokes seriously!?' isn't the most compelling call to action.

Except, as I've already pointed out, people have been excusing behavior as a "joke" since 2016, and at every opportunity he proves that it's not a joke. People thought "Mexico will pay for a wall" was a joke; it wasn't, it was just a lie.

> Trump never laid out the idea of running as Vance's VP and forcing him aside.

I never he said he did. I did say that he said that he's "looking into ways that he can run," an idea supported by other people in Trump's orbit, such as Steven Bannon. It's not misinformation to say that Trump is considering running again, it's plainly stated in the record.

So your position is that: Trump said he's looking into running (but it's a joke), he's selling 2028 hats (but he's trolling), close advisers say he's running again (but that doesn't count). Do you understand why people think MAGA denies reality? Is there any possible evidence that would make you think he's thinking of running again? (For the record, I don't think he'll run again, because I think he will die or become gravely ill: were it not for that, he definitely would try.)

> That's accurate, but the implication to somebody who only relies on the media, instead of first party sources,

Oh, you have first party sources? Great, please tell me what Donald Trump has personally told you, that has not been publicly revealed.

> In any case, none of this would be news to you if you posted this in a place with more open discussion.

Nothing you've told me is new. I've heard all this before. The entire country has spent a decade hearing people like spout nonsense like "Trump isn't a politiician, he tells it like it is" and "Trump is already rich so he has no need to make money from the presidency" and "Trump may lack expertise, but he'll hire great advisers" and other provably incorrect statements. You mistakenly believe that we disagree because we haven't heard your side. The truth is that we've all heard your side incessantly and we just think you are dumb and/or crazy.