Brennan Center for Justice Report: The Campaign to Undermine the Next Election
65 comments
·August 6, 2025docdeek
buerkle
Showing ID to vote wouldn't be controversial in the US if states made it easy to obtain a valid ID for the purpose. But states routinely use it as a backdoor mechanism to prevent people from voting.
antonymoose
In my state I bring two forms of ID and a couple of bills to the DMV and I’m issued a same-day license?
How does that compare to a notoriously unfriendly nation like Germany?
In any case, my understanding is virtually any nation in Central and South America requires identification to vote. If the third-world poverty stricken nations make it work there is no reason the rich United States cannot.
crooked-v
"Same-day" doesn't work if you live somewhere that the DMV is only open during work hours, has lines longer than 8 hours (https://dmvwaittimes.org/north-carolina), or is literally only open four days a year (https://trust.dot.state.wi.us/cscfinder/cityCountySearch.do?...).
arp242
You can't use your driving license under the proposed SAVE act, as it's not proof of citizenship. Only a few states offer "extended" driving licenses, which do, but also need to be requested separately in most (or all?) states that offer them IIRC. For every other state: you will have to use a passport, birth certificate, or a separate state ID card.
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woodrowbarlow
another angle is: if the ID costs money, no matter how trivial the amount, then it is effectively a ballot fee.
erghjunk
assuming that you're talking about a driver's license, you're leaving out the important steps of passing driving tests and, more importantly, having a car.
frakt0x90
There's an excellent documentary by Channel 5 (formerly All Gas No Brakes) where he tries to work with a group of homeless people in Las Vegas to get them papers and the process is extremely difficult. Like bordering on impossible.
gruez
>where he tries to work with a group of homeless people in Las Vegas to get them papers and the process is extremely difficult. Like bordering on impossible.
That seems like the worst case scenario though? I don't think homeless people should be disenfranchised, but at the same time it's unfair to pretend the typical experience of getting a voter id resembles whatever the TV show is depicting either.
cosmic_cheese
To add to this, there’s friction from the citizen side of things with a relatively high level of distrust in government that’s been present for decades. If you go out deep enough into the boonies for instance you can probably find people who still don’t have government ID of any type despite being native born and prefer to keep it that way.
crooked-v
Also see the Amish, who explicitly avoid photo IDs for religious reasons, generally substituting notarized statements for them for business purposes.
blindriver
[flagged]
hypeatei
> It’s basically frictionless.
You're assuming the theoretical US system would be the same and not be made arbitrarily complex by Republicans.
ncr100
Which, to reinforce the point, is the actual situation here in America.
All the support systems that help ID cards be fairly distributed to citizens are under-documented for the populace and under-supported by the administration.
It's ripe for the authoritarian takeover that is currently underway here.
Sniffnoy
> It is strange that showing ID to vote is controversial in the US and that providing basic ID to citizens for free to allow them to vote is a problem that seems difficult to solve (or want to solve).
One of the blockers to a national ID system in the US, that would result in voter ID no longer posing any substantive obstacle to voting, has been anti-government paranoia; but another, if you're not aware, has been fundamentalist Christianity and its eschatology -- fundamentalist Christians may associate the idea of a national ID with the "mark of the beast".
The amusing thing here of course is that while Trump's attempt to unilaterally impose ID rules is illegal, if it were successful, it would likely be an own goal. Formerly, the sort of person who is likely to not have any sort of ID -- someone disconnected from any systems that would require it -- was more likely to vote Democratic than Republican, but in recent years, this has reversed. While I can't cheer for breaking election laws (or for a court ruling that this is in fact legal, because it shouldn't be considered so), it would at least be amusing if this backfired.
specialist
> associate the idea of a national ID with the "mark of the beast"
This was absolutely true during the 2000s.
The huge irony is that having a national ID (central authenticator issuing globally unique identifiers) is the only way to protect PII, at the field level, at rest.
Per the Translucent Database strategy. Which I won't repeat here. Unless the peanut gallery develops a genuine interest.
In other words, not having Real ID (or equiv) enables our panoptic surveillance capitalistic dystopia.
nerdponx
The kind of actual voter fraud that ID requirements would prevent is extremely rare. There are better ways to rig elections than hiring thousands of people to physically show up at different polling centers and vote several times under different names. Even disregarding the fact that voter ID laws are (and historically have been) widely abused to disenfranchise specific groups in the USA, what do you actually gain by requiring ID?
celeritascelery
> what do you actually gain by requiring ID?
Preventing non-citizens from voting. Some counties in the US have almost half of the population who are non-citizens. It's great that we have so many people wanting to come to the states, but they can't vote until they become citizens. This is not a controversial issue anywhere except in the US.
xnx
And this article is just covering efforts to undermine the election from inside the US.
There's also the rest of the world: "China Turns to A.I. in Information Warfare" https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/us/politics/china-artific...
exceptione
I don't want to depress people, but try to zoom out a bit.
1. This is just one part of the slope from which the republic has been sliding down from anocracy towards autocracy.
2. You, reading and trying to process this, are an exception. Now imagine that the vast majority of the public does not have any overview and is not aware, being smothered in us-vs-them vibes.
3. You, being a normal human being, trying to make sense of it, trying to see if you can interpret this as normal. When we see something alarming but don't get an `ACK` from our social system, we shut off the internal alarm. This is the original sin of the media rooms, as their role in democracy is to see the big picture; they should ACK, they should sound the alarm loud and clear.softwaredoug
One misread of the situation by the GOP: now their own voters would be just as negatively impacted by the sorts of changes they want to make. They have as many rural voters that rarely vote, may not have ID, may not be able to navigate election bureaucracy, etc as the Dems.
Like I bet the electoral make-up of "people with passports" skews rather left
bjourne
Honestly, what of it is left to undermine? It's billionaires, Israel, oil, and gun lobbies running the show.
samdoesnothing
Republicans want to mandate voter ID so less poor people are able to vote democrat, and democrats don't want voter ID so more non-citizens can vote democrat. What a funny country.
gruez
That's actually no longer true, due to changes in voting demographics for both parties:
>The best evidence seems to be that the impact of restrictive laws is minimal. An analysis published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics of 1.6bn voting records from every state in America found that strict voter ID rules, on average, neither significantly suppressed votes nor prevented fraud. Nor do ID laws hurt Democrats any longer, according to research by Jeffrey Harden and Alejandra Campos. Whereas in 2010 voter ID laws reduced Democratic vote share by 3%, by 2020 they increased it slightly. Because of the changes in party voting coalitions, the overall effect of the next phase of even tighter voting rules could now “easily be a wash” when it comes to benefiting one party or the other, says Nicholas Stephanopoulos, who studies elections at Harvard University.
hypeatei
How did MAGA win in 2024 if Dems had illegals voting for them? I see right wingers regularly push the narrative that they're the underdog fighting against people rigging the election and that evil Dems are stealing it from them... yet they still go out and vote?
Please enlighten us with elections where illegals voted and changed the outcome.
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tastyface
Bullshit. If there are *any* mainstream democrats who are pushing non-citizens to illegally vote, they are a rounding error. This is just some stale Fox News propaganda.
The main reason democrats push back against voter ID is so that republicans can't disenfranchise them even further.
jimbo808
If you can't even prove you're an American by providing basic identification, you shouldn't be allowed vote. Democracy requires a system of voting that is trustworthy. Allowing people to vote based on who they say they are is not conducive to a trustworthy election.
neaden
But it works fine. There have been extensive efforts to find people voting illegally and it turns up a small handful across the entire country, and many of those are things like returning a recently dead persons mail in ballot that voter ID wouldn't even help with. The fact is that all the evidence says an incredibly small number of people vote who are not legally eligible to do so, and only a small proportion of those are non-citizen immigrants.
fzeroracer
The thing is, if you think about this for even two seconds you realize how hard it is to actually commit voting fraud. That's why most of the known fraud occurs not by individuals but by intermediaries 'losing' votes.
If I say I'm John Doe at James Lane then you can trivially verify this in multiple ways. You can check the prior voting records, you can check the death records, you can check property information. If another person comes by and says they're John Doe at James Lane then you can send mail to said address asking them to verify their identity / vote.
tastyface
Fine. First hand out IDs to every single person, for free and without forcing them to spend hours on obscure bureaucratic processes, then mandate voter ID when there's close to 100% coverage. It's the only way to be fair. Otherwise, the only thing you're doing is disenfranchising the most vulnerable while changing almost nothing about election security in practice. (Studies have repeatedly found that voter fraud is practically nonexistent.)
samdoesnothing
Not saying they're pushing non-citizens to illegally vote, but it's pretty obvious that without any need to prove who you are there is going to be plenty of voter fraud. Politicians aren't that stupid, they won't say it out loud but they're thinking it.
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tastyface
Except studies have repeatedly shown that there is practically no voter fraud, because it's pretty easy to detect and people generally don't want to commit felonies for zero personal gain. *You* show me the proof of widespread voter fraud.
fourseventy
[flagged]
treetalker
Article's actual title: "The Trump Administration’s Campaign to Undermine the Next Election"
tastyface
Using the actual title will immediately get it flagged/killed. Which is a shame because the article is far from clickbait.
treetalker
Meanwhile look what's happening in Texas: another gerrymander attempt, since even some Republicans are sick of Trump's authoritarian dumpster fires and the kowtowing Republicans in Congress. And, sensing the impending Midterms bloodbath, the GOP is picking its voters instead of letting the voters pick their representatives.
True, Democrats and others have gerrymandered too. But I sense that most people don't want the gerrymander to be possible. Yet we can't get it changed because we're beholden to some dead guys who laid down rules hundreds of years ago, which none of us agreed to or had any input on; and we don't really have representatives in Congress to change things according to law the way we want them to, because they self-deal (looking at you, Rick Scott) and because Citizens United cemented the power of those who really get representation —those with money, and corporations. The People will revolt if things don't change fast.
hypeatei
I'm really not sure how we've normalized corrupt behavior at the highest levels of government. Penalizing law firms for supporting things that Trump doesn't like is insane. Doubly so when they enter agreements to provide free legal services for things he does approve of so that they can "get the monkey off their back" so to speak.
All I can hope for is that we punish this behavior in the future when grifting and violating civil rights isn't the normal thing to do.
lesuorac
Honestly, kinda hope they did require a passport to vote.
It'll be great to see what a shitshow it is when 70% of people in Arkansas [1] can't vote. It seems to be pretty evenly split amongst being the administration and their primary opposition although I guess devil might be in the details [2].
[1]: https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/...
[2]: https://today.yougov.com/travel/articles/35414-only-one-thir...
1659447091
The PDF in [1] has an interesting stat. (from the Notes section)
>> Note: According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 79% of women in opposite-sex marriages have changed their surname to their spouse’s while 5% hyphenated their surname, meaning that 84% of women who are currently or have been in opposite-sex marriages have changed their legal name and therefore do not posess a birth certificate that could prove their identity and by extension citizenship status under the SAVE Act.
Am I reading correct that this would disqualify them from voting?
65 million "Estimated number of female citizens whose names do not match their birth certificate (last name change only)"
69 million "Estimated number of female citizens (15 years and older) whose names do not match their birth certificate (last name change or hyphenation)"
Guess they are working on the undermining females part of project 1525 now
For completeness:
>> Additionally, Pew reported that approximately 5% of men who marry also change their surname - nationwide this would account for approximately 4 million men.
Jtsummers
It wouldn't disqualify them outright, but they have to bring more documentation to prove their identity. This is one reason my wife didn't change her name when we got married.
favorited
That's a great way to ensure that only folks who have had the means to travel internationally in the last 10 years are allowed to vote.
jimbo808
> A recent Economist/YouGov poll doesn’t show any party gap on this question, as Democrats (41%) and Republicans (38%) are equally likely to hold and not hold valid passports
xracy
Sorry, how is a 3% difference "no gap"? Am I misunderstanding those metrics? If a Democrat is 3% more likely to hold a passport, that seems like a potentially huge impact to elections.
tromp
41/38 ~ 1.08, so it's 8% more likely rather than 3%.
TimorousBestie
Nationwide averages are irrelevant to presidential elections.
BrandonM
It would be worse than the nationwide average. Battleground swing states would swing way right. The Republican voters in the suburbs have passports at a much higher rate than the Democrat voters in the poor neighborhoods.
lesuorac
Dunno why you're being downvoted.
Devil in the details is literally how you gerrymander. If there are say overwhelming democrat passport holders in say NY then you just lose that one state and win the rest.
That said, I'm just more interested in seeing the sheer number of people being told their voter registration is invalid and if that would backfire as individuals who supporter the administration are kinda overwhelmingly targeted (top of that passport list isn't the south).
mythrwy
I'm very surprised to learn 1/3 of Americans have a passport. I would have guessed much lower.
1659447091
It use to be, but sometime in the early 2000's land/sea crossings to Canada and Mexico required a passport for re-entry. I remember reading most Americans that travel outside the US go to Mexico or Canada; changing to require a passport caused a large jump in applications
Modified3019
We used to be able to afford traveling.
Hikikomori
Project 2025 phase 1 is progressing quickly. How long until we se military arresting democrats?
tastyface
Trump is already making noises in the direction of arresting Obama for... election interference, or something.
galleywest200
Good thing John Roberts gave presidents complete immunity for official acts then. Wonder how that will shake out.
EverydayBalloon
[dead]
It is strange that showing ID to vote is controversial in the US and that providing basic ID to citizens for free to allow them to vote is a problem that seems difficult to solve (or want to solve).
My anecdote: I am an EU citizen living in another EU country. As such, I am permitted to vote in local and European elections. When I moved to my current village I registered with the local town hall online. I sent a scan of my national ID card (for my home country) and they registered me to vote for the elections I’m eligible to vote for. Ahead of the elections, they post me a physical election card telling me where to vote (always the same place in the village), and on the day I take my card and ID and vote.
It’s basically frictionless. It’s no problem to register online with a foreign ID document, and it’s no problem to present a foreign ID card alongside my election card on the day when I vote.
If I turned up to vote without my election card or my ID, I would be refused the chance to vote. That makes sense to me and showing ID to vote is not questioned by anyone.