States already provide some sort of ID for the people who don’t/can’t drive. If there’s a requirement to bring a photo ID in order to establish identity and be able to vote state should provide these IDs FREE OF CHARGE to anyone who comes and says that he/she needs it FOR THE PURPOSE OF VOTING. It’s the only fair solution – none of that proof of financial hardship, or other big government bureaucratic BS that is going to cost more than just providing free voter IDs.

fear of polling obstacles, given the long history we have in this country of politicians using things like ID as a means of discouraging voter participation.

Personally, I'd revamp how the elections are done entirely.  ID is great by me so long as we can keep it from being cost prohibative.  I'd also make election day a federal holiday - some people just do not have time to vote, and it can be a real pain finding time to get to a precinct.  Some countries already do that - some even penalize people for not voting, although I wouldn't want to go that far.  If people want to stay home, then their apathy is their own fault.

My Election Reform plan - better than anything the dems have proposed :)

We get the standard bs about "there has not been much fraud proven to make a difference" or that it is such a minor problem compared to all the other electoral problems. Well how the hell can you even find out if fraud is going on when you can't check who the hell is voting and it's such a ridiculous free for all.

I have no idea how much fraud is actually taking place.

However, I absolutely guarantee you that if I had wanted to vote twice during that period where I had an extra voter registered at my address, I could have.  There was no credible deterrent -- there was no way I could have been caught.

One simple reform would be: if someone doesn't vote in any election (regular or primary) in a 2-year period, their name should automatically be removed from the books and they should have to re-register.

For CA, here's an interesting tidbit: (http://www.ss.ca.gov... )

California Elections Code Section 2111 states, "A person may prove he or she is a citizen by his or her certification under penalty of perjury on the affidavit of registration (for voter registration purposes only)."

In other words, they don't actually check that you are a citizen -- they simply trust you?  It's not clear what prevents a non-citizen from simply sending in a registration form by mail.  Yes, if you get caught, you are in big trouble, but will you actually get caught?

There have been a myriad of cases where people trying to get IDs have horrible problems because they are elderly and weren't born in a hospital and don't have a birth certificate.

You need a process that allows individuals to GET their ID in the first place, which is a lot harder than it sounds.

So you suddenly support filibusters if it involves mandatory paper ballots and auditing if it doesn't also require voter ID. You don't want things to get better unless it gets done your way first.

Wouldn’t it be more efficient to GPS chip everyone? I mean, if you’re an honest person – what do you have to fear from the government? Next thing I know someone will tell me I need to register my guns.

to give those elderly a blank check if we don't know who the hell they are. Everyone should be able to prove their identity in order to get free crap from the government. If they can prove their identity for SS or welfare or whatever, they should be able to prove their identity for a free ID card. If they can't then who the hell are they?

The point is they could bring other proof, like SS card, bills, etc to get those IDs. Make it easier to prove identity for those who don't have a birth certificate - because you know that they've proven it by other means before.

Make the process helpful.

...how do we make sure they don't register twice under different names/addresses and vote twice?

...how do we make sure they're a citizen and therefore have the legal right to vote in the first place?

...how do we make sure they are a resident of the county/state where they are trying to register and therefore have the legal right to vote in that particular county/state?

What is *supposed* to happen if I show up asking to register to vote under a fictitious name and claim to have no driver's license, no passport, no Social Security card or number, no birth certificate, no green card, no nothing?  How can you allow a person with *none* of these things to register to vote without making a complete mockery of the law and opening up the floodgates to those who would abuse the system?

Requiring a utility bill (or similar) is a very small step in the right direction, but is also completely insecure and can be forged by even the most novice fraudster.

the voting machines. Diebold system is hardly failsafe.

And of course the wording on  ballot initiatives themselves, which often misleading favoring one view or another.

And Choice Point "computer glitches" that list normal people as felons.

Oh and what if you move?

There a a thousand ways to disenfranchise voters, and a thousand ways to cheat, especially if you are the Attorney General (see Kenneth Blackwell).

And then there are issues of fire and natural disasters that destroy all personal records..... so that you might not be a legal citizen even though your were born and raised in New Orleans.

I can't imagine why it would be that difficult to use your social security # (the new one with a photo) as your voter ID. It is the one # they use for everything. Medical records, credit cards, drivers liscenses. It would be the simpliest way to identify people...... it seems to me. All you have to do is add a picture or a finger print.

Sounds like you have minimal confidence in the voter system.

Why can't we do it like they did it in iraq. Everyone dip their fingers in indilible purple ink, after they have voted? They closed the city, had armed guards for insurance. If it is so important why not make election day a federally mandated day off.

Fingerprint readers are a simple thing, you hit your fingerprint and sign your name (which is the real voter ID that they have used for years!)

That of course is not the point. The point is voter suppression and only hassling people who have trouble with bureaucracy will accomplish that. That and hacked voting machines will keep criminals in power when gagging and disgust at their ways would overthrow them.

Of course with the real theft underway they need a fake problem to try and deflect folk from seeing what is actually happening.

(ps see my new diary entry that is what everything is really about)

But legal citizens have an absolute right to vote and until you can solve the 'getting ID' problem

You simply can't put the requirement on people.

Example from the linked article. Solve this, then we'll talk.

Kent has been trying to secure those documents for two months now.

After getting a ride to an office building in Grand Center to get an I.D. at a vital statistics location, she was informed that she would have to go downtown to City Hall for her birth certificate.

Moving around isn’t easy for Kent, and her once-a-month Social Security check doesn’t afford for unforeseen expenses. But Kent - eager for an I.D. so she can vote this November - made her way to City Hall.

There, she was told she would have to write a letter to the Illinois Department of Public Health in Springfield for her vital records.

She only has an eighth-grade education, but could get help with writing the letter. However, a photocopied I.D. must also be sent to obtain her records. She has no I.D. - which is why she’s trying to get the birth certificate.

...

To order online, a person must pay by credit card - Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover - none of which Kent possesses.

There’s a printable application online that can be mailed. It takes an average of three to four weeks and that doesn’t include mail delivery time. Her documents might make it to Kent before the polls close on November 7 - but there’s yet another hindrance written near the top of the application: Submit a copy of your current photo I.D.

Unfortunately, there has been so much history of denying certain people their right to vote that you need to overcome a major obstacle before people are going to believe that you aren't trying to do the same thing again. The fact that you are focusing on the voter issues that cause less fraud and is harder to solve rather than the efforts to keep legal voters from voting, which is more serious and is easier to solve simply adds to the suspicion.

it's not the point because you say it is not the point. Of course there is no fraud but only voter suppression because those are the dem talking points and nothing else matters.

oppose Voter ID requirements?

In Alabama, ID is required to vote -- although there about a zillion other identity documents that you can use if you don't have a driver's license, including your electric bill or a fishing license.

And we don't use Diebold.

In all the discussions I have seen here, I don't remember liberals being opposed to voter ID. As far as I no, voter fraud has not been shown to be a huge problem though, so most liberals would rather worry about electronic voting that is a problem instead of voter fraud that doesn't seem to be. If you  can give everyone an ID, I am all for it. I don't know about California, but I know they always ask for some ID when I vote.

That said, polling taxes have been a real problem in the not so distant past, so people are smart to worry about the possibility.

As far as I no, voter fraud has not been shown to be a huge problem though, so most liberals would rather worry about electronic voting that is a problem instead of voter fraud that doesn't seem to be.

Again, I think the problem is that it is difficult to show voter fraud to be a huge problem when you are not even checking the identity of people voting. And there is no incentive to go back and verify after the fact.

I am glad that you'd support it if we could give everyone an ID.

You do have to provide proof, your signature. If you sign someone else's name you have committed fraud and are subject to legal action.

When you go to an ATM machine all you need is the card and the PIN, a pretty weak form of verification, especially when money is involved. It seems, however, that the amount of fraud with ATM's is sufficiently low that there are no strong attempts to change things.

The premise of this diary is consistent with the RWA personality type (sorry to harp on this again, but it is relevant). In this case it shows the inherent belief of this type of person that ordinary people can't be trusted to be honest and do the right thing and need to be monitored and controlled by an external authority.

Most people, for most of our history, have assumed the opposite. Those showing up to vote and signing in are honorable people and simple steps are all that are required to prevent fraud.

It is worth noting that in those periods of our history where fraud was most rampant (NYC during the late 19th and 20th Centuries, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc.) the fraud was carried out by the party in power, not individuals. Dead voters on the roles, trucking people from one polling place to another, and paying people to vote were all common. These techniques wouldn't have worked if the poll workers hadn't been in on the scam.

Just recently in the contested elections in Florida and Ohio, it was the actions of voting officials which were questioned, not individuals. The same is true of the current debates of the security of electronic voting machines. Tampering is not something to be done by voters, but by election officials.

So those wanting to tighten up requirements on individuals are either ignorant of the real problems, or are trying to suppress the vote and lying about their motivations.

I'll take door number 2. 

History has shown that business without adequate control gets too big, too powerful, dishonest and inefficient. In addition there is no operational mechanism for altering behavior other than government. Show me the last time the "stockholders" altered the practices of a large firm.

If a voter misbehaves on an individual basis the effect on society is essentially zero. If Enron misbehaves the result costs billions.

See, living in your fantasy world, you can't understand that we have plenty of data on what works and what doesn't. You could make an argument that unconstrained government can be just as bad as corporations and point to history.

However, the degree of abuse is directly related to the participation of the people, in other words a functioning democracy. A fake democracy yields Zimbabwe. A struggling democracy yields the current situation in the US. With 90+% of incumbents getting re-elected we barely have a functioning democracy. That's why we have seen the rise of a plutocracy, war without popular consent, and the weakening of the working class.

Could firms be kept in check by their stockholders? Not anymore. Business is too complicated, financial structures are impossible to understand, even for specialists, and most information is kept private. Only the government has the ability to look at the books and to force testimony from people. That's why regulation falls to the government.

As I've said before, we live in a society of large institutions. Get used to it. Now figure out how to regulate them.

Let's see...

- Banks generally have low limits on how much cash you can get from an ATM in one day.

- There *is* a PIN (just finding a lost card alone is not enough to get money).

- If you lose a card you can have them deactivate it and get a new one.

- For credit cards, if someone makes an unauthorized charge, you can challenge it after the fact and are not liable for the fraud.

- In general, banks don't do transactions immediately (you have time to catch mistakes), and have systems in place that allow erroneous or fraudulent transactions to be prevented or reversed.  Checks can be cancelled, holds can be put on accounts, unauthorized transfers can be reversed, etc.

For an election, if fraud happens, even if we discover it and prove that it happened after the fact, we have no way to "reverse" it.  No one can go back and remove the votes cast by those dead people in Baltimore.  (After all, we wouldn't know which candidate to subtract the fraudulent votes from, because we [for good reason] have no record of which person voted for which candidate.)

It seems, however, that the amount of fraud with ATM's is sufficiently low that there are no strong attempts to change things.

Identity theft is now a huge problem.  Its rise *has* caused people to change how they do things.  For example, it is now very important to check your credit reports annually online (free at www.annualcreditreport.com ), to shred paper garbage containing confidential information, and to make sure that your mail isn't stolen (check your mail every day, drop off outgoing mail in a secure location, and stop delivery or have a neighbor get it if you're out of town).

The premise of this diary is consistent with the RWA personality type (sorry to harp on this again, but it is relevant). In this case it shows the inherent belief of this type of person that ordinary people can't be trusted to be honest and do the right thing and need to be monitored and controlled by an external authority.

Do you lock your doors at night or when you're not around?

It is a fact, not an opinion, that people can't be trusted to be honest and do the right thing all the time.  (Exhibit A: crime statistics.)

To say that asking for a photo ID constitutes "monitoring and controlling" people is paranoid.  It is simply a way to make cheating harder while imposing a negligible burden on the rest of us.

There are other areas where I think we need to *eliminate* stupid security regulations -- airline security would be the obvious one.  I fail to see how confiscating nail clippers, water bottles, and cream-filled pastries makes anyone safer, and it definitely imposes a non-negligible burden on the rest of us.

Those showing up to vote and signing in are honorable people and simple steps are all that are required to prevent fraud.

*All* of them are honorable people?  Every single last one?  I doubt it.

As far as I can tell, in California, we are not even taking *simple* steps.  We are not taking *any* steps.  No one checks those signatures, and even if we did, a signature of "X" is considered valid.

Further, presenting ID seems to me to *be* a "simple step."  I mean, photo ID can also be faked -- I'm not saying we need to hire a bunch of bouncers from bars who know what to look for in a fake driver's license.

If we use the "locking your doors" analogy, right now we leave the "door" to election fraud not just unlocked, but *open*.  I'm merely proposing that we close the door.  Maybe we can think about locking it later after we're done closing it.  (Locking it might mean that you have to present a form of ID like a passport that proves citizenship as well as identity.)

It's true that shareholder activism generally fails.  Although, there's no reason why it necessarily *must* fail.  It only fails because most people just vote "yes" by default.  I highly encourage people to buy funds from fund companies that have good policies on corporate governance.  Vanguard is a great example -- Vanguard actually goes and evaluates each proposal and director on their merits and frequently votes "No."  (Vanguard is also great in a lot of other ways.  I'm a big fan.)

But let's even suppose that shareholder activism is truly hopeless and always destined to fail.  So what?

If you don't trust a company's management and board of directors, you have a simple recourse: "Sell."  You are not forced to hold a company's stock against your will -- you hold it by choice.

If everyone concludes the same thing as you, i.e., that the management/board is untrustworthy, and they all sell, the stock will tank, and the company will find that raising capital is now a lot more expensive.  In other words: it is a self-correcting system.

If Enron misbehaves the result costs billions.

And when the government overreacts and passes Sarbanes-Oxley in response, it costs trillions.

Real corporate reform starts with abolishing the double taxation of dividends.  Corporations can cheat on earnings, but they cannot cheat on dividends.  Steady payment of dividends is tangible proof of earnings and cash flow.  Dividends keep management focused on maximizing not just earnings growth but also on cash flow, and force management to weigh the costs as well as the benefits of holding on to cash.  Also, paying out dividends rather than reinvesting earnings *prevents* companies from growing suboptimally large.  In summary, dividends are a great counter to the agency problems faced by corporate shareholders.

The reduction of the dividend tax to 15% was a decent start.  Now let's get it to zero (or make them deductible from corporate income taxes).  Dividends have already been taxed once as corporate income; they don't need to be taxed again at the individual level.

As long as dividends are double taxed, corporations have a harmful incentive to reinvest earnings rather than paying them out to their shareholders, and shareholders have a harmful incentive to encourage corporations to behave this way.

Dividend tax repeal can easily be made revenue-neutral by changing other aspects of the corporate tax code to make up for it.

If someone has the legal right to vote, we ought to make it easy for them to do so.

Unfortunately, some of the same reforms that have made it easier to vote are the same ones that have opened up new avenues for fraud.

The most obvious one would be the big push for vote-by-mail.  It used to be that absentee ballots were only used in cases where people were actually out of town or had some other specific excuse.  Now you don't need an excuse -- you can vote by mail in every single election.  (Vote by Internet has many of the same dangers and is also no panacea)

Perhaps a better alternative would be to allow more early voting, or to have a more interoperable voting system where anyone can vote from any precinct in (their county, their state, the country, the country plus overseas military bases and embassies?), rather than having to go to a specific polling location.

Now, they can certainly try to pull off their fraud by bribing voters to vote a certain way, or vote twice, or whatever, and historically that has happened, but it's really ineffecient and really likely to be discovered by someone talking.

...and there's usually no way to enforce the bribe.  ("Sure, I'll take your money... but I'll still vote the same way")

Which is why paper receipts for electronic voting are bad, in theory, since they could serve as a way for the buyer to verify the vote. Given the uncertainties with the currect machines, we have to compromise security somewhere, and I tend to think that printing an anonymous record of each vote for the poll workers to keep in case of a recount and giving the voter a paper receipt is the best of a bad situation. The whole thing is a mess, though, and there's really no way to make it ideal before these elections. 

There are various schemes for (mostly) secure anonymous internet voting that would allow each voter to verify their own ballot and anyone to verify the overall count -- I can't say I follow all the technical details but I imagine that's the direction we'll go in eventually. That sort of system would work well with national ID cards constructed with a little memory. 

It's true that shareholder activism generally fails.  Although, there's no reason why it necessarily *must* fail.  It only fails because most people just vote "yes" by default.

See, this is where the Libertarian disconnect between how things should and how they do work shows up. Just recently there were two high profile governance cases, one involving HP and another with GM.

In the first case Walter Hewlett fought the merger with Compaq. Even though he had a substantial number of shares, spent millions on the proxy fight and gathered support from many stockholders he lost.

Kirk Kerkorian bought almost %10 of GM for over a billion dollars and managed to get his man on the board. He was still unable to get GM to change policies.

You could say this is democracy in action, but you can't point to an example where management has lost. In a recent case where a majority of the stockholders voted for a change in the rules concerning the election of board members the company declined to follow the decision, claiming it was "advisory".

An investor can't just move to another firm which has better governance. There aren't any. Vanguard and a few other mutual funds have had some very modest success in getting the most outrageous governance issues changed, but that is not their proper role - it's governments.

Wake up and smell the bacon. Money and power set the rules, so if you want a level playing field you need equal power on the other side. Good intentions count for nothing in the real world.

If I go and start a business and take out a loan from you, my business needs to pay taxes on its income and you need to pay a tax on the profit you make as I pay off the loan, even if it is an interest only payment (i.e. pure dividend)

Nope -- the business can deduct that interest from its income.  That interest is not considered part of the "profit" of the corporation.

Investors have to pay taxes on interest from corporate debt, but corporations are allowed to deduct that interest from their income.  Single taxation.

Employees have to pay taxes on their salaries and wages, but corporations are allowed to deduct salaries and wages from their income.  Single taxation.

Investors have to pay taxes on dividends, but corporations are *not* allowed to deduct dividends from their income.  Double taxation.

Dividends are the exception.  Getting rid of double taxation of dividends means taxing that income only at one level (either at the corporate level, or at the individual level, but not both), putting their treatment at parity with interest on debt.

Another way to think about double taxation is to ask: if I run a business as a sole proprietorship or partnership, and then I incorporate, do my taxes go up, down, or stay the same?

Those investors are getting paid for their investment. Why should they escape taxes on that payment while the employees who are getting paid for their labor are not?

Investors are *not* escaping taxes.  The taxes are simply paid at the corporate level rather than at the individual level.  If all corporate income were paid out as dividends, it would make no difference whether we had (A) a corporate income tax of 35% and no individual dividend tax or (B) no corporate income tax but an individual dividend tax of 35%.

What we had in 2000 was a corporate income tax of 35% *and* a dividend tax of up to 39.6%.  The overall top marginal tax rate on dividends was 1-(1-0.35)*(1-0.396) = 60.74%.  The top marginal tax rate on capital gains was 1-(1-0.35)*(1-0.2) = 48%.

What we now have in 2006 is a corporate income tax of 35% and a dividend tax that is usually 15%.  The overall marginal tax rate on dividends is now 1-(1-0.35)*(1-0.15) = 44.75%.  The capital gains tax rate is also 44.75%.

Investors used to get 40 cents out of every dollar of corporate profits when it was paid out as dividends, whereas they got 52 cents when it was reinvested as capital gains, and 60 cents when it was paid out as interest on debt.

Now investors get 55 cents out of every dollar for dividends or capital gains, and 65 cents when it is paid out as interest on debt.  Capital gains are still slightly favored over dividends because you only have to pay them when you sell, rather than every year.  This is not a big deal if you hold a stock for 5 years, but it matters a lot if you hold it for 30 years.

So there is still an incentive for corporations to reinvest profits rather than paying them out as dividends, and an incentive for corporations to finance themselves through debt rather than equity.  But it's a lot better than it used to be.

I'd like to see the counter arguments, but you raise good points.

I've seen double taxation used in reference to the estate tax so much that I'm always suspicious when I see the term used.

Thanks for the links. The concept that seemed somewhat reasonable was the idea that dividends could be tax deductible as an expense, but I'll acknowledge my accounting and economics background isn't my strongest suit.

When I see the words 'double taxation' I immediately assume that someone is pulling a fast one.

Personally, I see the problem with economic discussions being that people hop back and forth between 'fairness' and 'effective' as a method to ignore counter arguments. Particularly annoying as the terms have no accepted definition.

All that said, large scale tax simpification is going to wait until afterr the deficit is taken care off. Otherwise it really comes down to

"Who are you raise taxes to make up for the cut?"

"Who are you going to lower services for?"

or

"Why is this worth raising the deficit over?"

That or the Laffer curve gets involved and then I start to completely lose interest.

None of these proposals allow income to go untaxed.  It always gets taxed at one place or another -- either at the corporate level or at the individual level.  As the IRS explains (http://www.irs.gov/b... ), tax-exempt corporations do not qualify for reduced dividend rates.

No matter how you implement it, the important point is to eliminate the favoritism the tax code currently shows to corporations that reinvest their earnings rather than paying them out as shareholders, and to debt financing over equity financing.  It doesn't even have to be a tax cut at all -- you could pay for it by raising overall corporate income tax rates and make it part of a revenue-neutral tax reform.

All of your concerns about in-person voter fraud would be addressed if voters were allowed to show a non-photo id as well as a photo ID when they attempt to vote.  If you can explain why a photo id only requirement is necessary to prevent in-person voter fraud you would be the first person to do so. 

Example: the 1986 tax reform