> The verification process has to be trustworthy and not some opaque process that needs a lot effort in order to challenge it if people think there was something wrong.

Aside from someone who lost a major election making wild claims, what is not trustworthy? Every step of the election process has checks and requirements for strict observation (by opposing party representatives). The effort required to challenge should be proportional in significance to the interruption being requested. AFAIK that's basically how it is now. Want to challenge a vote? Easy. Want to challenge a lot of votes or put a hold on the results until you've had a chance to go digging? That needs to take enough effort that only those with more than a conspiracy theory will attempt it.

> Of course the people who feel represented by the current party in power are likely to trust how the state government handles this process

Eh, I think this is actually pretty peculiar to just one of the parties. I've never worried about the elections tally when our county clerk was Republican (which has been most of my life). Messing with the votes is a daunting task. Go look at the actual process in your locality, I bet it's the same.

> challenging the process has been frowned upon as somehow anti-democratic

Not true. Conspiracy theories, "I think it's fraudulent because my guy lost", these absolutely ARE anti-democratic. They are intended to tear down the system, not strengthen it. Come with evidence, then you can strengthen the process.

What’s preventing 300 people from presenting the same ID?

Why is presenting an ID somehow singularly responsible for the process not being opaque?

> But if someone is motivated enough by the scant risk-reward balance of fraudulently voting, they’re not going to be deterred by having to buy a fake ID.

Buying a fake ID is orders of magnitude more difficult than looking up a name and using it when voting, isn't it?

And it's only a scant risk-reward balance if voting individually. If something organized and can send 10k-20k votes, that can tip plenty of elections IIRC.

> To be fair, this isn’t difficult. Voter rolls are public. We usually think of likely voters, but it’s also possible to identify likely non-voters.

I agree, this is fairly easy to do. Signature checking will catch some of it, but the bar is a bit lower. The real problem making this work is detectability. Once someone legitimately tries to vote and gets told they already did, it's going to get noticed quickly.

And as you say, the value at an individual vote level is close to zero, which makes the risk/reward ratio pretty terrible.

> Why bother with ID when registering to vote, then?

It’s voter Xanax.

In New York, I had to show ID to register. In Wyoming, the clerk accepted just a bank statement for proof of address—I used my voter registration to get my driver’s license after moving. (They’re supposed to demand ID. But the entire process is done live.)

In my experience, red states’ election officials are less funded and thus more lenient than blue states’. We didn’t have photo ID for most of our republic’s history.

Oh HELL yeah dude, now you’re talking my language. If we’re talking about how much faith we should have in our electoral process, “extremely skeptical at best” is a charitable position. But penny-ante voter fraud is a distraction; incidents are very low and it’s almost always some right wing nut casting a ballot as their dead mom or whatever.

The real disenfranchisement happens before a vote is even cast. Parties gerrymandering their districts to hell and back, big purges of “inactive” voters from rolls, candidates colluding to box out opposition from outsiders, massive dark money PACs essentially bribing politicians in broad daylight or serving as effectively personal slush funds, the first-past-the-post system ensuring effective duopoly of political parties, the entire structure being profoundly anti-democratic (why is there an electoral college and not just popular vote? why should someone from Wyoming’s vote count for 10+x my vote thanks to how senators are apportioned? Etc).

This shit is just red meat for both sides. BUT, that said, it is overall a good thing to not let local municipalities set up their own bullshit rules on top of all this.

> seems to me that both groups are arguing for what is better for them

Yup. Which will make how these groups’ positions change amid the racial depolarisation of American partisan politics [1] super interesting.

[1] https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-128-paths-to-the-white-hous...

But who is going to correct or challenge the results after the fact?

> constitution also guarantees the right to bear arms, wouldn't requiring ID in that case also suppress certain populations exercise of that right?

One, the meaning of that phrase is much more ambiguous than the right to vote. Two, you can buy a gun without ID at a gun show.

> How do these people register to vote, do you not need ID for that or should that be banned as well?

Please don’t spam the comments.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41754695