Euros get passports almost the day they're born because of the much more common reality of crossing borders into other countries. For the opposite reason, most Americans do not get passports.
The primary philosophical reason for obtaining a passport is you do not have real freedom until you have a valid passport in your hand. So long as someone can stop you from leaving, that is not freedom.
Note: when foreign people come to work as servants in Saudi Arabia, the first thing to happen on arrival is the state confiscates their passports so they cannot leave.
The functional reason for making passports mandatory is for voting. There is so much chicanery taking place in Texas just now to ensure only white people vote and they do it by jacking the requirements to get a drivers license. They've made it such a hassle to do it I still don't have one and mine expired months ago.
If you want to vote then you show a passport and no second-rate dipshit local hero like Kim Davis can stop you because of some redneck regulation or because she just doesn't want to do it.
(Ed: what stops you from going somewhere else and voting again?)
There needs to be a database keyed by the passport identifier.
(Ed: yah, sure. You want my ID directly connected to my voting record. That will happen as soon as you pry this Winchester, the rifle that won the West, from my protesting fingers.)
Hear it through. The content of your vote mustn't be in the database but the timestamp for when you voted and where you did it is required.
(Ed: ok, assuming there is no security violation and no possible way to connect that information with your actual vote, we can continue. It's a huge assumption.)
Granted it's a huge assumption but consider the model nevertheless.
If you flash that passport, the strongest identification anyone in the country can carry, you have the right to vote in an American election.
(Ed: the state has a right to manage who votes in its elections)
Not in a Federal election. Every American has a right to vote in them and the obligation of the state is to provide the means.
Update from Kannafoot (paraphrased):
Unbelievable as it may seem, the right to vote is not guaranteed in the Constitution. In researching it he discovered Constitutional lawyers insist there are multiple reasons voting is a Constitutional right but Kannafoot researched it and didn't find anything specific to that. It's not clear how these lawyers can say it's there when it's not but lawyers have a particular talent for things like that, don't they.
(Ed: the election ballot may contain Federal and State proposals)
In which case, you have a fault in process rather than the model.
The state level validation won't work by a passport alone. Drivers licenses are a legal nightmare but, other than a generic state ID which serves no purpose other than identification, the drivers license is required for the state. There are multiple problems with state level management of drivers licenses and this is only one of them.
You can be charged if you are guilty of a 'three-way split' and this is the situation when you live in state A, you are driving in state B, and your vehicle is from state C. For example, I lived in Ohio and had a drivers license from Ohio. I was in the Army and stationed in Texas where I got a motorcycle was registered. I rode the bike to Albuquerque for three-months TDY (temporary duty) and got busted on a three-way split. Here at the Rockhouse, we submit that's ludicrous.
To take this out to sci-fi, the database is updated in near real-time and now it does contain your vote. Because of our extra-sophisticated software of the future, there's no way to connect your identity with the content of your vote.
(Ed: anything can be hacked)
Roll with it, Doubting Thomas. We shall see how this shakes out. We're assuming we have a highly-professional staff who monitor the Federal voting system because they're not allowed to release any voting results until the last votes in the last state on the schedule have been cast.
This highly-professional staff has no way of altering the results and their only capability is to ensure the system is running correctly to receive those results.
(Ed: whomever supports this program owns the country)
We're assuming our colleagues in the future have come up with some type of software self-checking which prevents introduction of poisoned code by nefarious plotters who managed to get inside the system somehow.
(Ed: so the programmer mole goes after the code which does the self-checking and poisons that instead)
Man, we can play security roulette all day and I'm willing but the assumption is our programmer colleagues of the future are more clever than we and have come up with mechanisms to assure this.
With the assumptions so far, we have a Federal election database which is being updated in real-time with the nation's votes. Our security is so dayum good we know there is no chance the vote can be connected to whomever made that vote. It's also dayum good in how it prevents unauthorized access to the database.
We get from that a system which is immune to state level corruption and which is validated by holding a valid U.S. passport. The security concerns are noted but we deem them manageable.
Next from that is what serves as a polling station and we submit you can do it from anywhere. If there isn't a machine-readable code on the passport now then make one. Manufacturers can do that with everything from toys to rolls of toilet paper. It shouldn't be such a formidable technological problem.
(Ed: the machine-readable code from your passport is stolen)
Sure and that could happen but that passport still only gets one vote.
(Ed: hackers make fake codes and use those)
The code will do the same validation process for the code which is used to enter the country. If they can hack that code, you have a much bigger problem than a hacked election. Primary to this model is the passport is a unique identifier when almost nothing else is.
Your Social Security number is not immune to duplication and that's not simply a hypothetical, it happens. Your name isn't even close to unique and probably there are three or four of you at least in the same state, maybe even in the same city.
There's your general model and there are clear flaws to it but it needs the assumption technology will increase in sophistication to address those flaws. From that comes the question: would you support this and if not then what's the problem with it, ideally staying conceptual with it and details can be hammered through if it's considered the model is valid.
The primary philosophical reason for obtaining a passport is you do not have real freedom until you have a valid passport in your hand. So long as someone can stop you from leaving, that is not freedom.
Note: when foreign people come to work as servants in Saudi Arabia, the first thing to happen on arrival is the state confiscates their passports so they cannot leave.
The functional reason for making passports mandatory is for voting. There is so much chicanery taking place in Texas just now to ensure only white people vote and they do it by jacking the requirements to get a drivers license. They've made it such a hassle to do it I still don't have one and mine expired months ago.
If you want to vote then you show a passport and no second-rate dipshit local hero like Kim Davis can stop you because of some redneck regulation or because she just doesn't want to do it.
(Ed: what stops you from going somewhere else and voting again?)
There needs to be a database keyed by the passport identifier.
(Ed: yah, sure. You want my ID directly connected to my voting record. That will happen as soon as you pry this Winchester, the rifle that won the West, from my protesting fingers.)
Hear it through. The content of your vote mustn't be in the database but the timestamp for when you voted and where you did it is required.
(Ed: ok, assuming there is no security violation and no possible way to connect that information with your actual vote, we can continue. It's a huge assumption.)
Granted it's a huge assumption but consider the model nevertheless.
If you flash that passport, the strongest identification anyone in the country can carry, you have the right to vote in an American election.
(Ed: the state has a right to manage who votes in its elections)
Not in a Federal election. Every American has a right to vote in them and the obligation of the state is to provide the means.
Update from Kannafoot (paraphrased):
Unbelievable as it may seem, the right to vote is not guaranteed in the Constitution. In researching it he discovered Constitutional lawyers insist there are multiple reasons voting is a Constitutional right but Kannafoot researched it and didn't find anything specific to that. It's not clear how these lawyers can say it's there when it's not but lawyers have a particular talent for things like that, don't they.
(Ed: the election ballot may contain Federal and State proposals)
In which case, you have a fault in process rather than the model.
The state level validation won't work by a passport alone. Drivers licenses are a legal nightmare but, other than a generic state ID which serves no purpose other than identification, the drivers license is required for the state. There are multiple problems with state level management of drivers licenses and this is only one of them.
You can be charged if you are guilty of a 'three-way split' and this is the situation when you live in state A, you are driving in state B, and your vehicle is from state C. For example, I lived in Ohio and had a drivers license from Ohio. I was in the Army and stationed in Texas where I got a motorcycle was registered. I rode the bike to Albuquerque for three-months TDY (temporary duty) and got busted on a three-way split. Here at the Rockhouse, we submit that's ludicrous.
To take this out to sci-fi, the database is updated in near real-time and now it does contain your vote. Because of our extra-sophisticated software of the future, there's no way to connect your identity with the content of your vote.
(Ed: anything can be hacked)
Roll with it, Doubting Thomas. We shall see how this shakes out. We're assuming we have a highly-professional staff who monitor the Federal voting system because they're not allowed to release any voting results until the last votes in the last state on the schedule have been cast.
This highly-professional staff has no way of altering the results and their only capability is to ensure the system is running correctly to receive those results.
(Ed: whomever supports this program owns the country)
We're assuming our colleagues in the future have come up with some type of software self-checking which prevents introduction of poisoned code by nefarious plotters who managed to get inside the system somehow.
(Ed: so the programmer mole goes after the code which does the self-checking and poisons that instead)
Man, we can play security roulette all day and I'm willing but the assumption is our programmer colleagues of the future are more clever than we and have come up with mechanisms to assure this.
With the assumptions so far, we have a Federal election database which is being updated in real-time with the nation's votes. Our security is so dayum good we know there is no chance the vote can be connected to whomever made that vote. It's also dayum good in how it prevents unauthorized access to the database.
We get from that a system which is immune to state level corruption and which is validated by holding a valid U.S. passport. The security concerns are noted but we deem them manageable.
Next from that is what serves as a polling station and we submit you can do it from anywhere. If there isn't a machine-readable code on the passport now then make one. Manufacturers can do that with everything from toys to rolls of toilet paper. It shouldn't be such a formidable technological problem.
(Ed: the machine-readable code from your passport is stolen)
Sure and that could happen but that passport still only gets one vote.
(Ed: hackers make fake codes and use those)
The code will do the same validation process for the code which is used to enter the country. If they can hack that code, you have a much bigger problem than a hacked election. Primary to this model is the passport is a unique identifier when almost nothing else is.
Your Social Security number is not immune to duplication and that's not simply a hypothetical, it happens. Your name isn't even close to unique and probably there are three or four of you at least in the same state, maybe even in the same city.
There's your general model and there are clear flaws to it but it needs the assumption technology will increase in sophistication to address those flaws. From that comes the question: would you support this and if not then what's the problem with it, ideally staying conceptual with it and details can be hammered through if it's considered the model is valid.
8 comments:
"Not in a Federal election. Every American has a right to vote in them and the obligation of the state is to provide the means."
That's up for debate, believe it or not. I was curious about whether or not the right to vote was Constitutionally guaranteed, so looked it up. It turns out that, according to Constitutional Lawyers (a class for whom I have little to no respect, mind you) there are numerous reasons listed why you cannot be denied a vote, however outside of those reasons, the actual right to vote is not protected. Amazing little loophole, that...
How extraordinary! I'm not a great believer in taking things for granted but, dayum, that one seemed granite solid!
Both parties will have issues with it as they both try to manipulate who can vote based on who they will probably vote for.So neither side actually wants a system that would stop that manipulation
Passports already have a readable code.
Kannafoot said yesterday he wants to see a better system for the specific reason votes from military overseas may not be counted. He also agreed it was a huge mistake to announce any election results prior to the closing of the last polling station and that specifically was because it gives the power to the news services to influence elections.
I suspect there's more agreement in Goldwater Republicans than may be evident because they're being drowned out by the All Liberals Are Communists crowd.
Projections arent allowed til after polls close but If it is a national election then they should not be allowed after all voting ends not just the local polls
The national elections are where the poll closing aspect comes into it because Hawaii's vote doesn't even matter. I know for sure Goldwaterites support that but those cranks in the middle are sure making a mess of things.
There's a slight misinterpretation in what I posted. Constitutional Lawyers all agree that there are a number of reasons that cannot be used to deny a vote. For instance, you cannot be denied a vote because you are black or because you are female. There are Constitutional amendments that prohibit that type of discrimination. What they also say, though, is that there is nothing in the Constitution that ensures a right to vote in the first place. In fact, there's a lot to suggest that - especially at the federal level - the mechanism by which representatives (small r, not capital r) are selected is at the whim of state and federal law, and not a Constitutional guarantee.
It gets a bit convoluted because it's open to the whim of Supreme Court justices. Suffice it to say that, unless you're denied the vote due to any of the reasons listed in various Constitutional Amendments, then you have no fundamental claim of a rights violation.
Sorry. I should have cut and pasted.
I wonder if the Founding Fathers had any idea how much that document would be inspected over time. Since the Bill of Rights came out four years later, they must have had an inkling but this microscopic review it gets now might have surprised them a tad.
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