Identification Cards in Order to Vote...Is It the Thing to Do?

[BigBadBrian]

There was some liberal whining about this on another site I frequent...basically saying it was a modern day poll tax.

What do you think? Should it be mandatory that voters show some sort of identification in order to vote?

[Seshmeister]

Mail on Sunday
30th October 2005, p54

Why Adolf Hitler relied on ID cards

BY Edwin Black

Author of IBM and the Holocaust

So the Government has finally managed to squeeze the National Identity Card Bill through the Commons. A few weeks ago, it was passed by 309 votes to 284, slashing the Government's majority from 66 to just 25. But that was enough for Home Secretary Charles Clarke. Despite growing indications of the public's unease at the prospect of compulsory ID cards and a rebellion from Labour's own backbenchers, he is determined to push forward with the scheme.

But he and his Government would do well to consider the dark side of this sort of technology, which illustrates clearly how dangerous the collection of personal information by the State can be.

The Information Age was born not in Silicon Valley at the close of the 20th Century, but in Berlin in 1933.

Few even understand the very term 'the Information Age'. It is, quite simply, the individualisation of statistics. It was invented by IBM expressly for Adolf Hitler to provide him with the first of many solutions to Germany's perceived problems that led to the Holocaust. Indeed, there was no solution IBM was unwilling to provide Hitler with.

Until the 12-year strategic alliance between IBM and the Nazi regime, people could be counted manually, but not individually identified. At the end of the 19th Century, IBM invented data processing with its Hollerith punch card system - that is, a simple process of storing information on individuals, places, objects and processes by mechanically punching select holes in designated columns and rows.

Those holes could be sensed by high-speed card readers, then matched, sorted and combined with other data cards to cross-tabulate revealing information on anybody. But the process which for decades had run railways, financial institutions, manufacturing, warehousing and censuses, had never been applied to identifying an entire society.

In 1933, as Hitler wanted to identify the Jews and other 'enemies of the state' so he could target them for persecution, IBM energetically stepped forward, offering to create an automated system for Hitler's first national census. Until then, Germany had no way to identify who was a Jew by ancestry or practice.

The company designed a census that not only counted heads but also recorded the characteristics of those heads by name and background.

How? For example, by punching the Jewish hole in the religion column, the Polish mother tongue hole in the language column, the Poland hole in the national origin column, furrier in the occupation column, and finally Berlin and then its districts in the location column, the Nazis - at the rate of 24000 cards per hour - could quickly identify exactly how many Berlin Jews of Polish extraction were engaged in the fur trade.

Identify them, and then subject them to the Reich's systematic regimen of pauperisation and destruction. In fact, throughout the 12-year Reich, IBM's technology helped the Nazis in all six phases of the Holocaust: identification, social exclusion, confiscation, ghettoisation, deportation and even extermination.

The entire 'Extermination by Labour' campaign was facilitated by IBM's technology which identified prisoners across thousands of concentration camps along with their skills, and then matched those inmates to work needs.

The victims were then worked to death. When too frail to continue, the slaves were gassed or shot, an outcome which IBM coded as status '6'.

For this purpose among others, there was an IBM customer site, known as the Hollerith Department, in almost every concentration camp, from Auschwitz (IBM coded 001) to Dachau (IBM coded 003). It all began with national identification in 1933.

The system was used to target any designated enemy: for example, homosexuals (coded 2), Jehovah's Witnesses (3), Communists (6), Gypsies (2) and, of course, Jews (8).

In practice, the technology was deadly.

The case of France and Holland is a poignant example. Adolf Eichmann planned to rid both occupied France and Vichy of all Jews, many of whom were recent refugees.

Eichmann's plan was to work with the census bureau and punch card specialists to register all citizens in the socially fragmented country, identifying its 300,000 Jews, and then deport 100,000 of them to death camps.

But the plan was sabotaged at the last minute by census technicians in the French Resistance who secretly refused to punch column 11, which asked for Jewish identity. What's more, some 100,000 cards of Jews already identified were never handed over to the Gestapo.

The mastermind behind the punch card deception, Rene Carmille, was tortured by Klaus Barbie. But Carmille never cracked and never revealed how the tabulations were foiled. He ultimately died in Dachau. Frantic and determined to meet his quota, Eichmann turned to the Netherlands, a much smaller and mostly homogeneous society known for its orderliness and respect for regulations. On the day of the Nazi invasion, some 140,000 resident and refugee Jews lived in Holland where punch cards were a well-developed statistical tool.

In 1939, IBM located a training school in Amsterdam for its European sales force. By that time, the Netherlands was preparing for wartime disruptions by cataloguing all sources and stores of the nation's food stocks.

Ration cards were regularly issued to all civilians. All information was punched onto cards and sorted by IBM equipment.

With the anaesthetised glee of a blind technocrat, Holland's punch card wizard, Jacobus Lambertus Lentz, took charge of the Nazi identification programme. Not a Nazi and never thought to be an anti-Semite, Lentz took delight in the accomplishment of registering the population, identifying the Jews, and ensuring a smooth roundup and deportation to camps.

Holland had Lentz. France had Carmille. Holland possessed a well entrenched Hollerith infrastructure. France's punch card infrastructure was in complete disarray.

The final numbers: of an estimated 140,000 Dutch Jews, more than 107,000 were deported and of those, 102,000 were murdered - a death ratio of approximately 73 per cent, the highest in Europe. In France, of an estimated 350,000 Jews, about 85,000 were deported - of these barely 3,000 survived. The death ratio was approximately 25 per cent.

With similar precision, IBM's people-identifying technology was consciously used to aid the extermination of gypsies in Romania, the enslavement of Poles in Poland, and the concentration in camps of Japanese in America after Pearl Harbour.

No one in Romania, Poland or the United States adopted national identity data processing programs with the intention of persecuting minorities. But it did happen with a careening government and a willing provider such as IBM. During the Second World War, it was never about the anti-Semitism, or the Nazism for IBM. It was always about the money. The consequences only became clear when it was far too late. As former Education Secretary, Charles Clarke should remember these lessons from history. Today's technology is so far advanced that the Government could issue smart cards brimming with biometric and biographical details which could be accessed at the click of a mouse.

Copyright 2005 Edwin Black

Edwin Black is a New York Times writer and best-selling author of the award-winning IBM And The Holocaust, published by Little, Brown in 2001, which first revealed IBM's involvement in the Third Reich. His website is: www.edwinblack.com

[Nitro Express]

There was some liberal whining about this on another site I frequent...basically saying it was a modern day poll tax.

What do you think? Should it be mandatory that voters show some sort of identification in order to vote?

You have to show ID at the polls here to vote. You have to prove who you are and that you really live at the address you are registered under. I'm fine with it. It makes double voting and other kinds of voter fraud harder to do. Of course who is in charge of running the polls is the counties. It's up to them what to do not the federal government.

We already have national ID if you want it. It's called a passport and yes the country accepts that as legal ID to vote as do they a drivers license or a utility bill in your name.

[Satan]

This is definitely a Repuke scam to remove legitimate Democratic votes.

Why is that?

Who is unlikely to have a drivers license?

1) People who live in big cities with decent mass transit systems and do not choose to own a car, since it wouldn't be practical to drive one.

2) People who cannot afford to own a car.

3) Senior citizens who no longer drive - whether by choice or for medical reasons.

Now certainly in some states, you can get a state issued ID card even if you don't drive. Except it usually costs about the same as the drivers license does, and you have to stand in the same ridiculous lines at the DMV to get one. And if you're well over the age where you need it to buy a beer, what practical use is it to anyone?

Now tell me what party most (if not all) of the people I have described above would be likely to vote for, and then you will know why the Repukes are so desperate to pass this shit. Along with the fraudulent Diebold machines, and the Shittizens United inspired outright LIES they can now get away with in massive TV advertising.

Republicans cannot win a fair fight, and they know it. So they have to eliminate every vote they can, by any fraudulent means necessary.

[WACF]

Voting without picture ID is ridiculous....play it how you want but it makes no sense.

[jhale667]

It's definitely more of an attempt at voter-suppression than to combat voter fraud, that's for sure (BBB is fooing himself if he thinks otherwise, but THAT's not shocking). Notice they're REALLY pushing for this in areas that traditionally vote democratic? Yeah, that's just a coincidence...riiiiiiight.

My mom would fall under reason 3 in Satan's post - she relinquished her driver's license last year due to health reasons. Fortunately she immediately went and got an ID card so she WOULDN'T have any issues with voting and the like. It's good to see organizations like Think Progress already putting together drives to get seniors and poor people ID cards. It will be somewhat of an equalizer.

[BITEYOASS]

This national ID seems rather redundant. If someone wants an ID that bad and they don't drive, than just get a state ID.

[Unchainme]

A National ID is dumb

as is voting without some form of ID. Here, if you're wondering what it takes to vote in my state:

* A current and valid photo identification (i.e. Ohio driver’s license, state ID card, government ID). Photo identification must show name and address (does not need to be current address for driver’s license or state id card); or
* A military identification. (Does not need to show name or address); or
* A copy of a current utility bill (including cell phone bill), bank statement, paycheck, government check, or other government document that shows the voter’s name and current address (including from a public college or university).

simple. easy. If you're a resident of the state of ohio you have no reason to complain.

[FORD]

When I registered to vote, way back in 1984, I was mailed a voter ID by the county auditors office. It had my name, address, date of birth, and number of voting precinct on it. I had moved before the 1988 election, but didn't update my registration by then, so I just went to the old voting place. Moved 2 or three more times before the 1992 election and then got a new card there.

I have no problem with voter ID's such as this one being issued for this purpose, and even though I no longer actually need one to vote (ballots are all sent by mail now) I believe they should still be required in order to attend your local party caucus. They didn't check ID's at the 2004 caucus, and even though Howard Dean won, Judas Iskerryot got the second highest vote count. Here's the thing though.... I did not recognize 2/3 of the IsKerryot voters. I doubt they were from my neighborhood, which means they had no business being at my precinct caucus, and were probably Repuke moles sent there to vote for Judas because they wanted the weakest candidate against the Chimp (which unfortunately, they got in the end)

There's no declared party registration in this state, so if a right winger wants to attend my caucus, or I want to attend theirs, it's completely legal - but NOT if they don't actually live in the goddamned precinct! Technically, you are only supposed to attend one party caucus, and you do have to sign in, so a paper trail is there if somebody wanted to challenge it. Anyway, that's why a voter ID, issued by the county upon (or shortly after) registration should be a requirement.

But not tied to a drivers license, social security, or any thing else. That's just bullshit.

[Nitro Express]

This is definitely a Repuke scam to remove legitimate Democratic votes.

Why is that?

Who is unlikely to have a drivers license?

1) People who live in big cities with decent mass transit systems and do not choose to own a car, since it wouldn't be practical to drive one.

2) People who cannot afford to own a car.

3) Senior citizens who no longer drive - whether by choice or for medical reasons.

Now certainly in some states, you can get a state issued ID card even if you don't drive. Except it usually costs about the same as the drivers license does, and you have to stand in the same ridiculous lines at the DMV to get one. And if you're well over the age where you need it to buy a beer, what practical use is it to anyone?

Now tell me what party most (if not all) of the people I have described above would be likely to vote for, and then you will know why the Repukes are so desperate to pass this shit. Along with the fraudulent Diebold machines, and the Shittizens United inspired outright LIES they can now get away with in massive TV advertising.

Republicans cannot win a fair fight, and they know it. So they have to eliminate every vote they can, by any fraudulent means necessary.

Dude. You have to be registered to vote to get a ballot. You just need some form of ID to prove who you are. My country accepts a utility bill. With the country as full of illegal aliens as it is without a proper ID system they can just come in and vote. I would say both the Democrats and Republicans are both guilty of welcoming illegal aliens into this country. You can screw them out of their workers benefits and you can manipulate them with blackmail. The Republicans are as eager for the illegal votes as anyone.

[BigBadBrian]

It's definitely more of an attempt at voter-suppression than to combat voter fraud, that's for sure

A Simply Stupid viewpoint.

[ashstralia]

here in oz, everyone is on the electoral roll. voting is compulsory. you go to your local polling place, get your name ticked off, you mark a ballot paper and that's it.

[jhale667]

Have I told you to go fuck yourself lately? If not - I just did.

A Simply Stupid viewpoint.

That means so much coming from the RA's resident "simply stupid" poster. It's a FACT, tool. Deal with it.

[Nitro Express]

A national ID card required to vote is actually unconstitutional since the US constitution leaves the running of polls up to the local governments. Currently in the US the polls are ran by each individual county and each has their particular process of voting. Some already require a form of ID to vote. Each county has it's own process. In the case of a national ID card being required to vote that would put the federal government in charge of the local voting process.

The only national ID worth anything is a passport. A national ID card would be worthless and if made required for certain things it just becomes another big brother program.

[knuckleboner]

i'm fine with it.

in virginia, if you didn't bring any id, you can sign an affidavit affirming that you are who you state. was there likely widespread voting fraud beforehand? most certainly not. but it is hard to argue that it's bad policy to try and have some minimal level of verification.