I don’t dispute that there are racist democrats or democrats that say racist things. But the actual quote I was replying to was not about democrats saying things that were racist. It was this:
That seems to be saying that just having the view that voter ID laws discriminate against minorities itself exposes some racist views.
I’m not sure if you have a specific point about the Democratic presidents not solving the issue. There are lots of issues they haven’t solved. One of the issues is that both parties spend a lot of time fighting each other. A lot of people on the left are pretty disillusioned with the democrats, and a lot of people actually argue that the democrat vs republican dichotomy is flawed, because neither one is actually on the side of the people.
Regarding fixing the problem - I’m not an expert on US civics at all, but I think that one of the issues is that the ID stuff (birth certificates, driver’s licenses, etc) is the responsibility of the individual states, not the federal government. So I think that there are a lot of things that would be overreach for the federal government to do.
Even right now, the federal government passed some laws about Real ID. That took 20 years to finally come into effect. There isn’t actually a federal system for people to get Real ID compliant driver’s licenses or state IDs. (Passports are federal and are Real ID compliant though.) The federal government set the rules for what is required for an ID to be compliant, but each state has its own system, so the rules for getting a Real ID vary by state.
In the US you have to register to be on the voter list. They don’t keep a database on their own: it is an opt-in system. And states actually remove people from the voter list for various reasons, including if you haven’t voted recently. The voter lists are also based on where you live, not where you are born, so it wouldn’t make sense to just put birth certificate info into a database. Each state is responsible for its own voter lists, and they all have their own rules.
One way they protect against fraud is that the voter registration lists are publicly available in most states. You can access the voter lists, which include things like names, addresses, party affiliations, and voting history (just whether they voted or not) of registered voters. (You might notice when people commit a high profile crime, the media will often find their info on the voter list, and say if they were registered as a democrat or republican, and if they voted recently.) This makes doing certain types of voter fraud, such as voting as a non-citizen, or voting in more than one place, risky and a matter of public record that anyone could look up if they wanted to.
Yes. That is one of the complaints that people have about what is happening right now.
There was a Mexican Repatriation that happened in the US in 1930s. According to Wikipedia, between 300,000 - 2,000,000 people repatriated or were deported, and 40-60% of those people were US citizens. Some people are worried that this current push will also end up deporting citizens, since there are US citizens who are not easily able to prove their citizenship.
One reason people are so worried about what is occurring is because it could end up with the wrongful deportation of citizens. There are claims we don’t need to give illegal immigrants due process because the constitution doesn’t apply to them. I don’t agree with that, but even if it were true, then some of the people denied due process would inevitably be citizens who never get a chance to prove they are citizens. There is no way to fully deny illegal immigrants due process without accidentally denying due process to some citizens or legal immigrants.