Voting is a right in America. Much like you have the right to free speech
and the right to a firearm, you also have the right to vote. Though it used to be viewed more as a privilege
and we still kind of think of it that way. If you try to introduce any kind of rule that
maybe curtails a few people from voting, aside from those few people affected, most other
people don’t seem to care. They might even be in favor of those rules. The only way to stop these rules from taking
effect is to vote. So please, vote… assuming you still can. This video is brought to you by Skillshare. When America was founded, or rather, a few
years later when the Constitution went into effect, only white male protestants over the
age of 21, who owned a not insignificant amount of land were allowed to vote. When George Washington was elected in 1789,
only 6% of the US population had the right to vote. Much like the definition of a citizen, the
right to vote was both expanded and restricted over the years. By the 1840s, the property ownership requirement
had disappeared. Then in 1870, after the bloodiest war in American
history, the white requirement was removed by the 15th Amendment, allowing black males
the right to vote. We had some issues with letting Asians and
Native Americans vote, but that was cleared up later. In 1920, the 19th Amendment granted women
the right to vote federally, certain states had allowed it previously. And lastly, in 1971, the 26th Amendment was
passed, lowering the voting age to 18. So that’s it, as long as you’re a US citizen
over the age of eighteen, you’re allowed to vote, and now, you know better…
… wait. Yeah, if only it were that simple. States decide who gets to vote, so aside from
those few amendments I mentioned, we don’t have any uniform federal rules. So every time the federal government extended
the right to vote to a group, new state rules were put in place to limit how many people
in that group could actually vote. Like after the Mexican-American War. When we annexed all that new territory with
all those new people, America had a problem, because at the time, Mexican people were still
classified as white. So English literacy became a requirement. And it remained a requirement that was rather
famously used to deny black people the right to vote for another hundred years under Jim
Crow. Along with poll taxes, which meant you had
to pay a fee every time you voted, which were eliminated by the 24th Amendment
It’s a common misconception that felony disenfranchisement was started during Reconstruction
or Jim Crow in order to suppress the African-American vote. Felony disenfranchisement means that you lose
the ability to vote if you’ve committed a certain level of crime. The idea is that you broke the social contract,
so you shouldn’t be able to participate in decisions that help shape that society
or its rules. And you could argue that that makes sense
for a little while… but forever? Forever-ever? Forever-ever? We’ve actually had these rules since basically
the beginning. Kentucky was the first state to enact criminal
disenfranchisement in 1792, followed by Vermont in 1793, then Ohio, and Louisiana. By the time the Civil War came around, most
states, in the North and South, had some form of felony disenfranchisement. In fact, during Reconstruction, only one state
expanded felony disenfranchisement in order to stop black people from voting. Can you guess which one? It’s Alabama, I mean c’mon. Their constitution still has a rather long
list of people disqualified from voting, including: All idiots and insane persons – that’s
off to a great start. It should be noted that idiot was a medical
term back then, man that has not aged well. But here’s the list of crimes that disqualify
you. Those who shall be convicted of treason, murder,
arson, embezzlement, malfeasance in office, larceny, receiving stolen property, obtaining
property or money under false pretenses, perjury, subornation of perjury, robbery, assault with
intent to rob, burglary, forgery, bribery, assault and battery on the wife, bigamy, living
in adultery, sodomy, incest, rape, miscegenation- If you needed anymore proof that this was
racially motivated, here you go. Miscegenation is marrying outside of your
race, if a black man married a white woman, neither of them were allowed to vote. That section of the constitution wraps up
with a blanket statement. Or any crime punishable by imprisonment in
the penitentiary, or of any infamous crime or crime involving moral turpitude. An “infamous crime” is usually defined
as a felony. Many of the crimes on that list were retracted
over time, but the felony part has not. But felony disenfranchisement on the whole
is starting to disappear in the country as people start to realize that punishing someone
for life, well after their sentence, was a bit much. In Maine and Vermont, there is no disenfranchisement,
people are allowed to vote while in prison. These states allow you to vote once you’re
out of prison and these states after probation or parole. These states allow you to vote after your
sentence, but only for first-time offenders or non-violent crimes, it varies by state. But in these four states, no felon of any
kind ever gets to vote, ever. Forever ever? Yes. Well, unless the governor personally restores
your rights… and then the next governor doesn’t immediately reverse that decision. Florida has the chance to change their color
on that map in the election on Tuesday. But as felony disenfranchisement has been
disappearing, a new form of voter suppression seems to be emerging. When you register to vote, you have to prove
who you are and where you live, but some states are now requiring a separate ID when you actually
vote. Voter ID laws are one of those things that
just feels like it makes sense, but the facts don’t seem to line up with those feelings. Another example of this would be drug testing
people on welfare, it costs way more than it saves. A common argument for Voter ID is that you
need one for all sorts of other things, you can barely get by without one, so it makes
sense that you should have to prove who you are before you go vote. On the surface, that sounds reasonable, which
is probably why a majority of Americans support the idea. Except you don’t really need an ID for all
sorts of other things… unless you’re a teenager. I couldn’t tell you the last time I had
to show anyone my ID. Not to get into an R-rated movie, or buy spray
paint, or even alcohol. If I lived in a city that had decent public
transportation, I wouldn’t need an ID at all. Well, you need one to work, right? No, not really, no. When you got hired, your HR person gave you
this list – and you probably just handed over your driver’s license and social security
card. But there’s about a dozen other options
available. And here’s the kicker, those dozen other
options, depending on the state, aren’t valid Voter IDs. 11% of American citizens
do not have a valid Voter ID. I have an ID and if you thought that me saying
that I don’t remember the last time I had to show it to anyone is far-fetched, 35 million
Americans don’t have an ID and seem to get along just fine. Except when it comes to this new rule about
voting. If you lost your driver’s license, it would
be a pain, you’d have to take a few hours off of work, go to the DMV, sit there for
a few hours, pay a fee, and then wait six to eight weeks for it to arrive in the mail,
it would be a whole thing. But you can justify it because you need it
to drive. But if you take the bus to work every day
and everything is fine, but now you find out you have to do all of that stuff in order
to go vote, when you didn’t two years ago… You’re probably just not going to vote. Voter ID laws vary by state, but there are
currently seventeen states with rather strict Voter ID laws. The usual reasoning behind these laws is to
stop voter fraud and we’ve been told a lot in the last few years that voter fraud is
a big problem. And the integrity of our ballot box is paramount. I’m not going to address the claim that
millions of illegal immigrants are voting because, no they aren’t, that’s ridiculous. But in most of the states that either have
passed or are trying to pass Voter ID laws, someone will claim that hundreds of dead people
are voting. An analysis of recent elections in the state,
ready for this, shows that 953 dead people voted. After the investigation was complete, they
found that only five ballots couldn’t be accounted for of the 1.3 million votes that
were cast. But using that pretense, South Carolina still
passed Voter ID laws. Voter ID laws really only stop voter impersonation,
that is, you showing up at the polls and claiming to be someone you’re not and casting a vote. Between 2000 to 2014, there have only been
31 cases of that happening in the entire United States. Again, using voter fraud as a pretense, Texas
passed one of the strictest Voter ID laws in the country, disenfranchising over 600,000
people. Between 2002 and 2014, two people were convicted
of voter fraud in Texas. Imagine for a moment, that over the course
of 12 years, two people committed a crime with an AR15, and as a result, the state decided
to take away 600,000 AR15s from people who did nothing wrong. Not permanently, don’t worry, you can get
it back. You just need to take time off work, go to
the state ID office, wait for a few hours, pay a small fee, and wait a few weeks for
it to come in the mail. This isn’t that much of a stretch, voting
is a right, just as much as owning a firearm. Texas has one of the most interesting and
strictest Voter ID laws in the country. The issue isn’t that you need and ID, it’s
which IDs count. Most people have some form of ID, to work
or go to school or whatever, but those don’t count in Texas. Wisconsin allows school IDs, which makes sense,
it’s a state-run government institution. But Texas doesn’t, you know what does count? A Concealed Carry Permit. I can’t imagine any difference between people
who carry CCLs and people who carry school IDs… huh. And here’s where we get to talk about discrimination. Voter ID laws are often described as useless,
since it solves a problem that isn’t really a problem, but also racist, which usually
makes people defensive and use some of the arguments that I’ve already mentioned. Again, the problem isn’t that you need an
ID, it’s which IDs count as valid Voter IDs. As I said before, 11% of all Americans do
not have a valid Voter ID, only 8% of white Americans don’t have one, while 25% of African-Americans
don’t have one. These laws disproportionately affect poor
people, who also tend to be minorities. Anyone has the legal ability to go get a state-issued
ID, provided they have the necessary paperwork like their original birth certificate or proof
of name change. But not everyone has the financial ability
to do so. Even if the ID itself was free, if you have
to take off work for several hours to get an ID, when you didn’t need one to get to
work or anything else, that’s a cost that you might not be willing to pay in order to
go vote. Which is why some people claim that it’s
effectively a new form of a poll tax. It’s an unnecessary barrier to voting that
didn’t exist before and doesn’t really solve any problem. Using a fake ID to vote will be just as easy
as using one to buy alcohol, it won’t stop the small amount of voter fraud that exists. But it does stop minorities from voting. Let’s take a look at North Carolina, you’ll
notice that it doesn’t currently have any Voter ID laws, because it was struck down
by the courts. Although the new provisions target African
Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems
assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that don’t exist. The North Carolina legislature pulled racial
voting data and crafted the law around that to purposefully disenfranchise African American
voters with… what did they call it? Surgical precision. With race data in hand, the legislature amended
the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans. As amended, the bill retained only the kinds
of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess. If you needed anymore proof that Voter ID
is discriminatory, that should do it, it’s not that you need an ID, it’s which ones
count. Why do you think Texas allows CCLs but not
school IDs? But that’s not all they did, they discovered
that a lot of African American voters used same-day registration, so they got rid of
that. They also cut early voting from seventeen
days down to just ten, because that racial data indicated that a lot of African American
voters tended to vote early during the first seven days. Which eliminated a “Souls to the Polls”
day, when churches would bus people to go vote, do I need to tell you who used that? Likewise, in every state that has Voter ID
laws, you only need to present an ID if you vote in person, not if you do a mail-in or
absentee ballot. Guess who that favors… there’s a trend
here. When you register to vote, you have to identify
yourself and show some sort of proof-of-residence to establish your address. Usually a utility bill or a lease, seems simple
enough. But when North Dakota passed a law requiring
every registered voter to have a valid street address, they effectively disenfranchised
Native Americans who live on reservations. Because the Post Office still hasn’t gotten
around to giving them physical addresses. Even if you have an address, you’re registered
to vote, and you have a valid driver’s license or state-issued ID, you may go to the polls
and find out that you’ve been purged. Which is exactly what happened in Georgia
just a few weeks ago. Brian Kemp, who is running for governor and
also happens to be the current Secretary of State, purged almost a half a million people
from the voter rolls. 70% of which were African American. One of the justifications was that they didn’t
pass an “exact match” which requires all state documents to have the exact same spelling
and spacing of your full name and address. They used computers for this of course, nobody
is going to go through all those documents by hand. And they could have learned how to program
those computers by going to skl.sh/knowingbetter3. Skillshare is an online learning community
with classes taught by experts in their field. Learn C++ from Scratch in this set of courses,
and realize that missing a space in your address isn’t the only thing that can ruin your
life. Or learn how to make Java stop telling me
there’s an update available. Or choose from 20,000 other classes to purge
whatever lack of knowledge you have from your voter rolls. So head over to skl.sh/knowingbetter3 and
get 2 months of unlimited access to all of Skillshare’s courses for free, and you’ll
be supporting the channel when you do. He did this after the voter registration deadline,
so you won’t be able to fix this before Election Day. People were also purged for not voting in
previous elections. Most states have something like this, known
as use it or lose it, you’re removed from the voter rolls for not voting in the previous
general, midterm, or sometimes even off-year elections. Yes, there are off-year elections, there is
an election literally every November. Many of these laws have good sounding intentions
on their surface, but background negative consequences. They may not always have nefarious intent,
but they will have nefarious effect. It is your duty as an informed citizen to
think about these intents and consequences, especially if it effects people who may not
have the right to vote like you, because now, you know better. Go vote, if you heard nothing else during
this video, please, vote. I’d like to give a shout out to my newest
legendary patron, Darren, if you’d also like your name to fly across the screen too
fast for anyone to read it, head on over to patreon.com/knowingbetter. Don’t forget to register that subscribe
button, follow me on twitter and facebook, and join us on the subreddit.
I love how he stressed that Voter ID laws are not a problem necessarily because they require you to show an ID...they are a problem because of which IDs they require you to show.
Good video but I wish he expanded on the exact-match laws he mentioned at the end. That's the most blatant discrimination I've seen from any of theses laws. Yeah some people get their IDs issued with spelling mistakes, and it's not going to be the person with the last name Smith, but with a non-english last name. I've had my last name come up slightly wrong on my drivers licence before because my last name is french, I can see it happening to Hispanic names as well.
Went into this expecting partisan bullshit, wasn't so bad.
It does seem wrong that a voter ID is distinct from other ID. I don't understand why all official IDs aren't merged into a single QR-coded card/app in this day and age.