I'd note that Democrat states have recently introduced Photo ID requirements at all non-essential businesses. So there's an element of hypocrisy on both sides.

@JonathanReez [citation needed]; do the vaccination mandates actually require photo ID?

.. and as you said yourself, non-essential, unlike voting, and not with racially discriminatory intent.

@pjc50 If requiring photo ID for voting is racially discriminatory, so is requiring it for other "non-essential" businesses as part of a vaccine mandate.

@nick012000 vaccines mandates are discriminatory, but not on the basis of race… so I’m not entirely sure what your point is here? Are you suggesting people have the right to spread diseases freely?

@MDevelopment If mandating photo IDs for voting is racist because it's more difficult for PoC to get the ID, then it's also racist to mandate photo ID for vaccine mandates.

@JonathanReez: Vaccine mandates are meant to be exclusionary, as a matter of public safety. We are required to have a license to drive a car, too, so that we can ensure people meet some minimum level of competence. But being 'exclusionary' is not the same as being 'discriminatory'. No one makes it hard to get vaccine just to exclude a certain group.

And these vaccine + photo ID requirements aren't accompanied by criminalising helping people to meet that requirement

@JohnathanReez haven't checked them all, but NYC one states the ID must "• The name of the individual and a photo of the individual; or • The name of the individual and the individual’s date of birth." so there does not appear to be a photo ID requirement.

I'd also add that there is minimal enforcement of the vaccination ID requirements, we're talking about restaurant workers who just glance over practically as a formality, not people representing the government checking with felony consequences for misrepresentation. Something simple like a student ID would be sufficient for vaccine ID, while Republican voter ID laws require you to obtain very specific government issued ID's which can be difficult to obtain.

@Jontia a lot of “voter ID” laws likewise allow lesser forms of ID that don’t actually contain a photo: vote.org/voter-id-laws.

@MDevelopment Black males have the lowest vaccination rate in the US out of any racial group. Technically not because of racist vaccination policies but ID problems are also technically not because of racist laws.

@Kai many Republican states do in fact allow student ID to be used for voting: vote.org/voter-id-laws

@JonathanReez and many don't. In any case, being barred from being able to dine in at a restaurant during a pandemic due to not being able to demonstrate vaccination status is a public health measure and is not equivalent to being disenfrachised from your right to vote in an election and have your opinion represented in an ostensibly democratic government. African Americans have many historical reasons rooted in racism which influence their lower vaccination status, e.g. the Tuskegee experiment.

@Kai “being required to show ID in an era of widespread voter fraud is a public safety measure and is not meant to be racist” is literally what the Republicans are saying too. And if African Americans have a valid reason not to get vaccinated, why aren’t they excluded from the vaccine passport system?

@JonathanReez Please provide evidence of this "widespread voter fraud". These is of course ample evidence of the widespread impact of our current public health issue, but evidence of widespread voter fraud seems scarce.

@CarlKevinson there is none but that's what the claims are. But there's also no evidence showing that requiring ID as part of vaccine passport checks reduces "vaccine passport fraud" by a meaningful margin or improves the achievement of public health goals. You can still fake a vaccine card or vaccine card photo very easily in the US, there's no mandate to use QR codes like in the EU.

@JonathanReez People can claim all sorts of things, but it would be nice if policies would be made based on facts, not the (rather active) imagination of GOP politicians. The comparison between "widespread voter fraud" and "vaccine passport fraud" also makes little sense (there are other mechanisms in place to prevent in-person voter fraud).

The claim that GOP voter suppression is "not meant to be racist" is also rather difficult to believe, considering that their policies are formed based on race data and that they are openly saying that the purpose is to suppress minority votes.

@tim I feel like that's a big stretch of logic. A honest answer is that ID checks were more convenient for Dems, so they've introduced them. In another context they were more convenient for Republicans, so they've introduced them. Neither side particularly cares about efficacy.

@JonathanReez: I really dislike equivocation, and in particular false equivalence. The ID checks Dems want are geared to slow the spread of a virulent disease; the ID checks the Rep us want are geared to make voting more difficult. Whatever you might think about the first, it’s an intrinsically moral act. And Whatever you might think about the second, it’s intrinsically immoral.

@TedWrigley by that very same logic voter ID is important because it reduces the odds of voting fraud. And since voting and democracy are one of the few things more important than public health, any actions taken to improve the integrity of voting are intrinsically moral. I personally believe both should be abolished or both should be accepted.

@TedWrigley in other words, if the flimsy excuse of vaccine ID must be taken at face value because the vaccine is important, then the flimsy argument for voter ID must be taken at face value because voting is important. In reality ID is not important for vaccine checks, nor is it important for voting.

@JonathanReez: I"m sorry, but that's a ridiculous set of statements. There is no recent history of voter fraud; hasn't been for probably a hundred years (the last big one was Tammany Hall, if I remember right). Sure, if someone were asking me to get a vaccine for a disease that didn't exist, I might be annoyed as well. But almost a million Americans have died from covid, which seems fairly significant. And in the last election there were a vanishingly small number of actual or suspected voter fraud cases (most, apparently, from Republicans).

@JonathanReez: Trying to justify a false equivalence based on an overt lie is deeply offensive: morally and intellectually offensive. Anyone who does that and feels no shame about it... Well, let's just say that isn't a person I can intellectually or morally respect. Don't be that guy.

@TedWrigley what evidence is there of "vaccine passport fraud", of the type that could be resolved by asking for ID? Why isn't it sufficient to just ask for the vaccine card? And look - agreeing that "your side" did something wrong is not the end of the world. You can support Democrats without agreeing with everything they do or everything that the "establishment" says is a good thing to do.

@JonathanReez: I don't know what evidence there is — haven't looked into it — but please note that (unlike voting) there are no other safeguards in place. Vaccination reporting is mostly done on the honor system, since it is presumed that most people will not willingly want to infect others. And please note that (again, unlike voting) there are significant numbers of people actively talking about cheating or evading vaccination restrictions. You're still trying to push that false equivalence, and my respect for it is diminishing with every post.

@TedWrigley if you are going to produce a fake vaccination card, what difference does ID make in this scheme? At worst there would be a bit of inconvenience around having to make a fake card with your own name, but since photos of vaccination cards are accepted everywhere and stacks of CDC cards are still lying around at vaccination sites, this is pretty trivial. What's so hard about admitting that the policy is ill thought out, just like the Republican version? Both should go away or none should go away.

@JonathanReez: I've told you this is a false equivalence — a complete prevarication — three times now. the fact that you refuse to engage that point tells me that there's simply no longer any point in discussing the matter with you. I cannot stop you from lying if you are dead set on doing it, but I don't have to pay attention to it.

@TedWrigley I'm pointing out the inconsistency in attitudes towards ID checks. This causes strong cognitive dissonance for many people, who unfortunately are unable to evaluate their positions and accept that both policies are wrong.

@JonathanReez the inconsistency come from the fact that voting is a right that is central to the functioning of the democracy while eating at a restaurant or patronizing another non-essential business is not. Engaging with a non-essential business is by definition not essential. Voting is a completely different category of activity.

@JonathanReez: That is not what you are doing. You are fabricating a moral equivalence out of thin air and pugnaciously refusing to acknowledge it (for reasons I doubt you will ever be honest about). You cannot honestly believe that taking steps to discourage sick people from entering places where they can infect others is morally equivalent to taking steps to discourage minority groups from exercising their due and intrinsic right to vote. And since you cannot honestly believe that, all of your arguing here is at best studied hypocrisy.

@phoog right but if we expand this logic further, isn’t the corruption of voting worse than the corruption of public health, since voting is more essential? If some people don’t get vaccinated we get a higher hospital occupancy. If some people cast illegal votes, we risk undermining trust in the system and creating another January 6th event.