It’s not a double check at the polling station. They simply need to confirm that you showed up and voted today, and have a way to ID you. The actual check, that you are legally allowed to vote, and that you are actually who you say you are, and that you aren’t allowed to vote anywhere else, all happened when you register to vote. That is a long process, and that’s why it is done before you actually need to go vote.

Every difficulty you build to try to make harder for your enemy voters to cast their vote is a difficulty you set up also for your voters.

Elections are run by the individual states (unless something egregiously unconstitutional is going on) which allows the governor and even local election officials to make decisions that affect how hard it is to vote almost down to a street level basis. If you don’t want people from blue areas to vote, you just put in fewer polling stations, and make them in less convenient places for areas that skew blue on the map. So adding 30 seconds to the voting time doesn’t really matter for a rural station that might need to service 100 people in a day, but for an inner city location that might need to service 100 people a minute those 30 seconds per person really add up.

Someone has to pay for the new SSN system. Someone has to pay to maintain the database for the old system, since a lot of stuff is still reliant on those “old” numbers and will be for some time. Someone has to pay for printing and distributing new cards to everyone. Someone has to pay for gov employees to check IDs and verify people before distribution. Someone is going to have to pay for errors in the deployment. Someone is going to have to pay for the damage done by identity theft.

I would bet that someone will not be Elon, or anyone else at DOGE.

The check in the US is done when you register to vote. Once you are registered, a variety of proofs of ID can be used to vote at your polling location.

Requiring a passport and birth cert or some other strong ID are unnecessary at the actual voting site. The main reason for doing this is to make voting take longer, and be more strenuous, which means that you can have a greater effect on election results by manipulating the number of polling stations for an area.

Yeah, thanks for that Equifax.

Please prove you are over 18 years old if you would like to continue this conversation.

I’m sorry. I can’t speak with you further. Discussion could include references to material that is not appropriate for children. Please prove you are over 18 years old if you would like to continue this conversation.

You cannot and should not charge their parents, who had abso-fuckin-lutely nothing to do with it.

https://apnews.com/article/james-crumbley-jennifer-crumbley-oxford-school-shooting-e5888f615c76c3b26153c34dc36d5436

You cannot and should not charge their parents, who had abso-fuckin-lutely nothing to do with it.

These two had “literally nothing” to do with it, and they were charged for it. It’s called Neglect.

https://abcnews.com/US/parents-charged-manslaughter-boy-struck-car-gastonia-north-carolina/story?id=122500748

And yes, if your kid commits crimes, then you can be fined and sued for it. You are responsible for the conduct of your child while your child is incapable of being responsible for themselves.

Let’s not forget, by your framework of parental responsibility, if your unsupervised child sees porn on discord because they wandered into a community of people talking about porn… Tough shit, that’s life.

Drinking and driving can and do harm others. I understand age gating those activities to prevent unresponsible children from hurting other people and themselves. Remember, by your framework of parental responsibility, “tough shit, that’s life”. The age limits on smoking and also drinking, are there to prevent tobacco and alcohol vendors from hooking children on addictive substances. Remember, by your framework of parental responsibility, “tough shit, that’s life”. Age requirements to get tattoos are there to prevent children from getting life-long body altering ink from a vendor who had a financial interest in doing the work. Some states do allow teens to get tattoos, with parental consent BTW. Remember, by your framework of parental responsibility, “tough shit, that’s life”.

This is exactly what I meant when I said you should think about the wider implications of your argument before you make it and nail your identity to it.

Tell you what. Let’s do one more thing here to really test your conviction to this argument that discord should be photo-ID-ing it’s users. The Fediverse is an equally open (if not more so) forum where people can communicate in ways that convey NSFW content. I will stick to my guns, and accept the consequences of any child I’m responsible for seeing titties or a live leak murder if I let them on the internet unsupervised. You, on the other hand, need to show us all a photo ID (make it your profile pic, or put it in your bio, to prove you’re not a child) before you can post further on any platform? Deal? Or are you going to back out of what you are advocating to force on everyone?

Microsoft. Please, scrape my comment and reach out to me. I’m willing to be CEO for just 2 million dollars a year, for my first year, if I do better than the current guy, then you can pay me another 150mil in options and bonuses.

Yep. Un-parented teen burns down your house, shit happens.

Another kid brings their dad’s gun to school and shoot your kid, shit happens.

Kid has to steal food in order to survive. Shit happens.

Clearly, the parents are completely beyond reproach.

Seriously, do you even think of the wider implications of a position that you are arguing, or do you just pick the dumbest fucking stance and stick with it all the way? Parents have been raising their kids for literally as long as there have been people on this earth. It’s practically globally agreed upon that the parents are responsible for raising and controlling their child, until the child has developed enough to make their own decisons, understand the risks, and accept the consequences for their actions.

And… To go further, your “world view” about “bad shit happens” can be extended to cover “My child saw porn, shit happens”, which would break down your argument that it is necessary for discord to collect and store PII from millions of people.

Gotcha. So if it is the first time, or maybe the second time, fuck you, pay for the damage someone else did to your car and their own car. Maybe on the 4th or 5th time, we can start getting the teen’s parents to pay for it?

If you can demonstrate a pattern of bad parenting, sure.

So, if a teen takes their mom’s keys, and drives her car into your parked car, should you be on the hook for the damages to your vehicle? Should you be on the hook for the damages to her vehicle? Especially if it’s a first time offense?

I don’t understand how you reconcile these 2 statements. They can’t watch their kids 100% but also if the kid does something illegal, it’s their responsibility?

The reconsoliation is that as a parent, you are responsible/accountable for the actions of your child at all times, whether you are watching them or not. It’s part of being a parent. Raising your children not to be little sociopaths who can eventually be trusted as adults, is a major part of parenting.

Let me ask you: Should parents be responsible for damage done by their child?

I’m not really expecting yes/no to that answer, so feel free to elaborate on it

If your child steals a car, are you allowed to say “I can’t watch my kids all time time” and get off consequence free?

Of course not. Do I think it is realistic for parents to keep an eye on their kid 100% of the time, of course not… But, I do expect that parents raise their kids in a progressively less restrictive manner and provide access to more autonomy as the child mautures? Absolutely, and I don’t think it is unreasonable to extend that progressive loosening of the parental leash in the real world to children on the internet. You shouldn’t have to watch your kids all the time on the internet, if they are old enough and mature enough to be on there unsupervised. If they aren’t ready for unsupervised access to the internet, then you shouldn’t allow it.

Okay. Cool that’s what I said too. Just… the way you said it sounded like you were advocating for using bad parenting as a pretext for massive breaches of privacy and identity security.

Ah, so maybe shitty parents isn’t a good enough reason to let a company monetize and eventually lose your PII to the dark web?

I hear you. I guess shitty parents is a good enough reason to let a company monetize your PII for a bit before they (or one of their customers) gets hacked and dumps to the dark web.

It sounds like you are doing the right things.

Long ago, I had a co-worker ask me if fortnite was okay for their kid to play, and I said “I don’t know. Why don’t you go play fortnight with your kid this weekend and see for yourself” and it was like a switch flipped in their head. Playing games online with your kids is something you can do, both to see how people are interacting with them, and to see how they are interacting with other people. I think it is really important too, that kids (especially only-childs) see other people gaming online first hand, so they can see that the person on the other end could just as easily be their mom, or grandpa, or another human being, and not just a bot that they can antagonize without consequence.

My nephew plays lots of on online games. My sister checks in with me to make sure that he is both playing games that are appropriate for him, and with people who are appropriate to play with. We’ve setup a discord specifically for him and his friends, and the account he uses is actually my sister’s account, on her own device, so she has direct control over what communities he’s on in discord, who he talks to, and what content he is exposed to.

He is not allowed to play public lobby games with out her supervision, or a trusted “chaperone” (one of many IRL friend and family members) being in the lobby with him. This is as much about protecting him from harmful content, as it is about teaching him proper gaming etiquette. He was showing some toxic behaviors (greifing mainly) and I shut that down pretty quick.

And how do you , practically, do that?

By paying attention to your child.

Before the internet, parents could exert control by knowing where their children were physically going and who they were talking to over the phone.

Yes, by paying attention to their children.

Even in the '90s and 2000s, parents could control a child’s Internet use by limiting time on the family computer.

Yep, by paying attention to when the kid was on the computer and what they were doing on there.

Nowadays? Just about every child has a tablet or phone. Even the ones who don’t have devices at home, or have their device use monitored at home, have access to school devices.

If you give a child a tablet or phone, you should probably pay attention to what they are doing with it. You wouldn’t just give them a full tool box to play with unsupervised.

Exerting control over a child’s online activity now means monitoring everything they do on every device they have access to, including during the eight hours per day or so that they’re on devices for school work

Yep, by paying attention to the kid.

No parent has time for that.

Bullshit. You need to pay attention to your kids, that’s a basic fucking part of parenting.

And if the child is deliberately trying to hide some kind of illicit online activity, monitoring becomes an order of magnitude more difficult

Maybe you should pay attention to your kid and not let them have unsupervised access to the whole Internet until they are ready for it?

because, again, children have access to their own devices, school devices, their friends’ devices, library devices, and dozens of other devices a parent may not even know about and has no ability to monitor.

Actually, you do have an ability to monitor who your kid spends time with, and when. It’s called parenting.

I’m frankly horrified by the increasing requirements for real identity verification but let’s not pretend being a parent is the same as it was in the '70s.

Let’s not pretend that phones and the Internet only started existing in 2026 too. I was a child in the 90’s, during the real “Wild West” days of the internet. If anything, parents have more tools and controls over what their child can access in 2026 than they did in 2000. There weren’t “child” cellphone controls when I got my first phone. My dad didn’t give me one until I both needed it, and was mature enough to have it. The parental controls on my old Window 2000 machine were laughably easy to defeat. Do you know what kept me out of trouble though? My dad paid attention to when I used the computer, what I was doing on there, and how much I was doing it.

Either parent your kid, or don’t, but it is not my job to make sure your kid is coddled on the internet.

Should be pretty evident from the comment.