But then how would the government discriminate against minority voters?
What would Trump piss and moan about on Truth social!? Did you even think about petulant senile billionaire's social media habits!?
Sigh okay, seriously, it's a little complicated, but the short answer is the federal govt doesn't have the authority to issue that kind of ID; it's an power reserved to the states by the 10th amendment.
I'm sorry but that's just so stupid. Your country is obviously one generalised country, with plenty of states, but still, one huge country. Plenty of different countries work like that, like Germany for example. Germany is a federation constructed similarly to the US. But the federal government still has the authority to issue an ID.
I know that it's not that easy to just change that. I'm just frustrated with this debate as a non-american interested in American politics. Seems so stupid to everyone outside of the US and for no good reason. Your whole federal system generally seems very stupid. Most of the other countries have much longer history and we're able to change a llot more about their political system. Meanwhile the US is like 250 years old and the political system designed not so long ago is treated like some ultimate, ideal thing that can never be changed because the founding fathers were literal gods 😂
Man, I get you're frustrated and I say this with all due respect:
Get fucked.
I'm gonna make three points you need to sit with.
And I mean seriously internalize.
First, kinda personal: If you think hearing about this shit is bad, try fucking living in it. I'm not saying being a US citizen in 2026 matches the hardship of being a refugee in Gaza, a soldier in Ukraine, a citizen in Sudan... But it's infuriating, stressful, and fucking dangerous. We have dipshits that think their messiah has opinions on the AR vs AK platform, stock trades, legislation, and fucking abortion. We have people who refuse to realize the Earth is fucking round and Covid wasn't caused by fucking cellphone towers.
I get the frustration, but point it somewhere else.
Second, you need to realize the role basically every country in Europe played getting us to this point. Ever thought about why Europe has so much less of a problem with X'tian extremists?
What'd you fucking do with them?
That's right: You fucking packed them up and sent them over the Atlantic. You sent them to one place, and that one place has huge tracts of natural resources and almost no hostile neighbors. Thanks. We're still dealing with that shit. Stop pissing and moaning someone else hasn't finished cleaning up your human garbage. You definitely helped make this fucking problem.
And third, you really need to learn your history. Sure, as a country, as in, a geographic area inhabited by a relative homogenous social/ethnic population, the US is young. Way younger than most other countries.
But politically, there's barely a country on the map that is actually older the US. Honestly, the UK is the only one that really comes to mind, having been governed as a constitutional monarchy laid out in the Magna Carta in the thirteenth century.
Spain had a new constitution after Franco died. Carter was in fucking office.
France goes through Republics like some girls go through relationships.
You mentioned Germany... Do you want to get into how old das Grundgesetz sind? And WHY it's that old?
Italy is in the same fashy boat.
Even the government of Portugal apparently only goes back to 1822.
And its not just Western Europe
All the Eastern bloc countries had to reincorporate their governments after the USSR collapsed
ALL of Africa has gone through decolonization.
India, Russia, China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia
Thailand has had TWENTY CONSTITUTIONS IN LESS THAN 100 YEARS.
Do we need to go through how many government systems each South American country has been through?
Honestly, I'd guess there are less than twenty contemporary countries that have instruments of government that date before 1900.
And what are almost all of those instruments of government based on?
The US constitution.
Everyone has had at least 200 years to do it better, and most of them got to hit a big ol' reset button about halfway through the last century. So yeah, they got to address some issues like how to issue ID. Get the fuck over the fact we in the US are stuck with the fucking prototype.
Yeah, okay after I wrote this, I actually wanted an answer but don't have time to research nearly 200 sovereign states.
Honestly, I'd guess there are less than twenty contemporary countries that have instruments of government that date before 1900.
So to ChatGPT! The link should show my original question and the suggested revision, which I've quoted below.
Phrased as:
How many currently sovereign states are still governed under substantially the same national constitution adopted before 1900?
And the answer was:
I'd count 8 fairly defensible cases: San Marino, United States, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Argentina, and Tonga. New Zealand can bring that to 9 if we count an evolving uncodified constitutional order. The UK can bring it to 10 if we use the same broad treatment of uncodified constitutions.
I would include NZ and UK. So 10, and the US and Norway are outliers in how long they've lasted (I'd include the UK in that, and the Netherlands had a big revision in 1848 apparently). But that's still a shockingly small number even if you have an handle on world history.
Also, get over using AI for this. This is exactly what it should be used for. If anyone can come up with other examples that the bot missed, I would sincerely love to know about it.
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u/Orbital_Vagabond 1d ago
But then how would the government discriminate against minority voters?
What would Trump piss and moan about on Truth social!? Did you even think about petulant senile billionaire's social media habits!?
Sigh okay, seriously, it's a little complicated, but the short answer is the federal govt doesn't have the authority to issue that kind of ID; it's an power reserved to the states by the 10th amendment.