Annoyingly "Android Auto" and "Android Automotive" are completely different things.
Android Auto is where you can connect your phone to the car and your phone projects onto the car's display with apps and navigation.
Android Automotive is when the car itself is running Android Automotive for its infotainment OS, meaning it has access to a limited Android App Store to install apps natively into the car's infotainment system and you can sign in with your Google account.
Some cars with Android Automotive also support CarPlay and Android Auto on top of it, but GM has decided to disable those features, meaning you have to use the built-in Android Automotive system to manage your media streaming apps and pay GM for the data access plan.
The main difference there is that with an HDHP your employer is still the one choosing the insurance provider, and the insurance provider views your employer as the customer. There's no risk that you as an individual will switch to another provider as long as the employer remains with this one.
Removing that layer of indirection would make it your own choice to pick a provider, and the provider is then incentivized, at least a little bit, to provide you with a good outcome or else you may freely switch to another provider.
There's also the component that, right now, you lose the discounted group rate insurance premium as soon as you lose or leave a particular job. Putting the purchasing power with the end consumer means that you can keep your provider at the same premiums even if you switch jobs. All that might change is your employer contribution.
My understanding is that some US states have regulations against selling power by the kWh unless you are a registered power utility. This is an old regulation meant to be about landlords marking up electric rates to tenants etc.
Most states have updated their laws to account for EV charging providers, and in those states we pay per kWh.
This product effectively cuts the entry price for a new model Mac laptop in half. The cheapest current-generation MacBook has been $999 or above for a very long time, even back to the iBook days.
Yes, Apple has offered discounted prices by continuing to sell older models or offer straight discount sales via third party retailers. But I expect that will continue here too. This is $599 MSRP at Apple but will probably be $499 via the usual retailers by the end of 2026.
That's a bit different than continuing to sell a 5-year-old model at a discount.
I think assuming that this is a disposable, non-serviceable machine is a bit premature. Yes the RAM and SSD are soldered to the mainboard, but otherwise it looks like this might be Apple's most serviceable computer in a long time.
TBF my friends who were getting business degrees struggled with their 8 gigs pc. When they need to run something like SPSS next to a chrome instance, their ram got tight pretty fast.
> That being said, I am in favor of in-person voting requiring proof of citizenship
I think this is fine if it also then means that obtaining a qualifying ID is treated as a no-cost and highly-accessible right for all citizens.
This is where such arguments tend to get stuck in the US. If you require proof of citizenship, but also have places where getting to a government office to get such an ID is difficult or expensive, then you are effectively restricting voting access for citizens. A measure to place stricter qualifications on voting access needs to also carefully consider and account for providing access to all citizens.
The US is a geographically very large place with worse public transportation options compared to many other countries, and with that comes differences in economic and accessibility considerations for things like "Just go to your county's office and get a qualifying ID."
Pretty much every bill that has ever been put forward for needing an ID to vote has had a provision for free IDs. That’s not where things get caught up.
Also, it’s a pretty silly thing anyways. I don’t even drink and I still need my driver’s license quite a few times every year.
I don't even know why this is downvoted. Standard technique in Texas. Harris County does not have 40 DPS offices for its 5 million people. The current backlog to get a DPS drivers license appointment in Harris County is 45 days. The next available appointment in Kerrville is tomorrow. That is inequitable.
But anyway, none of that is the real core issue with the idea of voter ID. The real issue is that there are many living Americans who were born in jurisdictions that steadfastly refused to issue birth certificates to Black people.
In Washington voting is free. My ballot comes in the mail, I fill it out, I drop it in the outgoing mail. It's pre-stamped. I don't mind full citizenship verification at the time of registration, as that can be done months before it's actually time to vote.
A (small) majority of states require employers to grant time off to vote and a (large) minority require that time to be paid. Although as others have noted, it is often the case that the window for voting exceeds a single shift (dependent on your area of work).
Funny, because I have the exact same thing to say to the legislators. Oh, it's too hard to get everyone voter ID? Too expensive? That's life; figure it out before passing your pointless security theater law[1]. Otherwise, we will do everything in our power to stop it.
[1] (Though mass disenfranchisement is almost certainly the actual purpose of the law, not security.)
"Voting is only from 9-4" and you have a real job. Let's not pretend this wouldn't immediately be taken advantage of in certain places where disenfranchisement is real.
Get an absentee ballot then. And I've never seen such limited hours in my lifetime. Usually it's 6am-6pm on election day. And many places now have early voting, you have 20-30 days to find a time to go vote.
Absentee ballots are available at the county seat from 2:00pm to 3:15pm on the second Tuesday the month except in September and October if the county has less than 5 clerks available. Clerk allocations are based on property tax (pay for what you use). Congratulations poor and minority counties now can’t access absentee ballots.
This sounds made up but limiting access to “free” services is not unheard of. This topic has been litigated to death. There are no new arguments. If you are in favor of voter ID laws you are simply ignorant.
Making things more difficult means fewer people will do it. It's foolish to insist that it's all or nothing. It's not about being capable, it's about marginal effects in large groups of people.
Yep. And in fact there's been a ton of resistance for 20 years to rolling out an alternate form of driver's license which does act as proof of citizenship. See the REAL ID, which even now is only kinda a requirement to fly domestically.
For example, DACA recipients, temporary protected status refugees, and citizens of states in free association with the USA (Micronesia/Marshall Islands/Palau) that are in the USA are all eligible for Real ID.
Correct. My understanding of the SAVE act is that it would require an enhanced RealID drivers license to act as sole proof of citizenship, which is a type of license only issued in 5 states (all bordering Canada) that can act as proof of citizenship when driving across the US-Canada border. Even people with a valid RealID would be required to bring an additional form of ID to prove citizenship, such as a birth certificate. The fact that this is confusing to people is, in and of itself, a huge red flag for the impact this will have on voter participation.
I'm not sure where this idea that REAL ID is a form of citizenship came from. I am not a citizen and i was given a REAL ID just by proving my legal (non-immigrant) status.
I have a Real ID, and I supplied a proof of citizenship to get it. However, in my state, it's possible to obtain a Real ID without providing proof of citizenship, so my Real ID does not qualify as proof of citizenship. My passport is the only document I have that could function as both photo ID and proof of citizenship. Passports are not the easiest things to obtain and they are not free.
While Wisconsin was debating this, they also closed a bunch of DMVs and limited hours for other ones.
The WI constitution enshrines the ability to vote. So you may think it's silly and for 99% of people it may be silly, but if anyone is prevented from voting because there's not a reasonable way for them to get a license, their rights are being infringed.
You can make it free but still require a person to travel to the county seat or some other distant location to get the ID. That requirement disproportionately hinders minority and poor voters. It’s also easy to “forget” their registrations.
The current bill Trump is pushing for requires "documentary proof of citizenship ", this can actually be very hard. It means an original/certified birth certificate, as well as any subsequent name changes (mostly married women).
This is completely unnecessary.
We establish citizenship, very reliably, at time of registration. This is on of the main jobs of the registrar of voters. They have plenty of time to look up the details of the person and establish citizenship (and intentionally lying in this process is a serious crime).
We then establish identity at the time of voting, again, very reliably.
Intentional voter impersonation or voting when not eligible is vanishingly rare in the US.
Some states only require a piece of mail and checking a box saying you are legally allowed to vote to register. Then when you checkin to vote the workers are not permitted to ask for ID to prove you are the person you claim to be.
At no point during that process is there presentation of proof of citizenship.
Any ballots that are cast under same-day registration are cast as provisional and will go through the full verification process if the election is close enough where those ballots are necessary.
Source: actually ran a fucking election precinct. Non-citizens aren’t casting ballots illegally.
I'm not talking about same day registration. If you are on the rolls and proof of citizenship is not required to register, then how do you as a poll worker know the person on the rolls is a citizen?
You don't, but also you don't have to. Voter rolls are cross referenced with other sources of data to verify citizenship. ID is required to submit a non-provisional ballot even during early voting if you're not in your designated precinct.
Also just generally it's a severe federal crime to vote illegally, so people who are here illegally aren't out en masse publicly tying their identity to federal felonies.
They literally just charged someone in Philadelphia for illegally voting in every federal election since 2008. Non-citizen, ordered deported back in 2000 but still in the country.
There's not been a reliable audit to show the extent to which this happens (probably not enough to affect even local elections), but to say that it isn't happening is just a lie.
One of voter ID's biggest advocates, the Heritage Foundation, could only find 68 cases of non-citizens voting since 1980. Even if all of them are repeat offenders, that's a few hundred bad ballots out of billions cast. As you said, it is also possible to catch these people. Our election integrity is not threatened by non-citizen voters. It just doesn't happen on the scale that Republicans insist it must be happening, and the fact that they keep repeating it doesn't make it true, it means that they have an agenda that benefits from making you think it's true.
The Heritage Foundation's database on fraud was explicitly described as not exhaustive, but merely demonstrating that the potential (and reality) is there. It's not like they've got exhaustive access to both voter registration rolls and votes cast.
In states that bother, millions have been removed from voter rolls who weren't eligible in recent years, but the DOJ hasn't done anything with the data either.
If the Heritage Foundation's goal was to merely demonstrate the possibility of voter fraud, then they should have saved themselves the effort. Of course it's possible, and of course it happens; and when it happens, it tends to get discovered and handled. They have a much higher bar to clear to convince me that the issue warrants any greater scrutiny than it already receives.
As for the removal of millions from various voter rolls, you'll have to be more specific; most of these are administrative tasks being performed as they are meant to be performed, and very few of the millions removed are non-citizens. Most are removed because they've died, or moved, or failed to respond to inquiries, etc. Oregon, for example, recently moved to remove 800,000 voters from their rolls, but again, this was an administrative move; the voters were already marked as inactive and inactive voters in Oregon do not receive ballots. Removing them wasn't a priority, but now it is, so they're doing it. The point is that millions being removed is not really a cause for alarm or a sign of fraud; it's just a sign that you're unaware of how the system works.
If you listen carefully to the "ballot access" side of this argument (actually informed people and politicians, not random on the internet), you will see they don't ever say it does not happen.
What they say is that it does not happen enough to plausibly come close to affecting the outcome. And this is widely supported, including by right-wing organizations (as a sibling comment observes).
As with most issues, there is a trade-off here. As you tighten controls to prevent improper voting, you prevent some people from realistically being able to vote (it's just too hard, time consuming or expensive for them to meet the documentation requirements), and discourage others. This is particularly bad for the 1-2 elections after the rule change, which most people won't know about until they show up to vote. IMO, this is really the point of the changes.
And you have to weigh that negative against the supposed benefit. But that benefit is really hard to find. It's very clear that intentional voter fraud (fraud in registration, or in-person impersonation) is extremely rare, and does not come anywhere close to affecting outcomes. It's already a crime, and we seem to be pretty good at catching it.
The other argument for a benefit is that it improves voter confidence in elections. I reject this, since the only reason the public at large has any real concerns is because of intentional misinformation by the right. You can't lie to people to convince them there is a problem, and then use that to justify your heavy handed solution.
> Source: actually ran a fucking election precinct. Non-citizens aren’t casting ballots illegally.
So, you can see people are actually claiming that it doesn't happen. Further,
> It's already a crime, and we seem to be pretty good at catching it.
How can we be good at catching it if it is too hard for our own citizens to actually get proof that they are citizens? We hear about the cases that happen, but we don't hear about the people go go undetected, because they go undetected.
Ok? And yet, they were caught. Dude's a shithead, swung zero elections, and got caught. They catch people all the time voting illegally. I would make a strong guess that they counted zero of his ballots as they were all provisional.
He should go to jail and yet his existence is not proof that there are hoards of African deportees voting in state and federal elections.
That is the documentation they ask for in the application. It's enough for them to understand who you claim to be. They then consult their own records to establish if that identity is eligible to vote. Then finally, on Election Day, you show you are that person.
At that last part, Election Day identification, is not even that important, since the same person can't vote twice. So if you impersonate another person that will be quickly detected. It's not a useful strategy to alter the outcome of an election.
Requiring poor people to pay a hefty fee, which they probably don't have, to get a passport seems a fairly competent way to go about making sure poor people don't vote to me.
If I don't want poor people voting, then attaching a fee to voting doesn't mean I'm incompetent. It means I'm smart enough to know poor people don't have money.
By the way, I think all of this is horrible. Everyone should be equal before the law and should have their vote count without having to pay for that right. I'm just pointing out that this is a really good way to eliminate the vote of the poor.
I hate that we get so caught up on applying labels to the disenfranchisement, rather than completely and forcefully rejecting any attempts to disenfranchise any voter.
In a functioning democracy, voting is sacred. It must be treated as THEE core, fundamental right of every person under its care.
To violate this sacred tenet should be immediate grounds for exile. If you can't respect the ONE CORE tenet, or are incapable of, then there is not space for you in this society.
>obtaining a qualifying ID is treated as a no-cost and highly-accessible right for all citizens.
I do not think it is that straightforward. Making it more accessible makes it possible for people with less skin in the game able to vote. Imagine how invested someone who owns several properties and businesses in a city is and how much they care about the success of the city compared to some other person who is just renting an apartment and has not even a job in that city meaning they could move at any time. The vote of the first person is much more important than the second. Trying to make voting overly accessible may make more people from the second category start voting which could result in bad decisions being made because people can easily move away if things go wrong.
Great but history is proof that it won’t be equally accessible to everyone. There’s no evidence these laws are necessary. This juice just ain’t worth the squeeze.
> I think this is fine if it also then means that obtaining a qualifying ID is treated as a no-cost and highly-accessible right for all citizens.
This is essentially what the Supreme Court said when they upheld Indiana's Voter ID law in 2008 [1]:
> The burdens that are relevant to the issue before us are those imposed on persons who are eligible to vote but do not possess a current photo identification that complies with the requirements of SEA 483. The fact that most voters already possess a valid driver’s license, or some other form of acceptable identification, would not save the statute under our reasoning in Harper, if the State required voters to pay a tax or a fee to obtain a new photo identification. But just as other States provide free voter registration cards, the photo identification cards issued by Indiana’s BMV are also free. For most voters who need them, the inconvenience of making a trip to the BMV, gathering the required documents, and posing for a photograph surely does not qualify as a substantial burden on the right to vote, or even represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting.
> Both evidence in the record and facts of which we may take judicial notice, however, indicate that a somewhat heavier burden may be placed on a limited number of persons. They include elderly persons born out-of-state, who may have difficulty obtaining a birth certificate; persons who because of economic or other personal limitations may find it difficult either to secure a copy of their birth certificate or to assemble the other required documentation to obtain a state-issued identification; homeless persons; and persons with a religious objection to being photographed. If we assume, as the evidence suggests, that some members of these classes were registered voters when SEA 483 was enacted, the new identification requirement may have imposed a special burden on their right to vote.
> The severity of that burden is, of course, mitigated by the fact that, if eligible, voters without photo identification may cast provisional ballots that will ultimately be counted. To do so, however, they must travel to the circuit court clerk’s office within 10 days to execute the required affidavit. It is unlikely that such a requirement would pose a constitutional problem unless it is wholly unjustified.
Yes, but I don't think most of those IDs qualify as "proof of citizenship."
Even a RealID compliant ID is not direct proof of citizenship.
Others in the comment chain have talked about localities with very few DMV officer per capita in some districts and appointment wait times of over a month. If we are going to require such a step to be eligible to vote, we need to hold states and municipalities to a high standard of providing an adequate level of service for all citizens.
> but also have places where getting to a government office to get such an ID is difficult or expensive
Where in the US do you find it's difficult for people to get an ID? Where is it not? What percentage of the population has an ID in a place where it's difficult to get one vs somewhere it is easier?
What constitutes an ID being expensive?
Nearly every country in the world requires proof of citizenship to vote. How is the rest of the world dealing with this problem? Do you think that their democratic processes might be compromised because of it?
> Nearly every country in the world requires proof of citizenship to vote. How is the rest of the world dealing with this problem?
Most of those nations have a mandatory national ID, so everyone already has proof of citizenship. The US and UK are very much outliers in having vocal and successful resistance to the implementation of a national ID card.
It's still bizarre though how this plays out in reality.
In some places like Illinois, an ID is required to exercise the rights of people but not the rights of citizens (FOID required to bear guns, but ID not required for vote).
In places like Arizona, it's the exact opposite. You can bear or conceal guns without an ID but you need an ID to vote.
Vermont is the only state I know of with any consistency on lack of ID requirements that convey non-ID citizens to also have the right of people. You can conceal guns and vote without ID.
Until 1986[1] most Americans didn't get a Social Security Number until their first job.
In The Matrix (1999) there's a scene where Agent Smith explicitly remarks that Neo has an SSN as proof he's a law-abiding citizen in a white-collar job.
[1] when it was made a requirement to claim tax deductions for dependent children. Even today, if you don't want the tax break, you can opt out at the cost of ruining your child's life!
Prior to that, getting the SSN required giving your birth certificate to the government. If the family wasn't getting government benefits, many didn't bother.
> What percentage of the population has an ID in a place where it's difficult to get one vs somewhere it is easier?
Not the OP, but except for passports (and passport cards)... there isn't really any federal-level ID in the US (and passport booklets/cards are expensive, just a bit over $100 IIRC).
The nearest equivalent in the state level are driver's licenses, which are also on the expensive side considering the ancillary costs (because it's a driver's license, not just an identification card). This is also the reason why US-centric companies like PayPal, for this exact reason, accepts a driver's license as proof of identification (obviously where not otherwise prohibited by local laws).
Some (New York for example) do have an ID (called a non-DL ID, that's how embedded driver's license is in the US), but most states do not have a per se ID.
> What constitutes an ID being expensive?
Developing countries, rather ironically, issue their IDs for free? Okay, indirectly paid by taxes, but there's no upfront cost. The above-mentioned identity documents have a clear cost attached to them.
> How is the rest of the world dealing with this problem? Do you think that their democratic processes might be compromised because of it?
Cannot talk about other countries (because there is an ID system and it's not a controversial affair to them), but instead I'll answer with a reflection of the US system.
Unfortunately, American ID politics are hard, mainly due to concerns of surveillance, but I think (only my opinion) because some of them want those historically disenfranchised (even if a fully native-born US citizen) de facto disenfranchised. This means that there is no uniform and freely-issued identification system in the US (or even a requirement to do that at the state level). Unfortunately, this... is a tough nut to crack, politically-speaking.
I haven't researched this thoroughly, but what state will not issue an ID that is equivalent in every way to a driver's license except that it isn't a license to drive? I just checked Mississippi, Wyoming, South Dakota, and West Virginia, all of which do, so clearly being rural, poor, or both isn't enough to stop states from doing it. (The detailed politics are, as you say, a mess.)
Out of curiosity, do you have a source or list for this? My own home state and those around me that I've spot checked all have a state ID available as an alternative to a driver's license. My understanding was that this is the case for most states.
Unless I've misunderstood you and you meant a state ID that is completely separate from a driver's license to the point that people with a DL would have one?
Proof of citizenship is not the same as the driver's licenses people are issued by their state.
Not everyone has ready access to proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. It gets even more difficult if your current legal name doesn't match your birth name, e.g. if you took your husband's name.
Not every eligible voter has or needs a government issued ID. For example, retired people who don't drive. For them to get to the DMV to get an ID just to vote would be a challenge.
The US has large rural areas where government offices are hours away.
All of this adds up to significant barriers to eligible voters. There's a reason even the GOP isn't bending over backward to pass the SAVE Act.
The person I used to stay with when I used to visit WV don't have a proof of citizenship. He doesn't know where his birth certificate is (probably with the US army if they kept track of their nurses giving birth on ex-allied territory during a war), and get by with is SSN and driver license.
How it works in my country : my electoral card is freely sent to my address when I register to my voting office. I can vote with it, or with an official ID, as long as I'm in the correct place. The only moment I need my ID is to cast a vote on behalf of someone who identified me as a 'surrogate'.
There are rural places in the US where it is an hour + drive to whatever the equivalent of the DMV office is, with no public transit. You can find similar places in cities where people may not have a car at all, with a long walk to find such an office that is only open during narrow hours.
People in or near poverty are going to be disproportionately affected by those conditions.
And just getting to the DMV does not necessarily mean you can get an ID that counts as proof of citizenship. There is no standard federal citizen ID in the US. A basic state ID or driver's license is not proof of citizenship. Even a RealID compliant ID is not a direct proof of citizenship, so depending on how strict the voting requirements are it may not be adequate.
Nearly 21 million voting-age U.S. citizens do not have a current (non-expired) driver’s license. Just under 9%, or 20.76 million people, who are U.S. citizens aged 18 or older do not have a non-expired driver’s license. Another 12% (28.6 million) have a non-expired license, but it does not have both their current address and current name.
Additionally, just over 1% of adult U.S. citizens do not have any form of government-issued photo identification, which amounts to nearly 2.6 million people.[1]
If 10% of drivers lacked car insurance, would your solution be to remove the legal requirement to possess a valid insurance policy to operate a motor vehicle because it discriminates against the poor?
The poor have a right to vote, while they don't have a right to operate a motor vehicle. We can debate over how disenfranchising it is to be unable to drive in the US (very), but the law makes a pretty clear distinction between these two activities.
Under the SAVE act, you kind of have to have a passport or don't vote in some states.
Which is why I'm pretty sure it's not gonna pass. Both republicans and democrats depend heavily on mass votes from, let's just say, a lot of people who are, generally speaking, not the sort to have passports.
In the US, a driver license isn't a proof of citizenship. Also, state IDs are not accepted by federal agencies, so it probably wouldn't work as proof of citizenship on federal elections.
If there is a federal law requiring proof of citizenship, as is currently being argued in Congress, a state ID would not be all you need since they are not proof of citizenship.
The cliche about HR doesn't mean that HR can't ever be helpful to you, just that they are incentivized to be helpful in ways that help the company. For example advising on how to best use benefits to keep employees healthy or recover from an illness or injury so they can return to work.
But if your needs as an employee go against what is best for the company by costing money, productivity, or creating risk for bad publicity, or they go against high level managers or executives who hold outsized sway with HR, then it will be difficult for you to get help from them.
Fairly common for me to see my light turn green and 2-3 more cars continue turning left in front of me through a red light. And not just yellow-light clippers, but cars that would have fully entered the intersection under a red light.
I'm actually all for impartial enforcement of traffic rules via camera systems, but there are problems that need to be solved.
- There need to be standards for evidence required to assign an infraction to a driver.
- There need to be standards for setting yellow light durations to avoid municipalities reducing them to increase revenue
- There needs to be protection against municipalities outsourcing the whole project to a private entity where there is a combined financial incentive from the private entity and the municipality to issue more tickets without adequate oversight.
My town implemented red light cameras around 15 years ago and then took them back out. Locals noticed shortened yellow lights, and there were multiple issues found with how the private operator issued the tickets and with their contract with the municipality.
Android Auto is where you can connect your phone to the car and your phone projects onto the car's display with apps and navigation.
Android Automotive is when the car itself is running Android Automotive for its infotainment OS, meaning it has access to a limited Android App Store to install apps natively into the car's infotainment system and you can sign in with your Google account.
Some cars with Android Automotive also support CarPlay and Android Auto on top of it, but GM has decided to disable those features, meaning you have to use the built-in Android Automotive system to manage your media streaming apps and pay GM for the data access plan.
reply