UN observers shocked no ID is required to vote

Voter ID cards are used in Mexico.
To prevent fraud nations around the world require ID to vote.

United Nations observers are shocked at Americans casting votes without showing ID

• The American election system is wide open for corruption with little to no controls to prevent voter fraud.
• Many voters can now register on-line and vote by mail.  No human being sees if they are real people or not.

For the head of Libya's national election commission, the method by which Americans vote is startling in that it depends so much on trust and the good faith of election officials and voters alike.

"It's an incredible system," said Nuri K. Elabbar, who traveled to the United States along with election officials from more than 60 countries to observe the presidential elections as part of a program run by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). One reporter visited polling places with some of the international officials Tuesday morning. Most of them agreed that in their countries, such an open voting system simply would not work.

Voter ID cards in India.

"It's very difficult to transfer this system as it is to any other country. This system is built according to trust and this trust needs a lot of procedures and a lot of education for other countries to adopt it," Elabbar said.

The most often noted difference between American elections among the visitors was that in most U.S. states, voters need no identification.

Voters can also vote by mail, sometimes online, and there's often no way to know if one person has voted several times under different names, unlike in some Arab countries, where voters ink their fingers when casting their ballots.

The international visitors also noted that there's no police at U.S. polling stations. In foreign countries, police at polling places are viewed as signs of security; in the United States they are sometimes seen as intimidating.
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(Foreign Policy.com)

In many Arab countries dipping the finger in purple ink
is used to prevent fraud.

A Libyan man holds up his voter ID card at a polling station
in Benghazi, Libya, on July 7, 2012. (Ibrahim Alaguri - AP)

We have our voter ID cards and are ready to vote in person.