To your point on American, entrenched parties controlling and applying many of the levers of power, that is mostly a forgone conclusion. The only way out is for one party to splinter cleanly and then the other could as well. The parties seed, raise, and harvest grist for the mills to feed the party itself.
I would suggest massive voter fraud is not feasible. There are many quality checks that limit the potential. There are disconnects in how many Americans think about the registration and voting process which, when played out, inspire suspicions or contempt. Busing voters, encouraging political engagement from the religious pulpit, etc. We have or can get the data. Between census, voter roles, etc. Fraud can be detected and surfaced - but it rarely is.
Also, all sober reviews of voting has supported the argument that the ID issue follows the narrative that one tribe is trying to apply ID laws to disenfranchise to their benefit and the other is trying to enfranchise to their benefit. Nobody stakes a purer claim to virtue on the matter. But, in a democracy enfranchisement > disenfranchisement, so in this case, Democrats are in closer alignment with the spirit of democracy.
In terms of how and why voter ID is being used in recent US cycles, review North Carolina where they collected and applied data on voter access to certain types of valid ID (there are multiple) and then applied that data for max political effect. It's a turf war. You won't find Republicans arguing to hand out voter ID's or making it trivial to get them. Just picking certain forms of ID to make it more cumbersome for certain people to vote.