As a European, it boggles my mind how there isn’t any for of proper verification on voters identity in many US states.
Requiring voter ID disenfranchises marginalised and poor voters, who may not be able to obtain ID easily. I know several people who have no form of government issued ID.
It's different in countries like Germany and France, where compulsory national ID is a thing.
Rates of fraud and abuse are low enough that this isn't an issue. Technically I could go and vote in somebody else's name, and hope they also didn't vote, and I most likely wouldn't get caught. But if they did vote as well, then the double-vote would be noticed (people have have been caught casting multiple votes in the past) and would be investigated.
If the office that hands out ID cards is only open 9-5 Mon-Fri, for example, a voter who must work during this time and can't afford to miss work may not be able to get ID.
(Not a conjecture, this was actually evidence in one of the various voter ID lawsuits; the state government had constructed a table with impact assessments of various approaches, then picked the one with the worst impact)
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-we-know-about-vote...
To be clear what I don’t buy is voter ID having a suppressive effect iff we had an actual national ID
IMO, it's bloody retarded that this feature is still non-present in the US, resulting in all the pseudo ids like driver's licenses and SSNs.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-we-know-about-vote...
In the UK you must pre-register for a single voting location, and then when you turn up to vote they cross your name off so you can't come in again.
> I think this is a big part as to why postal voting fraud happens.
It might happen, but it is exceptionally rare. The impact of introducing voter ID laws would cause a far larger decrease in election validity due to voter suppression than postal voting fraud causes.