^that’s bait
It turns out that when the "voting security" party becomes the "anti -education" party, those two ideals might come into conflict...
Most people use state-issued drivers licenses (with varying levels of federal acceptance) as their primary ID.
Historically, US States used "poll taxes" to defacto discriminate against recently freed slaves, who obviously had no money, so we have explicit laws against fees for voting, and an ID that you have to pay for is kind of an indirect way of implementing a fee for voting.
There's a lot of complicated history involved, and I totally get why the system feels weird to an outsider, but you accidentally blew a dog whistle that usually belongs to people trying to find sneaky ways of preventing minorities from voting (that as I alluded too, have the potential to backfire in modern times).
Maybe you wouldn't find it interesting, since you said you don't care about our politics, but the history of voting discrimination, voting rights, and the various schemes to try to surpress then while following the law in the US are kind of fascinating and worth digging into if you're genuinely curious.
I am familiar with the history, but from an outsider POV it feels like the story of the sheep that got electrocuted once and then never ventured outside, the path dependency is not really helpful in general. Also I followed the law in the US to make ID mandatory at voting, and from what I saw the whole debate around it seemed deranged, if voter fraud and non-citizens voting is inexistent, why did so many people oppose it. Ironically what will happen is that the elderly will be most affected and will stop voting Republican (chat happened in the UK).
1) because as the other commenter pointed out these systems have historically been used to discriminate. Historically being recent history at that.
2) drilling down on “if voter fraud and non-citizens voting is inexistent, why did so many people oppose it”: If voter fraud isn’t a problem, then it follows we shouldn’t go out of our way to make sweeping, costly, often discriminatory changes to stop a thing that doesn’t really happen. Even Trump’s own team that was looking far and wide in his first term couldn’t find any evidence of meaningful voter fraud. So why should we risk disenfranchising people in an effort to stop a problem that doesn’t really exist, as verified by his own administration and decades of research?
The voter fraud “concern” (politically speaking, some non-politicians believe it’s a large issue because they have been lied to) is fueled by the fact that he can’t possibly believe he lost. He even did it in 2016 when he won, because he couldn’t stand losing the popular vote, going so far as to claim the exact number of fraudulent votes was the number he lost by in the popular vote (as usual with no evidence). I just don’t understand why anyone would think this kind of initiative is in any way legitimate or otherwise in good faith.
1. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/report-trump-commi...
2. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/disb...
3. Fun fact I just noticed, the linked executive order disbanding the group investigating alleged voter fraud (at this point we can just call it a lie) has been removed from the WH site, and in typical Trump admin fashion there’s no explanation given so I will have to assume it’s another example of their removing stuff they think makes them look bad despite the information being clearly in the public interest. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or...
To be clear: I am not against a national ID for voting. In fact, I think the best compromise is that the federal government should issue a free identification card to every US citizen, which can be replaced once (maybe twice) a year with no fee, that every state then recognizes (in addition to current identification forms) as a legitimate form of identification for voting. That sounds like a great idea to me as it could even help voters and imposes no fees to vote, but I can also tell you that it’s nothing like what the Republicans are proposing, even though it makes total sense.
It’s pointless expense if you ask me. But if you believe voter fraud is a real problem then this seems like a reasonable solution.
I mean yeah, not free but a minimal fee like 20$ or something, doable in an easy place., the problem is not really the ability or will, but political polarization that makes even reasonable propositions become weaponized.
It's not a pointless expense if it is integrated into other systems like healthcare, driving licence, and for example, online identification to do taxes and such. You cannot meaningfully digitalize bureaucracy without standard IDs.
It should be free and easy to acquire. No fee, no DMV nonsense. There is no reason to charge. Trump’s ridiculous crusade to “prove” voter fraud cost US taxpayers half a billion dollars directly. We could’ve easily given every person voting age an ID card with that money.
You have to bear in mind that voting is opt-in here and you are already required to show ID to register to vote. On top of that, even states that don’t require an ID each time to cast your vote do require it the first time you vote. So nobody in the US can 1) register and then 2) vote without identification in any state, despite the republicans’ often misleading (through being incomplete) claim that you can vote without an ID. There are 3 barriers: not able to me vote by default, 2 times proving identification with a legal ID, and an ID every time you vote in 38/50 states. That is plenty to stop voter fraud, as clearly evidenced by the handful we see per election