Sure, the federal government could set something up, but I think the tricky part is getting all the individual states to adopt the system.
Two things to note though: the Japanese registry system was originally set up so the government could keep track of its people, and given the level of anti-government paranoia in the US, I highly doubt that sort of change would get support.
A majority of Americans don't even support a uniform ID card for all citizens, which almost every other country has.
>Sure, the federal government could set something up, but I think the tricky part is getting all the individual states to adopt the system.
It doesn't even need to be on federal level. Just think about it - koseki was designed mid-19 century and used paper records held by municipality. Churches in Europe kept paper books noting marriages, births and deaths even before that.
The downsides are obvious:
- in case of need you should go to same municipality and get extract from same book where event was recorded;
- you only can make record in book of municipality where you are resident.
Also possible in implementing such a system are a variety of accidents or abuses that may unfairly benefit or harm different groups. "Seeding" the central database from the existing patchwork of forms, licenses, decisions, databases and other records would be inherently messy and even a quasi-legal database could cause a bureaucratic nightmare once any process starts depending upon it.
