> Hailing this as necessary to prevent voter fraud is just as preposterous as the mark-of-the-beast nonsense covered by another child comment.
It's not needed to prevent voter fraud in the US because there is very little voter fraud to prevent. What it could help with is reducing voter suppression.
Several states, claiming that it is necessary to prevent fraud (which they cannot actually find any significant examples of) have instituted voter ID requirements.
In many of these there has been a pretty good correlation between what ID they accept and whether or not the people who tend to vote for the party enacting the ID require are more likely to already have that form of ID than the people who tend to vote for the other party.
These are often accompanied by changes to how IDs are issued that make it significantly harder for many people who vote for the other party to obtain ID. For example, state IDs are often issued by the same department that issues driver's licenses. Some states, citing budget issues, have closed such offices, with the closures hitting hardest is largely minority areas, and reduced hours in the offices remaining open eliminating weekend and evening hours.
This makes it so that for many people in those areas that lost their offices getting an ID means losing a day of work or more, which many of them cannot afford and so have to give up voting.
A Federal ID that is easy to obtain for all citizens, very cheap or free, and that states are required to accept as voter ID could go a long way to helping eligible voters actually be able to vote.
> easy to obtain for all citizens, very cheap or free
This is the key point, though, and harder than it sounds. It needs to be (at least approximately) free-as-in-beer with a small time investment, while still gathering adequate evidence of identity. My best idea is to build it as an outgrowth of the passport infrastructure without the relatively onerous forms and other costs. Doing it through the post office like passports is as good an idea as any, but you need to make sure they all have (working![0]) cameras and trained personnel. Not cheap.
I'm all for the idea, I just don't want people to underestimate the difficulty, because that will make it more likely to fail.
[0] When I went to get my passport, the camera at the post office was broken. I had to run across the street to the drug store. Not fatal, but a pain, and not something you could tolerate at scale for voter id.
It's not needed to prevent voter fraud in the US because there is very little voter fraud to prevent. What it could help with is reducing voter suppression.
Several states, claiming that it is necessary to prevent fraud (which they cannot actually find any significant examples of) have instituted voter ID requirements.
In many of these there has been a pretty good correlation between what ID they accept and whether or not the people who tend to vote for the party enacting the ID require are more likely to already have that form of ID than the people who tend to vote for the other party.
These are often accompanied by changes to how IDs are issued that make it significantly harder for many people who vote for the other party to obtain ID. For example, state IDs are often issued by the same department that issues driver's licenses. Some states, citing budget issues, have closed such offices, with the closures hitting hardest is largely minority areas, and reduced hours in the offices remaining open eliminating weekend and evening hours.
This makes it so that for many people in those areas that lost their offices getting an ID means losing a day of work or more, which many of them cannot afford and so have to give up voting.
A Federal ID that is easy to obtain for all citizens, very cheap or free, and that states are required to accept as voter ID could go a long way to helping eligible voters actually be able to vote.