[ohyeshedid]

Making it directly free doesn't solve all the issues.

8 years ago I was in a state I grew up in, but wasn't born in. Real ID was started, and I needed to renew my license.

Even though I have had a license for 25 years in this state, they required me to verify by identity again to meet the Real ID requirements. This required a birth certificate.

The state I was born in, at the time, didn't allow mailing of birth certificates. For $12, I could pick one up locally. The two states were 1700 miles apart. My only option, other than a road trip or flight, was LexisNexis. The cheapest option, at the time, was $75.

I did what I had to do to comply, other folks may have had a harder time or been entirely unable to solve that problem quickly, or at all. A corporate tax on peoples identity is only one of the possible hurdles in obtaining a "free" ID.

[Godel_unicode]

Nobody is saying it would be easy, or that there wouldn't be edge cases where people would get screwed. I argue that the current situation where it's an edge case to find people who aren't screwed is worse.

I further argue that your whole issue, and many like it, are caused because you didn't have a national ID, granted at birth or naturalization, which all State ID programs are required to recognize.

I actually think that we need a constitutional amendment for a national ID system. Add lots of "the government shall not" language to it for CR/CL, and require States to recognize it as a source of truth by itself that you are you.

[ohyeshedid]

Real ID is the current form of national ID. Some states fought it, and still haven't implemented it. The current state I'm in will be going live with Real ID in the next two years.

I took a friends kid to the DMV to get them their first license here about 6 months ago. My out of state license expires in a few months from now. I asked, since I have a current Real ID, how I should go about renewing my license. I was told that I would need to get a state license, without Real ID, until their system was upgraded to support it. Then return to get a new license with Real ID, and that would require the Real ID verification again. Even though I already have a Real ID. That's $35 per license.

I agree there should be a completely free national ID program, but the list of "shoulds" is infinite, and not worth much. No cap, like I said I agree, it's just damn near impossible to change this kind of structure from our level.