The most common government-issued ID is a driver's license, to the point that it can sometimes be hard to get a government ID that isn't a driver's license. So anyone who can't drive has an uphill battle--predominantly blind people, as well as poor people who live in the inner city where car ownership is infeasibly expensive. Another commonish case is tribal reservations, where tribal documentation is usually sufficient, but the state might not consider a tribal ID sufficient to vote.
The statistics I've seen for people who lack valid voter ID is somewhere in the region of 10-15%. Unsurprisingly, this tends to be concentrated among groups that tend to be more reliably Democratic than Republican (something like 25% of African Americans lack valid ID), which is why voter ID is often a dog whistle for disenfranchising certain voters.
> it can sometimes be hard to get a government ID that isn't a driver's license
As far as I know every state will issue a picture ID, similar to a driver's license but which doesn't confer driving privileges. to someone who doesn't drive.
If the argument is that people who can't drive will find it more difficult to make it to the office that gives out government issued IDs, the obvious solutions are (1) put more of those offices in places like inner cities, convenient to public transportation, and (2) have the political activists who spend so much time complaining about disenfranchisement do some actual work instead and provide people transportation to and from the offices.
> the state might not consider a tribal ID sufficient to vote
The solution to that is obvious too: either fix the state law or fix the tribal ID requirements so they meet existing state law.
I wonder why the interested parties don't just offer to pay for ID cards. Seems like this would solve both problems, but perhaps I'm missing something obvious.
The statistics I've seen for people who lack valid voter ID is somewhere in the region of 10-15%. Unsurprisingly, this tends to be concentrated among groups that tend to be more reliably Democratic than Republican (something like 25% of African Americans lack valid ID), which is why voter ID is often a dog whistle for disenfranchising certain voters.