[vkou]

> Make the ids free?

That would be the 'logical' solution, but the party that wants voter ID is not trying to do something logical.

It wants to prevent people who don't currently have it from voting. So they demand ID, without making it possible/easier to get. (And when they do make it possible/easier to get, its only in their political strongholds - or they explicitly disqualify particular kinds of state-issued ID from being used to vote.)

Selective disenfranchisement is the whole point of the policy, not an unfortunate, unforeseen, unpredictable side effect. If you'd like to learn more about the history of this, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow are a good primer on the motivations behind it. Those motivations haven't gone anywhere, because the cultural struggle in question has never actually been resolved.

[josephh]

> So they demand ID, without making it possible/easier to get.

Great, have congress legislate laws to make it easier/free to obtain passports. Instead of requiring folks to travel to DMV/Post office/etc., why not have federal public servants visit them door-to-door and assist in issuing it? We do it for census, so what's preventing them from doing it for passports?

[mrguyorama]

Charitably, the democrats don't care to take any action because there's never been evidence that voter fraud is an actual issue. It happens, in minuscule amounts, in most elections and is statistically meaningless. Most cases of voting fraud in the US are mistakes, because sometimes people don't realize when they've lost the right to vote, or didn't know they were taken off the voter rolls due to inactivity, or being incorrectly listed as dead or similar.

How much are we willing to spend on non-issues?

This is not my opinion however, as I think the US could do with a guaranteed, everyone has it, national ID card. Republicans however definitely don't want that, as it could be evidence that a government can actually do something right, and that's anathema to them, and also because a not-small group of evangelicals think that a government issued ID is a sign of the devil or something.

[dahfizz]

> but the party that wants voter ID is not trying to do something logical.

If the opposing party wanted to be logical, they would just make IDs free and easy. Especially while they are running the government.

[jensensbutton]

Note that voter ID laws are being passed at the _state_ level. Doing what you say above is fine, but getting states to recognize those IDs is not. This is not some trivial problem in America (like it may be in other countries).

[vkou]

1. They don't really get to run the government in the states where this is an issue.

2. Once in a blue moon, they do. But anything they build to enable this requires constant funding and maintenance. Their opponents either dismantle it when they take power, or retroactively disqualify existing IDs from being eligible for voting.

It's not, and has never been about IDs. It's about disenfranchisement.

[dahfizz]

I agree that the current Republican approach is about disenfranchisement.

However, voter ID itself is a completely reasonable thing. This issue will never go away. The most logical thing for Democrats to do is to enact voter ID the right way so as to remove this as a tool from the Republicans' arsenal.

"Republicans may implement voter ID improperly, so we must never ever verify that the people casting votes are doing so legally" is an insane position, honestly.

An obvious first step would be to make getting a passport easier and free, though I am not sure if the federal government can compel states to accept a passport as identification.

[vkou]

> "Republicans may implement voter ID improperly, so we must never ever verify that the people casting votes are doing so legally" is an insane position, honestly.

We already verify this, we just don't do it with the particular methods that they demand (and why they reject state-issued IDs that aren't used by their preferred demographics.)

Which is, of course, a game of goal-post shifting, that is impossible to win.

[pessimizer]

> they demand ID, without making it possible/easier to get

Wouldn't this be the responsibility of the government in power, and not require any participation from the opposition?

[Volundr]

A nationally required ID is constitutionally questionable, meaning this would need handled at the State level. It would require involvement from all parties.

[post_from_work]

The Federal government should set standards for features that need to be present on a State/Territory ID card "in order to facilitate interstate commerce". Then offer to subsidize production/distribution programs run by the States, for any State with a compliant ID program. Even better if we fused all of this with FICAM somehow. (https://www.idmanagement.gov/ )

The DoD has had ID card production figured out for years. All it takes is a work station (for checking your entry in a database and confirming the data that goes onto the card), a specialized printer, and a few other peripherals (camera, fingerprint scanner, keypad). I can walk into a DoD ID card center and walk out with a new card in 15 minutes. You could easily stuff several of these workstations into the back of a van, and then drive around to neighborhoods, bringing ID services to the disadvantaged. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Access_Card