Lets start with, what "system"? There are a ton of governments that issue their own ID cards. Are you magically going to integrate with all of them or does everybody now also need a voter ID card issued from a singular source?
Next lets go onto "verified"? Historically there have been a lot of instances where the wrong black person was arrested because a white cop thought they were the guy in the photo. People cannot verify that a picture matches a face. This is going to lead to a bunch of discrimination complaints. There's also the big issue of people's appearances changing in less than 4 years. Or the simple case of a lot of people look the same and could just use each other's IDs (or get a fake one of that person).
Next lets go onto "just like they do at the airport". You can fly without ID [1] and you also might not be able to scan your ID [2]. They also don't check the photo against the system; just attempt to verify that the ID isn't fake and that the picture on the ID you gave them matches you.
Finally, the overarching idea that "voting by mail introduces fraud". It doesn't. Make a calendar event for ~1.6 months into the future to volunteer at your local election board and you can get first hand experience of the systems that keep 1 vote to 1 person in place even when using different voting methods.
> There are a ton of governments that issue their own ID cards. Are you magically going to integrate with all of them or does everybody now also need a voter ID card issued from a singular source?
The entire US is now Real ID compliant.
> Next lets go onto "verified"? Historically there have been a lot of instances where the wrong black person was arrested because a white cop thought they were the guy in the photo. People cannot verify that a picture matches a face. This is going to lead to a bunch of discrimination complaints. There's also the big issue of people's appearances changing in less than 4 years. Or the simple case of a lot of people look the same and could just use each other's IDs (or get a fake one of that person).
That's a lot for a HN thread which we aren't going to be able to solve. For purposes of voting, I don't have any real concerns here.
> Next lets go onto "just like they do at the airport". You can fly without ID [1] and you also might not be able to scan your ID [2]. They also don't check the photo against the system; just attempt to verify that the ID isn't fake and that the picture on the ID you gave them matches you.
If we're verifying that the ID isn't fake by scanning it and you want to forge a vote badly enough to get a real, verifiable ID that has been swapped with a photo matching you...we have significantly raised the bar from simply providing any name that hasn't yet been used on a list.
This also makes it a lot harder to infringe of somebody else's right to vote by impersonating them, thus preventing them from being able to vote at all.
> Finally, the overarching idea that "voting by mail introduces fraud". It doesn't.
There have been numerous instances just in the last month of people showing up to vote and being told they've already voted by mail.
There's a whole industry about making fake IDs.