[CurtHagenlocher]

I do not understand why we have not long ago adopted a national ID. This could be used for voting, for validating work eligibility, for potentially reducing whatever Medicare/Social Security fraud might actually exist, etc. Concerns for elderly, poor and otherwise disadvantaged people could be addressed by a relatively small amount of money to help those people acquire an ID. We would be lightyears better off than the current patchwork system of insecure social security cards, state driver's licenses, birth certificates and passports.

I can only conclude that there are too many people benefitting from the current stupid situation.

[amluto]

We almost have this in the form of a social security number. But the system is ridiculous:

1. Getting an SSN requires all kinds of obnoxious documentation. It should be easy for anyone, legal or otherwise, to obtain an SSN, and mere possession of an SSN should not indicate anything about one’s citizenship, voter, employability or immigration status.

2. It should be straightforward for anyone to obtain official ID that ties them to their own SSN.

And then the voting system could look up an SSN in a database to determine voter eligibility.

(For that matter, the current system by which a visa is generally applied for from outside the country and by which one’s immigration status is oddly tied to the act of entering and exiting instead of to the legality of being present and having a job is rather absurd.)

[criddell]

We don't have a national ID because of pushback from fundie Christians. Some of them see any national ID as a mark of the beast.

I couldn't remember the details so I googled it and found:

> In the Bible, the "Mark of the Beast" is a symbolic mark mentioned in the Book of Revelation, representing a sign of allegiance to an evil power (often interpreted as the Antichrist) that will be forced upon people during the end times, allowing them to buy and sell, and is often associated with the number 666; it is seen as a mark on the forehead or hand, signifying devotion to this power and its leader.

https://www.gotquestions.org/mark-beast.html

[kube-system]

State governments and politicians derive power from being able to control identity documents.

For example, they decide who can get the documents, what services they are valid for, the information collected to get one, etc.

[derektank]

I do not think this is a substantial source of power for state governments

[kube-system]

It isn't, but it is non-zero. Those in a position of power don't want to give up any of it.

[locopati]

In states that enforce strict ID rules, they generally make it harder to get ID by adding arbitrary hurdles... closing ID centers in Democratic areas, requiring birth certificates or passports which some people may not have, requiring name matches (like the SAVE Act).

The rules are not made in good faith and are based on a notion that voter fraud is widespread which it absolutely is not and lately when it has occurred it has been Republicans not Democrats committing it.

The goal is to limit Democratic voting, just as it is with gerrymandering absurd districts that split Democratic voters.

[tim333]

In the UK we don't have national ID because people don't like it as it seems like excessive government control that you have to have some bit of paper. There's a stereotype in the WW2 films of the nazis always saying "show your papers" and the Brits not doing that.

[williamscales]

I wrote some stuff musing about this but it didn't make much sense so I'll just leave this quote and article as (hopefully) helpful context for folks.

> It is both a political issue and a practical one, and the idea of federalism is cited as supporting federated (regional) identification. All legislative attempts to create a national identity card have failed due to tenacious opposition from liberal and conservative politicians alike, who regard the national identity card as the mark of a totalitarian society. [0]

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_documents_in_the_Unit...

[derbOac]

I can provide my perspective on it. I think some of these arguments I sympathize with more than others, although I probably do sympathize with all of them.

One reason is that it is extremely difficult in practice to get an ID for some persons, especially the unhoused and transient. These discussions often come around to some hypothetical solution for these individuals, but in practice I doubt that they would work. Bureaucratic obstacles tend to grow, not shrink, when anything is implemented, and even more so if you consider implementation at the local level, inevitable tolls in the form of administrative fees, etc. In many of these cases it might be impossible for someone to provide necessary documents to get an ID, and they are at much greater risk of threat and so forth. I have just about every form of federal ID you can have and I feel like it's too much of a pain. I can't imagine someone who is homeless dealing with this nonsense.

A second reason is that an argument can be made that a fundamental bedrock principle should be innocent until proven guilty. If you apply this to issues of citizenship or voting eligibility, or whatever, this implies the burden is on the state to provide evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that you are not a citizen, or eligible for voting, not the other way around. I should not have to provide evidence beyond a reasonable doubt for basic rights ennumerated by the Constitution; the state should have the burden to deny it. Regardless of the costs of obtaining an ID, it flips the evidentiary burden from the state to the person (who presumably should be innocent by principle).

A third reason is concerns about abuse. This has maybe been lost a bit to time but many of these discussions started post 9/11 and at the time it was pointed out that if you take legal jurisdiction of border authorities seriously, they have a lot of leeway over areas nowhere near the border. The concern is that if you institute a national ID, just becomes a target of abuse for corrupt government officials, or alternatively, another target for criminals engaging in identity theft and so forth.

I think overall the question is, what is the real evidence for violations of the law that might be prevented by having a national ID, and what are the actual harms associated with those violations. In reality both of those questions are "negligible". When you introduce cost-benefit considerations I think the needle moves even further away from national ID requirements.