| Because the US doesn't have a default federal ID. Most people use state-issued drivers licenses (with varying levels of federal acceptance) as their primary ID. Historically, US States used "poll taxes" to defacto discriminate against recently freed slaves, who obviously had no money, so we have explicit laws against fees for voting, and an ID that you have to pay for is kind of an indirect way of implementing a fee for voting. There's a lot of complicated history involved, and I totally get why the system feels weird to an outsider, but you accidentally blew a dog whistle that usually belongs to people trying to find sneaky ways of preventing minorities from voting (that as I alluded too, have the potential to backfire in modern times). Maybe you wouldn't find it interesting, since you said you don't care about our politics, but the history of voting discrimination, voting rights, and the various schemes to try to surpress then while following the law in the US are kind of fascinating and worth digging into if you're genuinely curious. |
I am familiar with the history, but from an outsider POV it feels like the story of the sheep that got electrocuted once and then never ventured outside, the path dependency is not really helpful in general. Also I followed the law in the US to make ID mandatory at voting, and from what I saw the whole debate around it seemed deranged, if voter fraud and non-citizens voting is inexistent, why did so many people oppose it. Ironically what will happen is that the elderly will be most affected and will stop voting Republican (chat happened in the UK).