Is the argument that if country X does Y then Y isn't bad for the US?
Belgium requires people carry id with them all the time. Does that mean the US should be like Belgium and require everyone carry id?
Sweden requires either an id or someone with an id who can vouch for you, which is less strict than some of the US states.
Most of those countries have a national id system. Why wouldn't that be a prerequisite for the US?
Ultimately I am against anything requiring IDs, but so long as I need to show my ID and vaccine card to get seated at a restaurant in SF, it doesn't seem outlandish to me at all that elections should require IDs.
Regarding national IDs, I'm not sure what you think this would look like but frankly that is the whole point of the REAL ID initiative which began in the wake of the Patriot Act reauthorization in 2005. Perhaps you have objections in light of the changes brought on by the REAL ID Modernization Act wherein the SSN requirements were significantly defanged, but IMO the point still remains.
That doesn't explain how readthenotes1's comment is relevant.
The amount of fraud in mail-in-voting is astoundingly low.
Mandatory voter id doesn't seem to provide any benefits except for calming an artificial fear that was hyped just to pass mandatory id laws.
I don't know why you say "focus on race" when the history shows that voter id requirements are there to elect Republicans, of which race is one correlated factor.
Why can a gun license be used as valid id, but a state college id cannot? College students tend to vote for Democrats. Gun owners tend to vote Republican.
Why do DMV offices (where you get ids) tend to close down in poor areas when there are cutbacks? Poor people tend to vote for Democrats.
Now, if we really do look to other countries, we can ask why the DMV is in charge of issuing id. In at least some of those other countries, it is the police which are in charge of ids.
So if we follow readthenotes1's suggestion see what other countries do, my point is that perhaps doing that correctly requires certain prerequisites that don't exist in the US.
> so long as I need to show my ID and vaccine card to get seated at a restaurant in SF
I didn't realize that getting seated at a restaurant was a constitutional right.
There's places in the US where you need to bring an ID and your vaccine card everywhere. If we're not willing to require ID to vote, then we should definitely ban that.
> Most of those countries have a national id system. Why wouldn't that be a prerequisite for the US?
Why aren't you counting any of passport books, passport cards, or REAL ID-compliant IDs (which are finally available nationwide) as national IDs?
Showing id to vote therefore won't improve things in any meaningful way. While the negatives are easy -- what do you do if you lost your wallet the day before voting day and have no other accepted form of id?
If there are no benefits, why have it at all?
By comparison, from what I read, lots of people cheat the vaccine card system, so an id that helps verify that the vaccine card is indeed for the person presenting the card. The benefits are supposed to be the reduction of the infection rate, the ability to have an alternative to having business shut down either by order, or because of consumer reluctance.
Maybe you disagree with the conclusion of that cost-benefit analysis, but it's far more substantial than the benefits of having voter id.
> Why aren't you counting any of passport books, passport cards, or REAL ID-compliant IDs (which are finally available nationwide) as national IDs
Because it's a de facto, ad hoc, and incomplete system that isn't comparable to at least some of those countries.
In some of those countries which require voter id, you can get a valid id from your local police station, or from your bank, or the tax office. While the US ones seems to be centered around a much smaller number of DMV offices.
In Belgium, everyone is supposed to have an id. In the US, something like 9% of the population doesn't have an id which would be acceptable for voting. (Eg, don't drive because of age, illness, poverty, or live in a place with good mass transit.)
As a reminder, double voting (voting in more than one district) is also a form of voter fraud. Though, oddly, it isn't always illegal! - https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/double... . Even when illegal, it is NOT solved by presenting photo id. One solution that does solve it is to set up a nation-wide registry of where people live, with the legal requirement that if you move you inform the authorities. That's what some of these countries do, as part of their national ID system. This also updates your voting location.
And those are reasons why the US system isn't easily comparable to an actual national ID system, as well as helping highlight how the emphasis on in-person impersonation voter fraud over other forms of voter fraud is artificial.
(As a reminder, four people from The Villages, Sumpter Counter, FL have been arrested for suspicion of casting multiple ballots in the 2020 selection - https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/resident-of-the-village... - so it's probably more common than in-person impersonation. ... but I'm having a tough time tracking down those numbers!)
In any case, these sorts of voter fraud are paltry compared to wholesale gerrymandering practices.
