> The voter suppression claim is nonsense. You need an ID to practically do anything in this country. There is no burden. But there is a burden, because obtain

> The voter suppression claim is nonsense. You need an ID to practically do anything in this country. There is no burden. But there is a burden, because obtaining an ID can require driving, waiting for hours at the DMV, paying money to apply, or a combination, all of which can be burdens for low-income households and rural households [1][2]. Homeless people face additional obstacles to getting an ID, including having to fill in a residential address [3]. If you're transgender or gender non-binary, updating an ID you becomes a burden [4]. > A better question would be why you wouldn't require a voter id. A question that isn't for you in particular to answer is, in the current day and age, would the number of fraudulent ballots prevented by a new strict voter ID requirement be greater than the number of valid votes prevented by such a requirement? The current legal framework of obtaining government-issued IDs makes strict voter ID laws de facto voter suppression. 30 million people lacked a driver's license as of 2022 [2], and I'd be willing to bet that at least 1 million of them are US citizens of voting age. Let's assume that 25% of them would vote if they had the option to do so from their homes (a arbitrary but conservative hypothetical percentage in light of actual voter turnout percentages [5]). There's been no national election with 250000 fraudulent ballots. Any new voter ID bill that doesn't take this into account will almost certainly be voter suppression. The problem isn't the principle of requiring a voter ID. It's that the laws around getting an ID need to change prior to or simultaneously with laws that make ID a requirement for voting. [1] https://www.mapresearch.org/file/ID-info-low-income-communities.pdf https://www.mapresearch.org/file/ID-info-low-income-communit... [2] https://www.mapresearch.org/id-documents-report https://www.mapresearch.org/id-documents-report [3] https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105435 https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105435 [4] https://www.mapresearch.org/file/ID-info-transgender-nonbinary-communities.pdf https://www.mapresearch.org/file/ID-info-transgender-nonbina... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_presidential_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...