The problem is implementing that in a way that doesn't disenfranchise a lot of people. Most or all countries that have the kind of robust national ID system for such a system also make sure it is easy for every citizen to get the necessary ID.
Such a system could be added to the US without too much disruption if we did it gradually, say making it only apply to people born after 2030 so there is time to get all the support infrastructure in place.
Doing it quickly, and making it apply who grew up in a US without anything like that, would be a big and probably expensive effort. None of the proposals I've seen Congress talk about, or seen states talk about or that states have passed, have addressed this.
They say it is actually easy to get the required ID, but when you dig into the documents needed to get it if you don't already have a government issued photo ID it is a lot harder.
A certified copy of your birth certification is usually good enough...but most states require government issued photo ID to issue a certified copy of your birth certificate. Oops.
Also, for many older people, it can be hard to find where to go to get a birth certificate. That's all handled by the states, not the feds, and at the time many older people were born many states just recorded those records at the county level.
There are alternatives that allow can work around the lack of a certified copy of your birth certificate, or that can work around needing a government photo ID to get the birth certificate. They involve secondary documents, such as school records. Those don't usually have difficult ID requirements to get, but are even less likely to be centralized. You might have to go to the school district to get the records. For an older person trying to dig up old elementary or middle school records to bootstrap getting an idea that will often be difficult, even if that school district is still around and somehow the records haven't been lost.
The current system does in fact work well. It should be replaced with a stronger that could stand up against larger and more well organized adversaries than it has had to face before, but it is not urgent, and we have the time to do it right.
It's not any easier to get a national ID in say Germany if you don't already have one. E.g. https://www.personalausweisportal.de/SharedDocs/faqs/Webs/PA/EN/Servicebox/8_get_national_id_card_anyway.html https://www.personalausweisportal.de/SharedDocs/faqs/Webs/PA...
"In order to be issued a national ID card, you need to be able to establish your identity and your German citizenship. If at the time of your application you are not able to provide any documentation of your identity, such as an expired national ID card or a birth certificate or other identity-establishing document, the issuing authority will check your identity by other suitable means (see no. 6.3.1 of the Administrative Regulation on Passports (Passverwaltungsvorschrift, PassVwV))."
If you read through administrative regulation 6.3.1, it provides for the issuing authority to look at various documents to establish identity and citizenship. If all else fails, affidavits from witnesses can be used.
U.S. states operate the same way. I'll use Georgia as an example since I've lived there: https://sos.ga.gov/page/proof-citizenship https://sos.ga.gov/page/proof-citizenship. There's twenty different ways to prove citizenship, including affidavits from third parties if all else fails.
The undeniable reality is that these measures do, in fact, constitute barriers to voting and the barriers are not evenly applied. Less privileged Americans are less likely to have ID, and that’s just a statistical fact.
If the opposition cannot be trusted to even so much as acknowledge reality and fact, we must reject all notions of voter ID, with no exceptions. One begins to wonder why the right is so unbelievably hamstrung on ignoring the issue of ID availability.
Could it be, perhaps, because their goal is not righteous as they claim, but is rather a thinly-veiled attempt at voter suppression? Based off their actions, I would say any reasonable person would have no choice but to see it that way.
There are solutions to these problems. The people you’re championing would rather die than even consider them. Sit back and ponder why.
If it makes you feel any better, efforts to "disenfranchise" eg. by requiring ID or "enfranchise" by making it easier to vote with same-day registration/voting, mail-in ballots, early voting, etc. have minimal effect on the outcome, independent of the majority party or location.
I just not that hard to (register to) vote. People who want to cast a vote will. The ones don't, won't.
You're omitting fundamental differences between these systems, for example that Germans are required by law to own a government ID, so only a tiny fraction of the population has to use this process. As far as I have seen this appears to be around 2-3%, and I haven't come across any studies showing that historically disadvantaged groups are more likely not to have an ID. Compare that to ~10% of Americans without proof of identification, and it just so happens that minorities make up a disproportionately big part of this group.
Second, in Germany there exist exactly 2 ID cards accepted for e.g. voting: your national ID card, and your passport. There are no per-state ID cards, there are no ID cards that are completely fine to use in all government interactions except for voting. Meanwhile the US has 50 different ID card systems, and the people who are making arbitrary decisions on which of these ID cards are acceptable are the same people who can electorally benefit from strategically banning/allowing certain kinds of IDs.
So no, rayiner, these situations aren't remotely comparable. They could be if the US government introduced a uniform national ID card, and if citizens had plenty of time to get one. For example I'd have no issues with voter ID if it were introduced only once >95% of the population owns this hypothetical national ID over a 5-year period.
The funny/sad part in all this: if conservatives actually cared about election security, all they'd have to do is listen to the arguments against voter ID and remove these roadblocks over a few years, maybe a decade. But for some reason their only approach seems to be to demand Voter ID be introduced right now, no time to prepare, no efforts made to solve any of the issues. I wonder why?
Every one of the excuses about how (and the need) to obtain ID are the red herring of this conversation, intended to distract from the fact that states have been verifying identities and holding their elections for 250 years and that Republicans are involved in the election process at every single level that are apparently complicit in these supposed “massive frauds”. They would have people believe the issue is ID and illegal voting, rather than the fact this is an attempt to take control of elections and influence them. They have already started doing shady things, like demanding access to the actual votes despite the entire system being run electronically and re-verified locally under bi-partisan oversight, and that those same states who had US cyber intelligence to assist them in securing their elections prior to Trump reducing that access in order to further his election fraud claims. It doesn’t look good when your own agencies assisted on securing the very thing they are claiming is a fraud.
This is exactly what every despot who nationalized election security did right before their Party magically started winning in every election by “overwhelming popular demand”. What a shock that they are trying to use the same playbook.
It is the responsibility of the state to enact THEIR OWN elections, as was made clear in our constitution. States oversee their elections, primarily away from federal influence. Republicans passed their own laws that they are now using to say requires them to interfere in the state election process; they created the excuse they are using and have, to date, failed to show a single shred of evidence of any real systemic issue outside of a potentially 0.001% who MIGHT have voted illegally (based on the few cases they tried to use, often paperwork errors). If fact, the most obvious acts of election interference have been consistently Republicans. They are the ones who put out fake ballot boxes in states. They were the ones caught trying to tamper in order to “prove there was fraud”. They have been inside the house the whole time, so to speak.
Claiming this is a need to identify voters, which literally every state does, is just the BS people try to use to ignore the truth; that there is nothing wrong with the elections they are trying to steal. All of the ways people claim that can be used to get an ID … are LITERALLY the ways states verify voters when they don’t have an ID…
Republicans just haven’t understood yet that his claims mean THEY are complicit and have been supporting fraud — an accusation I think they would probably take issue with if they understood the real claim. Instead, they listen to news from organizations that literally argue that their news is “entertainment” and therefore not intended to be “truthful”. The party has become a disgraced shell of itself, co-opted by the Tea Party-incarnate MAGA who for years have left Conservative values behind in their attempt to remake the constitution in their own view in order to exclude dissenting voices.
Only US citizens are allowed to vote. How do you control for that without ID of some sort?