Usually not if coupled with a mandate that the government provide everyone such an ID at no cost (yes, yes, "nothing's free", but everyone knows what that means). The breakdown is that one side wants to require ID to vote, and the other side is OK with that if there's a program such that every citizen is issued ID for basically no effort, cost, or hassle, and is registered for voting and residency with similar ease (so there must not be renewal crap, problems sorting out issues at the polling place if there's a discrepency, that kind of thing—cannot make voting harder, and if done right should make it easier)—but that's a non-starter because of the things already mentioned (plus some others reasons, but stating the public and explicit, not inferred, positions of certain political factions in my first post apparently rubbed some people the wrong way, so I'll refrain from mentioning those).
If 100% of citizens for-sure had an ID there wouldn't be disagreement on the issue. Using such an ID and whatever residency registration program was associated with it would save money and hassle over maintaining voting rolls, overzealous purging of which is another thing the left doesn't like, would allow automatic voter registration, and so on. This would broaden franchise, in practice.
I agree, and I'm even fairly liberal. Showing proof of who you are, to be allowed to vote in the most fundamental process in a democracy is not a dumb idea. Why would you not want the most rudimentary election security?
The only reason that it's a ridiculous situation here is that (and you can debate whether widespread or not, or believed or not) some people use it as a means to make voting difficult for others. And we tolerate / compromise on the situation because we have no good (or widely believed) stats to document the frequency of the risks.
And with your point above, why don't we simply make getting an ID easier for everyone and this will no longer be an issue. Take one year to have roaming DMV offices, voter ID, licensing stations, and take care of this stupid problem once and for all. No more arguments or patches to look the other way.
And I will say also, it's a fucking sad situation when the people you want to be voting can't get it together in their lives to get an ID renewed once every 5 years. You don't even have to go in person in most cases. If that's the issue, I don't think you would've gotten their vote even if they had ID.
> Why would you not want the most rudimentary election security?
Why would I want a solution with negative trade offs for a problem I'm not convinced exists? Even if I believed it was a problem, I wouldn't just accept a solution that was "rudimentary" without considering the trade offs and alternative solutions.
Why do you put locks on your car or your house? I bet you've never been broken into. There's not a high chance of it either. Why do you want your email encrypted? No one's sniffing around your personal life, so why do you want a solution to a problem that doesn't exist?
Remarkable how people distort their principles when it gets in the way of a political symbol.
Concerted coordination between countless conspirators is required to commit the kind of vote fraud an ID requirement corrects and is quite certain to be detected and can be corrected.
A single burglar can change my life forever regardless of the fact that it will be detected.
> Remarkable how people distort their principles when it gets in the way of a political symbol.
Which principles and what symbol? You seem to have me shoehorned in to some political pigeonhole. I'm used to that, but I'd be curious which one it is this time.
Maybe that's your standard, but I rarely hear people on the left argue that easily and freely issued ID would make ID-to-vote requirements acceptable to them. If that really were the case, wouldn't you think that during times when Democrats controlled congress or the white house, they would try to push through legislation to enshrine easy and free to get federal ID?
