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.

My question there is, 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.

So why is it that in other advanced countries that also don't have much voter fraud, they feel they should have some kind of ID as a requirement to vote? Why is that unreasonable?

Because the constitution bans any form of poll tax. Requiring someone to got out and get an ID is considered a poll tax. Even if the ID itself is free, there is still time and travel involved.

I pay taxes that pays for all of the expenses required to administer voting administration (booths, paper, pens, etc). Why can't our taxes fund the administration required for people to get IDs?

By that faulty logic, just going to vote incurs a tax because of time and travel involved.

How is faulty logic? It’s well established law. It’s been to the Supreme Court! See Harper v Virgina Board of Elections

Because by that logic, voting itself is a poll tax.

This is another example of where the US' unwillingness to look at what other countries do, bites it in the ass.

Same thing with birthright citizenship (yes, I know it's in the constitution). The US is just one of a handful of Western countries that give citizenship to anyone born within it's borders. Pretty much all of Europe does not offer it, the child basically has whatever status the parents do.

Yup. The first time I voted 15 years ago I didn't have to show any ID and was quite puzzled. A friend of mine actually considered voting under my name when he found out :)

The OSCE (? not quite sure) vote observers commented on this in their election monitoring report, and the next election the government had acted on the advice and you had to show ID

It's also _dramatically_ easier for _all_ citizens to _get_ ID's in those countries.

I also bet a lot of those countries have voting holidays.

You're not making an apples-to-apples comparison.

What makes you think so? IDs cost here too and yes you have to go bigger centrums usually to pick them up. Unless you're English the whole dance around anti ID and voting sounds insane to Europeans and most likely large parts of the developed world. It's common sense.