Democrats aren't opposed to making voting more secure. They just want to do in a way that doesn't make it harder for poor citizens to vote. Republicans have been using the fear of voter fraud to keep US citizens they don't like from voting. They'd do things like pass a voter ID law and then close DMVs in poor democratic districts so that it's harder for "the wrong" US citizens to vote. They weren't even remotely subtle about targeting specific groups of voters (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/the-s...)
Every democrat I know wants elections to be more secure than they are. They just also want them to be fair. There's been a lot of room for proactive measures here that democrats could have been pushing for, but there have been efforts too (https://www.npr.org/2021/06/17/1007715994/manchin-offers-a-v...)
This appears to be province-by-province but looking at Ontario’s rules they appear to allow a lot of documents to count as an ID for voting, and do not require a photo ID, nor do they have multiple tiers of ID that require bringing, say, several ID documents if you lack a single “better” one—any single one of the many examples works.
Some US states have voting ID requirements, and they tend to be (though not always!) significantly stricter than that, sometimes requiring a specifically a government-issued photo id, for instance.
I’m pretty sure laws that have much looser definitions of “ID” and/or provision resources to ensure timely, free, and easy access to such an ID, see less resistance from democrats. If the entire pro-ID movement just wanted to do what Ontario does it’d be less of a contentious issue, I think.
[edit] for the record, though, I agree this is a place Democrats could safely give ground—the data do not well-support their disenfranchisement concerns, and 30+ states already have some kind of voter id law.
It is, separately, also true that there is no evidence there’s any actual reason to enact more of these laws. The data also don’t support that, at all. But whatever, it’s probably not significantly harmful, just a minor waste of resources.
Democrats actively fought against voter id laws. Instead, they should have supported those laws, but with an amendment to make it easier for people to get an id.
I do think trying it is a better tactic than not, but would not bet on embracing reasonable ID laws preventing a push to modify those to unreasonable ones from becoming exactly as big an issue, through the same mechanism, among the same voters.
That’s the risk when the measure is more-or-less harmless but also the problem it addresses isn’t real. They can just keep claiming the problem still exists and running on it.
Every democrat I know wants elections to be more secure than they are. They just also want them to be fair. There's been a lot of room for proactive measures here that democrats could have been pushing for, but there have been efforts too (https://www.npr.org/2021/06/17/1007715994/manchin-offers-a-v...)