I do not understand why we have not long ago adopted a national ID. This could be used for voting, for validating work eligibility, for potentially reducing whatever Medicare/Social Security fraud might actually exist, etc. Concerns for elderly, poor and otherwise disadvantaged people could be addressed by a relatively small amount of money to help those people acquire an ID. We would be lightyears better off than the current patchwork system of insecure social security cards, state driver's licenses, birth certificates and passports.

I can only conclude that there are too many people benefitting from the current stupid situation.

We almost have this in the form of a social security number. But the system is ridiculous:

1. Getting an SSN requires all kinds of obnoxious documentation. It should be easy for anyone, legal or otherwise, to obtain an SSN, and mere possession of an SSN should not indicate anything about one’s citizenship, voter, employability or immigration status.

2. It should be straightforward for anyone to obtain official ID that ties them to their own SSN.

And then the voting system could look up an SSN in a database to determine voter eligibility.

(For that matter, the current system by which a visa is generally applied for from outside the country and by which one’s immigration status is oddly tied to the act of entering and exiting instead of to the legality of being present and having a job is rather absurd.)

We don't have a national ID because of pushback from fundie Christians. Some of them see any national ID as a mark of the beast.

I couldn't remember the details so I googled it and found:

> In the Bible, the "Mark of the Beast" is a symbolic mark mentioned in the Book of Revelation, representing a sign of allegiance to an evil power (often interpreted as the Antichrist) that will be forced upon people during the end times, allowing them to buy and sell, and is often associated with the number 666; it is seen as a mark on the forehead or hand, signifying devotion to this power and its leader.

https://www.gotquestions.org/mark-beast.html

State governments and politicians derive power from being able to control identity documents.

For example, they decide who can get the documents, what services they are valid for, the information collected to get one, etc.

I do not think this is a substantial source of power for state governments

It isn't, but it is non-zero. Those in a position of power don't want to give up any of it.

In states that enforce strict ID rules, they generally make it harder to get ID by adding arbitrary hurdles... closing ID centers in Democratic areas, requiring birth certificates or passports which some people may not have, requiring name matches (like the SAVE Act).

The rules are not made in good faith and are based on a notion that voter fraud is widespread which it absolutely is not and lately when it has occurred it has been Republicans not Democrats committing it.

The goal is to limit Democratic voting, just as it is with gerrymandering absurd districts that split Democratic voters.

In the UK we don't have national ID because people don't like it as it seems like excessive government control that you have to have some bit of paper. There's a stereotype in the WW2 films of the nazis always saying "show your papers" and the Brits not doing that.

I wrote some stuff musing about this but it didn't make much sense so I'll just leave this quote and article as (hopefully) helpful context for folks.

> It is both a political issue and a practical one, and the idea of federalism is cited as supporting federated (regional) identification. All legislative attempts to create a national identity card have failed due to tenacious opposition from liberal and conservative politicians alike, who regard the national identity card as the mark of a totalitarian society. [0]

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_documents_in_the_Unit...

I can provide my perspective on it. I think some of these arguments I sympathize with more than others, although I probably do sympathize with all of them.

One reason is that it is extremely difficult in practice to get an ID for some persons, especially the unhoused and transient. These discussions often come around to some hypothetical solution for these individuals, but in practice I doubt that they would work. Bureaucratic obstacles tend to grow, not shrink, when anything is implemented, and even more so if you consider implementation at the local level, inevitable tolls in the form of administrative fees, etc. In many of these cases it might be impossible for someone to provide necessary documents to get an ID, and they are at much greater risk of threat and so forth. I have just about every form of federal ID you can have and I feel like it's too much of a pain. I can't imagine someone who is homeless dealing with this nonsense.

A second reason is that an argument can be made that a fundamental bedrock principle should be innocent until proven guilty. If you apply this to issues of citizenship or voting eligibility, or whatever, this implies the burden is on the state to provide evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that you are not a citizen, or eligible for voting, not the other way around. I should not have to provide evidence beyond a reasonable doubt for basic rights ennumerated by the Constitution; the state should have the burden to deny it. Regardless of the costs of obtaining an ID, it flips the evidentiary burden from the state to the person (who presumably should be innocent by principle).

A third reason is concerns about abuse. This has maybe been lost a bit to time but many of these discussions started post 9/11 and at the time it was pointed out that if you take legal jurisdiction of border authorities seriously, they have a lot of leeway over areas nowhere near the border. The concern is that if you institute a national ID, just becomes a target of abuse for corrupt government officials, or alternatively, another target for criminals engaging in identity theft and so forth.

I think overall the question is, what is the real evidence for violations of the law that might be prevented by having a national ID, and what are the actual harms associated with those violations. In reality both of those questions are "negligible". When you introduce cost-benefit considerations I think the needle moves even further away from national ID requirements.

>The SAVE Act lists several types of documentation that would be accepted, including a form of identification issued consistent with the requirements of the REAL ID Act of 2005, a valid United States passport, valid military ID, forms of Tribal identification and proof of naturalization. Many of these forms of ID, other than a passport, either include a birth certificate or must be presented alongside a birth certificate.

I do not understand why it is "alongside" most of these forms of ID require a birth certificate in the first place.

> I do not understand why it is "alongside"

Because that makes it more difficult.

To make it more difficult to vote. That's the goal.

Assuming this act even moved forward (big IF), "bugs" like this show up in first drafts of bills all the time. They'd do a little research, then apply a fix. Amusing that the "coverage" didn't seem interested in "how could this easily be addressed?".

you are assuming this is a 'bug' - it likely isn't. They actually want to make it harder for women to vote...this is done on purpose.

Because IDs don't necessarily prove citizenship (e.g., green cards). Birth certificates do.

Well, if you get rid of birthright citizenship, then no, they don't. You have to pick one or the other.

A naturalized citizen would not have an American birth certificate

Or just one born abroad.

For a subset of citizens.

This will not pass anyway, in the Senate anything like this will need 60 votes. So just a fund raiser for the GOP and to distract people from increased inflation.

I don’t disagree, but man, a lot of “this will not happen” is happening.

The only was this could pass is they get rid of the filibuster. I would not be that surprised to see it happen.

It would be the least surprising shoe drop since the election.

The western European country where I live demands ID for voting. It is entirely non-controversial.

The entire problem is that it's very difficult to obtain ID in many jurisdictions because the ruling class uses it to decrease the "wrong people" from voting.

None of the people who want ID for voting want to make getting said ID easier.

It's kind of a catch-22 though, isn't it? If people rarely need the documentation, there are few incentives to streamline the process for getting it.

But there's no reason to wait with streamlining until people need it. If you know you want to require IDs, streamline the process in the years before.

It's been my observation that organizations - including governments - rarely have that level of foresight. They're usually more reactionary.

Now, there's less need for foresight than for US state legislators to admitt that many currently active or already proposed voter ID laws suppress more valid voters than prevent fraud votes.

Do they maybe also mandate ownership of a valid suitable (for voting) form of ID? Because then it's something you need regardless of voting, so you aren't using right to vote to force it onto people.

I'm not sure if it is mandated but it is certainly relatively easily obtained. You will need a birth certificate and it will often differ in name for married women. The relative ease with which it can be obtained is important for voting, I suspect.

And also doesn’t require any kind of registration. You just get the voting papers mailed in, and you hand them in at the place of voting - together with your ID for verification.

I had to register (being a European citizen but not a national citizen) but, yes, it's all straightforward.

The one where I live does too, but it's one that people have. The requirement is not obnoxious. It's not even bothersome.

This looks more like a simple oversight with how the bill was worded rather than something intentional.

More detail and the methodology:

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-save-act-would-...

Texas already pulled similar shenanigans under their Voter ID law preventing married woman from voting through that mechanism. They seem pretty determined to prevent people from voting as a means to hold on to power.

Seems exaggerated.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/texas-voter-id-names-women...

Just curious if there are any women left on HN?