Part of the issue is that ID’s are expensive. When I moved from one state to another a couple years ago, a new driver’s license was $50. There’s a long history of poll taxes used for voting suppression in the US, so any kind of pay-to-vote concept is tough. (The easy answer, of course, is to make ID issuance free.)
Then there’s the issue that states have widely different levels of competence regarding ID issuance. The REAL ID Act [0] required states to start issuing IDs based on more robust requirements by 2008. That deadline has been delayed through 2025, and is likely to get pushed back again.
When I lived in Kentucky (stereotypically poor and rural), there was a major issue that birth certificates were handwritten and never digitized, and existing driver’s licenses had been issued based on what you claimed your name was. When they started validating birth certificates as a part of REAL ID, people ran into issues when the name they had been using for their whole life didn’t match what was handwritten on their birth certificate.
Basically, identity documents are local (and often hyper-local; my own birth certificate is certified by my county, not even my state). Dragging the whole country into something resembling modernity is a major project that will exclude big chunks of people that are otherwise “responsible”.
Making the right to vote dependent on that whole system happening to work out OK for you just doesn’t seem like a good idea.
> Part of the issue is that ID’s are expensive. When I moved from one state to another a couple years ago, a new driver’s license was $50.
That doesn't sound that expensive at all. It's actually on par with other countries across the world, if you account for difference in average income. I wouldn't want a person who doesn't have $50 for a proper ID to be able to vote anyway.
However, I agree that (1) tying id to driving is weird, and (2) random circumstances completely out of your control should not stop you from voting.
Part of the issue is that ID’s are expensive. When I moved from one state to another a couple years ago, a new driver’s license was $50. There’s a long history of poll taxes used for voting suppression in the US, so any kind of pay-to-vote concept is tough. (The easy answer, of course, is to make ID issuance free.)
Then there’s the issue that states have widely different levels of competence regarding ID issuance. The REAL ID Act [0] required states to start issuing IDs based on more robust requirements by 2008. That deadline has been delayed through 2025, and is likely to get pushed back again.
When I lived in Kentucky (stereotypically poor and rural), there was a major issue that birth certificates were handwritten and never digitized, and existing driver’s licenses had been issued based on what you claimed your name was. When they started validating birth certificates as a part of REAL ID, people ran into issues when the name they had been using for their whole life didn’t match what was handwritten on their birth certificate.
Basically, identity documents are local (and often hyper-local; my own birth certificate is certified by my county, not even my state). Dragging the whole country into something resembling modernity is a major project that will exclude big chunks of people that are otherwise “responsible”.
Making the right to vote dependent on that whole system happening to work out OK for you just doesn’t seem like a good idea.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act