We don’t need symbolic laws. Adding a restriction on our most fundamental rights because it feels good is misguided and extremely dangerous.
This country has a long and well documented history of voter suppression and voter ID is just the latest example.
You’re going to have to do better than “other countries do it” to convince me voter ID laws are a good idea. Start with any evidence of necessity and a how the south won’t abuse the hell out of it. Remember that they have already abused the hell out of it.
Voting is not a fundamental right like by definition, because only citizens have it. Fundamental rights are those that all persons have, innately, by virtue of being a person. Voting is a civic right of citizens.
Furthermore, in US specifically, right to vote is not even a guaranteed right for citizens - there's nowhere in the constitution that says a citizen has an inherent right to vote. There are various amendments that prohibit the government from discriminating based on certain traits (gender, race, age, poll tax etc); but none of them are a blanket grant of the right. This is why the states can prohibit felons from voting, for example, and why the criteria for that are so drastically different between them.
Now, personally, I think this is not a good idea, and every citizen should have an unconditional right to vote that can only be stripped with citizenship. But you insist that we talk about US as it is - and that is how it is.
The way you implement voter ID such that South can't abuse it is by using the constitutional power of Congress to set uniform rules for all congressional elections in the country. Since citizenship is a federal matter, it follows that voter eligibility as it pertains to citizens and non-citizens is also a federal matter, and should be set on the appropriate level. It would completely preempt any state legislation on this, solving the problem once and for all. This also means that the feds should be required to issue an ID that is sufficient to vote to any citizen who asks for one, at no cost to the citizen, and with minimal hassle - ideally, automatically - same as every other government in the world does.
And I disagree that symbols don't matter. The right to vote is valuable in part because of its exclusivity - not everybody has it. If you're unwilling to protect that exclusivity, even symbolically, that diminishes the right.
This country has a long and well documented history of voter suppression and voter ID is just the latest example.
You’re going to have to do better than “other countries do it” to convince me voter ID laws are a good idea. Start with any evidence of necessity and a how the south won’t abuse the hell out of it. Remember that they have already abused the hell out of it.