> Ideally, national (voter) ids should be free and obtainable with minimum effort.
Except they definitely won't be. See: the entire south. Election integrity can be maintained without voter IDs as evidenced by the fact that we have a couple centuries of successful elections without them. The concept exists only as a way to disenfranchise voters.
Every democratic country in the world with successful elections has voter ID* except for the US, unless I missed one. I don't know if there's some way people were disenfranchised as a result. For the past couple of centuries here, we don't have a way to prove that election integrity was maintained.
* checked either at registration time or polling time
We do actually have a way to validate election integrity because we have voter registration. If someone impersonates me and casts a vote in my name that is detected when I try to cast it again.
There’s zero credible evidence that it is needed and clear evidence that it will be used to disenfranchise voters.
It’s a feel-good “common-sense” issue but that juice ain’t worth the squeeze.
Impersonation isn't the issue. In almost every state, ID isn't required for voter registration, so there's no way to tell if you're an eligible voter or even a real person. Maybe if we have access to how many people registered and voted without ID in each race, we could determine it's been a small enough number not to matter even if 100% of them were fraudulent. But idk, there have been some tight races in the past.
So what is your assertion here? That there are enough fake voters registered to influence the outcome of elections but there has never been any evidence of that happening? How is that possible? How is such a conspiracy administered and coordinated?
What we do have evidence of is deliberate voter disenfranchisement. Things like limiting where and when voters can register to places that are hard for minorities to reach. Or moving polling locations at the last minute.
You’re attempting to solve a problem that has no evidence of existing with a solution that will definitely benefit proven abusers.
My assertion is that we don't know whether or not fraudulent votes have changed the outcome of an election, whether coordinated or not. You keep saying it's never happened, without any evidence.
Except they definitely won't be. See: the entire south. Election integrity can be maintained without voter IDs as evidenced by the fact that we have a couple centuries of successful elections without them. The concept exists only as a way to disenfranchise voters.