Coupling a free and easy to acquire national ID for every citizen with the requirement to show your ID when voting is the obvious compromise. It makes one wonder why almost all the people pushing for voter ID laws refuse to engage with this compromise.

As I said, this is a "politicized drama". There is no solid evidence that voter id laws have any impact on voter turnout. The vast majority of Americans (80%) of all skin color support these laws. Describing them as "voter restriction laws" is literally true but dishonest and dishonesty is bad.

The number of people that cannot easily obtain and do not already have a state-issued photo ID is very small, practically negligible - to our great misfortune, modern life has made it very difficult to leave your house without papers. Your own link goes into great detail about all the different photo ids the state offers and the different ways to obtain them and the initiatives to make it even easier.

This is another one of those bizarre mismatches between American and European politics, I suppose. In much of Europe (and most of the world, really), photo ID is expected and it often isn't even free, like it is in much of the US if you qualify. It certainly isn't easier to get! Your own Wisconsin-based link provides information about an IDPP process that allows you to get a state ID without any identifying paperwork for free! [1] The argument is simply that some people might find it inconvenient to get to a DMV within a couple years! (Actually, the argument in your link is also that it's 'offensive' to require a photo ID to resemble its bearer - not an exaggeration, an exact quote.)

This is definitely an example of an American issue that is very, very weird from the outside looking in. There's a lot of political and mental energy spent on a very microscopic issue.

[1] https://bringit.wi.gov/free-id-and-identification-card-petit...

Thank you for that link. Voter ID law seemed like a non-issue until I realized the problems which can arise obtaining an ID and keeping it up to date.

I can imagine lots of edge cases, like a senior citizen who doesn’t drive and has an expired ID. Is it still sufficient proof of identity? Should a voter be turned away?

I suspect these laws are most popular among young people and people who drive—-in other words, people who maintain their ID for other reasons.

People voting multiple times under different names or is so incredibly rare that it's a non-issue. In order to change the outcome of an election a significant portion (at least 1%) of the public would have to vote multiple times.

The question is why are we expending legislative effort on a non-issue when there are plenty of real issues that need to be solved.

no, whether id is easy to get or not is entirely beside the point. by constitution, we're decidedly not a papers-please nation, despite the slippery slope you seem to support.

voting should be plentiful, accessible, subsidized, and unimpeded, not gatekept, especially not by a surreptitous effort to implement national id.