Would you object if the Federal government were to provide photographic identifications free of charge to all citizens, Deuce?
I'm not Deuce, but I'll say: with important caveats. It may seem odd that many do not actually have photo ID, especially to lawyers (I believe someone told me you were one, and I certainly am - appellate criminal defense, the most hopeless of the lot, but anyway....).
- Necessary documents
for getting a license need to be free. There are fees for things like birth certificates, etc.
- Relatedly, outreach to people who hear about this offer to help them get documents if they suffer from some medical disability, etc., matter. Same for finances. If you're poor, you may not have a computer, even. Or you may. It depends. If I didn't have one, I'd have a hell of a time working out exactly who to call to get a copy of my birth certificate (do they even deliver phone books anymore?).
- Some vague set of things related to that outreach to the poor in more rural areas. A lot of America resembles third world countries much more than the "America" most of us think of; Alabama trailer parks, and backwoods TN. Etc.
The main thing with these kind of things is that it's a hell of a lot more of a problem than it would be to you or me for some poor person - especially rural - to gather the documents necessary to get an ID (and now/soon, a "Real ID"). You really might not guess it unless you talked to them, and since I focus on representing the indigent, well, I at least have some insight.
My main position is back on post #233, though: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And every time the authorities go looking to see if there is a lot of voter fraud, they come up empty handed. We hear about registries with dead people on them, yes, but we hear about that because
they cannot show us evidence of dead people voting in any meaningful number. There aren't even stories about X thousand people around the country reporting that they showed up to the voting booth only to get turned away because their name had already been crossed off the roll. It simply does not happen in any meaningful degree.
Why make a fuss if we can't prove the existence of the problem, but only things that might conceivably create a problem if X00,000 or X,000,000 people suddenly decided to risk years in federal "pound me in the ass prison" (cite: Office Space) just to cast one little fraudulent vote? Why bother?
I'd think the meaningful concern would be about who tallies/counts votes, whether it is an electronic system or a mixture or ...well, whatever. That's what you'd target if you wanted to push an election and were willing to go to jail to do it, right? Not your one or five votes....
eace