Ouze wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
I don't get this. Is the issue simply they need to provide ID when they vote instead of just voting?

In the US, you register to vote when you turn 18. Thereafter, you get a voter registration card showing you where your polling place is, and then you show up to vote thereafter. At the actual polls, you say who you are, they check you off a list, and then you vote. You do not have to show a photo ID for this process. In the US, you are not required to have ID the way you are in other countries, although you will need ID for many activities. Additionally, which you may or may not know, the US has a long and sordid history of restricting and denying voting rights to minority populations for racist reasons, as a result of which, the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. I mention this because this is a game this country has played for a long, long time.

Anyway, many people do not have valid photo ID in the US for a variety of reasons, such as only working off the books, having their license lapsed from a decade ago because they don't drive anymore, never having gotten a license because they don't own a car, etc etc etc. The pool of people who tend to lack valid photo ID isn't a even distribution, demographically - it includes more poor people, more ethnic minorities, and so on, which also tend to vote more Democratic than Republican. As a result, the GOP has pursued a strategy of passing laws requiring valid photo ID to actually vote, because this will tend to depress a small percentage of the population that can legally vote, tends not to vote republican, and doesn't have a voter ID.

The rationale for passing these laws is to prevent in-person voting fraud, which in addition to being super illegal, statistically does not exist in the US - in the 10 year period from 2000 to 2012, there have only been around 10 cases of in-person voter fraud. There were 120 million votes cast for President in 2012 alone, so it functionally does not exist.

As has been said by Sebster, the laws requiring photo ID rarely to never include provisions or funding for getting an ID for everyone. Going a step further, at least one state has greatly restricted the hours and/or closed offices in locations that vote primarily Democratic.

Anyway, we have a thread on this every few months, where otherwise bright people pretend to be complete fething idiots and pretend that this isn't an organized strategy, and that it isn't for the purposes above, and that what's the big deal anyway, and so on and so forth, because feigned obtuseness is a valuable tool for scoring points for your team.