While most of what the Republicans are proposing to suppress the vote is very unpopular (even among Republican voters) and most of the Democratic proposals in the For the People Act (H.R. 1/S. 1) are very popular (even among Republican voters), the one voter suppression tool that gets a lot of popular support is requiring voters to have ID. It is easy to understand why this proposal is popular. People are used to having to present their ID for a variety of circumstances. So presenting it to vote does not seem like a big deal to people who have government-issued ID (which is the vast majority of people). And most people will not look past the initial “common sense” aspect of requiring voters to have ID to look at the real issues.
First, while there are a variety of circumstances for which we have to present ID, the reason for producing ID is different for these situations. And that determines what needs to be done by the people looking at the ID. For example, many of us remember our misspent youth when we had to produce IDs at bars and restaurants if we wanted to purchase an intoxicating beverage. The bar requires us to produce an ID because they are facing potential criminal charges if they sell to a minor. If they check ID, they can prove that they did not knowingly sell to a minor. So they are simply checking that the photo matches the person in front of them and that the ID shows that the person is at least 21. They do not care if you really are John Doe, III, or Leia Smith. Unless the ID is an obvious forgery, they are fine.
On the other hand, the bank or the car dealership wants to know that the person buying the car or opening an account is really Jane Roe. They are not merely checking the ID to see that the photo matches the person in front of them; they are also making a copy so that they have a record just in case the ID is a fake.
And these different approaches is key to the voter ID situation. If the real goal was to prevent vote fraud, then the way that ID is handled would have to be more like banks and less like bars. Election judges get very minimal training on their duties. In most places, they certainly do not get the detailed training that is necessary to catch a professional fake ID. (And if there were really a vote fraud scheme, it would use professional fake IDs.) But most states follow the bar model with election judges only doing a visual inspection that the ID photo matches the voter. To have any chance of catching fraud (and it would be after the fact), you would need to make copies of every ID and then have law enforcement run every photograph through the state ID database after the election (or have a law enforcement present to do that check at the polling place) to catch any fake IDs. I am unaware of any state that does that, and taking the time to copy or scan every ID would add a significant delay to the voting process.
The only time that I am aware of any state requiring a photocopy of an ID is for mail-in ballots. And that does almost nothing to prevent fraud. All it shows is that the person casting the ballot obtained a photocopy of the ID of the person that is allegedly voting. It does not show that the vote is actually being cast by that person.
Second, we do not have a good ID system in this country. Unlike most countries, there is no mandatory ID document. Most people do have an ID because most people drive vehicles. Especially in rural areas, the number of people without driver’s licenses is minimal because you need to be able to drive to get to work or to get groceries. In urban areas with good public transportation system, however, many people do not have a driver’s license. For these people, whether they have a non-driver ID depends upon if they need one for other purposes. Again, many people in urban areas do have a non-driver ID, but not everybody does. It really is possible in an urban area to never need an ID for day-to-day life. And any effort to make ID mandatory, especially a national ID, meets serious Republican opposition.
Similarly, after 9/11, there was a push at the national level for “Real ID” — a series of rules that would assure that state-issued IDs went only to real people and to make it easier to detect a forged ID. Of course, these rules met serious pushback at the state level. While Real ID compliant documents are needed for travel, in my state, people have the option to get a Real ID compliant driver’s license or a “normal” driver’s license. If the state were really concerned with preventing voter fraud, they would require the use of a real ID complaint document.
The reality is that we are not going to persuade people that having ID for voting is a bad idea. So we need to link ID requirement at the polls to changes in how we issue IDs. If IDs are not mandatory for everyone, people should not need to get an ID just to vote. So, if we are going to require IDs to vote, we need to make IDs mandatory.
