Voter Photo ID question...?

Your drivers license comes with a fee of somewhere around $25 in most states. That's a poll tax. Poll taxes are EXPLICITLY unconstitutional. So unless the government is giving those IDs out for free, it's a non-starter right from the start. Furthermore, there are plenty of people for whom the correct documents DO NOT EXIST. My grandfather, for example, was born in a farm house on land that later became a native american reservation. There are no government records of his birth. So he wouldn't be able to get one of these IDs under current requirements. Finally, in-person voter fraud is NOT a problem. Far, FAR more people are disenfranchised by voter ID laws than the number of fraudulent votes that have been cast in the past decade. Something on the order of 100,000 TIMES more people are disenfranchised by voter ID laws. Shouldn't we be applying some rationality to the discussion? No government records of his birth = no birth certificate. Yes. That's what it means. There are several hundred thousand people alive in the USA who are legitimate voters with no birth certificate. There are some quantity more where the record of their birth was destroyed in floods, fires, etc. And the largest problem of all is people who's documents do NOT match. (E.g. their Social Security number was issued under a different name than their birth certificate.) It's EXTREMELY difficult for those people to correct the issues and get the proper documents for state ID cards. That's why its such an awful law ... for now. Eventually all those issues can be resolved. But there's no rush.

IF voter fraud is being committed (which you can only assume statistically--because quantification is impossible), it is likely institutional. What this means is akin to "this is the way we've done it since Grandma was little." A picture ID will do nothing to solve the issue because, eventually, it too can be easily circumvented. A much less controversial way to approach the sanctity of the ballot is to simply require a voter to put a thumb print on a simple affidavit at the polls. Criminals don't like the collection of biometric information which could possibly link them to crimes. Even if the thumbprint is unusable, the mere fact that it is being collected will add risk to illicit behavior. Also, unlike a picture ID, it is difficult to argue that giving an instant thumbprint would disenfranchise legal voters.

It's a big inconvenience for democrats apparently