Quote (bogie160 @ Mar 10 2024 04:56pm)
The vast majority of Americans have a driving license. You need an ID in order to open a bank account, and it is legal for a state to require an ID before you exercise other constitutional rights like buying a firearm.
The most stringent test for constitutionality is whether there's a compelling government need and whether the restriction in question is the least onerous available. Yes, the government has a compelling need to verify that voting is conducted in a legal manner, as the voting process underpins the legitimacy of the entire constitutional process. And so long as the government accepts multiple forms of voter identification, or even better, offers free ID, it passes the onerous test.
Why does the Republican party often operate far out of bounds on this issue, in a way that prevents something that its constituents actually want? There seems to be a frequent tendency to immediately say that the left is against voter ID all while ignoring that the left opposed it because of the way it was being implemented (amongst other policies that disenfranchise voters). There have been instances where Republican parties passed voter ID laws, but did so based off of comparing voting and ID record data information, which "coincidentally" disenfranchised non-White voters.