This goes for more than just voter ID. Politicians will say things that "sound reasonable" or "are common sense" on the surface, but the motives and fact once you get into the details tell a much different story.
The REAL ID act was supposed to be a step toward this, but has been continually delayed as far as I know.
[1] https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/oagnews/release.php?id=...
I also note that mandatory ID laws wouldn't have stopped the case you linked - they had IDs but the fraudulent bit was the citizenship!
If the later, then I can understand why people are against requiring such an arbitrary form of identification.
A bored immigration guy in Detroit once amused himself by pointing out that neither my driver's license nor my draft card showed that I was in fact a citizen of the US, or I guess a legal resident. When I said that this was the only ID I was carrying, and shrugged, he waved me through.
Varies from State to State as far as know. At least in some states it's enough to prove that you live in the state, not that you are living there legally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REAL_ID_Act
I definitely had to show the 4 types of documents the last couple of times I've moved (photo/birth/status/address). Stupidly, the first id that was obtained by showing that stuff didn't serve as proof of the first 3 when I moved again.
Can you link to a single instance of voter fraud effecting the outcome of an election?
How would voter id laws prevent an american citizen from voting in a different district?
For example the texas election ID doesnt even include your address.[1]
im kidding, but seriously thats a really interesting article/event - what search terms did you use, or did you have prior knowledge of that incident?
I found the incident a few months ago when I simply tried to collect a bunch of data on voter fraud in order to estimate how prevalent it is. Because the issue is so highly politicized, you have to dredge through an excessive amount of bullshit just to find references to specific elections. That election is mentioned in this article (which I, incidentally, recommend reading in full) about Hans von Spakovsky in the New Yorker, albeit in a VERY different guise than two relatives of the candidate: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/29/the-voter-fraud...
A much more interesting election is that of Loretta Sanchez to the House of Representatives in 1996. That resulted in a Congressional investigation that lasted for over a year, whose findings are worth reading if you're interested in analysis of voter fraud. For a quick link to an article from the time, see for example http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/02/13/cq/sanchez.html
The idea of voter ID is effective because of what you just said it sounds so reasonable, until you look at the motivation that it disproportionately results in poor people not being able to vote.