If you check ID, but make that ID available only through a particular process that is difficult for some people to access, you've effectively disenfranchised that demographic. This has actually happened in some states, where older black people who didn't have access to the amenities of the state when they were young have been unable to vote because they now lack the things they "should" have. It's similar to the problems with poll taxes and literacy tests.

The hard part is discouraging and dissuading the right groups of people.

Which seems like a politically charged thing to say, but it is more or less transparently true.

Because that would be a government ID which would be used to track you and take away your freedom and is therefor evil. Unlike SSNs /s

Seriously though you’d still have all the issues of normal voting registration (people without known birthdays, for example). Depending on how you handle such cases you can end up discriminating against a lot of people.

> Voter's fraud is already pretty low, so I'm assuming the above works fine as it is...

How would that be quantified with empirical evidence, out of curiosity? The same question is true for the opposite presupposition which assumes it is pretty high and influential

Assignation of a voting number and requiring voter ID are considered voter suppression by some

In the United States, the concept of "ID card" is virtually synonymous with "Drivers License". Surprisingly to many Americans, many other Americans do not have a Drivers License. These people are disproportionately more likely to be poor, not white, and Democrats.

A national ID card could address this problem, but then some subset of Americans goes apeshit over the idea, despite the fact that most of them are carrying drivers licenses that have the same effect. Most of these people seem to be Republicans.

If the effects of requiring picture ID were party-neutral it would not be a controversial position. But the effects aren't neutral, and one party wants to use it to disadvantage the other party.

All states will issue a photo ID that is not a drivers license but equivalent to one for other purposes.

So there isn't even any need for national id to address that part of it, just a bit of funding.

And not all people who hold driver's licenses are eligible to vote. Non-US citizens, felons, people under 18, etc.

Yes, but why? If the government gives an ID to everybody, there is no discrimination or suppression. Most countries have voter ID and do just fine. This would do a lot to prevent voter fraud, which is far more common than most seem to think. I keep seeing stories of dead people voting, people voting multiple times, and noncitizens voting. These are just the cases that are discovered and receive press coverage; there must be plenty of cases that the public doesn't hear about.

The US doesn't give ID to everybody. Not only is it handled by the states but you have to pay for the ID, and spend several hours on a business day at a DMV. This puts ID out of the range of easy availability for many people.

Also some ... shall we say less than fair counties and states do things like "voter registration is only available at DMV X in OtherSideOfStateTown on the third Tuesday of the month between 1400 and 1430".

I wouldn't dare suggest this was a way of specifically trying to disenfranchise the poorer, Democrat-leaning demographic.

1.) That's considered to be a method of suppressing voters based on race/wealth/education.

2.) The more religious in the U.S. are apt to quote the number of the beast whenever any form of national I.D. is brought up.

So how do you verify that the same individual doesn't have two different ID numbers?

By having a country database of numbers and a clear set of rules for verification and assigning. (Usually on birth or name.)

European countries have those systems and they work. You cab try to lie about yippee number but this can be add hard as trying to brute force a CRC on the fly while also being easy to validate later against the database.