> I am opposed to a national ID on a very specific point: It can be used as a tool for voter suppression if not done correctly.

We can solve it by making it the duty of the government to provide everyone with ID cards, not the other way. This is an even easier problem than universal healthcare.

But of course, "the government is always inefficient!" crowd will fight tooth and nail to keep it from happening.

> Some of us realize that the Bible is a book of metaphors and guidelines, not a literal future-history account.

The first time someone told me that the story of Adam and Eve was allegorical and not literal, it blew my mind.

I had grown up and been taught "literalism", in that everything that Bible said was literally the truth and not simply a story.

Serious question, how did you rationalize contradictions in the bible? The story of Adam and Eve directly contradicts the story of creation told immediately prior.

The Bible didn't make any sense to me until I took a religious studies course and learned that the old testament is basically the verbal tradition of the ancient Jewish people in written form. I had tried reading the bible when I was much younger, and the contradictions were so absurd I started highlighting them, and I ran out of highlighter before I ran out of Bible. I'm still not religious, but at least religion kind of makes sense to me now.

> It can be used as a tool for voter suppression if not done correctly.

I can see that somewhat but voter ID requirements and legislation in specific states can already be used for it. A free national ID would make it easier and would even fix or prevent abuses from individual states.

Besides if countries like India, which have more corruption, more poverty and fight with such issues like open defecation can manage to provide IDs to more than 95% of its population (and some states have close to 100%) surely we can do it as well.

In the past I would have agreed that state-level voter suppression was more likely, but this administration is pure evil and would potentially be far worse given that kind of power.

The fact that almost any other democratic country in the world have a national id for decades (since 1965 in Brazil for ex) demonstrate that there is no obstacle in that.

Neither New Zealand nor Australia have national ID cards, for what it's worth.

> I am opposed to a national ID on a very specific point: It can be used as a tool for voter suppression if not done correctly.

Having a free, low barrier, nationally accepted ID would help to disarm the weapon of voter suppression by ID demands.

> "Having a free, low barrier"

I agree, but the current administration would never allow either metric, because they don't want voter suppression to go away, they want to broaden and empower it. I am wholeheartedly disgusted with the state of our national government but I feel powerless to do anything about it. I vote (usually Independent/Libertarian/Democrat in that order as available on the ballot) and I contribute to organizations, but I'm just one person in a deep red state.