Germany and France have a mandatory national ID that everyone has. European countries which _don't_ have mandatory national ID will generally accept a wide variety of things. For instance, in Ireland, we can use a bank card, a social security card, a birth cert, an employee or student ID card, and so on. Essentially everyone will have one of these.
If the US used this sort of approach I don't think there'd be so much concern. The problem comes in requiring ID which certain classes of people are likely not to have. I don't think any US state has proposed an Irish-style approach to this; most seem to want either a driving license or a purpose-designed ID.
33 states allow by-mail voting without any specific reason (or have mail-in elections to begin with). This includes many big republican states like Georgia and Florida (with Texas being the notable exception--there, you need to certify you'll be away from your polling place on election day).
> For instance, in Ireland, we can use a bank card, a social security card, a birth cert, an employee or student ID card, and so on. Essentially everyone will have one of these.
> The problem comes in requiring ID which certain classes of people are likely not to have. I don't think any US state has proposed an Irish-style approach to this; most seem to want either a driving license or a purpose-designed ID.
You misperceive where the battle lines actually are in the US: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voter-.... No state requires a "driving license or purpose-designed ID for voting.
14 states, including most of the largest ones, require no documentation whatsoever. Here in Maryland, I voted by walking down to the fire station, writing my address on a ballot, and signing it. These states are significantly more permissive than Ireland.
The next batch of states requires some form of ID, or other documentation, but usually you can vote anyway by providing identifying information and signing an affidavit. In Texas, for example, you need some sort of photo ID, and if you don't have one, you sign a declaration saying you don't have one. These is about as permissive as Ireland. Maybe a bit more permissive, because you can usually still vote even if you don't have an official ID.
Only 7 states have a "strict" voter ID law. These just require some form of photo ID. All but Wisconsin allows you to vote and then come back 3-5 days alter with your photo ID. This sounds roughly comparable to Ireland, maybe a bit more restrictive insofar as you need a photo ID (employee or student ID card) as opposed to a non-photo ID (bank card).
When you hear people in the U.S. talk about voter ID laws being used for "voter suppression" those people want all the state laws to be like Maryland, where there is zero verification. Ireland's laws would get lumped in with those of evil Republican states like Texas. Likewise, when you hear about "voter purges" for the most part they're talking about any attempt to maintain an accurate list of who is registered to vote (in a country where it's not mandatory to update your address with the local government).
In LA and California, the voter rolls have 112-114% as many people as the number of eligible voters in the county: https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/judicial-watch-.... According to those counties, they classify those voters into "active" and "inactive" lists, but in fact people on either list can still show up and cast a ballot and have it counted. When states like Georgia try to remove voters from the rolls that didn't respond to multiple notices sent to their home address, or haven't voted in many years, people call that "voter suppression."
Removing people from voter rolls should require making active efforts to determine if there is a change in voter status. For example, are they still filing taxes at the same address? The most common cause of stale voter roll information is people moving, and the voter database not reflecting it, but there are already several government databases that will reflect whether or not someone has moved. Purging voters simply because of nonresponse and non-voting should be insufficient burden of proof--and yet states have tried to do that in the past.
It's actually quite frustrating how many different government agencies I have to inform of my move [1], especially because there's very little indication of who will and who won't be told of it.
[1] The title registration of my car and my driver's license not using the same database is particularly frustrating because it was the same damn agency.
https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/here...
> The notices are generated after the state compares the list of people who submitted a change of address form to the U.S. Postal Service with the state’s overall list of registered voters.
> Voters who receive them are asked to fill out the form and return them to their local county elections office. The notice says a voter will be declared “inactive” if they don’t respond within 30 days. Several advocacy groups including the ACLU of Georgia, however, say not all voters should face that consequence.
https://www.npr.org/2019/12/20/790319853/are-states-purging-...
> Now, in Wisconsin, it's a whole different case. It's the state that wants to wait until after the 2020 elections to remove some 234,000 voters who appear to have moved. They want to wait because they've run into problems in the past using Division of Motor Vehicle change of address records to clean up their lists.
At the end of the day, why is it unreasonable to have similar voter laws to say France or Germany? Maybe you get a ballot in the mail, but you have to show up with a photo ID. This doesn’t seem like too much to ask.