Even you can get a new passport or ID at Amsterdam airport and some municipalities while living abroad. Even here in the UK there is an evening opening hours to get your ID (5-7 pm) or open on Saturday morning.
Personally, this sounds the US government is trying to make it unreasonable hard to vote.
I've never really come across this phrase in UK politics. If it was to come up, I'm certain it would be met with extreme outrage. Why is it just accepted in the US?!
I've not seen "extreme outrage" to any of these examples:
"It could lead to a repeat on the mainland of the Northern Ireland experience where the introduction of individual registration led to a 10% drop in registrations and many eligible voters effectively being disenfranchised."[0]
"The government trialled voter ID in some local authorities during the 2018 and 2019 local elections. It was disturbing to see ministers describe it as a “success”: we know that hundreds of people were denied a vote for not having ID. In 2019, according to official figures, more than 700 people were turned away from polling stations across just 10 council areas."[1]
"A large software company whose shareholders include Brexiter and former Conservative Cabinet minister Peter Lilley has been given a lucrative contract by the Cabinet Office without competitive tendering to revamp the management of the electoral register in extraordinary circumstances."[2]
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/sep/15/new-voter-r...
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/queens-speech-voter-id-...
[2] https://bylinetimes.com/2020/01/07/why-did-cabinet-office-ru...
https://www.nps.gov/articles/anti-suffragism-in-the-united-s...
It's been a continuous process since the country's founding to enfranchise all citizens with the right to vote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_St...
In Sweden, are there limited protections for worked so that many poor workers won't have any paid days off they can use for such a trip, so it will cost them a day or two of pay to get their ID, and perhaps their job if their boss doesn't approve of them taking time off from work?
In Sweden, are the politicians who instituted the voter ID policies the same politicians that have drastically reduced the number of polling places per capita in minority neighborhoods so that actually voting there can require hours of standing in line (and missing work if your employer doesn't give you a paid day off to vote), while not cutting or even increasing polling places per capita in white neighborhoods so that it is a breeze for whites to quickly and easily vote?
Have they cut back early voting programs that opened the polling places during the weekend before election day, so people could vote on their days off?
If the answer to all of the above is "no", then what you see in Sweden is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to understanding voting in the US.
The fact is that the people enacting voter ID laws in the United States (1) are generally the same people who have been working hard to limit minority voting, (2) cannot demonstrate that it solves any actual problem, (3) try to make it hard for poor and minorities to get the ID that they pick for their system while making it easy for white people.
That's why there is plenty of opposition to voter ID--the politicians pushing for it are not acting in good faith. If someone proposed a voter ID system in good faith--one in which it was free to get ID, could be obtained quickly and without the need for a lot of travel, and was easy for minorities to get as for white people, there would mostly only be objections from those who oppose national ID system in general.