This seems utterly inflammatory, and somewhat divorced from reality. I absolutely understand systems thinking, and specifically can see the argument for posiwid here, but even then... This sort of conspiracy thinking strikes me as profoundly not useful.

Before attributing laws requiring IDs to the evil evil overlords, first ask yourself why 80% of citizens approve of these laws? Is everybody just all working to keep a tiny group of people down? Might it instead be that complex systems have edge cases and people who are already on the margins of society hit these edge cases more? The reason I ask is because we can fix bugs, but obviously we can't fix a global conspiracy, so I'd really like to know which I'm dealing with. If it is a conspiracy this makes it seem like there's nothing I can do to solve the problem.

[0]: https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthp...

Voter suppression is a real thing in the United States. It's a strategy often used to hold and retain power by the minority (often richer, privileged) party

See https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/block-the-vote-vot...

> Suppression efforts range from the seemingly unobstructive, like strict voter ID laws and cuts to early voting, to mass purges of voter rolls and systemic disenfranchisement. These measures disproportionately impact people of color, students, the elderly, and people with disabilities. And long before election cycles even begin, legislators redraw district lines that determine the weight of your vote.

" The reason I ask is because we can fix bugs "..

These problems can be fixed, but they require effort by all citizens to vote and put pressure to make voting equitable.

Fortunately I live in New Zealand so our democracy is quite healthy, though it could always be better.

Unless the purge is over-enthusiastic, with unrealistically high barriers to re-entry. It’s not a problem for someone who has all the documents and the time to jump through all the hoops (or someone to do it for them), and a sympathetic administration with an office close enough that you can go there without taking a day off. Assuming you have days off at all. It’s quite harder otherwise. The result is a disproportionally large fraction of “undesirables” (poor and living in specific areas) being disenfranchised.

The link you posted indicates that 80% of people think it's reasonable to show ID at a polling station. I think you'd find that's a pretty common opinion on it's face because it's perfectly reasonable to show ID to do things like vote or get social security benefits or register property you own or all those government-y things.

The trouble comes when you hijack that perfectly reasonable expectation by then making ID preferentially difficult to get for certain classes of people. You don't need to trust that this is the case - it's apparent from the statistics. More than 10% of adult US citizens don't have ID. Why not? Because it takes time and money - you need to pay fees, you need to travel, you need underlying documents that can sometimes take hundreds of dollars of fees themselves to generate, etc. Politicians also can 'tune' what counts as ID to preselect the voters they want. TX for example, counts concealed carry cards as ID but does not count student IDs.

In fact, in 2014 the GAO itself found that strict photo ID laws reduce turnout by at least 2-3 percentage points on average with significantly higher proportions in economically depressed and racially diverse areas, and it's well documented that the people impacted by that lower turnout are overwhelmingly members of specific demographics that tend to vote for specific policies. That's a pretty big incentive to marginalize these people if you don't agree with those policies.

It's undeniable that for many of the most vulnerable and powerless members of society obtaining ID under the current regime is in direct conflict with simple survival, and is unlikely to be a priority. If we want to require ID for voting we should make the process of obtaining that ID require as little economic power as possible - a task that is easily within our grasp.