I believe the US has a national ID scheme, just not a mandatory one. You need to request an ID card (though the vast majority of people just use their driving license), but just like you need to proactively get your ID card issued and renewed in France.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_document#United_State...

Well, the US has passports and passport cards, but they're not inexpensive--in the $100+ range with card a bit less--and pretty much no one gets them if they don't need a passport. (And as sibling comment notes, those are only available to citizens--though that's not really relevant for voting anyway.)

Drivers licenses and equivalent ID are at the state level although there's now a fairly high level of standardization (if you get a REAL ID version--required for federal purposes like flying).

So basically government-issued photo ID is fairly readily available but it's (often) not free and can get tricky in cases where, for example, you don't have a permanent address. And, unless you have an existing chain of ID documents, you need your birth certificate at some point.)

The French are so confident in their national ID cards that they still have drivers licenses that are a flimsy piece of paper. New ones are an actual card, but as they don’t need renewal, lots of flimsy pieces of paper out there.

A student id from a university might have a passport sized photo stapled to it.

> I believe the US has a national ID scheme, just not a mandatory one. You need to request an ID card (though the vast majority of people just use their driving license), but just like you need to proactively get your ID card issued and renewed in France.

It has national ID standards for drivers licenses, but as far as I know it doesn't issue any kind of national-level ID document besides passports (and passport cards), and you can only get those as a citizen.

Are non citizens allowed to vote in state and federal elections?

> Are non citizens allowed to vote in state and federal elections?

No. I kinda lost sight of the context.

Also, IIRC, passports are one of the harder and more expensive forms of ID to get.