I've heard those arguments, but the thing is there are several cases around the country right now where ballot-level fraud _was_ caught[1].
Without doing any research I'll say that while it's easier to generate a bogus ballot than it is to generate a bogus hundred dollar bill, it just doesn't scale to the point where it's useful. It's a pain in the ass to get your hands on enough ballots, fill them out, and deliver them to a drop box or whatever. You can't just pull up with a wagon full of ballots and drop them off.
How much is it worth to somebody to flip a county? Which county do you flip? How many ballots will you need to flip it? What's the risk/reward ratio like?
[1] https://www.cpr.org/2024/11/06/mesa-county-mail-ballots-frau...
The ID check is presumably still attached to the envelope rather than the ballot, right? (Otherwise you have massive deanonymity problems). If there is fake voter registration happening, presumably obtaining fake IDs by the same methods is just as easy.
I'm sure a certain amount of e.g. individuals submitting their dead relatives' ballots happens - but anyone doing that can probably grab their relative's ID too, and go to two polling stations. I doubt any large-scale partisan fraud via in-person submission at polling stations is going on, because it's impractical to make that happen while keeping it secret - the only way it could happen would be with widespread official collusion, and again in that case an ID check wouldn't move the needle.
How does checking an ID ensure eligibility better than what's already done? And similarly for ballot casting - how would IDs make a better uniqueness/registration check than what we have?
> a) id requirements disenfranchise voters and b) official collusion is the “only way” are structurally and by evidence unfounded
It's well documented that many legitimate voters do not have IDs. And it's widely accepted that large-scale in-person voter fraud is not happening and there's no real plausible way for it to happen; if you want to claim that it is or it can, the onus is on you.
> In your argument they provide only hand-wavy service for an otherwise unsupported conclusion.
Please grow up. The over-the-top rhetoric doesn't make you more convincing, quite the opposite.
Papers referring to voter ID disenfranchisement rest almost entirely on address-field-correctness deficiency (people move), which is a minimal problem other fields requiring human resolution.
To nurture your aside: People who achieve things identify the factual and structural nature of problems. Articulation is a scale factor. Good luck!
OK, and what is it that ID checking would change about this?
> Papers referring to voter ID disenfranchisement rest almost entirely on address-field-correctness deficiency (people move)
And? Supposing that's so, what difference does it make?
B) It’s administrative and readily-solved.
So what is the concrete difference an ID check makes to the process, and what concrete attack does it prevent? You already get your name checked and crossed off the list, in a world with an ID check you would... get your name checked and crossed off the list?
> It’s administrative and readily-solved.
Then why hasn't it been?