Okay Mr. Glutten, see, that’s your problem right there.
Fuck democracy. Let them eat cake while standing in line.
I have never been offered cake at the DMV.
Let them eat $.25 pens from a creaky vending machine that is fascinating to little children.
Better? 
Well, if this goes into effect in, say, 2014, and everyone’s allowed a free voter ID if they can’t get a DL or can’t pay for one, then how is this a problem? Plenty of notice and it’s free.
Because it’s a waste of taxpayer money to address a non-existent problem created to suppress opposition voter turnout and because, as already seen with closing and cutting back of services (and outright direction not to tell people about free cards), it unnecessarily restricts the vote in order to preserve a majority of Republicans.
Post number 5 sums up the problem with “oh, but it’s not that much extra” in one word.
I understand it’s a non-existant problem right now. But it could be one in the future. Honestly, though, I have to show my ID when I drink, go to the bank, get pulled over, buy with a credit card, etc.
Most people have IDs. For those that don’t, they can go get one.
If getting an ID is going to prohibit you from voting because you’re too lazy, then I don’t feel sorry for you.
Other civilized nations do it. Hell, they have National ID cards.
edit: It would be nice if the OP provided a friggin link. iirc, Florida already requires an ID. It worked in 2008. Is that what this is about?
Drinking is not intrinsic to a functioning democracy.
Banking is not intrinsic to a functioning democracy.
Driving is not intrinsic to a functioning democracy.
Using a credit card is not intrinsic to a functioning democracy.
If it’s a "non-esistant problem right now", then why are you comfortable shrinking the franchise to benefit one party? There are lots of problems that “could be one in the future.” That is not a rationale for undermining democracy.
Go back and read Ludovic’s post number 5. It’s very short, but it directly answers many of your questions.
It is more of a burden on people who “coincidentally” tend to be on one side of the political spectrum. For some of these people, it will be the make-or-break which will cause them not to be able to vote.
This will cause a shift in the final vote count. This is deliberate.
:dubious: How much of the rest of the developed world does not also legally mandate either universal adult voter registration, or specific identity documents for all adults, or both?
Most of the rest of the developed world keeps stricter tabs on its population than we do, what with automatic voter registration by citizen ID number, having to register as a resident of whatever municipality you move to, and so on. Should we imitate them in that as well? Why not, if we’re so concerned about protecting the purity of the voter rolls from hypothetical identity falsifications of which nobody has provided any evidence?
If American Exceptionalism is going to decree that we shouldn’t automatically register all adults to vote or automatically provide all adults with a valid citizen/voter identity document, then requiring individual citizens to go to the trouble and expense of acquiring an identity document in order to vote smells a bit poll-tax-y to me. It clearly favors the more privileged and wealthy section of society which is more likely to possess such an identity document already.
But it is rather refreshing to see Republicans arguing in favor of an issue with a line of reasoning that basically boils down to “well, the Europeans do it, so why shouldn’t we?” Don’t see that very often.
I gotta ask, does the number of people who can’t be arsed to get themselves some form of ID (I still think ‘chipped at birth’ is a fabulous solution), but who also want to vote, amount to a significant quantity of relevant votes?
Its “significant” to them.
Why else would the support for this be so one-sided? ETA the only other explanation is that one side actively wants to cater to a significant number of illegally cast votes, which has been shown not to occur. The illegal votes, that is, not the desire for them.
Albuquerque dog becomes registered voter
Posted at: 02/29/2012 10:16 PM
By: Danielle Todesco, KOB Eyewitness News 4
An Albuquerque man says he successfully registered his dog to vote in Bernalillo County.
The dog owner said he saw a voter registration booth on the University of New Mexico’s campus a few weeks ago and decided to see how easy it would be to register his dog to vote.
He said he was trying to expose the problems with the registration system. He said he just received the dog’s voter registration card in the mail Wednesday, and it was way too easy.
NBC2 Investigates: Voter fraud
Updated: Feb 02, 2012 4:32 PM
By Andy Pierrotti, NBC2 Investigator
Two elections supervisors are taking action after an NBC2 investigation uncovers flawed record keeping and human error allowing people who are not citizens of the United States to vote.
No one knows how widespread this problem is, because county election supervisors have no way to track non-citizens who live here.
Four NY Democrats Plead Guilty to Voter Fraud Felony Charges
Thursday, 22 Dec 2011 01:20 PM
By Newsmax Wires
Four Democratic officials and political operatives have pleaded guilty to voter fraud-related felony charges in an alleged scheme to steal an election in Troy, N.Y., FoxNews.com reports.
The group forged signatures on applications for absentee ballots and on the ballots themselves in a 2009 primary of the Working Families Party, which was affiliated with now-defunct community group ACORN.
That was just a quick search. Who said there is “no” problem?
It’s sloppy and biased to attempt to equate “people who can’t be arsed to get themselves some form of ID” with “people who don’t have some form of ID”. Not having an ID doesn’t automatically mean you’re lazy or apathetic.
To answer the less sloppy and biased form of your question, yes, there is a significant percentage of registered voters who do not have a driver’s license or other DMV-issued official ID. In South Carolina, for example, according to the state’s Electoral Commission, it averages out to nearly 7% of registered voters statewide.
:dubious: Emphasis added. Uh, you do realize that legally requiring voters to present an identity document in order to vote in person will not by itself have any effect on deliberate attempts at voter-identity theft using absentee ballots, right?
The example of a prankster deliberately registering his dog to vote is irrelevant, as is your zero-evidence example of non-citizen voting.
Yes, realistically speaking, voter fraud is not a problem in our electoral system. There simply aren’t significant numbers of people fraudulently using other people’s identities in order to vote.
There are, however, significant numbers of registered voters who don’t have official DMV-issued identity documents, and those are the people that the Republicans would like to keep from voting, since they’re more likely to vote Democratic.
I’m not denying that it’s a pretty clever scheme, as political shenanigans go. But there is no plausible cover for it in the form of genuine evidence that we need any voter identity document system to rein in alleged voter fraud.
If there is no time or resources to get an ID, where does one find the time and resources to vote?
Except all the studies show that even when you spend $900,000 to subsidize fresh fruits and veggies, they don’t buy it anyway.
So should we extend that analogy to voting?
The reduction of early voting hours can be its own thread.
there was no fraud, yell the Democrats! You can’t prove the dog voted!
And limiting his registration would disenfranchise all the lawfully voting dogs!