First things first, I don’t doubt it is a bad thing, considering who supports it and who doesn’t.
But my question is what exactly is the issue and what is the current and proposed voting process when it comes to IDs?
Here in my EU country, you have to show some version of a government ID, be it an ID card, drivers license or passport. And we don’t have to pre-register to vote.
I will give you an example I overheard for five whole minutes while at the early voting place in my state:
We present our ID and it has to match with the record. You have to confirm your name and address by saying them out loud to the poll worker. Easy, right? Not for this one guy. I’m not sure what the specific issue was, but he could not follow the instructions. The poll worker asked for his name, which went ok. Then she asked for his address. He could not give the address. She asked again. He gave his name. She asked again. He couldn’t answer. She tried all variations of “where do you live?” She was willing to settle for him writing it down. She got to the point where she asked if he could read it off the ID card and he couldn’t. I have no idea what it took, but he was eventually given a ballot about the time I left.
There are many reasons he may not have been able to understand what to do or verbalize (some kind of disability, maybe a language barrier), and it was a bullshit step that depended entirely on who was behind the table and their level of patience. It could have easily disenfranchised him despite having an ID.