As soon as you require a government-isseud ID to vote, you then get into the questions of which IDs qualify and how hard or expensive are they to get it.
You’re slippery sloping. Nobody has advocated for anything beyond a government-issued ID and nobody has suggested discriminating based on “which IDs”.
This is not "slippery sloping". This is analyzing what the proponents of said policies want to achieve, and have achieved in the past. Maybe it's not a conscious decision, but many of these proposed voting laws, or ones that are implemented seemingly effect specific demographics.
Factually and statically, these demographics don't vote in favor of the ones proposing these policies. Said demographics are often of lower income, working longer hours in physical labor jobs.
> ... nobody has suggested discriminating based on which IDs.
"Missouri state Rep. John Simmons, a Republican who sponsored legislation requiring a state-issued photo ID, said that election fraud cases are low priority for prosecutors and that requirement is a “commonsense” way to prevent such cases."
I understand your wording wasn't precise, but requiring a photo ID is specifying "which" type of ID is required. Yes, it is still a vague category but it is narrowing what type is acceptable.
To tie it back to the demographic I mentioned, it may pose a more difficult challenge to acquire a photo id than one would imagine; from my understanding these photos must be taken at an approved institution like the post office. In many of these low income communities, a post office will not be nearby, and due to a lack of transportation it may be quite difficult to get to the place to take the photo.
Ontop of this, the jobs these people are working are far less forgiving with freetime, or taking breaks to do anything not work related when compared to a "cushy" engineering job; for these people, getting time off may be difficult (though I was under the impression that's illegal in many states, I thought an employer is required to), and the money they lose out on could mean not being to afford an important commodity/bill.
> nobody has suggested discriminating based on “which IDs”.
This is a phenomenal achievement in ignorance. Multiple states have had controversies where their Trump-oriented legislatures tried to enact restrictive ID requirements that excluded one group or another, and their state courts or federal courts struck them down based on their nakedly discriminator intent. This includes North Dakota where they tried to disenfranchise tribes (struck down by state supreme court), Texas were they tried to get rid of almost a million black voters (stayed by federal courts), and North Carolina where a state court stayed the enactment of an ID law because reactionaries had "undeniably implemented this legislation to maintain its power by targeting voters of color". There have been controversies about which IDs are valid for voting in every state that tried it.
The fact that restrictive voter ID laws are coextensive with the Confederacy should be all the evidence you need.
You’re only strengthening my argument. Nobody wants these state-wise Voter ID kludges in the same way nobody wants Social Security cards to be de facto ID cards. We want state-issued IDs to function as voter IDs. These voter ID cards that we have now only exist because of opposition to using state-issued IDs.
>We want state-issued IDs to function as voter IDs
The groups who advocate such things also work to make it incredibly difficult to obtain state-issued IDs in communities who don't vote for their party, be they minority communities, university towns, etc.
I know plenty of people who claim that voter ID should be obvious and trivial. These people live in white suburbs where voting never takes more than 15 minutes, the DMV is open every day and you never have to wait more than an hour, and they're all well off enough to own reliable vehicles.
All of them are utterly incapable of understanding (you could argue willfully ignorant) that that is not the reality for plenty of people. That in many communities both places to get ID and places to vote are restricted in number and hours, making it impossible or deeply impractical for people there.
Indeed, one of the key disenfranchisement tactics used by Texas and some other states is to make it virtually impossible for college students to vote. They require 2 printed proofs of residency, which are things like leases or utility bills that name the subject and are addressed to their residence, but university undergraduates don't receive mail at their residences, they have post office boxes, and they don't have leases or utility bills, either. If you look at the list of documents for establishing "residency" in Texas, you can see how impractical it would be for a teenage college student especially one who moved from another state.
You’re slippery sloping. Nobody has advocated for anything beyond a government-issued ID and nobody has suggested discriminating based on “which IDs”.