Brazil and China, which are as big as the USA in land (both) and population (China) have IDs as well. All IDs are issues by the nation-state but usable in other EU countries.

I mean yeah, not free but a minimal fee like 20$ or something, doable in an easy place., the problem is not really the ability or will, but political polarization that makes even reasonable propositions become weaponized.

It's not a pointless expense if it is integrated into other systems like healthcare, driving licence, and for example, online identification to do taxes and such. You cannot meaningfully digitalize bureaucracy without standard IDs.

I will turn the omelette of sorts, I think that it still worth it as a standard to pursue the federal ID as it would simplify a lot of things overall and the whole tapestry of systems (state Ids and such) actually makes everything more difficult for everyone (minorities included) and more falsifiable which adds tension to an already polarized system.

I am familiar with the history, but from an outsider POV it feels like the story of the sheep that got electrocuted once and then never ventured outside, the path dependency is not really helpful in general. Also I followed the law in the US to make ID mandatory at voting, and from what I saw the whole debate around it seemed deranged, if voter fraud and non-citizens voting is inexistent, why did so many people oppose it. Ironically what will happen is that the elderly will be most affected and will stop voting Republican (chat happened in the UK).

In the rest of developped countries you can't vote without an official ID, in local, regional and national elections. I am not american, I don't care about your politics, ID voting is the way to ensure that no party or fringe movement gets to label elections as tricked. How is this such a controversial opinion that I get downvoted, national issued ID is the norm

This is exactly how every EU country conducts their elections, it is crazy to paint this as some bait or crazy thing

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