Voter ID is required to register. At which time it is verified and eligibility is adjudicated.
Identity is confirmed when a ballot is issued. For postal balloting, which is not opposed by Republicans, your address is proxy for identity. One exception is North Dakota; no ID is required, because presumably poll workers know their neighbors.
The issue is what forms of ID are required to be issued a ballot.
Pro democracy persons who support enfranchising their fellow citizens are content to accept many forms of official ID to confirm identity.
Anti democratic persons who openly advocate wide spread disenfranchisement demand restoring unconstitutional poll taxes.
That is not necessarily true in the US. If I vote in person on election day in my town (I usually vote by mail or earlier at town hall) I give my address but do not have to present an ID.
You replied: "That is not necessarily true in the US."
Yes, yes, yes. There are always exceptions in the USA. No one person can know them all.
Because every jurisdiction is a snowflake. And everything keeps changing. Causing us all to talk past each other. No small part of the challenge talking about this stuff rationally.
For your jurisdiction, the powers that be determined that your signature was sufficient verification, which can be compared against the signature on file (your registration), just like with postal ballots.
I live in what is almost certainly a perfectly typical town in the Northeast US. And it's fully compliant with Massachusetts law.
Which is just one state as you say. But, if you follow the news, requiring ID is a very contentious topic that's often associated with disenfranchising voters so I assume it's not the norm.
Left unsaid in the kabuki over voter ID is The Correct Answer:
Universal automatic voter registration. Like every other mature democracy.
We now have a handful of complete rosters. Of everyone living and dead. Updated in near real-time.
We know with complete certainty if someone is eligible to vote.
We could just use any of our existing national demographic databases (NSA, Planitir, Facebook, LexisNexus, ChoicePoint, etc) for good governance. Instead of 50+ mutually incompatible chaotic mutant voter registration databases.
(Related: Just do a query, instead of walking around with clipboards every 10 years and doing a partial head count.)
Why don't we use the resources we already have to moot this issue?
> Universal automatic voter registration. Like every other mature democracy.
Exactly this. Every citizen should be automatically able to vote without any effort on their 18th birthday. I personally think it shouldn’t even require being 18, but should be permitted if elections are happening during your 18th year, but you haven’t hit your birthday yet—nobody turning 18 in 2020 should be unable to vote for the next president just because their birthday is after Election Day. We should be doing all we can, on the public dime, to the point of begging and dragging people to the nearest booth to participate in their government.
I think post offices are the perfect first place to look to for handling this. Far more citizens live in close proximity to a post office than a dmv. And as needs require and areas permit, we can look to libraries, state universities, and community colleges as additional points where one can handle voting needs—even casting ballots.
Voter ID is required to register. At which time it is verified and eligibility is adjudicated.
Identity is confirmed when a ballot is issued. For postal balloting, which is not opposed by Republicans, your address is proxy for identity. One exception is North Dakota; no ID is required, because presumably poll workers know their neighbors.
The issue is what forms of ID are required to be issued a ballot.
Pro democracy persons who support enfranchising their fellow citizens are content to accept many forms of official ID to confirm identity.
Anti democratic persons who openly advocate wide spread disenfranchisement demand restoring unconstitutional poll taxes.