All this ballot-this and ballot-that is so easily solved if only those who oppose showing ID would drop their objections. Here's how it works:

1: show up at polling location, either on voting day or within the early voting period.

2: show ID to poll worker who verifies it and hands over the ballots for the elections in which you have the right to vote

3: fill in the ballots, put them in the envelope(s) and hand these over to a poll worker

4: poll worker checks again whether you have voting rights for the specific elections and drops the envelopes into the correct voting urns

Done. No postal service involved. You can vote at any (early) voting location for national elections, for local ones you'll need to go to a local voting location where the required ballots are available. Early voting can start a few weeks before election day so nearly everyone should have the possibility to set aside half an hour to an hour to do their civic duty.

That leaves those who really can't make it to the polls. For these people there can be a verified postal ballot system, i.e. they get one sent home on request, fill it out and send it back in the required envelopes. Voting by mail always adds risks but since it would only be needed for a small fraction of the voters that risk is manageable. Mail-in votes need to be counted on election day so they need to be in the mail about a week before election day. Why you ask? Because the fraud risk of mail-in ballots makes it all too easy to use them to add enough votes to push a close race towards a specific candidate. Count them early on election day and publish the results, these need to be final results, before the rest of the votes are counted. There's plenty of countries where votes are counted this way, this is not rocket science. I have voting rights in 2 different countries in northern and western Europe, both use something resembling this scheme. Everyone shows his or her ID either to get the ballots or to have them deposited in the voting urns, this has never been contested and the mere thought of voting without ID is so clearly outrageously silly that nobody brings it up. All the arguments against showing ID have been proven to be specious at best, you need ID to do just about anything related to the government so insisting on voting without it only serves to undermine trust in elections.

You are probably getting down voted because you are assuming that what works in other countries would work in the US. Maybe it could, but it would take a lot of effort which the people who are pushing for voter ID in the US are not willing to put in.

Those countries have robust and long establish national ID systems, and they do go a good job of making sure citizens easily obtain their ID.

The US has no such system.

There are millions of adult citizens without valid government issues photo ID acceptable and who cannot reasonably afford to get it. Before you say that states offer free ID, it is not the cost of the ID itself that is the issue. It is the cost of getting supporting documents.

Often getting copies of the supporting documents requires showing ID. Oops. There are alternate procedures, which often involve hard to find documents, often not digitized or centralized.

The only way to do a voter ID system in the US without disenfranchising a large number of voters is to establish a system similar to other countries with a national ID that is easy for every citizen to obtain and we grandfather in existing citizens by making the new system only required for people who are born after it is instituted.

ID is already required in the US to vote. You are required to register to vote, and that registration includes an identity check. Performing the check at this stage allows the time to verify identity and correct any issues, well before voting day.

The United States barely has a standard ID system across states, no federal system of ID besides the passport, and a horrible history of using every single possible opportunity to turn any requirement into a racist, discriminatory system.

Somehow folks who call for voter ID laws seem to also be opposed to making getting a photo ID free and easy

0. Make polling day a public holiday for everyone who isn't super essential. Make another polling day for super essential workers which they get as a holiday instead (people who aren't super essential will cover their shifts).

-1. Give everyone an ID. Actually give them one and don't just pretend to do it.

I still don’t understand how meaningful in-person voter impersonation would work.

I’m working as a poll worker for the current US election, and I can’t see how you would do it. We don’t check ID.

> if only those who oppose showing ID would drop their objections

You're not even wrong.

I worked as a poll judge for a long time. I know a little bit about election administration.

Most every jurisdiction has required ID for a very long time. And the exceptions prove the rule. (IIRC, North Dakota?)

I also strenuously objected to closing the local polling sites in my county and state. (We activists were only able to delay it 2 years. Mostly by exposing lies of vendors and their lackeys.)

One of the (many) reasons was the long term decline of USPS, mostly caused by the decades long revanchist campaign to dismantle it, to further undermine our democracy.

Sadly, we were proven right.

voting should be frictionless and not have to go anywhere

it's a constitutional right, not something you should have to jump through hoops

people don't have the time to take off work and not get paid and wait in line for hours which is exactly what many places do now by reducing voting location radically

many people can't even afford a car these days or to fill it with gas

if you insist on in person voting, make it a paid day off

the ID thing is a false narrative, it's not ID that's the problem, it's that it costs money to get the ID and now they want your birth certificate saying the ID doesn't even prove you are a citizen with "realID"

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