> For instance if you have a DUI arrest warrant in Washington, I know Arizona and California will still issue you an ID. I think a license too if Washington hasn't convicted you and removed your driving privilege.
California won't issue you a driver's license. My mother sold her car because of this.
About 3 years ago she tried to revert to her maiden name when renewing her driver's license, which resulted in California finding an open Illinois DUI case from the 1970s. As she tells it, there was some miscommunication between her and the DA back then because she didn't realize it was still open until California sent her the renewal rejection.[1] Resolving the DUI from afar would have required more time and expense than she was prepared to spend.
Fortunately, by selling her car she solved two problems. She lives in San Francisco. Her apartment building has no parking, so she was street parking. Keeping and parking a car in the city induced too much anxiety. On balance she's happier and healthier taking the bus and walking. She works as a home assistant and can easily find clients close enough to not require transferring buses. For most people outside San Francisco, though, doing this would be (and is!) much more difficult and stressful. (I once worked with an engineer in Sunnyvale who had an open DUI case in Connecticut. He would bike and walk everywhere, which definitely did not make him happier, though perhaps healthier.)
Around that same time my dad would have been racking up DUIs across the country. For decades he drove without a driver's license. Fortunately he lived in a small town in Alabama and was friendly with the local police and sheriff's deputies. Elsewhere he relied upon the same strategy as many illegal immigrants: never speed and drive very carefully. He also generally avoided the interstates, which would add many hours to our Thanksgiving road trips from Mobile/Pensacola to Tampa.[2] I think at some point in the 2000s he bit the bullet and resolved things in Alabama, but considering he had (and has) open DUIs in several other states I assume Alabama didn't have reciprocal notification and enforcement.
[1] More likely she did what most people have done who end up in the same situation: ignore it and pretend it went away. That was easier back then.
[2] My job was to mind the cooler and toss him beers.
EDIT: Regarding simply getting an ID, some time after moving to SF my mom needed to get a new ID showing her SF residency to apply for some assistance programs. The DMV wanted a copy of her birth certificate from Illinois; her Social Security card and Massachusetts license weren't enough, I guess. I don't really know what the problem was, but apparently she spent several hours playing phone tag and then learned it was going to cost some surprising amount of money. I would have paid the money, but at that point I guess she was fed up and fell back on her old "ignore it" strategy. Fortunately (again), San Francisco had begun issuing city IDs, partly for the benefit of undocumented immigrants. Her city ID sufficed for her immediate needs. I don't know if she ever got a copy of that birth certificate, but she did eventually get a California driver's license.
Anyhow, apropos stricter voter ID laws, people shouldn't assume getting an ID is so convenient as to not constitute any sort of burden, especially if you're under time constraints, such as when showing up to a polling station and being told you need a different form of identification than you had been using for years.