> I'm surprised why voter ID has become such a partisan issue, specifically how intense the Democratic opposition to it has been. It's a sensible policy and it seems the concerns about "[X] not having ID" should be addressed by
solving the problems preventing [X] from getting an IDIt's a partisan issue for three reasons.
1. The party that is enacting these voter ID laws in almost all cases is at the same time enacting changes to make it harder for those who do not already have a suitable ID to get one. If these laws also did as you suggest and addressed the problem of getting ID there would be much less objection.
Typical methods include reducing the number of places you can go to get IDs (with most of the reductions coming in areas that typically vote for the other party), reducing the number of days and the number of hours on those days that those places issue IDs so that to get an ID you have to come in on a work day during work hours, accepting many forms of ID carefully that happens to include things people who vote for them are more likely to have (i.e., state issued hunting licenses) and excluding ID that people who vote for the other party are more likely to have (i.e., state issue college ID).
I forgot which state it was, but in one if you took the list something like a dozen acceptable IDs and sorted it descending by the probability that a black person in that state already had that ID, all the acceptable ones were in the top of the list. The legislative committee that made the acceptable ID was known to have had that data when they made that list, which makes it rather hard to believe that it was not a coincidence that the ones black people were more likely to have did not make the cut.
2. These are almost always accompanied by non-ID voting changes that also make it harder to vote even if you have the correct ID, and these changes almost always massively disproportionately affect people who tend to vote for the other party.
E.g., restricting voting hours, in particular getting rid of early voting on the weekend before election day. Decreasing the number of places to vote or the number of places you can drop off ballots.
3. This is not addressing an actual problem. Every attempt to show that there is any non-trivial amount of incorrect voting has failed to find any.
#3 in itself is not bad. Just because it is not a problem now doesn't mean it can't become a problem in the future so getting ahead and getting it in place now could be sensible, but when combined with #1 and #2 it is clear that ID is being enacted not to increase election security but as a form of voter suppression.