It's been a talking point specific to the voting system in the US, strangely no other country seems to think it's an issue and as soon as the topic changes no one in the US has an issue requiring IDs for things.
Proponents of voter ID claim it is needed to prevent fraud, while opponents point out that there's not enough fraud for it to be worth the cost.
Note that countries such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand also didn't require voter ID. First-world countries that do require ID to vote have systems in place to ensure that getting that ID is easy even for poorer people - such as automatically sending the ID to the voter by mail if the government requires you to report your residence or filing out the necessary forms once, before turning 18.
there's no scientific link between race and the ability to go to a DMV once every 10 years
Another thing is when the id requirement is not just there, but added right before the election, so it's not "going to dmv once every 10 years", but "going to dmv this year especially so you can vote.
If I would be optimizing for the minimal dropoff, the policy would look like "passing the law that takes effect in 5 years from now, tasking the blah blah agency with increasing the id coverage and putting reminders how important it is to get an id and vote everywhere you look at, increased funding for the dmv and whatever". But no, it's has to be done with the urgency and framed as threat.
So the actual argument is not that there is link between race and going to dmv once in 10 years, but that the intent behind passing such laws is not increasing integrity, but favoring a specific party. Even if doesn't actually work, it's still one of the worst things a party in a democratic system can do.
> added right before the election
I feel like it's not hard to counter-argue that the writing has been on the wall for decades and it's not a genuine surprise at this point.
> So the actual argument is not that there is link between race and going to dmv once in 10 years
IMO, it's probably better to make the the actual argument.
> DMV
This entire discussion appears to be over a red herring. You may be interested in my comment on the sibling thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47345614
That form of ID is neither accepted per the proposed legislation [1] nor does it last 10 years (more like 4-5 years from what I've seen). Please go look at what's actually required per the SAVE Act.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safeguard_American_Voter_Eligi...
It's the same basic idea, richer people are more likely to already have an id (drivers licence, passport).
I have seen this constantly claimed, and never reasonably evidenced. It's also hard to believe the kind of American exceptionalism that supposedly causes these problems that everyone else can easily solve, despite an environment that is clearly heavily politically invested in solving it (because that also avoids the appearance of racism).
Meanwhile, American proponents of voter ID can readily find people including among the supposedly discriminated-against groups who will testify to the contrary.
In Canada a drivers license is enough to vote.
In any case, it's not on me to show that they shouldn't need ID. It's on the proponents of ID laws to do so, and they have utterly failed.