Thanks to someone (on the right but I forget the name) I looked up the Carter-Baker Federal election commission.
A blast from the past is this paragraph on the commission's homepage:
Full Report PDF (7.6MB) or Text Only
(Download will take approximately 20 minutes on a dial-up connection, 4 minutes on a cable or dsl connection, and under 30 seconds on a LAN.)
Apparently the report failed to attract support, perhaps for reasons indicated by the dissent. Personally I like the idea of standard photo ID for voting, but that's my nerd/bureaucrat coming out. I'd spend a few billion to get those IDs into the hands of everyone (including the majority of Native Americans (or possibly only Navaho members) who don't have individual mail service.)) and the very old, and then phase in use of the requirement. I know liberals don't like this, and it's reasonable to say it's not cost-effective: the amount of electoral fraud due to identity fraud is small.
But, and it's a big but, many on the right don't trust the system. Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight elections, and that trend is likely to continue, meaning the distrust will only increase.
So my grand bargain (which I've posted about before) is phase in photo-id of everyone, along with basic data (i.e., citizen/non citizen, age) to be used for election verification and for employment verification (E=Verify). The right get assurance about election validity and strong immigration enforcement; the left gets voting eligibility for everyone in national elections. I think it's a reasonable deal but I'm not optimistic.
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