This year is the 80th anniversary of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, do they really need to go through the history of IDs? We need to rebuild confidence in the integrity of elections, Voter ID, which most democratic countries require, seems like an incredibly modest step.
The states that historically had the worst race issues all have voter id anyway, it is the Northeast and West coast that are refusing.
People didn't lose confidence in the integrity of elections because our elections lack integrity, they lost confidence because they were told in a way that resonates with them that our elections lack integrity.
Voter ID would just be security theater in that it's an onerous rule that does nothing to help any actual problem aside from making things look better to some people.
As always, you should ask "what purpose does this serve?" Do we need voter ID laws? Well, is there a widespread voter fraud problem? No [1].
When you declare something to be "common sense", you betray either a lack of knowledge of why something is the way it is, you know why it's like that but you're willing to lie about it to push an agenda or you have a position of privilege where something doesn't affect you so you just don't care.
So if voter fraud isn't a widespread problem, you should then ask who is pushing for this and why? Also, why are things the way they are?
A big part is that as many as 7% of Americans don't have the documents required to prove their birth or citizenship [2]. So Voter ID laws disenfranchise a right (voting) to millions of people.
Voter ID is really about voter suppression. Why? Because you need ID to register and vote. If you don't have it, you lose that right. If you think those people are more likely to vote against your interests, you do what you can do make sure they can't vote.
As a real example, Alabama has Voter ID laws but in certain counties that have a large black population, the DMV (where you would have to go to get a valid ID) was only open one day a month [3].
That's entirely intentional. Make it difficult to get an ID then it's less likely you'll vote.
[1]: https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-c...
[2]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/mill...
[3]: https://www.governing.com/archive/drivers-license-offices-wi...
One of the things I used to see pushed back on, but it seems to have gone by the way side recently, is not citing the original source but rather citing the someone saying something about the source. Its increasingly pervasive in all types of research adn contributes to a giant and slow moving slide of meaning creep.
The OP mentions that reviewing the history would inform the discussion. You dismissed being informed and simply provided a truism - specifically accepted a truism common from oen side. If the issue is confidence in integrity, but there never was an integrity issue, then fixing an integrity issue is neither possible nor a solution to the confidence problem.
Again, I see this everywhere - from polite conversation to academic discourse adn it troubles me about the larger state of knowledge and knowing in the world.