There are cases spanning a century across several creative legislative attempts by the US Congress to create a de facto mandatory national identity system. This information is not difficult to find. All of them tried to workaround the fact that States can create mandatory identity systems but the Federal government cannot. (It is one of the reasons SSN cards go out of their way to assert they are not to be used as an ID.)
Past attempts included things like withholding tax disbursements to non-compliant States, but the US Supreme Court deemed that coercive and therefore illegal. The Real ID Act is the latest attempt but it has been delayed for many years by State non-compliance and general unwillingness to share their identity databases with the Federal government.
The ID required to vote is a State ID, which is perfectly Constitutional. No one is requiring a Federal ID to vote. In fact, many States will not recognize any Federal ID, including passports.
Then please find and supply it. -I- have had difficulty finding it. It certainly isn't so easy to find as "here is a linked citation supporting my claim", since you've yet to provide one.
"The Real ID Act is the latest attempt but it has been delayed for many years by State non-compliance and general unwillingness to share their identity databases with the Federal government." - not at all. Everything you said just in this post is incorrect, but more egregiously (and why I'm not even bothering to point out why it's incorrect), it's also -irrelevant-. Real ID...isn't mandatory. Not at the state level, not at the federal level.
"The ID required to vote is a State ID, which is perfectly Constitutional" - there isn't an ID required to vote according to the Constitution. In practice, most states also don't require any form of ID. Hence all the bills by the GOP to try and require one, while also doing nothing to ensure it is affordable and convenient (i.e., creating a form of poll tax); the GOP doesn't even care about it as an ID system, just as a form of voter suppression.
Which is my point; no legislature, not even the people trying to require ID for things, is pushing for mandatory IDs. It's not against the Constitution as far as I can tell, and you've done nothing to convince me; it just isn't politically worth pushing for given the resistance it would face so has never happened.
> There are cases spanning a century across several creative legislative attempts by the US Congress to create a de facto mandatory national identity system.
Then it should be easy to present one, preferably the most applicable one to modern proposals.
> This information is not difficult to find.
Its not easy to find the arguments of the people opposed to national ID, and its not easy to verify that the cases they cite are not about national IDs.
> All of them tried to workaround the fact that States can create mandatory identity systems but the Federal government cannot
None of the national ID debates have been about a mandatory ID (a mandatory-for-specific-purposes ID, yes, but the feds already issue a number of those.)
> (It is one of the reasons SSN cards go out of their way to assert they are not to be used as an ID.)
No, social security cards say that because they aren’t designed to validate identity, since all they contain is a name and a number and no way other than possession (which is extremely problematic) to associate that with a particular person.
> Past attempts included things like withholding tax disbursements to non-compliant States
[citation needed]
> but the US Supreme Court deemed that coercive and therefore illegal.
[citation needed]
> The Real ID Act is the latest attempt
Real ID is not a mandatory ID, but a required-for-enumerated purposes ID. The enumerated purposes are ones for which the federal government already establishes acceptable ID standards without any Constitutional challenge, under various Article I, Sec. 8 powers, Real ID is just a change to the standards. And all phases of it but for Phase 4 involving (notably) the mandated to use Real ID for commercial air travel have already gone into effect. Starting in 2014.
but it has been delayed for many years by State non-compliance and general unwillingness to share their identity databases with the Federal government.
Past attempts included things like withholding tax disbursements to non-compliant States, but the US Supreme Court deemed that coercive and therefore illegal. The Real ID Act is the latest attempt but it has been delayed for many years by State non-compliance and general unwillingness to share their identity databases with the Federal government.
The ID required to vote is a State ID, which is perfectly Constitutional. No one is requiring a Federal ID to vote. In fact, many States will not recognize any Federal ID, including passports.