[update below]
Bill Keller of the New York Times has a column today that begins with mention of the Arizona immigration control law and the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the part of it that allows the police to check the papers of persons they suspect may be undocumented foreigners. The risks of brazen ethnic/racial profiling are manifest
While we wait for this to play out, let’s turn our attention to another aspect of the so-called “show me your papers” law: Show me WHAT papers? What documents are you supposed to have always on hand to convince police that you are legit?
Welcome to an American paradox. This country, unlike many other developed democracies, does not require a national identification card, because the same electorate that is so afraid America is being overrun by illegal aliens also fears that we are one short step away from becoming a police state.
Keller sensibly advocates a national identity card as a solution to the conundrum, though understands
that the idea of a national ID comes with some chilling history, which is why it has been opposed by activists on the right and left — by the libertarian Cato Institute and the A.C.L.U., by People for the American Way and the American Conservative Union. Opponents associate national identification cards with the Nazi roundups, the racial sorting of apartheid South Africa, the evils of the Soviet empire. Civil rights groups see in a national ID — especially one that might be required for admission to the voting booth — a shadow of the poll taxes and literacy tests used to deter black voters in the Jim Crow South. More recently, accounts of flawed watch-list databases and rampant identity theft feed fears for our privacy. The most potent argument against an ID is that the government — or some hacker — might access your information and use it to mess with your life.
I have long been mystified by the American hang-up over the idea of a national ID card, which, as just about every minimally informed person is aware, exists not only in totalitarian dictatorships but in almost all the world’s democracies. In Europe national ID cards are utterly uncontroversial and hardly make the continent politically less free. There are also some misconceptions on the matter. In France, where the state is robust, the national ID is, in fact, not obligatory. One is not legally required to have one, let alone carry it on one’s person at all times. Practically every Frenchman and woman has the national ID (Carte nationale d’identité, CNI), mainly for the convenience, as there are occasions in one’s daily life when one needs to produce an ID (mainly in making payments with debit cards or checks; and, to reassure paranoiacs, one’s CNI number—which no one commits to memory and is used for no particular purpose—does not end up in some data base that can be hacked). The CNI is obtained at one’s mairie (town hall) upon request—with submission of birth certificate and maybe further proof of citizenship—and at any age. It is simply a facility offered by the state. French citizens carry the CNI the way Americans do drivers licenses, and the CNI contains no more vital information than the latter (see above specimen). And it is most useful when travelling around Europe (including in the Schengen zone). So what’s the big deal?
On matter of police ID checks, which I’ve written about: The law in France states that the police may request the ID of anyone whom they suspect may be about to violate the law or who poses a “threat to public order” (or of anyone in a designated area where public order is being disturbed, e.g. a riot zone). The police are not legally allowed to profile but they do anyway; they can basically demand ID of anyone they please (but then, this is the case in the US too). Re suspected undocumented foreigners, the police can base their control on “signes objectifs d’extranéité“—a lovely legalism that is not precisely defined but is, legally speaking, not to include physical appearance or the speaking of a foreign language in public 😀 … For citizens, several types of ID are acceptable, of which the CNI is only one. If a person whose ID is requested by the police does not have any on his or her person, s/he may be taken to the police station and held there for a maximum of four hours while his or her identity is verified. That’s it. So what’s the big deal?
On voting: A voter in France has to produce an ID at the polling station and which is matched against his or her name in the ledger of registered voters. I have been a polling station assesseur in every election round since 2007, i.e. 15 times, so have verified countless IDs. Most people show the CNI, some their passport or drivers license. Only once do I remember a voter not having a valid ID on her (she only had a student ID, which is not acceptable in this instance), so was turned away. She should have remembered her CNI (or passport or drivers license). She was an isolated case. 99.99% of French citizens who show up at the polling station to vote have a valid ID. So what’s the big deal?
It seems totally normal to me that voters should produce a valid ID at the polling station. On this issue, I don’t follow the Democrats in their hysterical objections to Republican-driven legislation on this (however suspect or dishonorable the GOP’s motives may be). A proper Democratic response should be to say, okay, let’s have Congress pass a law mandating that drivers licenses contain citizenship or immigration status information; and for persons who don’t drive, that the states issue state ID cards upon request and that contain one’s citizenship info. This would make life so much easier for Americans: for citizens, employees, employers, legal immigrants, and so on. Really, what’s the big deal?
UPDATE: This article in TNR, on voting in South Carolina, has caused a modification in my position. Voter ID laws in the US should be resolutely opposed unless and until obtaining state IDs is made as easy and cost-free as in France. (February 27, 2013)
Arun with a View 
There are a couple of uniquely American reasons why requiring ID cards for voting is simply another way to disenfranchise minority and poor voters. It’s neither easy nor inexpensive to get something like a driving license in this country. Breeder documents (birth certificate, etc) are also can be very hard to get; they usually require filling out several fairly complicated forms some of which will need to be notarized. Sometimes they can only be requested in person. Always there are fees. Even when the fees are waived—if you stand in line at a different counter for hours at the DMV to get the waiver—they are typically the least of the obstacles. In some states, you must visit two or more offices and spend hour after hour standing in line. The process can take weeks or months. That’s a lot of time off of work and money out of pocket that poor people just can’t afford. This is a pretty good post on the subject by Andrew Cohen: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/how-voter-id-laws-are-being-used-to-disenfranchise-minorities-and-the-poor/254572/
Thanks for The Atlantic article. I don’t disagree that the goal of the GOP is to disenfranchise voters. But to repeat what I wrote above, I think the response should be to make it easier to obtain state-issued IDs and that Congress should legislate on it. Everyone should have a universally recognized ID card (and that states one’s citizenship or immigration status). For those poor people in Texas, I wonder how many of them bereft of drivers licenses actually bother voting. In this respect, Texas’s law is particularly restrictive in only admitting IDs issued by its department of public safety. Contrast this with the list of valid IDs in France http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/F1361.xhtml
Kevin Drum has a new article in Mother Jones on this point that’s also worth reading: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/voter-suppression-kevin-drum
The other point I would make is that I think you are underestimating both the difficulties that some people have in obtaining identity cards and the extent to which a national identity card system would itself be vulnerable to manipulation for political advantage.
Most people who don’t have government issued identity papers understand perfectly well that they would benefit greatly from having such papers. They simply are can’t afford the time it would take to get them or else they don’t have the ability to obtain the necessary breeder documents. A requirement that they have government issued ID in order to vote won’t spur them into action to obtain such ID cards; it will simply put the exercise of the franchise even further out of their reach.
I entirely share your (and Kevin Drum’s) view of GOP campaigns against supposed voter fraud. But deploring and fighting GOP efforts here do not contradict the principle that all Americans should have a state-issued ID card – or at least easy access to one – and that contains citizenship information. This can be on drivers licenses, as I proposed. And even poor people need these to drive, no?
Interesting article from TNR, “Will Voter ID Laws Cost Obama Reelection?”
http://www.tnr.com/blog/electionate/104999/will-voter-id-laws-cost-obama-reelection
If free anything were being given out in any particular area, and the only requirement is to have an I.D, let us see how troublesome and difficult it would be for people to get an ID.
I read the comments after the NYT article and was struck by the number of people who associate these cards with Gestapo asking in a most sinister way for “papieren!”. Hollywood strikes again?
Actually, a good friend, aged 65 and an Israeli-American, came to visit me in Paris. When buying tickets for a bus tour of Paris, the clerk told her she would pay less if she was 65+, but she must be prepared to show identification with her date of birth to the bus driver, should he ask for it. At this, my friend looked extremely nervous and ill at ease, and preferred to pay the full amount. Sinister WWII stories told her by her European family?
Personnally, I find my identity card extremely convenient whenever I have to prove I am who I am, and believe these cards existed well before WWII. When living in the US, I was several times asked to show my driving license, and felt to be a guilty suspect person, as I do not drive and never had a license.
That’s odd your Israeli friend would be nervous about showing ID, as Israel not only requires its citizens to have the national ID card but to carry it on them at all times http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teudat_Zehut
I suppose she trusts the Israeli administration, but is convinced that France is a seething bed of antisemitism, whatever I can say and have been for years. Also, she lived most of her life in the US. Oh well…
Photo ID cards are quite common and uncontroversial here- I have one myself, my driver’s licence, like every other American driver these days (I don’t believe that any American state still has paper, non-photo licences any more, not even Texas or Idaho). Nor is national ID uncommon or controversial- SSN’s are a common identifier here, at least if you want to get a job, or open a bank account. (It didn’t used to be that way, something that changed under Reagan.)
This European puzzlement over our ID card controversy is simply missing the point- the current call among Republicans for voter ID is just a ruse to suppress voter turnout among Democratic constituencies. The type of voter fraud that Republicans pretend to be concerned about is voter impersonation, something that has been conclusively shown to happen with extreme rarity, around one hundred documented cases out of several hundred million votes cast. The Republican intention is to make voting more difficult for demographics that traditionally vote Democratic- remember, not everyone has photo ID over here, and those least likely to have that ID are Hispanic-Americans, African-Americans, the very poor, the old, & the young. The objections among Democrats are to the voter suppression tactic, not to the concept of legal identification.