This Needs Fixin'

Honestly, I’m kinda in favor of the U.S. having a national ID card and of requiring it to vote and whatever else.

Heck, even Costco has a membership card.

There’s a better argument for requiring an ID to vote than there is for requiring an ID to purchase discounted hot dogs in bulk.

In principle, a national ID card is actually a good idea.

It’s what’s likely to happen in practice that’s the real issue.

As the current coup is more than adequately demonstrating.

To be implemented fairly, and to be trustworthy, a national ID card needs a few specific things:

• the cost to the citizen needs to be minimal or scaled to income/assets
• the data storage and verification systems must be independent and secure
• verification needs to be ephemeral, so citizenship or other attributes (like age) can be verified without giving any source data to the verifier

These are minimal requirements; any system that can’t meet at least these three is unacceptable.

And frankly, I don’t think the U.S. government can manage that.

I doubt they could have implemented an ID card like that before the government was taken over by a pack of rabid meerkats.

Witness REAL ID, which doesn’t meet any of those requirements.

And now, of course, with DOGE skipping merrily through the government and copying whatever data they want there’s effectively zero possibility that the government could be trusted to manage an identity system.

But the notion is fine, even desirable.

We just don’t happen to live in a world where it can be done properly.

Maybe someday.

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