But that's alright, I have a solution:
Make state-issued IDs free.
Boom. Problem solved. If the government expects you to prove your identity, then they must provide a means for you to do so. Free national ID cards for everyone.
Problem not necessarily solved, sadly. It's only solved for people who have enough other ID to get said photo ID in the first place. I recently discovered, to my dismay, that to get either a driver's license or a provincial photo ID in Alberta, I need to be able to prove my identity with some other form of photo ID. While this is admittedly a ridiculous situation, if states that have used voter ID laws to disenfranchise poor people and minorities wanted to, they could still use such a stupid requirement to do so even while ostensibly offering free ID.
And even if they didn't specifically do that, there are bound to be people who couldn't provide enough alternative, non-photo ID to qualify anyway. Elderly people in rural areas who may not have a birth certificate. Homeless people without a permanent address to appear on any ID they did have, if they had any at all. Indians living on reservations without the same documentation infrastrucuture you're used to in your urbanized society. The list goes on, and all of these cases were documented as preventing people from voting in the latest Canadian election (the first one where ID was mandatory), and I'm sure the same problems apply to many Americans.
As basic as it is for many people, it's easy to forget that there are a lot of people who, for one reason or another, simply
can't prove their identities. You've previously
agreed with me that voter ID laws are silly, and though at the time both of us brought up the idea of state-issued ID, the fact of the matter is that unless they're willing to issue them without first requiring ID, it's not a solution.
Though that of course is actually doable. You brought up the idea of putting photos on SSN cards—do you need ID to get those? Because I'm pretty sure I didn't need any to get my SIN card. How much simpler my life would be if it had a photo on it, indeed.