Why should a person be intimidated by being asked for ID? Honest people have nothing to fear from giving their name. An educated voter knows that their name is not attached to the vote.

How else can a poll worker know that the person claiming to be john doe is john doe and is entitled to vote the one time that john doe is entitled to do. This ensure that Jeff is not voting in the morning under his name and then voting under John's name in the afternoon.

In California, until very recently, it was illegal for pollworkers to ask for identification. With the passage of the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA), it became necessary to check ID for new registrants, either at the time of registration (this is accomplished by providing one's California ID/driver's license number) or at the polls on the occasion of one's first vote.

If the law does not require an ID check for a particular voter, that person should not be asked. What if those ID checks were being done specifically on voters registered with a particular party? Black voters? Women? Young people? You can imagine all kinds of inappropriate criteria that pollworkers might use. If you look at the history of voting practices in the South, you will see why this is such an important issue.

Point 1: The law does not require an ID check in most cases.

Point 2: If we want ID checks, as "George" seems to, shouldn't they be universal? I could go with that. I can't go with selective, illegal ID checks, though.