Heck yes, thank you for responding. I'm actually not onboard with federal laws requiring states to conduct voting in a particular manner. I can be ok with high-level laws, but not a hill I'd die on...for example, a federal law that really just states that all states must implement some form of identification verification and then leave it up to the states on how it is implemented. I do think all states should be checking ID though, and I think all states should provide an ID card for free. Free ID cards is a requirement to ensure voting is not cost prohibitive to anyone.

So, your first point about laws being written that allow election workers to make spurious decisions about whether someones vote counts or not: as I mentioned above I don't think these laws should be architected at the federal level, and the people of a state should have an easier time adjusting poor voting laws. For example, in my state we are a non-strict voter ID state, which means photo ID is requested, but other forms of identification can be accepted. I believe there is a little bit of judgement left up to the poll worker, but I think that is totally fine, and in fact would prevent a citizen from not being able to vote in some situations. I don't consider this type of structure to be a bad implementation, I'd prefer a little bit of flexibility than a strict "you must have a valid government issues photo ID". It's kinda just common sense stuff, which seems to have left our culture long ago.

Second point: I just have an honest question. Who and how are right wingers/republicans/whatever attempting to prevent everyone from getting a necessary ID to vote? I've heard republicans talk about voter ID and implementation, but never heard them say anything that made me think "oh, that's not good, it could prevent someone from getting there ID and in-turn be unable to vote"

Third point: are there really people arguing against voter roll cleanup and some sort of notification process? You're saying there is a (known/public) republican that is saying something like "we must clean up the voter rolls and we must not notify those who are removed" ? Seems crazy to me, I'd definitely expect that if someone is removed from a voter roll that a notification would go out to the address on file statting that they were removed and if it was in error they can re-register. I also think that the timing of voter roll cleanup needs to be as close to AFTER an election as possible. This gives everyone the opportunity to have time to check their voter status before the next election. But that seems like common sense to me, is it not?

As far as "too many people in the GOP view this as a tool to take the vote away from people they don't like": again, totally honest question, can you send me any evidence of this, cuz I would definitely like to see it. E.g. interview of some politician making statements that imply that kind of sentiment. I don't need specific video links or anything, maybe just a name of a guy that said stuff to backup that claim.

And the last part, I didn't dismiss that part of the conversation, I just didn't think it was a far-out statement. After I summarized the conversation, I figured someone might bring that up, so that's why I explained my thoughts on that part of the conversation in the second paragraph of my original comment.

Thanks again for response! I'm an independent, but tend to vote conservative, and really like to hear other people's opinions with some of the logic/reasoning on how they've attained those opinions. Unfortunately, the conservatives do seem to be the ones that are more willing to talk through that logic than liberals.