When I turned 16, my friends were preoccupied with getting their driver’s licenses.  In fact, many spent hours on their actual birthday at the Department of Licensing, officially getting their first licenses.  They saw it as a rite of passage.  While I did get my driver’s license at 16, I did not spend my actual birthday doing so.

Honestly, every family I knew owned cars, so it only made sense that everyone I knew would eventually get a driver’s license.  However, students in my high school generally lived pretty comfortably.  First, sadly, many people cannot afford to get cars.  Second, if you’re a poor family, your insurance rates increase when young drivers live in your household; it doesn’t matter if they choose not to drive.  Suffice it to say, there are many reasons why people may not have a driver’s license.

The new standard for driver’s licenses is REAL ID.  Congress passed a bill that defined this standard in 2005, but it took until 2025 before TSA required it to travel.  The new license standard qualifies a photo identification to vote.  However, as I demonstrated above, many people do not have a driver’s license.  As it happens, all US citizens (even naturalized ones) have a Constitutional right to vote; this includes US citizens without a driver’s license.

Photo voter identification doesn’t work

As discussed in an earlier blog post, using photo identification (of any kind) to vote doesn’t work.  We can do all kinds of things to supercharge the modern photo voter identification, but it ultimately doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter how fancy (or legitimate) we make those photo ID’s; all forms of photo identification suffer from one weak link.  Ultimately, it’s up to a human to decide if that photo matches the person who presented it; that is fragile.

In fact, I’ve made the case that we have the technology to establish a better form of identification.  Based on my assessment, changing the identification method for voting from photo matching to retinal identification would substantially improve the process.  Let’s say that we agree we should move to performing retinal matches for voting instead of photo matches.

However, there are 340 million residents in the United States; around 275 million are eligible to vote.  Currently, none have a government-recorded retinal scan that can be used to verify their identity to vote.  Our next challenge is to get every eligible voter this new form of identification.  That’s a whole lot of people to scan.  How do we do it?

Scan every new citizen

The answer to this dilemma is to divide and conquer.  First, scan every newly anointed US citizen; we’ll deal with the backlog of 275 million citizens in another way.  Our constitution outlines that we can become citizens in four ways:

1. Birth:  You’re born in US territory.  Yes, and before we go there, Puerto Rico is a US territory; anyone born in Puerto Rico qualifies.
2. Derivation:  Your parents became naturalized, and you’re under 18.  This is how I became a citizen.
3. Acquisition: You were born outside of the US but to US parents.  You need to petition for this as well.
4. Naturalization: You apply to become a citizen and meet the requirements.  This is the process by which a citizen of another country becomes a US citizen.

We’ll save the first for last.  For the remaining instances, the US government can stipulate that you physically appear to establish your identity.  They may conduct the retinal scan at that time and attach it to your record.  It may subsequently be used to establish your identity when you vote.  Easy Peasy.  This takes care of cases #2-#4 above.

I’m not sure we can perform a retinal scan on a newborn infant.  If we can’t scan newborns, we can scan them later in life.  If we want to verify that when we scan them later in life, they’re indeed the same person, then we can compare their physical body to their birth footprint.

Convert existing records into retinal scans

How do we clear the backlog of 275 million citizens who qualify to vote?  The government should provide many opportunities for citizens to establish their retinal scan:

• Whenever we get (or renew) a driver’s license in person, they may perform a retinal scan at that time.
• A citizen may take the initiative to get scanned to vote.

That should account for most qualified voters.  However, that’s not sufficient.  For instance, not all citizens have a driver’s license, nor do they have the opportunity to take the time to get scanned.  The Constitution grants the right to vote to all US citizens who are at least 18 years old; that’s not limited to those who have taken the initiative to get scanned.

I won’t speculate on how many people are left.  However, I will assert that we can’t require this form of identification to vote until effectively everyone has it.  The question then becomes, how do we get the remaining US citizens recorded so that we may switch voting identification to match retinal scans?

That’s easy; we go door to door.

Going door to door

I know what you’re thinking, but this is not as far-fetched as it sounds.  There’s no way to estimate how many people would be in this last group before implementing this policy.  However, we know precisely who they are:

• We have a definitive list of all our citizens, including their ages and their home addresses.
• We know which ones have yet to register a retinal scan.

Suppose Elise was born in New York City in March 2022, but did not have a retinal scan as a newborn.  She will be eligible to vote in the 2040 presidential election.  She still has 14 years for that retinal scan.  Naturally, she has the option to get it done if she gets a driver’s license.  What if she does not incline to drive?  When would she get her retinal scan?

The United States conducts its census surveys every ten years, and they go door to door.  The people conducting those surveys may also perform the retinal scan in 2030 when they’re at her door.  Granted, Elise would only be eight years old at the time, but retinal scans are durable and maintain their accuracy.  It’ll match even ten years later.