I missed this John Fund column in the Wall Street Journal Monday. John is a big believer in voter identification, and I have been pushing him and others to agree that voter i.d. only makes sense when the government pays all the expenses associated with getting the i.d. and in fact proactively goes out and conducts universal voter registration. I think the Monday column was the first time in print that John moved toward endorsing that approach:

Some analysts say a photo ID law could pass on the national level only if it is seen to satisfy both sides. “As part of an overall bipartisan package of election reform–which would include universal voter registration conducted by the government–national voter identification makes sense, especially if structured to limit absentee vote fraud, and so that identification can be checked across states,” says Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School. But he says that excessive “partisan jockeying is not going to increase public confidence in the outcome of elections.”
Sen. McConnell’s proposed photo ID requirement is a good idea, but it may be able to move forward only if he puts some real money on the table to ensure that everyone who wants to vote can get an ID. In that, the photo ID issue resembles the immigration debate itself. The only immigration bill that is going to pass both houses is one that combines beefed-up border enforcement with steps that regularize the growing demand for labor from Mexico via some kind of legal guest worker program. But sadly, in the case of both photo ID and immigration, political jockeying appears to be the order of the day. It may take a lame-duck session of Congress after this year’s election for members finally to address both issues seriously.