obtaining proof of citizenship should be free and simple to obtain from every municipality, state and federal office

If it was, Republicans would just find another way to suppress the vote. This isn’t about citizenship or the integrity of the electoral process. It’s about the GOP knowing that the fewer people vote, the better for their fascist and therefore unpopular party.

whether it’s necessary to have proof of citizenship in order to able to vote. of course you should. everyone should.

That’s already in place, though. When voting, you have to supply your name, address and voter registration.

If no citizen with that name is registered to that address, you don’t get to vote.

It’s a pernicious lie that people in any significant number is able or even attempting to vote without indirectly proving their citizenship and even requiring “free and simple” (which it probably won’t be to some people anyway) direct proof will suppress the vote whether that’s your attention or not.

we spend so much political bandwidth on a loser of an issue, year in, year out, for decades

Because currently there’s no consequences for Republican politicians and their media echo chamber willfully misleading the people with their lies. In fact, the corrupt system encourages it.

Ceding ground to their demagoguery doesn’t make it go away. They’ll just have that more power to suppress the vote in additional ways.

something we should be pushing for too.

Nope. See above.

the poll tax argument no longer holds weight

It VERY much does. Any unnecessary obstacle to voting is undemocratic in the same way as a poll tax is and requiring direct proof of something you’re already indirectly proven is unnecessary.

no matter how much you whine about the smallest percentage of the smallest percentage of people who find themselves disenfranchised by the requirement

You VASTLY underestimate the number of people for whom voting is already unnecessarily difficult and who will be at a greater risk of not being able to justify the cost of voting the more obstacles are thrown in their way.

Especially when you consider that in person voter fraud is so rare as to be statistically nonexistent and is never non eligible people trying to vote.

That you display your ignorance in a supremely condescending way doesn’t help either.

the amount of support republicans get from this, as in issue that makes logical sense, doesn’t add up.

It does when you consider how effective lying their ass off is in the current system.

They aren’t right about any of this. They just have the money and media echo chamber to get their point repeated so much that impressionable people such as yourself are fooled into thinking that they are.