Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

The technological improvements in IC Engines and drivetrains are pretty amazing. 

My basic take is:
There was a lot of improvement early (up to maybe the early 50's).  Then most of the improvement from about the 50's to the 70's was just bigger=more power.  Then the EPA regulations came along under Nixon.  That dramatically cut power and diminished the bigger-is-better theory that had pretty much guided at least American automotive engine production for decades. 

It took about 20-30 years for them to figure out how to get back to early-70's power with the new pollution controlled and smaller engines. 

Once they did, the improvements came fast. 

I have a 1998 Z28.  It has a ~300 HP 5.7L V8.  In 1998 that was a LOT of HP.  Today you can get a minivan with about that much power and today's minivans get it on MUCH less displacement and with MUCH better fuel economy. 

1985 was too much in the "malaise" era.  That 5sp Caravan was great for it's day but yeah but comparison today's vehicles have way more power and better fuel economy. 

Well, most of the improvements were made with the help of electronic fuel injection, then direct injection.  It wasn't just about "figuring out combustion engines".  As computers and sensors got better, efficiency got better.  

Neither was abolishing the Federal Death Penalty, done by Biden's commutations. 

The federal government can no longer sentence folks to death? Wild. 

As you may recall, there is a history in certain parts of this country--some of it during some of your lifetimes--when local and state governments intentionally included voting requirements intended to prevent certain people--generally black people--from voting. Those requirements were often enforced by the local police. Sometimes those voting requirements appeared to be race neutral, but they were designed specifically to prevent poor or undereducated people--overwhelmingly black people in those areas--from voting. They were only enforced in majority black neighborhoods (which had also been intentionally created through both government and private action). 
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 formally precluded enacting restrictions on voting intended to prevent black people from voting. It included a provision that required the Department of Justice to pre-clear of any voting law changes in areas that had a history of denying black people the right to vote (more accurately, restricting black people's right to vote). To be clear, most, if not all, states had districts that were subject to the pre-clearance provision; this was not strictly about the south. In 2013 the Supreme Court ruled that because the country has changed so much--despite Congress consistently and overwhlemingly re-authorizing the Voting Rights Act--that Congress's pre-approval provision was no longer constitutional. For those of you who read the 15th Amendment closely, that is a pretty surprising decision from a Supreme Court dominated by "strict constructionists." But that's a tangent; we can talk about that another time.
Immediately after the Supreme Court did away with the pre-clearance requirement, the Voter ID laws became very popular--particularly in states that had historically had several areas subject to the pre-clearance provision.
Why?
As most of us have acknowledged here, we have a pretty closely divided electorate in this country right now, and elections are won and lost on razor-thin margins in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, and even--as recently as 2000--in Florida. A few hundred, and definitely a few thousand, votes can make all the difference.
On their face, voter ID laws apply to everyone, but in practice they apply to the poor. I would bet that everyone on this board has a drivers license and has probably rarely thought about a world in which they wouldn't have one--except should they get old enough to no longer be able to drive. But there are thousands of people in every state who are citizens--with the right to vote--who do not have a drivers license or state IDs. Why? Because they are too poor to need one, or too isolated to get to a state office to apply for and get one (including just a State ID, rather than a drivers license). These are the people who will lose the right to vote under the voter ID laws. In many of these states, it is black populations that will be hardest hit.
--FULL DISCLOSURE-- Democrats think these voters favor them, that is one of, though not the only, reason Democratic politicians take on this fight. Civil rights organizations, which have spent significant periods of their history fighting an openly racist Democratic party, don't care who these people will vote for; they think American citizens, regardless of wealth or race, should be allowed to vote.
BUT WHAT ABOUT VOTER FRAUD?
One of the strengths of our voting system is that it is very spread out and managed by local authorities. It also requires proof of citizenship to register to vote. For a variety of reasons--Google can help--coordinated voter fraud would be very difficult to pull off. Notwithstanding the rhetoric that has been in the media for the last 10 years or so, voter fraud is very, very rare. The most common forms of voter misconduct is people who vote in the wrong district because they have failed to update their voter registration. Sometimes a voter has been found to register in two places at the same time, then vote in both places (that is, obviously, voter fraud). Studies looking for voter fraud have found extremely limited numbers out of hundreds of millions of votes cast. Here is the Heritage Foundation's map of voter fraud from 1982 to the present. Heritage is no liberal bastion. This includes a concerted and well funded attempt to identify voter fraud in 2020. Look at the numbers; there's very little of it. Almost as many people have been sanctioned for legal misconduct for claiming voter fraud without factual support as have been found guilty of voter fraud in 2020.

This is a losing issue for Democrats. Most people go about their daily lives without thinking about needing a drivers license or state ID and with all the noise in the media about voter fraud, it seems obvious that a solution is to require a photo ID. But this all comes back to what the problem is and what is the impact of the proposed solution. The problem is essentially nonexistent; the proposed solution targets the poor. That's what this comes down to.
The point of constitutional protections is to protect the minority from the majority, the individual from the tyranny of the government. The point of protecting voting rights is to protect individuals' rights to vote, even when the majority is trying to take it away.
Regarding the impact, this is from 2016: https://www.texastribune.org/2016/07/20/appeals-court-rules-texas-voter-id/

There is one other piece of this that deserves attention--it goes back to where I started, which is the use of state actors to deny particular groups the right to vote. Voter ID laws also serve as a deterrent to lawful voting because they provide the very real possibility of being prosecuted for something like voting with an expired or suspended drivers license, neither of which should change whether a citizen has the right to vote. For groups that regularly have run-ins with the law--particularly groups that have a history of being targeted by state law enforcement in ways that are not related to actual lawlessness--these laws have a deterring effect. For some--NOT ALL OR EVEN MOST--of the people proposing these laws that is a feature not a bug.
But I have a solution to propose: for a state that passes a voter ID law, require that the state provide the same access to getting a drivers license or state photo ID as is provided for voting, e.g., anywhere the state puts a voting booth, the state also processes state IDs and provide those IDs for free. Also, require the state to process the IDs in the same amount of time it takes to process voter registration.

Y'all should put me and SFB in charge around here.  We'd get'er dun.

It is claimed around here that this is done, and getting photo ID is "easy and cheap".  I have not tested that personally of course.  I read the summaries of the law, and when I early voted, for me it was very easy, no wait, etc.

So long as the process of obtaining photo ID is facile, as you suggest, I'm for it.  But the recent furor is about registering to vote, and requirements to do that.

I actually think this is where the rubber meets the road: if the states are willing to incur the cost to make sure that people aren't disenfranchised for being poor, then cool, knock themselves out. That would suggest that they actually believed voter fraud is the threat that is claimed. I suspect that if this were required, most state legislatures would be much less inclined to pass these laws.

And to earlier questioning: yes, I typed my response with a straight face. This is one of those issues that it should feel very simple on the political level to throw up the hands and say, "it's a losing issue, so let's abandon it." But the reality is the impact on peoples' voting rights is real, and that makes it very difficult to simply walk away.

IMHO most of your earlier post is very well stated nonsense.  

That said, this portion of it is a necessary response to the later post that I've quoted here:

--FULL DISCLOSURE-- Democrats think these voters favor them, that is one of, though not the only, reason Democratic politicians take on this fight. 

This is obviously a tad understated.  Democrats don't "think" these voters favor them, they absolutely KNOW it.  

It isn't just the legitimate voters that favor Democrats though, the illegitimate voters favor Democrats and that is absolutely a reason for them to oppose requiring ID.