Short answer (that clears things up for most non-Americans): There is no national ID card.

When you register to vote, you’re expected to provide proof of citizenship, which for most Americans (who don’t have or have use for a passport) means a birth certificate plus some photo ID (which ultimately proves that a person with your name and your birthday was born on US soil and you are in possession of their birth certificate – so it’s very likely you). Bringing your birth certificate to vote would be kind of risky, since it’s the origin of all of your other ID and pretty much the only record that you’re a citizen. (Work visa holders and permanent residents get social security cards, for example.)

Funnily enough, if you’re an adult immigrant it’s almost safer, because there’s a huge federal paper trail of photos and records proving your citizenship (versus this flimsy piece of state-issued paper that native-born citizens have).

Of course, if election officials have some discretion on who needs to prove their citizenship, it’s rife for abuse.

What national ID?

The US doesn’t have a national ID card. I have a federally-issued ID card as a lawful permanent resident, but the typical US citizen has what? Their main proof of citizenship is their birth certificate, issued by their state, and doesn’t have a photo (and if it did, would probably be a baby photo). The people with passports tend to have enough money to travel internationally, which is a pretty small proportion of the population (as it’s a big country, so even a lot of people who can afford vacations will vacation in the next state over at most).

As a maintainer on an open source project, I assume the sticks are PRs coming in right before code freeze, right? Right?!

What I’ve read in recent weeks is that people have been donating to the “Biden-Harris campaign”, so Harris has access to all that money by default.

While I would love a stronger candidate (Whitmer, perhaps), I understand that Harris is a lot less complicated. My understanding is that she can just take the money and run (for the presidency).

Edit: Personally, I think (and thought back in 2019/2020) that Biden should have pulled the same move as James K Polk, and declared upfront that he would be a one term president. Then we could have had a competitive Democratic primary, which would have stood out against the Republican coronation.

There was a single season sitcom in 1990 called Ferris Bueller. His sister was played by an unknown actress by the name of Jennifer Aniston.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098795/

It’s a wonderful comparison going back at least thirty years: https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1994/07/15