All Soviet jokes aside, is this passport requirement being imposed only on those states with substandard vetting for drivers’ licenses, or are their Muslim populations also a factor?
Old fact: Red Army conscripts who served only a single enlistment were shipped directly back to their villages upon mustering out.
However, if a Russian soldier completed a second enlistment, upon discharge he was issued an internal passport & could relocate anywhere inside the Soviet Union (some cities required residence permits).
I did not know that. Hmmmm. I've always wondered where our government gets some of their ideas . . .
No, as an example New Hampshire does exactly the kind of vetting that the Real ID act contemplates. But in New Hampshire you have the option of not having your photograph stored in the central license database even though it is of course on your license, and you can request that your license show your mailing address instead of your home address, and that your Social Security number not be stored with your license data in the central license database.
Each of those choices helps preserve the privacy and safety of the license holder. And none of them reduce the value of the license as a tool for identifying the person holding on to it. But they do of course reduce the value of the database as an intelligence system for agencies interested in other issues, like matching up Social Security numbers to faces, even though other agencies have that data - like the State Department for passports.
So the real reason doesn't have anything to do with vetting applicants, just the federal government's desire to have states establish comprehensive databases they can then access.