There are a lot of reasons why the photo ID constitutional amendment is a bad idea (it was sent to the house floor today), but I’m going to ignore all the policy for now and focus simply on the mechanics. No matter what you think of the concept, putting it in the constitution could make for a very complicated problem a decade down the line when photo IDs may be irrelevant. And that’s the problem with putting policy into the constitution.
Think about it: constitutional amendments are fine for things like fundamental rights that don’t change over time. Lowering the voting age to 18? Changing the way the state government is run? Those kinds of amendments make sense. But making policy changes, and granular policy changes at that? Would it make sense to put into an amendment how to fill out a zoning variance? “We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, require that all licenses for the sale of intoxicating liquors within 500 yards of a school, church, or municipal park be filled out in triplicate with a Number 2 pencil…”
Even worse, this is an amendment that deals with a technology, one that is currently in a great deal of flux. What if ten years down the line we decide that some kind of biometric is a better authenticator for identity? We wouldn’t be able to make a policy change to take advantage of this new technology because this amendment would have to be repealed first. Given the confusion over the issue right now, how likely is that to happen?
Most of the amendments to the U.S. Constitution have deal with fundamental rights (voting, free speech, guns, etc.) or with how the government works (electoral college, Congressional pay raises, the succession of the Presidency). One glaring exception, an amendment that dealt with a pure policy decision, was the 18th Amendment, also known as the only amendment to be repealed: Prohibition. Debate the merits of photo ID all you want, just don’t put a policy change in our state’s fundamental governing document. Laws can be fairly easily changed, but amendments cannot.