The SSA issues actual Social Security cards to non-citizens authorized to work in the US or people who can show they need it for valid non-work reasons (mostly related to entitlements).
Those are separate from ITINs issued by the IRS that share a similar space.
And there are still some people around with Railroad Retirement Act numbers rather than SSNs. Back when you only got an SSN when you started working, if your first job was working for a railroad, you didn’t get an SSN but were entered into the previously existing Railroad Retirement Act retirement system.
Nearly all modern countries have national ID cards. Japan, the UK and the USA are the only ones that come to my mind as outliers – there are probably others I don’t know.
The UK had them in WW2 and gave them up. There is a long standing bias against them but I think the time is right to introduce them given the many circumstances where you need to prove your identity.
You ticked the wee box on your tax return that said, yep, sign me up lol 
Japan has introduced them recently, but they are still not mandatory. (They are incentivizing getting them now, but I imagine that they’ll make it impossible to get by without one in due time.)
Interesting! I had not heard of that card.
I had an alien registration card when I lived in Japan some years ago. Amusingly, I was able to use it to prove my identity in the UK in some circumstances.
They still have that, but they changed the name to the more welcoming “在留カード (Residence Card).”
Coming back around to the topic at hand, near-universal automatic voter registration is a solved problem.
And results
I think it’s an opt-in on your federal tax form. I just happened to have my 2022 return open, so I grabbed this snip:
What I don’t get is why USA’ns have to registers with/to a specific party. Or is not required, it seems to be common to declare D or R.
Just seems so damn simple.
Some states have closed primaries, where only voters who have declared a party can vote on their party’s candidates. The precinct needs to know which ballot to give you: a party-neutral one, a Dem one, or a Rep one.
Other states have open primaries where everyone votes on all candidates regardless of affiliation.
If people who aren’t eligible accidentally tick the box to register will they be prosecuted for fraud?
It’s automatic. There’s no checking the box.
As an additional indication, in states like this where the government is expanding registration, they aren’t looking for frivilous reasons to prosecute people for trying to vote. This isn’t Texas or Wisconsin we’re talking about.
I should’ve said ticking the box to say they are eligible to register.
Still not how it works. Automatic registration flows the other way - if you are eligible, you are automatically registered. You have to tick the box to opt out of registration. If you aren’t eligible, it doesn’t matter if you tick the box or not.
