voter registration question

[Anonymous]

As we all know there are different views on the issue of identification criteria for voter registration applicants. Liberals are generally opposed, conservatives favor proving your identity.
I only know Fairfax County, where I live and vote. You can apply for registration just filling in your name and address and answering a few questions about your background. When you go to vote, you will have to have a photo ID, which the election workers compare with their roster of registered voters at the precinct. So, at some point in order to vote you will need to prove who you are.
Is this the same everywhere? If it is NOT the same everywhere, then couldn't one person register under many names with many addresses and vote many times? If it IS the same everywhere, why is it a hardship to have to show ID at the time of registering or at the time of voting? It would seem if you have the ID to vote, you would also have it to register.
I am having trouble understanding what all the trouble is about.
Thanks for your knowledgeable insight!

[Anonymous]

It's not the same everywhere. I don't show ID to vote in Maryland. About 10% of the US population lacks a government ID, and it's ever higher if you look at really young or really old people.

Voter fraud is extremely, extremely rare, while depriving someone of such a fundamental and critically important right such as the right to vote is pretty easy to do. From a simple public policy perspective, it's much more important to maximize a citizen's ability to vote than focus all sorts of resources and requirements on trying to prevent voter fraud, which rarely happens anyway.