Since the 1990s, eligible voters in the country of Mexico (i.e., persons of age 18 or greater) have had to visit an electoral office and be registered into the electoral census in order to obtain a voting card issued by the National Electoral Institute (formerly the Federal Electoral Institute). Those voting cards are government-issued photo IDs, credentials that citizens are required to produce at polling stations in order to vote in federal elections in Mexico.

The United States has no equivalent national voter requirements or voter ID card, however. Some states require voters to produce photo IDs in order to vote, while others don’t. And even the states that do require photo IDs may still allow voters lacking them to use other means of documenting their identities and/or to cast provisional ballots.

These differences are often cited in opinion pieces (like the meme displayed above) questioning why, if Mexico requires its citizens to produce federally-issued photo ID cards in order to vote, the United States can’t or shouldn’t do the same in order to crack down on voter fraud. On the other side, critics of voter ID card plans maintain there are a number of reasons why what is used in Mexico isn’t necessarily a feasible solution or a panacea for the United States:

