Paper ballots with physical marks are easy to track and recount. Digital paper trails are ephemeral. Whom does this benefit? The people counting the ballots.
The separate question, of why people are obsessed with it - implicitly in the United States - is a separate question.
sonofhans - to reply to your follow up here, I mostly agree with you. But I would soften it to say it is a tool that can be used for good or bad ends, and I felt the Swiss were using it more towards good ends. But I agreed that the ability to misuse it is intrinsic.
[1] https://www.news.admin.ch/en/newnsb/ZLw6w1GV_UdJKDocuT0sX
It’s not a United States issue. Look how Taiwan does vote counting: https://youtu.be/DUZa7qIGAdo. They don’t do it this way because of anything distinctive about American politics. Being self-evidently difficult to manipulate, without requiring voters to trust an opaque system, is an intrinsic benefit for voting systems.
That's a thing pretty much everywhere. Developed countries such as Germany automatically enroll everyone eligible based on the registration data (you gotta register at the local authority after moving), but even we have a deadline if you think you should be eligible but didn't get a voting invitation to sort that out.
The big problem is, the folks who count the votes and cheat. They can invent an arbitrary number of votes to swing their guy.
Let's worry about the problems that matter.
First, do we not have proof of identity? How often should we have proof of idenity? How many cases of fraud are there per year? How large is the problem?
Second, who should issue a different proof of identity? How much should it cost? Should the requirements be left to states or the federal government?
Third, who would administer this system. Would it be public or private, or left to states? What criminal and civil law should exist for misusing this law for witholding the right to vote on this basis? Would you trust a non-Republican leadership if DHS still was the agency verifying identity documents and storing soft-copies of them?
What you want isn't unreasonable, but you leave out so many details that your reasonable statement can be misused for ill intent and denying people their right to vote.
A fair follow up question for me to you might be "how do you feel about the additional requirements for married women to get reissued vital documents when they have changed their birth name to their husband's last name in the SAVE act?" When concerns like these aren't addressed in massive changes to voting laws, it makes lots of people uncomfortable that the changes aren't made in good faith.