People in the English-speaking countries generally don’t have government issued ID beyond a driver’s license. That’s also true for the UK. Historically, ID cards are connected to military conscription. The UK could rely on the Navy for defense and did not maintain vast land armies like the continental nations. Political initiatives to introduce ID cards are usually rejected by voters as totalitarian overreach.

The former slave states in the US have a history of using procedural rules to exclude blacks from voting. After the end of slavery, there was formally equality before the law. So, laws were created to maintain the status quo that were non-discriminatory on their face. EG literacy tests. This not only targeted blacks who were denied an education. Administering such tests was fully in the hands of local elites. They could be made arbitrarily hard to black people, while politically reliable white illiterates could be excused.