We've had this discussion a few times in this subreddit. In the US specifically a national ID is contentious due to federal vs state bureaucracy. This has been shifting as we have Real ID guidelines which more or less standardize all IDs. It's basically a formality now that each state has its own ID. The other issue is national IDs need to be very cheap or subsidized. This used to be contentious, but states have been creating methods to get free IDs for voting for a while. Adding public/private keys to IDs might have some pushback due to ignorance of how cryptography works. That said, a lot of people now use chip payment and debit/credit cards and are more comfortable with the concept of secure communication. (Military people are familiar with Common Access Cards which are identical to what a national ID card is, so we have methods for producing them in mass quantities).

I view this as an inevitability as technology progresses and technology literacy increases. If you want to help you can talk about this with others. Being able to file taxes securely and do every government action securely has huge benefits for people and can basically eliminate identity theft. Anyone interested in lowering administration costs can usually be swayed with these systems. The cards more than pay for themselves with the added efficiency.