changed minds on voter IDs

If you're a blogger like me with a decade of experience blogging, some of your ideas will evolve. You have new experiences, receive new information, and have new opinions.


For me, one of them is the voter requirement to have a picture ID.


When I started voting in 1998, I just assumed you need a picture ID to vote in Hawaii.

So I was like "why are people opposed to the ID requirements to vote?"

I mean, you need an ID to work, enter age-restricted places (ie nightclubs), enter government buildings and more.

But when I started working as an election precinct official in 2006, I learned that a picture ID is not a requirement to vote in Hawaii. Those who didn't bring their picture ID can bring a bill (ie. a rent bill, electric bill, phone bill, etc) or be asked to recite their address (to make sure it matches what is listed on the poll book).

So far, I have heard zero confirmed allegations of somebody reciting someone else's address as a way to commit voter fraud.

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Also, renewing your ID is a pain.

In many places, it requires taking a whole day off work (goodbye $$$ I could've earned that day) to wait hours in a long line at a government building that is only open during the daytime.

If you lost your wallet that had both your ID and Social Security card, well good luck in getting both replaced. That happened to me, as I explained in this blog post

http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2015/12/my-wallet-drama.html

To get a replacement state ID, I need a social security card, but to get a social security card, I needed a state ID (or a driver license or a passport for which I have NEITHER)

and

Just when I went back home and feel all miserable, I got a message on my BlackBerry! Someone found my wallet!

The cash was gone but all the cards were still there!
A few lessons 

• DO NOT PUT ALL YOUR CARDS IN ONE PLACE

• DO NOT store your state ID and your social security card in the same place

• If you carry your state ID (or driver's license) in your wallet, DO NOT put your Social Security card there too! Hide your Social Security card somewhere else. Hide it somewhere in your home where burglars will have to struggle to find it! 

On other hardships of getting a photo ID

Sari Horwtiz, “Getting a photo ID so you can vote is easy. Unless you’re poor, black, Latino or elderly.,” Washington Post, May 23, 2016,
 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a-photo-id-so-you-can-vote-is-easy-unless-youre-poor-black-latino-or-elderly/2016/05/23/8d5474ec-20f0-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html?utm_term=.8ccfa92c21f6.

But many election experts say that the process for obtaining a photo ID can be far more difficult than it looks for hundreds of thousands of people across the country who do not have the required photo identification cards. Those most likely to be affected are elderly citizens, African Americans, Hispanics and low-income residents.

“A lot of people don’t realize what it takes to obtain an ID without the proper identification and papers,” said Abbie Kamin, a lawyer who has worked with the Campaign Legal Center to help Texans obtain the proper identification to vote. “Many people will give up and not even bother trying to vote.”

and

Many of the residents struggling to obtain a valid photo ID are elderly and poor and were born in homes rather than hospitals. As a result, birth certificates were often lost or names were misspelled in official city records.

Hargie Randall, 72, was born in his family’s home in Huntsville, Tex., and has lived in the state his entire life. Randall, now living in Houston’s low-income Fifth Ward neighborhood, has several health problems and such poor eyesight that he is legally blind. He can’t drive and has to ask others for rides.

After Texas implemented its new law, Randall went to the Department of Public Safety (the Texas agency that handles driver’s licenses and identification cards) three times to try to get a photo ID to vote. Each time Randall was told he needed different items. First, he was told he needed three forms of identification. He came back and brought his Medicaid card, bills and a current voter registration card from voting in past elections.

“I thought that because I was on record for voting, I could vote again,” Randall said.

But he was told he still needed more documentation, such as a certified copy of his birth certificate.

Records of births before 1950, such as Randall’s, are not on a central computer and are located only in the county clerk’s office where the person was born.

For Randall, that meant an hour-long drive to Huntsville, where his lawyers found a copy of his birth certificate.

But that wasn’t enough. With his birth certificate in hand, Randall went to the DPS office in Houston with all the necessary documents. But, DPS officials still would not issue him a photo ID because of a clerical mistake on his birth certificate. One letter was off in his last name — “Randell” instead of “Randall” — so his last name was spelled slightly different than on all his other documents.

Kamin, the lawyer, asked the DPS official if they could pull up Randall’s prior driver’s-license information, as he once had a state-issued ID. The official told her that the state doesn’t keep records of prior identification after five years, and there was nothing they could do to pull up that information.

Kamin was finally able to prove to a DPS supervisor that there was a clerical error and was able to verify Randall’s identity by showing other documents.

and

“I hear from people nearly weekly who can’t get an ID either because of poverty, transportation issues or because of the government’s incompetence,” said Chad W. Dunn, a lawyer with Brazil & Dunn in Houston, who has specialized in voting rights work for 15 years.

“Sometimes government officials don’t know what the law requires,” Dunn said. “People take a day off work to go down to get the so-called free birth certificates. People who are poor, with no car and no Internet access, get up, take the bus, transfer a couple of times, stand in line for an hour and then are told they don’t have the right documents or it will cost them money they don’t have.” 

because of these bureaucratic headaches, many believe the Republicans support both voter ID requirements AND laws to make it difficult to get a photo ID for the purpose deterring voters most likely to vote against them.

Being that Donald Trump won Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania by small margins, many felt the voter ID laws gave him an unfair advantage.  

The same has been said for states like North Carolina, Texas, Arizona, and Florida, all traditionally Republican states that have an increase in non-white populations. 

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That said, I do strongly encourage people to get a photo ID, but even more strongly, I encourage states to make it easier for people to get a photo ID! More convenient hours and less paperwork required to get a photo ID!