More GOP voter suppression “collusion” seems to be at work here. How much of this was pre-planned by the RNC and funded by the Koch Brothers? All of it I’m thinking.
The Top 1% wants to keep poor blacks and other minorities shackled to a model of slavery that is still the hallmark of the the party of Ronald Reagan. It’s never been more apparent. The rich want to make the middle class the working poor and the poor their peasants.
The very definition of a Catch 22. Kris Kobach gets a woody every time he thinks about it.
Well, they’ve changed to the extent that this is the thing they do to inhibit minority voting now as opposed to the things they did to inhibit minority voting then.
the 107-year-old DC resident has been unable to travel for a flood of interview requests
This has to be fixable however I was struck by the line I excerpted. You know, media, they make small, portable video cameras now…
ALL Americans should be outraged by this lady’s situation. The fact that more Americans are not outraged is disgusting and a real threat to OUR democracy.
Too busy on their Obamaphones, buying lobster with food stamps.
And that right there tells you everything you need to know about the purpose of the voter ID laws.
I’m pretty sure he has been posting in the past few days. I just read a post of his yesterday. Not sure when he posted it, tho. I hope everything is ok!
why shouldn’t everyone show some ID, forgetting that the draconian laws make it so difficult to obtain some of the documents required to get the ID.
More than that: sometimes the documents simply don’t exist. Births often weren’t recorded outside of a record in a family bible. Vital records only got centralized state-by-state in the 60s, often much later. A fire at a county courthouse could destroy the necessary paperwork for thousands of people without any copies. This is even before considering African-Americans in the Jim Crow South, who were systematically excluded from the bureaucracy that establishes the kind of civic personhood necessary for a middle-class life.
If documents do exist, handwritten records often have mistakes that are taken to be authoritative. County clerks mess up, hospital registrars mess up.
The bleat of “How do you fly? How do you buy liquor? How do you cash a check?” betrays a lot of ignorance about how civic identity is constituted.
Wow! I never heard of a birth certificate expiring. And why would PA change anything on yours? This is just crazy!
Voter id laws are universally stupid and wrong, regardless of which party or candidate is advantaged or disadvantaged by complicated rules which trip up one group of supporters more than another. Voting is a right which should be as easy and convenient as possible for everybody.
Still, I want to see hard empirical evidence, who’s disenfranchised by what. From what I’ve seen of Trump supporters in particular, they don’t strike me as very smart, organized or we’ll informed. Who says they won’t be just as tripped up by stupid rules as the next voter.
Thinking about this, I remember that there was a CST/CDT snafu in PA and IL back when boomers were being born. Some hospitals didn’t recognize CDT --maybe it was counties --and there was a lot of confusion for awhile until CDT became recognized by law. I wonder if they are making changes regarding this. Did anyone tell you what the changes were and why they were made?
Wisconsin has the same hoop. Need papers to get ID. Can’t get ID without papers. And the double jeopardy for women who were married, is very real.
The question I have is whether a hot headed Trump supporter is going to be more or less likely to be tripped up by stupid rules, as the kindly, sympathetic elder who danced with the President.
Do Rump supporters get married in places other than where they were born, more often than other groups? I have no idea.
You are so absolutely right. Thank you for bringing light to others who face the red tape!
Voter suppression needs to end.
BCs are revised all the time, I believe after 911 most were revised. The BC did not expire, they just did not like the fact that the cert was old, yellowed with age, etc. Just excuses to make the process as arbitrary and obnoxious as possible. And I am 70, white and male…
They will just pull out a gun and get a ballot?
Agree, have a uncle who spent 25+ years in the Army starting in 1941. When he went to retire he was told he needed his BC, don’t know why the Army asked. He spent over 3 years getting the paperwork together from churches, schools, etc in Central PA before the state issued one. That additional 3 years in the Army meant that we as taxpayers paid a larger retirement, (1) promotion, (2) additional time in service, for the next 50+ years before he died. Don’t we just love bureaucracy.
The only time I had heard of that previously was from doing the dozens:
“Yo mama so old her birth certificate expired.”
With any luck, much more so, as they will not have organized advocacy groups such as churches and the League of Women Voters, etc, helping them out.
She is therefore unrepresented, and should refuse to pay taxes.
Government is the servant of the people. It may not require people to provide documents to the government that the government already has.