Why REAL ID For Voting is a Disaster Waiting to Happen

Barack comes through and argues against requiring the use of the REAL ID for voter identification. Barack points out some initial problems in his press release.

Some others don’t quite understand the implications of such a move.

Barack’s points are pretty basic and point out the gulf between the middle and working class and those who truly live in poverty.

“This is a requirement that would be so restrictive that you couldn’t even prove your identity in order to vote with a U.S. military photo ID card or a U.S. passport,” Obama said. “This is a mistake.”

Lewis said the photo ID requirements passed by Georgia and other states are “a form of a poll tax,” used once in some states to keep blacks from voting.

“These laws take us back to the dark past where only a few groups of American citizens could participate in our democracy,” Lewis said.

Voter rights and civil rights groups have challenged Georgia’s law in court.

“Georgia has instituted a law that requires some of the poorest among us – those who probably don’t have access to transportation – to possibly travel great distances and pay up to $35 just for the privilege of making their voice heard,” Obama said.

“This is an extraordinarily heavy burden for the 150,000 Georgians over 70 who do not have government-issued photo identification. If other states followed suit, it would be a burden for nearly 1 in 8 Americans who do not have a driver’s license. And, we’ve got to remember who these folks are – disproportionately poor and without easy access to all the documents necessary for a government-issued ID,” Obama said.

Nationally, up to 10 percent of Americans are estimated not to have driver’s licenses or state-issued IDs, Obama said. Three million disabled people do not have driver’s licenses. Black Americans are twice as likely not to have a driver’s license as white Americans. Only 22 percent of black males between the ages of 18 and 24 have a driver’s license.

The burden isn’t just because someone is poor, but because with poverty comes all sorts of other problems including disabilities that severely limit mobility.

But this isn’t just the regular Driver’s license we are talking about, but the REAL ID. Remember that?

It’s completely a nutty idea that will add new meaning to slow bureaucracy.

It requires that each document used for identification to obtain such an ID be confirmed with the issuing agency and done on renewal as well as paper copies kept for 7-10 years. So every time I want to get a license, Will County will have to confirm my birth certificate and the information on it. Before I can get the actual license. My Social Security number will have to be verified with the federal government and any other identification such as a utility bill will have to be confirmed with the issuing company.

I’m a big fan of the ways Jesse White has improved and streamlined the Secretary of State’s office and made it easier to renew licenses for clean drivers and the such, but this would end it all.

One can theoretically get a license not up to the REAL ID act, but the proposals from the Baker panel would not allow those to be used to vote. Your passport could not be used to vote. Your military ID could not be used to vote. Your voter ID card as it now stands could not be used to vote.

If you take it one or two steps further, it only gets worse. What if you lose your ID within a few days of the election? Are you disenfranchised? What if you use it to post bond for a speeding ticket? Are you disenfranchised if you can’t pay in a couple days? What if a bouncer takes it claiming it’s fake when it isn’t? Are you completely disenfranchised? How do you verify the date of birth for an immigrant? Taking two common examples–The Soviet Union or Yugoslavia (as Durbin pointed out) don’t even exist–how do you confirm a birth certificate?

So what if you move to a new state and the State of Illinois can’t confirm that you cancelled your Missouri Driver’s License–you don’t get a new one until they can confirm such a move. You move in 60 days before an election, try to get a new license 30 days before an election, but Missouri can’t confirm in time (Trust me, not an unrealistic situation)? Are you disenfranchised for moving? What if you have a name similar to others—do they have their license cancelled then because the state can’t tell the difference (this has been quite common in purging vote files). So someone is now disenfranchised because of a bureaucratic mix-up.

Those are barriers for those who now have a licences–let alone the 10% of eligible voters who don’t have a license now at all.

Beyond that, a far more effective strategy would to be to actually employ someone at polls who is young enough to still have eyesight good enough to potentially catch a fraud. Right now, you could require the best ID in the world and the person behind the table wouldn’t be able to tell.

10% of people don’t have driver’s licenses or state issued IDs under current law. That’s likely to jump in the case of REAL ID. So are we really going to say that to vote you have to have such an ID? Or are there other options for individuals who don’t have such ID?

The impact of debilitating poverty on that portion of our society that is truly outside the mainstream is not understood by most. I spend a fair amount of time for work in areas that are poverty stricken and it is a different world. It’s a world where people don’t operate on the same assumptions as those in the blog world for sure and not the same that most people who read this interact wtih on a regular basis. It’s a life that’s not as oriented towards writing checks and using your debit cards, but making do to get through. One that doesn’t worry about six months down the line, but one that worries about the next couple days.

Add to that those who struggle to get through life because of disabilities (and having a disability is a big correlation to being poor) and requiring them to go through a tough process to get a REAL ID is a lot more than it sounds like to those of us who have easy transportation and can be annoyed while waiting at the DMV, but ultimately can do it without worrying about missing a treatment, or your nurse, or your daily food delivery that’s your primary sustenance.

Do we really want to disenfranchise these people?

This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t look to make voting secure, but REAL ID or even a state ID shouldn’t be the only ID–a mailed Voter ID card or a recent utility bill actually makes fraudlent voting pretty difficult. Combine that with competent poll workers and we do far better enfranchising the worst off amongst us while protecting the integrity of voting. It’s the right thing to do.