Getting Real ID was a sufficiently large PITA that I have become much more sympathetic to people who feel that ID laws are a burden.
But all of this is a side point: States have the right to make their own election laws with some input from Congress. The President does not and as such, this is not a lawful order.
What was such a pain about it? I got mine without any real issues. The biggest pain was waiting in line at DMV for a couple of hours.
If we’re going to make things mandatory, we can always meet in the middle and mandate that the government provide every single eligible voter with an ID, free of charge, with transportation costs reimbursed, and with a law stating that no employer may bar someone from taking leave to get one, so that nobody is caught off guard without one on election day.
But the government isn’t going to do that. ID requirements are a known tactic for voter suppression. Reasons why young people might not have an ID can be as simple as not needing one in their daily lives unlike older people. Sure it’s easy to get an ID but that does not change the reasons why these requirements are proposed.
I needed to get a new social security card. I needed to make fake “originals” of appropriate documents proving my address, since most of official correspondence goes to my email, not my home. It took me weeks to get everything i needed, and several explicit requests for stuff.
I thought it was odd that it was enormously harder to get “real id” than to get a passport.
I didn’t have a birth certificate, and have never before needed one as an adult. To get my birth certificate from the state that I was born in, I needed to provide id. But birth state and current state have different id standards, so the automated system didn’t recognize my id and needed to be processed manually. Then when I got my birth certificate, the numbering system in birth state doesn’t match the federal standard so couldn’t be inputted into current state’s computer system, requiring another manual override. Also had to find extra documentation proving my address that wasn’t convenient b/c of electronic billing.
The person in front of me in line had only brought what she thought was reasonable proof of who she was, and was denied her Real ID. This is in a suburban AAA location where people are presumably better educated than average.
Real ID requirements for me - there are alternates for every option but they get less and less applicable for most people:
If you need a birth certificate, the first thing they ask for is your passport or other photo ID and you’ll have to pay a fee. If you need a drivers license/state ID, they ask for similar documents and you need to pay a fee.
For those who don’t have some of these things already, it’s a huge pain. I knew a person who was kicked out at age 18 and didn’t have a SS card (nor knew her SS#), state ID/drivers license, or a birth certificate. They weren’t excited to spend a lot of money while homeless to get documents.
“It was easy for me, so it must be easy for everyone. That is called ‘logic.’ Perhaps you’ve heard of it??”"
So many things now that are attached to your SS number have most of it redacted to last 4 digits when mailed to you. It’s hard to find documentation proving full SS.
Since I haven’t had a SS card for decades, when I applied for real ID I think I used a tax return to document my SS.
It was not easy for me to get a replacement birth certificate, because of complex circumstances. But neither was it something I would consider optional in this day and age to have.
I don’t really have my shit together. Neither does my wife. At any point in our lives we have lost/stolen/expired licenses, birth certificates, passports, visas, cards, wallets, phones, etc.
Getting older has made it easier, but overall the solution is to travel/drive/bank/vote less.
Why not? Between 2000 and 2010, I lived in and got IDs in 3 different states, had at least 4 different employers, and never had my birth certificate. Why was a birth certificate optional then but not now?
Because voting restrictions.
Yeah, i haven’t need my birth certificate since i got my first passport, in my teens. (And the proof that i was the person on the birth certificate was that my mother “swore or affirmed” it. ) Why should i suddenly need that?
Exactly. My husband managed to find a paystub from a minor contracting job that had his full SSN on it, but i had nothing that qualified. And i lost my original SSN card when i was 16. Real ID drove me to get a new card, which was not as much of a hassle as i anticipated, but did take a long time. And i also didn’t actually have “original” copies of the kinds of bills that are acceptable, but i have a high-enough-quality color laser printer that i was able to fake it.
I have a friend who was rejected because her bill was a copy. She reprinted it, trifolded it, and printed a fake envelope and they accepted it. So dumb.
my wife was rejected bc of something about a middle initial being present/missing depending on the document. bc she took my name after being married and most bills are in my name, it was a PIA for her
My wife will be getting a Real ID in a couple of months - the DMV stopped giving appointments to just convert your license to one, now you have to wait until you renew.
She had tried about 6 months ago, when they were still taking appointments. They refused her because the utility bill only had my name on it, not hers, so she didn’t have proof of address.
I called the utility company and had her name added.
If you say unkind things about Musk or Tesla, the government is coming for you. Free speech is only free if you say the right things.
American museums, including the Smithsonian and the National Zoo, must update all exhibits to embrace Trumpian ideology