berchman Loc: South Central PA

Here is the "made up crap" copied from the relevant section of
SB 202. Here is what that section of the law says:

"(a) No person shall solicit v**es in any manner or by any means or method, nor shall any

person distribute or display any campaign material, nor shall any person give, offer to give,

or participate in the giving of any money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and

drink, to an e*****r, nor shall any person solicit signatures for any petition, nor shall any

person, other than e******n officials discharging their duties, establish or set up any tables

or booths on any day in which b****ts are being cast

(1) Within 150 feet of the outer edge of any building within which a polling place is


(2) Within any polling place; or

(3) Within 25 feet of any v**er standing in line to v**e at any polling place."

The bill also states that poll workers can make available "self-service water from an unattended receptacle to an e*****r waiting in line to v**e." But nothing in the law requires poll workers to make water easily available to v**ers while they are waiting in line.

The law makes it a misdemeanor to give away food or water within 150 feet of the outer edge of a polling place building or within 25 feet of any v**er in line. Violations of this law are punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Wuligal Loc: Slippery Rock, Pa.

1. You said, "Those of us who have ID cannot comprehend how difficult it can be to get an ID."
My response is: go to the nearest photo license office and within ten minutes you will have one at no charge .

2. You also said, "I have no idea where my birth certificate is. Do you? If you never had a driver's license (it's NOT a given), and you cannot locate your birth certificate, how do you prove your identity to ge one or the other?"

Yes, I know exactly where my birth certificate is. It's in a safety deposit box at my local bank. I had it replaced by going to the nearest department of records and, using only my social security number, city of birth and mother's maiden name I got it replaced within fourteen days. You do not need a driver's licence to apply for a copy of a lost birth certificate.

3. You ended with this; "I don't want non-citizens v****g, and I take offense to your statement that I do. Look back through this thread to the example given for how trying to obtain ID in some states is turned into a circle-jerk before you assume the worst."

If you don't want non-citizens v****g might I ask what you have done to prevent it or stop it? In as much as I was given the opportunity to v**e three (yes three) times in the last e******n I made certain my county e******n board will NEVER forget my name or allow blanket mailing of absentee b****ts again.

By the way, exactly which states offer only a "circle jerk" when trying to obtain an ID? Be specific please. Which states will not give out ID's to citizens? What exactly is a "circle jerk". Give me three examples of real people that could not get ID's in those unknown states. And remember, be sure you can verify what you say or it remains only your opinion......not factual information.

4. You "took offence" to my statement why you were against having v**er ID. That's unfortunate, I was hoping it would make you think past the manipulative brainwashing techniques of today's wimp filled counter-culture generation.

One last thing: Please define your meaning of "too difficult" because it sure as heck isn't the same as mine. My right to v**e is a blood won gift from tens of thousands of men and woman that came before me. It's an endowment from women of real courage. Woman with names like Millicent Fawcett,Mary Adams, and Susan B. Anthony. Black men had the right to v**e in 1870, it took another fifty years until people that look like me got the same privilege and it came at the cost of hundreds of women being beaten in the streets and tortured in rat infested prisons.
Do not speak to me of getting an ID as being "too difficult" ........my tears are for those that suffered and died for my entitlement. Forgive me if I don't have a lot of sympathy for someone with a lost birth certificate.

steve_stoneblossom Loc: Rhode Island, USA

Fortunately for me, I cannot address the issue of ID difficulties based on first hand experience, nor do I personally know anyone who can. Which is a far cry from saying that these people do not exist, or that the problem is of their own making.

With the permission of the original poster, berchman, in response to a separate topic (ine******y of v*****e distribution in Vermont), I offer a glimpse of the difficulties one not so fortunate as I might experience when faced with the "simple" task of obtaining an ID:

"But listen: It’s important to explain to Uncle Bob and his ilk that v**er ID laws disenfranchise a lot of people. Especially when Uncle Bob grumpily complains that obtaining a photo ID isn’t that hard, and even if it is, people who think that v****g is really important should either get one or shut the hell up already.

What Uncle Bob fails to understand is that a lot of people don’t have a photo ID because they don’t need it. There are people who don’t drive. People who don’t have bank accounts and simply get their checks cashed by the dude who runs the local market down the street. People who live in small towns where everybody knows their name and they’ve never had a reason to get a photo ID. People who used to have a driver’s license, but it expired and they don’t have the money or time to get a new one. Homeless people who have nowhere to lay their head, much less the ability to make it to a government office to get a photo ID, and even if they got one, the police would probably just confiscate all of their s**t anyway because they think homeless people should be neither seen nor heard.

And for these people, getting a photo ID solely for the purpose of v****g when all they needed before was their v***r r**********n certificate can be very difficult. And it’s especially hard on people of color, people with disabilities, non-English speakers, elderly people, and low-income folks. Don’t even get me started on students, with their multiple residences and t***sient lifestyles.

In her decision calling Texas’ v**er ID law an unconstitutional poll tax, U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos detailed just how hard it is for some people to get a photo ID.

In Texas, for example, the cost of traveling to the nearest Department of Public Safety office, Texas’ version of the DMV, can be burdensome: Of the 254 counties in Texas, 78 do not have a permanent DPS office. In some communities along the Mexican border, the nearest DPS office is between 100 and 125 miles away. And in rural communities in other states, the DMV offices are few and far between.

That means a person without a driver’s license is going to have to rely on a family member or a friend to drive them to the DMV (or, in Texas, the DPS) in order to get a photo ID card. Now ask yourself this—would you want to drive your Uncle Bob two hours each way and then stand in line at the DMV for god-knows-how-long to get a photo ID?

Yeah, I didn’t think so. Uncle Bob is kind of weird and he smells like soup.

And then there are financial constraints.

Oftentimes, people don’t even have the money to pay for the underlying documentation needed to get a photo ID card. Getting a photo ID invariably requires proof of identification; usually, that means you need your birth certificate. But what if you don’t have your birth certificate? Then you have to contact wh**ever government office is in charge of that sort of thing to get a copy of it. And that can be a real pain in the ass for a lot of reasons.

For that matter, a lot of birth certificates have mistakes on them. If your name is spelled wrong, then you have to go through a whole rigamarole to get that fixed before you can get your ID card.

Some people have never been issued a birth certificate. A lot of elderly Black folks, for example, were birthed by midwives at home. They don’t have birth certificates.

A lot of rural folks—Black, white, Latino, wh**ever—were born on farms. They don’t have birth certificates either.

And did you know that in 2010, the birth certificates of all American citizens born in Puerto Rico expired? Because they did. So if you were born in Puerto Rico and you need a birth certificate, well, good luck with that. Sure, you can pay five bucks to get a new one—and let’s not forget that for some people, like low-income folks or homeless folks, even five dollars is five dollars too much—but guess what you need in order to get a new birth certificate?

If you guessed “a photo ID card,” give yourself a pat on the back.

So if you’re Puerto Rican and you don’t have a photo ID or a driver’s license, you have to get a copy of your birth certificate from Puerto Rico. But in order to get your birth certificate, you have to have a photo ID. It’s a vicious circle. (And this sort of problem doesn’t exist only in Puerto Rico. In Texas, for example, in order to get a certified copy of your birth certificate, you need an ID card. And in order to get an ID card, you need a certified copy of your birth certificate. And round and round we go.)

If you’re trying to v**e in a state where you live but weren’t born, simply trying to acquire a copy of your out-of-state birth certificate can be prohibitively expensive.

In the Texas v**er ID litigation, one plaintiff testified that Louisiana wanted to charge him more than $80 for a copy of his birth certificate. Another plaintiff decided against obtaining his birth certificate from New Jersey, because that state wanted a $30 fee he didn’t have.

The bottom line is this: V****g is a fundamental right. V****g isn’t like buying beer, or entering a government building, or buying a gun. V****g is a civic duty that many Americans take seriously. And many Americans are being denied their right to v**e in states where the people in power are afraid that the changing population demographics might squeeze them out of existence."

So hopefully you'll forgive me if I don't apologize for the lack of personal experience in the matter. I'm actually quite thankful that is the case.

P.S. Circle-jerk can be exemplified by the underlined paragraph.

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

Texas Denies V**er ID to Former Speaker Jim Wright
by Brad Friedman

November 4, 2013

Print
Former U.S. House Speaker Jim Wright (D) was denied a Photo ID for v****g purposes in Texas over the weekend by the state's Department of Public Safety (DPS).

The 90-year old Wright, who is lucky enough to have an assistant to drive him to and from the DPS office, says that while he believes he'll be able to get an ID in time to v**e in this Tuesday's e******n, he's concerned the state's "unduly stringent requirements on v**ers" will reduce turnout.

According to the Star-Telegram, Wright's driver's license expired in 2010 and -- because he no longer drives -- he didn't bother to renew it. That expired license, he learned Saturday, is not good enough to obtain a Photo ID to v**e under the law TX Republicans passed in 2011. That law will be in effect, for the first time, on Tuesday. The state statute had previously been nixed just last year by the U.S. Dept. of Justiceand by a 3-judge federal court panel after being found discriminatory, in violation of the V****g Rights Act (VRA), as based on statistics supplied by the state itself.

Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court gutting a key provision of the VRA over the summer, however, Texas announced the law would finally be enforced for the upcoming e******n.

Wright is hardly the only well known figure to be stung so far by the Lone Star State Republicans' purposely disenfranchising law. And the hoops that many v**ers -- even ones like Wright, who says he's v**ed in every single e******n since 1944 -- must now jump through in order to have a chance at their v**e even being counted at all, is remarkable...

Last month in Corpus Christi, for example, 117th District Court Judge Sandra Watts was forced to sign an affidavit when trying to v**e early, after the name on her driver's license didn't match the one she was registered under. Her driver's license included her maiden name as her middle name, as once required by Texas law, but her v***r r**********n didn't. "What I have used for v***r r**********n and for identification for the last 52 years was not sufficient yesterday when I went to v**e,"she explained to local media. The name on her license had been the same for 52 years, and she's v**ed in every e******n for the last 49. "This is the first time I've ever had a problem v****g," she said.

Texas' 2014 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis ran into a similar problem recently when she tried to v**e, as did the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Attorney General Greg Abbott, who has been defending the state's Photo ID law against several law suits, including one by the U.S. Department of Justice (which he should likely lose, given what the courts have already determined about the state's discriminatory law.)

But at least those three were allowed to cast their v**e, even if they had to take extra time to sign an affidavit (a potential very serious problem in a large turnout e******n, where lines are likely to get exponentially longer thanks to the new law.)

For those without a state-issued Photo ID deemed proper under the new law, things will be much worse.

Former U.S. House Speaker Wright's assistant, Norma Ritchson, told the Star-Telegram that she's concerned the law will make it much harder for elderly v**ers to v**e at all.

"I've been thinking about the people who are in retirement homes," Ritchson told the paper. "I've read that this is the lowest early v**er turnout in a long time and I wonder if this [ID requirement] is the cause. We've tried so hard to make v****g easy, and now the Texas Legislature has made it harder by making you have a photo ID."

Wright, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years until resigning in 1989, told the paper, "From my youth I have tried to expand the e******ns...I pushed to abolish the poll tax. I was the first to come out for lowering the v****g age to 18."

But now, he's fighting to cast his own v**e at all in Texas. The details the Star-Telegram supplies for the hoops that Texans without the proper state-issued Photo IDs must jump through now is astounding.

Remember, Wright had a TX drivers license, but if a license has been expired more than two months under the new law, it can no longer be used for v****g purposes.

If one can manage to get to a DPS office -- some Texans live as far as 250 miles from an office, and 81 of 254 counties in the state don't even have one -- here's what a legal v**er will have to do acquire the supposedly "free" state-issued E******n Identification Certificate (EIC), according to the paper...

They must have proof of citizenship, such as a passport or certified copy of a birth certificate. If a person doesn't have a certified copy of a birth certificate, he or she can go to the...County clerk's office and get a certified copy for $3 if it is for the purpose of getting an EIC. Along with the birth certificate, people need to show two other pieces of identification -- such as a driver license expired less than two years, a v***r r**********n card, school records, military records or a Social Security -- card to get the EIC.
Update: Please note that the Texas DPS charges $22 for birth certificates online, and does not notify purchasers of any discount when certificates are needed only for v**er ID verification purposes. Passports cost more than $100.

So, even if you can afford to get to the DPS office (these are folks without a valid state driver's license, after all), and even if you can afford the time and money to purchase a certified copy of your birth certificate, you'll still have to come up with two additional pieces of documentation to prove you are you.

Remember, these are often v**ers, such as former U.S. House Speaker Jim Wright, who have been v****g in the same place, without problems -- until now -- for decades.

Remember also that in 1966, in Harper v. Virginia Board of E******ns, the U.S. Supreme Court found that even a poll tax of just $1.50 is in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Writing for the 6 to 3 majority, Justice William O. Douglas observed in that case:

[A] state violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment [of the U.S. Constitution] whenever it makes the affluence of the v**er or payment of any fee an e*******l standard. ... We say the same whether the citizen, otherwise qualified to v**e, has $1.50 in his pocket or nothing at all, pays the fee or fails to pay it. The principle that denies the State the right to dilute a citizen's v**e on account of his economic status or other such factors, by analogy, bars a system which excludes those unable to pay a fee to v**e or who fail to pay.
Without the state-issued Photo ID that TX Republicans now require for v****g there, one may still cast a provisional b****t. For that b****t to be counted, however, an otherwise legal v**er -- even one who showed ID when registering, as is already required in all 50 states under the Help America V**e Act (HAVA) of 2002 -- will have just six days to round-up and/or pay for the needed documents to attain an EIC and figure out how to get that information to the county e******ns office in order to validate their b****t in hopes that it will then be properly counted.

Based on data supplied by Texas [PDF] to the federal government last year, as many as 800,000 registered v**ers in Texas do not have the type of ID now required to v**e in the state. The U.S. Dept. of Justice found last year that those rates are disproportionately higher for minority v**ers.

Yet, in 2012, a non-partisan news consortium compiled every known e******n f***d case in all 50 states going back to the year 2000. Their comprehensive database identifies just 3 cases of possible v**er impersonation fraud -- the only type of v***r f***d that could possibly be deterred by polling place Photo ID restrictions -- out of hundreds of millions of v**es cast in the Lone Star state during the same period.

As of mid-October, according to the Dallas Morning News, just 41 "free" EIC cards had been issued by the state.

Originally published by THE BRAD BLOG. Republished with permission.

Photo: Flickr user Vox Efx, creative commons licensed.

Tags
CIVIL RIGHTS DEMOCRACY E******NS
by Brad Friedman November 4, 2013

Thought maybe you could relate since he was about your age.
Perhaps you met him on the Mayflower on your way over here.

steve_stoneblossom Loc: Rhode Island, USA

More anecdotal poppycock! (Damn, where the hell is that sarcasm emoji....)