I live in Nebraska where, fortunately, voter ID laws don’t yet exist, though they’ve been trying. But, about a decade ago, I went to get my driver’s license renewed after moving into the state. The problem - I had never changed my SSN after getting married 25 years earlier. I had to come up with a -certified birth certificate, a -certified marriage license, and several other IDs before, finally, after seeing my expired passport (which was not good enough), a supervisor took pity on me after 5 visits with insufficient IDs and granted me the leeway to get a license. I have lived in the US my entire life, was born in a neighboring state, and could not prove myself enough to get a driver’s license without a two-month-long ordeal of buying documents and, even then, requiring leniency.
If it was that hard for me, a white older woman with a clearly midwestern accent, how much harder for someone with any variation to that life? Elections have been rigged for a long time. It’s getting worse instead of better, and I don’t expect improvement while 45 is around. IF you need ID to vote and IF you really care about voting, start at least 3 months ahead of the vote on getting your requirements in order. Start now. Who knows what other blocks they will put in your path to prevent you from having a voice?
“Black voters were about 50 percent likelier than whites to lack these IDs because they were less likely to drive or to be able to afford the documents required to get a current ID, and more likely to have moved from out of state. There is, of course, no one thing that swung the election. Clinton’s failings, James Comey’s 11th-hour letter, Russian interference, fake news, sexism, racism, and a struggling economy in key swing states all contributed to Trump’s victory. We will never be able to assign exact proportions to all the factors at play. But a year later, interviews with voters, organizers, and election officials reveal that, in Wisconsin and beyond, voter suppression played a much larger role than is commonly understood.”