It’s telling that you assume the reason clerks won’t accept invalid ID is because they’re stupid instead of it being against the company rules, and the state can bust the clerk as an INDIVIDUAL for $500 allowing someone to buy booze without a valid ID. :rolleyes:
You must just be a lot smarter.
Depends on the state. Here in Michigan, there’s no requirement for ID. There is a requirement for reasonable assurance, and of course many stores follow the populist “ID if under 25” sentiment. Actually, ordering for home delivery is much tougher (an ID or age verification service is required).
I have a reader’s card from the Library of Congress that I like to present to officious security guards who demand a “photo ID” to let me into an office building. It has no expiration date. Even though it’s both valid and government-issued, TSA won’t take it.
Expired U.S. passports are considered valid proof of both identity and citizenship, at least for job purposes. (I’ve used my childhood passport for my identity stuff forever. I don’t show anyone my birth certificate or social security card. Getting them out of the safe deposit is a pain.) They just don’t allow you to traverse the border.
I’m sure they roll their eyes at you just like the guy who tried to show me a fishing license (haw haw haw) or his work badge (think he worked for the VA) (haw haw haw).
You know what we mean when someone says “ID”, people are trained not to say “driver’s license”. Why make their menial, brain-dead job any worse?
–chaoticbear, long-time menial, brain-dead retail worker
Give up any thoughts you had of being President 
Actually, if you went back to the LoC today, it’s no longer valid. Just saying.
An ID is no longer valid once it has expired because it’s easier on everybody if you only have one piece of any given documentation that identifies you. You can have a passport, and a drivers license and a state id card and a birth certificate that all identify you but if you have 2 drivers licences that identify you, the system becomes vulnerable. If my ID from 2 years ago were still valid, I could use my current id to get into a bar and give the other id to someone else who is underaged. If only one of my ids is valid then either only one person gets in, or else we come up with some harebrained scheme.
Your scheme blows because I could give my valid ID to anyone for bar entry on a night I wasn’t going to need it.
If a passport, birth cert, state ID card are all valid, give one to each of 3 friends and they all get in as long as the bouncer doesn’t notice that all the bar patrons have the same name.
And if you lose your ID, you can get an official replacement, just as valid. Do that two times, but don’t really “lose” it, and you have 3 perfectly valid IDs. Not harebrained at all.
Of course, if the IDs are like many modern passports and IDs, they would most likely void the old ID’s certificates as soon as it was reported lost or stolen (kind of like how they cancel your credit cards). When someone tries to use the stolen ID, it won’t work (unless they are just scanning it with the Mark One Eyeball Identification Verification Device, which only works as well as the operator, of course).
Still doesn’t do any good if you’re giving your driver’s license to a buddy while you use another form of ID. I’d love to see someone use a passport to get into a bar though.
TSA takes expired Driver’s Licenses as identification as long as they are less than a year since expiration (so, expiration date + 1 year). I have used my expired driver’s license multiple times at airport security checkpoints and they always note that it’s expired and tell me how much longer I can use it.
In the state of Florida, at least, you may renew your driver’s license via mail* and the new license will have the old picture on it. This is the secret to eternal youth. So there is some truth to the statement that it’s all about the revenue. Interestingly, I tried to get a replacement license in person, brought most required documentation but forgot to bring along my passport. The state of Florida would not accept my expired Florida driver’s license as a photo ID, although it was clearly me in the photo and it had only expired twenty days previously - I had lost the replacement just before a business trip and needed to rent a car. They had my new license on file and my photo on file, with tons of other identification. It was kind of surreal.
FWIW, I have since found the lost license, so now have to valid, current licenses, plus an alternate expired license. Except for the expiry date they are all exactly the same.
*This is why I still have my old license.
Very similar thing happened to me. The state of NJ would not accept my expired NJ driver’s license as a photo ID, although it was clearly me in the photo and it had expired only recently. I had forgotten to renew it, and it was now a few weeks later. They told me that the old license would have worked until expiration, but not now.
Why not?
So bars have electronic devices to verify driver’s license validity now? And they actually use them? I’m not saying it’s impossible, I just never saw that; around here, no one asks for IDs anyway because the bartender knows everyone who comes in.
The convenience store I used to work at did. It was build right into the register and read the magnetic strip of the back to deterime the DOB (which was printed on the reciept). It worked on out-of-state IDs too as long as they had a magnetic strip on the back. We could also use the lottery terminal the same way for ID verification. We also had the big book of every government issued photo ID in North America (plus a passport gallery), but never actually used it. In fact the only time it ever got pulled out was when it was really, really, slow (like on 3rd shift) and we clerks didn’t have anything better to do.
I think he meant electronically verified with the state database. The stripe just contains some basic information (or for enhanced licenses, more information). But those machines don’t connect with the state to determine whether or not they’re been cancelled by the state.
I had a bouncer swipe my driver’s license in some kind of fancy looking scanner (dunno what else it could do, but when I glanced at the screen, it just flashed my age in big print.)
I was thinking more along the lines of Passports and Common Access Cards (AKA Military IDs), which have RFID chips imbedded in them, along with various other types of scannable information. Guards can scan your ID, and the database will tell them if you are stationed at that base, if you are allowed to be there, if you have been flagged as being AWOL, etc.
Not really relevant to driver’s licenses (which, expired or not, will not grant you access onto a military installation), just a sort of gee-whiz sidebar.
I had a German kid working as a intern for me once. On his 21st birthday I took him out for a drink (or 6). Since he had no US driver license, his passport was what he had for ID. We almost didn’t get in because his birthday was in German standard dd/mm/yy format, which the bouncer was reading as mm/dd/yy, which would make him a few months younger. Fortunately there was another date (issue, or expiration I guess) with the day >12 so I was able to educate the bouncer.
I would imagine bartenders at airports see a lot of passports as well.
Not strictly related, but we took our exchange student to the go-kart track. The ones we went on required a driver’s license, but the guy couldn’t figure out his German ID card (he was 19, but didn’t have a DL), and let him go anyway.
And several of the bars around here have the magnetic swipey thing, in fact, some of the gay bars swipe EVERYONE’S, regardless of age. I’ve been there with people 40+ who got their ID’s swiped, but not sure what would have happened if it were expired. :smack:
Nope. Speaking as a former clerk, it’s because they don’t want to lose their jobs and/or pay fines. There is no incentive to be nice and let an ID slide. There is every incentive to be a stickler for the rules. At least not in chain stores, maybe in a mom & pop place they are more lenient.
The rules (not laws, the rules we were trained to run our tills under) say that if we thought the customer looked under 30, we had to ask for ID. And we could only accept valid ID, not expired or temporary ID. If we had any qualms at all, we were well within our right to refuse the sale, and I have done so many times.
Expired ID is by definition not valid, even if it’s only a day or three. You wouldn’t expect to use an expired credit card, even if you have a new card with the same number on its way to you; why is an ID card any different?