Yes, captain obvious, I do realize that.
And they should vote, why exactly? So they can spend other people’s money?
But did you ever consider that the reason they don’t have a job is because they are lazy and shiftless, not to mention commies, and so the country is better off for their inability to vote?
ETA: Holy crap, what do you call it when my snide insinuation about what D’Anconia is really thinking is ninjaed by him pretty much proving me right?
Many of the poor work.
I have to drive to an industrial park to see a client every so often, and if I’m heading there in the morning or evening, I see people, dressed for work walking the two miles to or from, a bus-stop.
As for not having a car, I didn’t have a car in my family when I was poor. I got rides from friends/relatives, caught the bus, or walked. My mother walked to her job.
Honestly, I think one of the problems here, and I honestly aren’t trying to make a dig, but I think you’re not trying at all to imagine answers to your questions.
The fact that you dispute that millions don’t have voter ID without any evidence, because, “How do they drive” is such a profoundly empty objection, that I find it hard to fathom.
This would have been easier if you at the outset said you don’t think the unemployed should vote.
Because they’re American citizens and they have the right.
Just because they’re poor doesn’t automatically mean they’re on welfare.
Thank you for this reply. Replies like this help sort out who I am and am not willing to spend my time conversing with.
Of course, it dawns, I remember. D’Anconia, a character in Atlas Shrugged. Pleased that I remember that, more pleased that I’ve forgotten all the rest.
According to the AL web site, in order to get a Driving License you need:
This looks like it’s just as complicate, if not more so, then getting an ID for voter registration. Maybe I’m reading this wrong, but if people can still get an ID at the same building as the could get a Drivers License, then what’s the problem? It’s not like you can just walk up to a counter, fill out a form, and get a DL.
That’s first time drivers.
What about those that just need to renew an existing licence, replace a lost one, or convert an out of state licence?
What state were you born in, and have you ever applied for a passport?
In my experience the “birth certificate” issued by a hospital is irrelevant; you need a separate document from a government office, embossed with their official seal.
As my earlier cite should have clarified, obtaining the DL is a far more significant problem than getting voter ID. Driving without a license can lead to arrest, while voting is an unimportant frill for most people. Certainly someone who wants both the DL and the right to vote, will focus on the former since it yields the latter as well.
And to answer an earlier question, yes the office closures have far more effect on the poor than the comfortable. 
Who can more easily afford a trip to Tuscaloosa, someone without or with money? Especially since two (or more) trips may be needed if paperwork, etc. is not in order.
On the question of birthdates and ages, I have in-laws who don’t know their own birthdate (they do know birth day-of-the-week, since that is relevant for omens and rituals).
[true story] I was told “she’s 14 but really 17” when I asked about the age of a neighbor! :eek: Her mother couldn’t afford the 20-mile trip to the government birth registrar, so waited until another child was born and got a two-fold return on the transport cost. (Admittedly this happened in a country much poorer than the U.S. Still, all too often posters here seem completely ignorant about the constraints of poverty.)
I’m a middle aged manager at a top 3 pizza chain restaurant.
During a traffic stop for *rolling *a stop sign in the parking lot of my apartment complex on my way home after work, my only form of photo ID was confiscated by the local police. The reason given was that my insurance had been cancelled by my insurance company. Later I found out that the card I had been using had expired, and my card company had not sent me a replacement yet, so the payment bounced even though I had the money to pay my bill automatically. A slight error on my part, but the system kicked me out of having legal insurance and therefore, having a legal driver’s license, and then the cop took my only form of ID.
So, pay the fine, get my license back? Not without legal ID.
I have worked all my life but due to an economic downturn and a large amount of unemployment in 2009, I lost all my life’s savings and almost every single item in my possession. I was nearly on the street, I moved several times just to find work and I had essentially nothing in my possession, certainly not records from when I was born.
Legal citizen born in this country, a taxpayer with a job, and who ordinarily pays all his bills but for this one mishap, I was now without legal ID, and the process it takes to get another one is a staggering nightmare.
One that involves numerous phone calls to an out of state government agency and having to mail things and pay fees and prove my identity.
Something I was able to do.
Not everyone is able to do those things. And my life is not nearly as horrific as what other people have had to endure.
And 25 dollars is a lot of money. You spend 5 dollars a day on food for a while, and have that be a great boon compared to months living on a couple of cases of ramen.
I really have no time for people who cannot imagine the hardships of being without, having to prove one’s identity, having to pay when it’s really hard to eat.
If this describes you, you **don’t **have a place in this discussion and you’d save a LOT of face by never returning to it, because there’s only so long that someone can talk about things they have no idea about before it becomes really obvious to everyone else.
Thank you for your story. I have never faced such hardship. I am on disability for deperssion and other problems. I have looked for work a few times in the past year(s) but it is hard. My point is… due to a couple of factors I am financially stable/OK, but, the places I do live in it is best for me to find cheap rent, often in the same part of town as section 8 housing… I count my blessings every day that I have a car and a decent apartment and more than enough food to eat.
I am not trying to compare stories as to which is worse, but, depressed or poor when you are on the bottom it is easy to loose hope, sometimes temporary, sometimes you loose it for good. The whole world is against you.
People who can not or do not understand that… I do not doubt their intelligence so much as I doubt their basic capacity for empathy and compassion. That is bad enough, but, not everyone is perfect, everyone has flaws… some people naturally think and feel more for other people… on some level it is a basic trait that you have either a surplus or a deficiency for… one of those mystery’s of life.
But to come on a message board and to belittle poor people… what kind of serious psychological damage does it take to do that… ???
I had to show a state-issued birth certificate to get a library card. When I strolled up in there with my baby footprints, the librarian laughed at me.
Sometimes I wonder how many people are poor simply because they are thwarted by bureaucracy. Conservatives love to tell us that red tape is the bane of small business. “Do away with regulation!” they scream. So it doesn’t make sense that they are in favor of so much red tape for individuals exercising their basic civil rights.
And here we get to the heart of it.
I think there are a lot of middle class people and affluent people who just don’t understand. Some are jerks and even if they “knew” what was going on, it wouldn’t matter.
Try waking up at 3:30 AM and walking to Hardee’s so you can clock in at 4:30 AM. You work your shift at minimum wage, just short of 40 hours so that they don’t have to give you any real benefits. You walk to the grocery store after work 2 or 3 days a week after you get off from work, or maybe to the family dollar, then walk home. It is only 20 minutes between each location but it starts to add up. In an hour or two your 2 kids will be home from school. You have to manage and care for them and do all the stuff people have to do. Then maybe if you are lucky after taking care of the kids you can get to bed at 10PM. You never get 8 hours of sleep, ever.
That is what life is like for the lady at the drive thorough at Hardee’s. She didn’t tell me all of that… she just said she had to get up at 3:30 AM and walk to work and that she had 2 kids.
Middle class and affluent people can talk all they want about how hard graduate school was or what it’s like to work 60 hours a week or any of things they do/have done that are honestly, legitimately, very hard to do. But there is a difference between working hard with a big payoff down the road and working hard day after day after day with no pay off down the road.
Sorry, Monstro, if my comments are a slight deviation from yours. I am just tired and in one of those moods at the moment…
Finally, somebody says what we’re all thinking.
That is, you finally said what we were all thinking you were thinking.
I grew up very poor and had to live without electricity for months at a time and yet I had no difficulty in getting an ID. At some point individuals in a free society need to take responsibility for the choices they make.
And $25 is less than many poor pay for weekly beer or cigarettes or dope. I am sure most could deprive themselves of that amount for a one time fee to acquire a birth certificate or other form of ID.
Now out in the sticks where transportation is non existent for the poor and there is a major hardship in acquiring an ID, some form of state outreach or aid would be useful.
A birth certificate is one way that someone else tells you how old you are.
That almost sounds like you are trying to say there are not any poor people who do not drink and/or smoke.