Puerto Rico invalidated all of its birth certificates a few years ago, requiring huge numbers of Puerto Ricans to re-apply for them–which of course required a bunch of other documentation that people are even less likely to have, and money. I had a client who had to pay to fly to Puerto Rico to sort out the mess and get her birth certificate.
There are a lot of stories like that. We’re not talking huge numbers on an absolute level. Maybe not even enough to affect the outcome of an election. But it’s enough to outweigh any of the reasons offered for voter ID regimes, which mostly boil down to paranoid fears about immigrants.
When I lost my wallet, I needed my birth certificate to get a new drivers license. Unfortunately, I had been born on the lovely island of Guam. I would suggest that if anyone else out there hails from Guam, they start the process of retrieving their birth certificate now. It took forever to get ahold of the right department, to find out what days of the month they might decide to come in, to reach them personally(voicemail? What is voicemail?)…and when we finally got ahold of a real person who was actually in charge of what we needed, what they needed from me to release the birth certificate was to fax over…a state issued picture ID. :smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack:
They can happen, but they are exceedingly rare. Surely you’re not suggesting that the poor, rural, African-American Alabamans without birth certificates are all afflicted by such problems.
Are you suggesting that anyone that has experienced such a tragedy just lose their right to vote? If your house burned down, then just screw you, you don’t get to participate in our democracy anymore? Is that it?
Instead of playing this “No, that isn’t it. No that isn’t it” game, why don’t you give us your best guess as to why you think they might not have their birth certificates handy? Stop Jaqqining off and give us your own opinion.
Puerto Ricans cannot become US Citizens? I wasn’t aware of that immigration barrier.
You do realize that a person born in Puerto Rico who later becomes a US citizen will still have to get their birth certificate from Puerto Rico due to it being invalidated right? They will still have been born there.
