Of course not – if he wants to get a bank account, or leave Austin, then he should definitely do so. I don’t see what this has to do with what I said.
I don’t see how this is relevant to this question of the Texas ID requirements. Kennie might be perfectly happy with his life, or he might not be. But either way, he should be able to vote without such hardship. So this law is unjust, in my view, and should be changed.
He would need ID to do so, which he cannot obtain because of his poverty.
My point is that of course he should be able to vote, but the lack of ID is causing other problems. I’m not going to second-guess his happiness, but the trope of the poor-but-happy person of color is so ingrained and so convenient to the upper classes that I’m also very reluctant to take it at face value.
Solve the “people are too poor to get ID” problem, and then the Republicans won’t be able to use “no ID” as an issue, and they’ll have to go find some other way to disenfranchise voters. Which they will.
We can and should do both – support policies that make it easier to exit poverty, while opposing policies that make it harder for poor people to vote.
If a person works 241 days a year (that is, 365 days minus weekends, ten holidays and ten vacation+sick days), then over the course of nine years that’s **2,169 **workdays, disregarding leap-year days.
I think you can afford to lose one day’s pay out of 2,169 days.
And one day’s pay every time you move, and one day’s pay every time the ID expires.
Doesn’t that already happen, voting or no voting?
Sure, if you already have an ID, but those aren’t the people affected by the Voter ID law. Only people who don’t already have an ID are affected, and they are being asked to get an ID, and maintain that ID, in order to be allowed to vote. Getting and maintaining ID is not a once-in-a-decade deal. Throw in the fact that people who can’t drive don’t generally go to the DMV, and it’s not likely to be the center of mass transit.
I see the slippery slope. I’m not blind to the fact that the laws are being passed by Republican legislatures in Republican states. I just simply can’t get all worked up over forcing someone to show government-issued photo ID in order to vote. It actually seems rather farcical that we should allow it otherwise.
Showing a photo ID is not equivalent to obtaining a Large Hadron Collider or even to the epitomal “literacy tests” of yore. It is, by my reckoning, integral to the individual functioning in society. I could not function without it; when I fill out my paperwork for a new job, they ask me for two forms of government identification, one of which must be a photo ID. If it is the assertion of you and others that the basic requirement to get a job is too much of a burden on the poor, then you must realize you drifted off the land of reason a few parsecs back.
If you already have a job, you don’t need to keep showing ID to keep the job. (And depending on how long you’ve had the job, you may never have needed to show photo ID to get the job.)
If you are retired, you don’t need to show ID for a job.
If you are drawing disability benefits, you don’t need to show ID for a job.
If you are self-employed, you don’t need to show your employer ID for your job.
etc.
(Oddly enough, the elderly and the disabled are among the groups most likely to lack current photo ID.)
The notion that everybody is going out seeking new employment on a regular basis is right up there with the notion that everybody is out flying around the country on a regular basis, or buying booze, or opening new bank accounts.
But the point is that without ID, people CANNOT seek a new job. I’d be very surprised if you could sign up for disability or social security benefits without establishing your ID: can you?
You can sign up for Social Security online; who would be verifying photo ID in that case?
Moreover, even if you did have to verify identity, the ID you used to obtain disability at 45 is likely to be worthless at 55, never mind 65. The photo ID laws generally require current non-expired ID, and most states issue IDs that expire within a few years (often 4 to 8 years).
Then we simply disagree. This is exactly the same as the old literacy tests. This isn’t about making sure voters have ID’s any more than literacy tests were about making sure people could read. This is about making sure some people won’t be able to vote. I know it and you know it.
Heck, it’s not that “the poor” can’t manage the task of getting an ID. It’s that all it takes is for one poor person out of 10,000 to not be able to manage for whatever reason to have a greater effect on the election than the in-person voter fraud the law ostensibly addresses.
Even if it wasn’t an issue of poverty and it was just some bureaucratic nuisance task that one person out of 10,000 couldn’t manage for whatever reason, it would have a greater effect on the election than the in-person voter fraud the law ostensibly addresses.
The point being that in-person voter fraud is really really rare.
An education requirement is not the same as a “show up at this location any day of the year and bring a few documents with you” requirement.
The former outright excludes a class of citizens from participating. The latter is achievable to anybody.
There’s a middle ground - it doesn’t have to be “achievable to all members of a class” or “excludes all members of a class.” Obstructing even one percent of the class can be enough to swing a close election.
Technically, yes it is achievable to anybody. That is exactly what makes Voter ID laws pernicious. The purpose is the same as a Poll Tax, or Literacy Test, but it enjoys a veneer of respectability.
Certain groups of people don’t need to ‘achieve’ anything to comply with Voter ID, their lives already involve photo ID. Other groups have a new requirement to fulfill in order to vote. One they can achieve, but with a significant personal cost in terms of effort, uncertainty, and monetary cost.
This other group is being asked to fulfill these requirements, not because the requirements are inherently important, but because it’s a way to reduce the number of people from that group who vote.
Note, my language is very specific, they are not being prevented from voting, they are presented with roadblocks, knowing full well that some of the group will fail to get past them.
Mind you, the same could be said of registering to vote, or showing up at the polls on a specific day, or requesting an absentee ballot, or really anything. There is no bar so low that someone out there won’t be excluded by it. At some point, you just have to throw up your hands and use the “reasonable person” argument.
There is a middle ground somewhere between “no IDs, ever,” and the current spate of “only the kinds of IDs Republicans tend to have, e.g. no college IDs.”
^This.
Registering to vote takes costs in time, etc.
But the same isn’t said of registering to vote or requesting an absentee ballot. As far as showing up at the polls on specific days, it’s the Republicans who are all over limiting early voting in those states that have it. You can rest assured that there will be areas where Republicans post flyers in minority neighborhoods instructing voters that Republicans vote on Tuesday, Democrats on Wednesday. It’s all about trying to deny people the right to vote when you think they’re likely to vote the way you don’t want them to.
At some point, don’t you also have to ask “What problem is this solving and what other problems is it creating?” :dubious: