Have you ever been poor? Have you ever been poor and had kids?
It's not as simple as taking a 15 minute drive to the DMV and waiting in line. Many of these people lack access to proper transit systems to get to these places. At least where I live, the DMV is open during normal business hours which may be impossible to get to without taking time off of work. Many of these people are paid hourly which makes this a financial decision as well. It's really hard to miss an hour of work when that could be food or rent.
It's really hard to come up with a solution when large swaths of the country or totally opposed to anything that slightly resembles a national ID. While I agree that we could probably be doing something, it's not as simple as telling everyone to go to the DMV.
Thank you for making this post. I've never been pro-ID laws, but I've never really seen the issue with them when implemented in a fair way.
I've thankfully never been in that situation, and I think you've done a great job explaining the issues with the a voter ID system to someone like myself who wouldn't see any issue with it.
Yes, I have been poor. I worked for minimum wage and could only get around by bus until my twenties and still had an official ID. Have you, or are you assuming what it's like to be poor from the outside?
If my comment was a little ad hominem, I apologize.
I watched my parents struggle growing up. My dad worked in a steel mill. My mom cut hair and cleaned businesses after work. I never saw them not busy. They made a ton of sacrifices to keep a roof over my head and food on the table.
Getting an ID would not have been a simple task for them. We lived in public housing and we walked almost everywhere. I watched them struggle to get by every day and to hear someone say "just do something" really makes me upset. It's not that simple. Their life was planned down to the minute. Work, walking me home, second job, making dinner, managing finances down to the penny, etc.
All that I am saying is, it's not that simple. People are in some really shitty situations despite doing everything right. Making it harder for these people to vote (who already have trouble finding the time to get to the polls) is just fundamentally wrong in my opinion.
Wait, are you claiming you grew up in poverty and still got an ID before you struck out on your own (I was young, worked for minimum wage, got around by bus, but I was far from poor considering my family background)? Did you grow up in a trailer in the middle of the boonies way off some highway somewhere? Did you burn your trash in your backyard in a barrel?
I mean, there is, I was young, living on my own, getting around by bus poor, and then there is poor poor.
It's not as simple as taking a 15 minute drive to the DMV and waiting in line. Many of these people lack access to proper transit systems to get to these places. At least where I live, the DMV is open during normal business hours which may be impossible to get to without taking time off of work. Many of these people are paid hourly which makes this a financial decision as well. It's really hard to miss an hour of work when that could be food or rent.
It's really hard to come up with a solution when large swaths of the country or totally opposed to anything that slightly resembles a national ID. While I agree that we could probably be doing something, it's not as simple as telling everyone to go to the DMV.