Voter ID laws

[justalurkr]

Georgia has one. I've read the page behind that link and am having a little trouble seeing the issue. Understandable, as the .gov site is no doubt designed to make this appear a non-issue. What's the fuss about disenfranchisement and poll taxes if the State of Georgia is willing to issue free Voter ID Cards?


A perfect storm of events has brought all of this to my attention:

1. I threw out my expired passport years ago and now need one to take a cruise with the parental units in January. Birth certificate needed. Embossed stamp of certification required to be considered valid.
2. My GA driver's lisence expires this year on my birthday in October. Am still looking into this, but apparently since the end of July this year, birth certificate needed. Embossed stamp of certification required to be considered valid.
3. GA now requires a picture ID to vote in any election, but I mostly care about the one in November following the expiration of my main picture ID.

The Hunt County courthouse housing my (and my mother's) birth certificate(s) burned to the ground taking all records with it some time ago, leaving us with what are obviously microfiche copies with no embossing provided. The certification of validity is a hand printed note from the then Clerk of Records.  Maybe it was the County Clerk, I'm not sure because the FEDERAL DEPARTMENT OF STATE TOOK MY ONLY ORIGINAL COPY OF THE ORIGINAL.

I guess it's good news that they took it to begin with, I guess.


TL:DR version: There's an outstanding chance I'll have a valid passport in hand to renew my GA driver's lisence in time to use it to vote this November, thus obviating the need for a free voter ID card issued by the State of Georgia. My curiosity remained piqued, however and I kept reading the Secretary of State site for what ID is necessary to get the free ID.


First, any ONE of the following is acceptable ID for voting.
Any valid state or federal government issued photo ID, including a *FREE Voter ID Card issued by your county registrar's office or the *Georgia Department of Driver Services (DDS)
*A Georgia Driver's License, even if expired
*Valid employee photo ID from any branch, department, agency, or entity of the U.S. Government, Georgia, or any county, municipality, board, authority or other entity of this state
*Valid U.S. passport ID
*Valid U.S. military photo ID
*Valid tribal photo ID


TL:DR version: Oh. So, I can actually vote this November using only an expired GA driver's lisence. Interesting. No info on how long it can have been expired. I know I have my old FL driver's liscense around here, last used just prior to its expiration to get the resident discount at Disney World even though I'd been in Georgia for, like, nine months by then. I wonder if Florida allows expired DL as ID for voting? If they did and I gave a rat's toot in a hurricane what was up in Broward County (12 years without any nationally publicized voting irregularities!)  these days...man, these laws totally protect us from voter fraud!.

But I digress. I was originally looking for super sekret evidence of poll taxing in the ID requirements, superficially circumvented by the State of Georgia's willingness to issue its citizens free voter ID cards. So, what do I need for one of those again?


All of this:
-A photo identity document or approved non-photo identity document that includes full legal name and date of birth
-Documentation showing the voter's date of birth
-Evidence that the applicant is a registered voter
-Documentation showing the applicant's name and residential address


Or an expired GA driver's lisence.  I can sleep soundly at night knowing that no fraudulent votes will be cast by people who lived in Georgia long enough to get a driver's lisence sometime in the past however long!

The original pique to my interest (before discovering that expiration does not invalidate a driver's lisence for voting in the State of Georgia) was:
-A photo identity document or approved non-photo identity document that includes full legal name and date of birth
-Documentation showing the voter's date of birth

It appears that one's birth certificate can stand in for photo ID and is required. Since the document including full name and date of birth isn't specified to be a birth certificate in the Secretary of State's verbiage, I'm assuming my adoption papers (wherever they are) or my marriage lisence would suffice, except for the part where I've been cheerfully single my entire life. (Disclaimer: That's all inference from the site failing to specify "birth certificate" as the document including full name and DOB, btw. I'm not a member of the legal profession and I don't think the Georgia Secretary of State's webmaster/mistress is, either. )

Next pique:
-Evidence that the applicant is a registered voter

Well, if I'm 18, it's with 32 years of practice, but if I were and just coming in to register, how would I meet this requirement? OMG THEY'RE DISENFRANCHISING THE YOUTH. Like failing a loan application because you can't prove you don't need one, now you can't register to vote unless you're registered?

At this rate, when my driver's lisence expires, I'm totally putting it in a safety deposit box and carrying my passport (assuming the Federal Department of State has no objection to my birth certificate's pitifully unembossed state) as ID.

Anyway, since the Bank of Mom and Dad obtained and houses my birth certificate when I or the State Department don't have it, I have no idea what it costs to obtain one normally, let alone through the personal good offices of a County Clerk due to past history of record burning. Wouldn't fees associated with obtaining an original or certified birth certificate for the purposes of voter ID count as a poll tax? Even though GA natives can get one for free by heading to their home County courthouse, what does the time and trouble of doing that count as?

And why on any sane planet would an expired state driver's lisence be valid proof of ID? I mean, clearly on the insane, racist and classicist planets, it lets anyone who's had the resources to obtain a driver's lisence off the hook for proving who they are for a free ....oh.

Yeah.

Never mind.

edited to add: replying to a reply has brought it to my attention that I misspelled the word "licence" throughout this entire post. For some reason, there doesn't appear to be a search & replace function to fix. Please be aware that spell check has finally schooled me.

Comments

[khek.livejournal.com]

It sounds like a convoluted mess!

I can't speak for the state of GA, but I can talk of experience in the state of Vermont! You used to be able to go to the town hall (or send your parents!) of the town where you were born to get a copy of your birth certificate, and they'd certify it. Now though, (according to my sister) you have to go to the state capitol in Monpelier to get it, and it has to be in person. Which is kind of okay if you still live in VT, or even in the rest of New England, but what if you're living in Hawaii or Oregon or Georgia? It's a bit of a trek!

I wonder if the expired license has to have the correct address on it, or if a different address means you need another means of ID.

For the longest time, VT didn't have photos on their licenses. You could get one, if you went to Monpelier, but otherwise it was just a paper document with an official seal. (And it was very easy to change a number if, say, you wanted to get into bars before you were 18. For example.) I think it was only about fifteen years ago that they started issuing photo licenses as standard.

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

I'm no longer worried about the poll-taxness of the situation or even the undue burden-ness of having to assemble all that documentation for one's "free" voter ID. The complete farce of

Q: what's an expired GA driver's license good for?
A: Voter ID

Is boggling me not quite to speechlessness.

But not as much as the sudden realization that I misspelled the word "license" more or less throughout the preceding post. (facepalm)

[nialla]

Wouldn't fees associated with obtaining an original or certified birth certificate for the purposes of voter ID count as a poll tax? Even though GA natives can get one for free by heading to their home County courthouse, what does the time and trouble of doing that count as?

Are you sure they're for free? If so, that's unusual from what I've seen working in a library where people request such records for genealogy.

I didn't have a certified birth certificate until 1999, when I needed to get a passport (which is now expired). Prior to that, I had a hospital issued birth certificate, which satisfied the requirements to get into school and such.

To get the certified birth certificate, I went through the courthouse of the county of my birth, which just so happens to be the county where I work. IIRC, it was $15. They're now $23.

You have to have ID to get ID, which is hell for people who've had their identity stolen. I don't think hospitals still issue their own birth certificates these days (and they're not certified, which renders it useless), but parents do tend to pay for a copy of the birth certificate for future needs. Having it remain not lost until the kid hits 18 is the hard part.

I know for a lot of people, shelling out $23 just to get the documentation to vote is not worth it. They need it to survive, and when they're at that point, they're probably at the level where they're going to assume their vote is meaningless anyway.

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

The Georgia Secretary of State swears to God and three other white men that the Voter ID is free and made liberal use of italics and font sizing to highlight that datum before shuffling the documentation required to obtain one to moderate sized print at the bottom of the page, not that any unkind inferences should ever be drawn about that. The blue voters mainly live inside the I-285 perimeter, but they're feisty enough to sue someone into oblivion if the SOS is embellishing for effect.

Y'know, I wish voters would pick an election and see what happens when 2/3rds or more of those eligible actually vote. If we jam the polling places and porta-potty riots break out around the queues and the election still goes pretty much as it would have if wild eyed doctrinaire weirdos were the only ones who showed up, then I'd quit haranguing people about getting up off the couch to vote. Too many people for whom a hidden fee to vote isn't a barrier put themselves in the same place as those who can't afford the fee/time off from work and it makes me sulky.

[captain-tiv.livejournal.com]

A lot of it is much ado about nothing.
A lot of it has to do with the left and right arguing about anything.
A lot of it has to do with Governor Deal (I didn't vote for him).

But there is a subtle legality that no one is talking about and it's the one that worries me. If you're of age and meet the qualifications, you have a right to vote. The idea that you have to "purchase" an identification card with your photo goes against that legality. It goes back to "only the people who can pay for their vote will get to vote" theory. What if they suddenly make driver's license fees or the costs of a state identification card $100? For a lot of people, they couldn't afford it. Without it, people don't have a vital photo ID and then they can't vote and that infringes on their right to vote.

It's basically paying for a vote, and that's just wrong.

And having to take all that crap just to renew a driver's license? They better have that changed by the time I have to renew. I got mine before all the nonsense kicked in. I don't even know where my birth certificate is, and my passport has expired. I was told that to get a new passport, I'd only need to bring my old one and $157 to the post office. :) No birth certificate required a second time, I guess.

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

Well, this assumes the renewer knows better than to throw out an expired passport, which I did not. See how much angst I could have spared myself? The only hoop I didn't have to jump through was lost/stolen affidavit notarized by the Mad Hatter's third cousin's labradoodle by the light of a Blue Moon because at least I had the common sense to throw the thing out more than 15 years ago, which is some sort of statute of limitations beyond which you can pretend you're applying for the first time.

I'm right there with you on hidden fees of any sort contradicting the the notion of suffrage. I shouldn't really open my mouth to kvetch about license renewal until I know more than what I've heard at work, which could be exaggerated.