All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Panfoot]

Not everyone has a DMV close by, and a lot of lower income people can't afford to take the time off to travel to a far one either.

[ed2962]

You just go to the DMV. It's not hard at all.

It depends. Some places may or may not ask for multiple forms of proof of identity or residence before they let you get a state ID. If you haven't established certain things early on or if you're an immigrant, it might difficult to acquire them.

[Kirby101]

You just go to the DMV. It's not hard at all.

They are making it hard.

Texas could close down 87 Driver License offices across the state

If the plan goes through, 78 counties in Texas will not have an office to get their driver's license, which is obviously a concern to people who live in those counties because you can't vote without an official photo identification.

This did not go through, but Abbott is still trying to pr3event people from getting ID. Other Confederate States are following suit.

[useridgoeshere]

It depends. Some places may or may not ask for multiple forms of proof of identity or residence before they let you get a state ID. If you haven't established certain things early on or if you're an immigrant, it might difficult to acquire them.

Yes. You need ID to get state ID and not everyone has the ID required, like a utility bill with their name and address on it, especially people who are transient or living with someone else.

[shooshoomanjoe]

We're talking about college kids though. You're telling me they can go to college campus several times a week but can't make it to the DMV one day?

[Dalak]

We're talking about college kids though. You're telling me they can go to college campus several times a week but can't make it to the DMV one day?

You assume they aren't living in a dorm on-campus, and depending on when their classes are scheduled or if they have a Job they might not be able to get to the DMV during office hours.

[scourge]

Here's a better plan...instead of making it harder to vote, we make it easier.

[shooshoomanjoe]

You assume they aren't living in a dorm on-campus, and depending on when their classes are scheduled or if they have a Job they might not be able to get to the DMV during office hours.

You take public transportation and ask for time off. People in the west make too many excuses instead of just getting it done.

[ed2962]

Yes. You need ID to get state ID and not everyone has the ID required, like a utility bill with their name and address on it, especially people who are transient or living with someone else.

Exactly. This was years ago, but once I had a hard time getting a rental card at a video rental place because they wanted a state ID and a utility bill. I had just moved to a new apt and the utilities were included in my rent so I didn't have a gas or electric bill. I had all kinds of other things like credit cards, social security card, drivers license, but the girl was insisting on a utility bill.

[hyped78]

Quite a different system vs. the US, but in most European countries a student ID is not accepted as a valid form of voting ID (not saying that what the GOP is trying to do in Idaho and in other places is correct)

[ed2962]

You take public transportation and ask for time off. People in the west make too many excuses instead of just getting it done.

The point is that the GOP is throwing up all these little obstacles not to make it impossible, but to make it more and more irritating or cumbersome. These are things that aren't going to hurt gainfully employed middle class adults, but they might turn off poor people and young folks.

[Dalak]

You take public transportation and ask for time off. People in the west make too many excuses instead of just getting it done.

Maybe this?

Here's a better plan...instead of making it harder to vote, we make it easier.

Instead of playing into the many restrictions that are being placed on Voting to make it difficult, why not just go back to the Voter Card they mailed out to you? Republicans make too many excuses about why they have to make things harder to get done, so don't help them out unless you are smoking that psychosis-leaf.

[Gray Lensman]

You take public transportation and ask for time off. People in the west make too many excuses instead of just getting it done.

Public transportation often sucks in many US cities. And depending on the job, you might not be allowed any time off besides the legally mandated stuff, and many employers will often try to weasel their way out of that.

And that doesn't account for some of the other stuff, like the closest DMV being 30 miles away and only open every 5th Wednesday of the month.

You ARE reading that one correctly, Wisconsin had a DMV that only opened 4 days per year, until it became a national punchline. So they closed it down entirely.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

You just go to the DMV. It's not hard at all.

Have you ever been in a DMV? Beyond the scarcity of locations (especially in red states which are shutting them down), those places are often crowded as hell with obscenely long wait times for services. Three months ago, I waited in a DMV in downtown Philadelphia (in the blue state of Pennsylvania) for almost two hours to renew my driver’s license, fortunately, I was on vacation, so I had the time to kill, for others, it isn’t as simple as you make it out to be. There’s another location not far from where I work, and practically every time I go by there, the line is out the damn door and stretching nearly a quarter block, imagine what the wait time there is like. So yeah, it CAN be hard.

[Kirby101]

If the DMV is not in the same town as the campus, and in some counties that is the case, there may not be any public transportation to an from. Maybe a once a day or once every other day bus.
So now you want some poor college kid to go over night to someplace and hope the DMV doesn't throw more hurdles at him.

We recently ran into a problem here in NY. My wife needed to renew her drivers license, and to get the federal approved Real ID, she needed her social security card. The name on her card, that she got when she was 12, decades ago, did not match letter for letter with her license. We needed other ID and had to come back another day. And NY is not trying to stop people from voting.

IT"S NOT EASY!