I have the luxury of living in beautiful Washington State, a place where it’s pretty easy to register to vote and all voting is by mail. If you are registered to vote and have an address, you get your ballot in the mail along with the pamphlet explaining initiatives and candidate positions. You can mail the ballot or drop it into a box, many of which are located in convenient locations (transit centers, colleges, etc.). So countering the most common voter suppression tactics is not a priority in my state. I know that it’s crucial in some other states, though, and have been trying to think about how I can help.
ID laws seem to me to be one of the biggest tactics currently in use for voter suppression, and I expect this trend to continue and get worse. I work with people living with disabilities, many of whom don’t drive, may be experiencing homelessness, and certainly don’t have a lot of extra cash lying around. It’s expensive and time-consuming to get a birth certificate—if you can even figure out where to find it—and may require use of the internet (another luxury). Then it requires a trip to the DMV and $60, in this state, just for a state ID (not even a driver’s license). How do we counter this?
Here’s my idea. I don’t know how to implement this and right now I don’t have time, but if it’s workable, somebody else might organize it. Even when I retire in four months, I will have enough extra income that I could help someone else. “Adopt a Voter” would be a matching system, wherein a person who needs help getting an ID would be matched with someone who has internet access and some extra cash. Let’s say someone in South Carolina needs to find a birth certificate and then get a state ID. I would be matched with that person, given enough data to track down and order a birth certificate, and then I would send that birth certificate to the person along with enough money to buy the ID.
Obviously there are some kinks to be worked out: do we need to screen the adopters to be sure they won’t take advantage of the information they get? Do we need to screen the prospective voters to be sure they need this help and don’t just want the $60? I’m not sure what it would take to set this up, probably an attorney to look it over, but why not? I mean, I don’t live in that state but that doesn’t mean I can’t help someone get what they need, so they can exercise their legal right to vote.
What do you all think? I rarely write a diary any more because the comments generally tell me I haven’t thought it through well enough . . . and I freely admit here that I haven’t. But you all are much smarter than I am, and if my half-baked thoughts can help someone come up with a better system, please do!
P.S. I’ve been trying to upload an image, a photo taken in the town where I work of a flyer pasted to a lamp post. I can’t tell if it’s loaded or not, and I can’t tell how to manipulate it. If there are two copies of the photo and they’re sideways, it’s because I keep getting the “processing” message and not the photo!