I post this here because it's hitting women

[slightlv]

(and the elderly) most disproportionately. After two years of trying to get the "correct" documents together... or those that look "okay" to the DMV people, and having my request forms "lost" more than a few times to states... my REAL ID driver's license finally came in the mail yesterday. It only cost me $18 at the DMV... $18.00 for two certified copies of one document.. and over $20 in postage fees to finally get someone to sign for the request and mail it back to me. That's not counting all the hours I've lost trying to track through unpacked boxes from several different moves, nor the frustration level when I think I've finally got it all together, only to have someone else at the DMV tell me this or that document doesn't meet their standards. For example, there was white out on my original marriage certificate and they wouldn't accept that... although all it looks like TX finally ended up doing was copying the certificate onto white paper and stamping it. So it was what? Close to $60 dollars to finally get ONE document that would meet up to the standards of DMV, and goddess help me, I actually found the appropriate page from a long-ago divorce that I'd saved into an old children's bible my grandma gave me a million years ago.

Funny thing is, I don't feel relieved or happy to have finally gotten this in the mail. To me, it seems more of bowing to an authority I don't morally, personally recognize as legal, for a process I feel deeply humiliated by, for a law that was made in extreme circumstances and rapidly in reaction to, rather than as a reasoned one. Looking back now, how many of these congress critters who made this law were serving during Cheney and GW's reign? With as much trouble as it is for women and the elderly, not to mention the costs involved, was this already an assault on our rights years before trump came on the scene... but not so early for some of these white, male congressmen. I still say Kudos to those who had the guts to stand against the law as it was proposed. I believe there were very few with the courage, but I want to remember at least one of them was a woman. If so, I dare say a very prescient woman.

[cachukis]

1. Well exposed. That you got through it is a monumental credit to yourself.

Think how hard it will be for those with less fortitude.
Assholes got voted in by assholes.

[mopinko]

2. when the talk about voter id

they know lots of ppl will have to jump through just such (expensive) hoops.

[J_William_Ryan]

3. "I don't feel relieved or happy to have finally gotten this in the mail."

And you shouldn’t.

That you were subject to this process is unwarranted, reprehensible, and wrong.

[CrispyQ]

4. I'm $67.50 into getting my docs & still need one more.

[summer_in_TX]

5. On a related note,

an elderly powerhouse of a woman in my community responded the first election after Texas passed the requirement for a photo ID to vote by marching into the polling location with a LARGE framed portrait of herself I'm pretty sure had been hanging over her mantel the only time I was at her home. (Where after serving me lunch I'd been grilled for more than an hourabout the nonprofit I'd founded to pursue a community radio station license while she took notes in her notebook.)

In our small town, everyone knew M.F. As conservative as a dyed-in-the-wool rural Texas woman of her era often could be. Very definitely could use a rifle, if only for Texas rattlesnakes and cottonmouth water moccasins. She'd married a hometown boy who'd served in the marines in WWII, and they had lived here since the 1940s. Volunteered in a lot of areas, was a formidable regular at city council meetings and of course always voted.

She was indignant at government demanding proof of who she was.

Not sure, but I suspect she was allowed to vote. I sure wouldn't have wanted to cross her.