It’s only a 200 mile drive
A horrendous situation could be shaping up in Alabama. Note I say could be, because this is a situation that could happen if the legislature does X, with X being something it’s discussing but hasn’t yet enacted into law. The Huffington Post reports:
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said Monday that proposed budget cuts would force it to close all but four driver’s license offices, even though the state requires government-issued photo identification, like a driver’s license, to vote in elections.
The 45 other locations would be closed in phases, the agency said, if the Republican-controlled state legislature were to pass the kind of “drastic” budget cuts it’s now considering. Lawmakers have proposed $40 million for the agency next year, which would be a $15 million cut from what it received in state funding this year.
Four driver’s license offices in the whole state – and Alabama is not a tiny state. Four. That’s in a state with 4.8 million people. Just for people who need to get a first driver’s license that’s an appalling burden…but Alabama has a voter ID law that requires picture ID. Golly gosh gee what a coincidence that Alabama is one of the Deep South former slave states. What a coincidence that the Supreme Court cut the legs off the Voting Rights Act two years ago.
The four remaining driver’s license offices would be in the cities of Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery and Mobile, meaning that the cuts would hit people in rural areas hardest. Someone who currently can visit the office in Dothan in southeastern Alabama, for instance, would instead have to travel 107 miles to Montgomery or 186 miles to Mobile to obtain a license for the first time. (Renewals can be done online.)
The legislature passed Alabama’s photo ID law in 2011, arguing that it would prevent voter fraud — even though proven cases of in-person voter impersonation fraud are extremely rare. Voters had previously been allowed to show non-photo forms of identification, like a Social Security card or a utility bill. Now, if voters don’t have one of the acceptable forms of photo ID, they can obtain a free Alabama voter photo ID card from a county registrar’s office. And still some long-time voters couldn’t vote in last year’s elections, because they didn’t have a way to travel to such an office to get the ID.
Just 41 percent of eligible Alabama voters participated in the 2014 general election, which was the lowest rate for the state in 28 years. Voting rights advocates warn that the threatened office closures would inevitably cause difficulties for otherwise eligible voters.
And that’s the goal. And the Supreme Court made it possible.
Myrna Pérez, deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said that it was important to consider the real-world impact of such budget cuts on low-income and minority voters in the state.
“This is one of a million reasons why we, as a country, need to rethink why it is that photo ID laws are being enacted and who it is that they are harming,” she said. “Strict photo ID requirements have placed enormous burdens on the right to vote for some of our most marginalized members of society, which is compounded when states don’t make those ID-issuing agencies accessible and available.”
A 2012 Brennan Center report showed that the Alabama driver’s license offices that operate on a part-time basis — those that would be on the proposed closures list — tend to be located in areas with high concentrations of minority voters, who disproportionately live in poverty. It also found that nearly one-third of eligible Alabama voters live more than 10 miles from an ID-issuing agency.
And guess what – people who live in poverty are less likely to be able to afford a car and the gas to get anywhere than people who have enough money.
One thing this reminds me of is the Sunday afternoon before Katrina, when Ray Nagin told everybody to get out of New Orleans. Get out, he said. Mandatory evacuation, he said. What he didn’t say was how the fuck people without cars were supposed to do that. And you know what? There was no way. They couldn’t. They were stuck there. Lots of them drowned. More died of dehydration over the next week.
It’s enough to make you sick.
H/t Cathy Newman.
Catch-22 is, it’s a 200 mile drive TO GET YOUR FIRST DRIVING LICENSE.
Chew on that. Fuel cost aside.
This is wrong. Very wrong.
Rrr – oh I know. That’s very much part of it. People who aren’t poor are a good deal more likely to be able to find someone who is free to drive them 200 miles and have the car and gas to do it.
Think also of the amount of time spent waiting when the number of customers at 40+ offices are now served by four offices. A two hour task is now an overnight trip, along with the associated expenses.
I live near one of the offices slated to stay open. That’s going to be a circus, if this comes to pass.
This budget nonsense is the worst crap I have seen in my five years in Alabama, and for a state with a legislature that prides itself on producing crap, that’s saying a lot. No time for budgets, but lots of anti-abortion and pro-prayer measures.
Yes, that too. It’s just so fuck-the-poor it’s unreal.
Chew on this for a minute: There are places in Ontario where you have to fly 2 hrs to get a drivers license because there are no roads to the communities. Since there are no roads (except ice roads in the winter) vehicles are a luxury item and most people make do with quads and/or snow machines (ski-doos). No license is required for those. That was fine except the Federal government just made having a drivers license necessary for voting.
The alternative to a drivers license is a piece of photo ID and a piece of mail that shows your mailing address. Except, no “General Delivery” mail and in these remote northern communities, most mail goes to “GD”.
The government is cool with it though. First Nations people never voted Conservative anyway so keeping them away from the polls is a win-win.
Oh my god. I was not aware of that.
Oh yeah. The Harper Conservative government is full of that sort of slime. Their “Fair Elections Act” has made it harder to vote. Their 1984 double-speak is never-ending (like the “Equitable Pay Act’ that takes away the right to pay equity from women working in the Federal public service).
The good – great! – news is that First Nations groups are actively “rocking” the vote. Idle No More has created the networks needed to get information out about registering and what’s required. I have friends who spent the summer working the pow-wow circuit to inform and help people register to vote and get their ID/ducks in a row.
I’m hopeful that on October 19 we’ll be able to defeat this government. Otherwise, I’m going to lead the revolution.
Is it at least possible to get an ID (not a DL) online?
You need to present identification documents like birth certificates to get an ID, and that needs to be done in person. Last I read, even the online driver license renewal can only be done once; the next time, they’ll need to take a new photo. However, renewals are done at probate court offices, not driver license offices, so that point may be moot.
This article discusses some of these problems, which I agree are part and parcel of the effort to privatize as many of the functions of the government as possible.
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency *says* that they would have to close those offices.. sounds like bureaucrats negotiating with government, the way the National Parks Service always closes the Washington Monument first. Wait until it gets a bit closer to be outraged.
My wife works for the state. All the state agencies are makings plans for what to do in the event the ignoramuses in the legislature can’t manage to put together a budget, including new revenue, and they have to absorb huge cuts. My wife speculates, based on long experience, that the agencies will devise methods to keep as close as possible to doing only what they are legally required to do. Providing license services is required, but having offices in most or all counties is not.
I am not in any way outraged at the licensing agency. My rage continues to be directed at the legislature, and at the electorate that put them in place. I think I’ve had plenty of reason to be outraged at them before, and to be particularly outraged now. State agencies are being put in an untenable position. If they have the tiniest bit of wiggle room, and they wish to put pressure on the legislature by proposing the most draconian cuts they can think of, good for them; maybe it will wake up the electorate, finally.
From what I’ve seen, though, some agencies are being overly optimistic. It likely all rather than most state parks will be closed, for example.