10 ms·

The cruel Catch-22 of being poor with no ID

71 points by dankohn1 9y ago

jacquesm 9y ago
Got to keep those poor people away from the polls. It's interesting how the government here - NL - makes it mandatory for those over 14 to have a photo ID of sorts at all times and charges money for those. A government issued ID should be free of charge, especially if it is required by the government to have one, and they set the prices. That's still a lot better than the situation described in the article which seems to be engineered to simply keep people in the hole once they through misfortune or carelessness slip up. It's sad too that it should come to volunteers to correct such situations, you'd think that the government would really like its citizens to be able to take part in society rather than to be pushed even further into the fringes.
- darrylb42 9y ago
  Like the John Oliver episode where they found a DMV that was only open on the fifth Wednesday of the month, those months that have a fifth Wednesday. Super easy to get an id.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Malice seems unlikely. There has to be some way to prove your identity, and people have tried to impersonate others. Is there a way to offer that kind of system while avoiding the concerns about identity theft? EDIT: After thinking it over, I guess identity theft isn't a big concern. It seems pretty unlikely that someone would actively exploit this system to get someone's ID, then their birth certificate, then somehow get a loan in their name, or something along those lines. I hope someone with more experience can chime in either way.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    How unlikely does it seem to you? A case was just before the Supreme Court: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/us/politics/voter-id-laws-supreme-court-north-carolina.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/us/politics/voter-id-laws...
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > Malice seems unlikely. On the contrary, I suspect that is the most likely explanation. See, if there were any other explanation then the government would go out of its way to provide people without identification with the right identification. > There has to be some way to prove your identity There are many ways, for instance in some countries several citizens themselves in the possession of valid identification go together with you before a judge and swear on the penalty of perjury that you are who you say you are. > and people have tried to impersonate others. Yes, and guess what that valid ID is meant to reduce? > Is there a way to offer that kind of system while avoiding the concerns about identity theft? Well, given that we have fingerprinting and biometric information these days it is hard to think of what else - short of DNA - we could give up to offer 'that kind of system' but don't worry, it will still happen and probably in your lifetime.
    - sillysaurus3 9y ago
      There are many ways, for instance in some countries several citizens themselves in the possession of valid identification go together with you before a judge and swear on the penalty of perjury that you are who you say you are. I like that approach. I wonder if there's some way to campaign for it here in the US. It seems more likely that the lack of this system is just what you get with lowest-common-denominator governance, so there are probably ways to change it for the better. If we could think of a way to add economic incentives to implement it, then it might have a chance.
    - bluedino 9y ago
      Even if the government issues me a free ID I don't have to carry it and I can tell anyone who asks that I am my brother
      - jacquesm 9y ago
        And I could say I am you. That wouldn't make it true though.
      - Swizec 9y ago
        Except in most of Europe where not having ID if you are an adult is illegal. Not in the "We will go after you if you don't have ID" way but in the "If shit happens and you can't prove your identity you are in serious deep shit" Just like snow equipment is mandatory to have in your car but nobody cared until you cause an accident or traffic jam because you didn't put chains on.
  - tomjakubowski 9y ago
    > Is there a way to offer that kind of system while avoiding the concerns about identity theft? I know there are other cases where you must prove your identity, but in the case of voter impersonation fraud, to pull that off at a scale large enough to affect a major election requires a massive logistical effort. You must: * Obtain the registered voter rolls for every polling place. This is the easy part. * Know a priori which registered voters will and won't vote on election day. Why? Because if you show up and say you're John Doe, and the polling place has marked that John Doe has already voted, you won't get to vote. If that happens enough times—especially if it happens to the real John Doe, after a fake John Doe voted on his behalf—alarm bells are raised. * Shuttle your team of voter impersonators across the city or county or whatever N times so that they can each fraudulently vote enough to tip the election in your favor. This enormous scope is why almost all known cases of voter impersonation fraud are in elections for offices like "dog catcher" in a rural town: the scale is small enough that you can tip an election with a handful of your closest friends, and you might also know a corresponding handful of registered voters around town who have said they're not planning to vote. Laws that require a photo ID to vote are malicious at worst, and wrongheaded and pointless at best.
  - adamcharnock 9y ago
    I think a distinction between personal malice and systemic malice could be useful here.
- Banthum 9y ago
  >"engineered to simply keep people in the hole once they through misfortune or carelessness slip up" This seems like a pretty extraordinary claim made pretty casually. What would motivate someone to intentionally prevent poor people from helping themselves? It seems much more likely a case of straightforward government dysfunction enabled by all the usual factors that make the government suck at accomplishing things. If the government ID infrastructure ran as well as Facebook's ad targeting department, we would have no problems of this kind whatsoever.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > What would motivate someone to intentionally prevent poor people from helping themselves? Less social security to be paid out. Once homeless the way back is super hard, and to receive social security you have to have a registered address and to have a registered address you need ID. So good luck reversing that.
    - lisper 9y ago
      > Less social security to be paid out. That, and fewer people voting for democrats.
  - typomatic 9y ago
    > If the government ID infrastructure ran as well as Facebook's ad targeting department, we would have no problems of this kind whatsoever. You might want to rethink that statement. I suspect that the government ID infrastructure works flawlessly for about 99.9% of users. The FB ad infrastructure does not work that well.
  - Avshalom 9y ago
    >What would motivate someone to intentionally prevent poor people from helping themselves? A theology that holds that god rewards the just and thus the poor must be so because they're wicked and/or a fucked up reading of the phrase "the poor will always be with you" A desire to 'prove' an economic philosophy that the poor brought it on themselves by creating a self perpetuating spiral of doom and then pointing to people that get caught in it as proof. Racism and a general supposition that these policies affect those people over there to a sufficient degree that these people over here are an acceptable loss. Just being a fucking dick.
- typomatic 9y ago
  > the situation described in the article which seems to be engineered to simply keep people in the hole once they through misfortune or carelessness slip up. It's sad too that it should come to volunteers to correct such situations, you'd think that the government would really like its citizens to be able to take part in society rather than to be pushed even further into the fringes. You'll find that Americans really believe in personal responsibility to an absurd extent. And if you're irresponsible enough to lose all your ID (forget why, who cares?) then you clearly deserve to die in a ditch somewhere. It's a brutal philosophy that permeates everything about the country.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    Yes. That explains why Americans give up time, money, effort, and care, to help other Americans back up out of the hole our government does not give a damn if it puts them in.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      Which is really nice, but not very effective and besides should not be necessary in the first place. Systemic failure and bureaucracy can't be effectively countered by relying on volunteers. In fact, the article is a good illustration of how ineffective this is.
      - throwanem 9y ago
        Oh, I agree. I suspect we might differ on the question of whether the best answer to bad government is more government, though. Wouldn't it be a remarkable thing if, for example, it were possible to exist without any number of pieces of paper and corresponding database records to prove that you do? I think it would be a remarkable thing. But I've often been called a dreamer.
- mobilefriendly 9y ago
  LOL yeah because DC, where the op-ed is focused, has a 76-6 Democratic to Republican party registration advantage.
koolba 9y ago
So she didn't have any opportunity over the forty years prior to secure any of those documents? Having to deal with something like this at the same time as being evicted and losing your mother is very sad, but that's not an excuse. It's a human interest story.
- SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
  Mate ID's expire every 6 years. Expired ID's are not valid ID's.
  - koolba 9y ago
    Social security cards and birth certificates do not expire. Drivers licenses do expire, generally at 4-6 year time frames. Assuming you're still at the same address (which she was), most states allow one to renew it through the mail. Checking a box, signing a card, and paying a nominal fee once every four years does not seem particularly onerous to me. Though if it were up to me the fee would be entirely eliminated.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      Assuming you're still at the same address (which she was) She was evicted from her previous address!
      - jacquesm 9y ago
        And the older comment by that same user already acknowledges that.
        koolba 9y ago
        She didn't have ID when she was evicted which means she had plenty of time to get one. If she had a license/state ID and answered the expiration mailer she would have had one.
Animats 9y ago
If you've been fingerprinted and identified, ever, you should be able to get copies of all necessary IDs from that alone.
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  You'd think. But, you can't. The process depends on the state, but usually requires a birth certificate and social security card, at the minimum.
kevindong 9y ago
I always wondered how people get IDs if: 1) they never got one while under an age when someone else could vouch for them, and 2) they didn't have any of the documents needed to an ID because to get those documents, you need an ID.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  One example: in Canada you get your house doctor and the principal of the school you went to as a kid to give you a letter that verifies your identity. Other options are several people that themselves have valid ID and you go before a judge and they swear you are you.
- jandrewrogers 9y ago
  There is a surprising number of Americans in this situation, though less than their used to be, partly by virtue of the fact that having an ID is not required and unnecessary as a practical matter for much of the 20th century. You'd have Americans with no birth records (used to be pretty common) who grew up overseas when a passport was not required, such that they didn't even have incidental records of their existence. It also used to be somewhat common in very rural areas. Consequently, there used to be a significant number of Americans who basically have no discernible record of existence prior to their teenage or early adult years. My mother is an example in fact. It used to be, as of a few decades ago at least, that you were whoever you said you were and the ID offices would happily accept informal artifacts (like family Bibles) as corroborating evidence, particularly in regions where record-less Americans were endemic. Once you got your first ID, you could chain off of that. These days I think it would be viewed with much more suspicion if a person was record-less.
thro808 9y ago
Let's see how racist voter id laws really are: https://youtu.be/llDM-44Zb8w https://youtu.be/llDM-44Zb8w
- jubabuba 9y ago
  This is really eye opening
  - osdiab 9y ago
    There are papers that demonstrate the discriminatory effects of voter ID laws on minority turnout [1], and these sorts of interview videos are easy to produce in a way that selectively validates the statement you want to convey. I don't know the data on a regional basis, but it could be the case that residents of places like New York City are better informed than those in other regions of the country. [1] http://pages.ucsd.edu/~zhajnal/page5/documents/voterIDhajnaletal.pdf http://pages.ucsd.edu/~zhajnal/page5/documents/voterIDhajnal...
SwellJoe 9y ago
I've volunteered on homelessness issues over the past few years, and many of my friends are homeless or have been homeless in recent memory. This is one of the most frustrating and pointlessly cruel aspects of the society we've built (among many frustrating and pointlessly cruel aspects). I can sum up just how evil it is with one anecdote: One night a few years ago, I got a frantic message from a friend on facebook, something along the lines of, "Look at X's wall. Nobody has been able to reach them." So, I looked at X's wall, and the last post looked very much like a suicide note. Brief and somewhat cryptic, but given the circumstances of X's life and some of the things they'd said and done in recent weeks made it pretty worrying. X, at that time, had been homeless for some time, off and on for years. They'd been couchsurfing but felt like they'd worn out their welcome and didn't want to be a bother. They'd been kicked out of their parents' house when they were younger because they were gay. They were literally terrified of their parents, and never want contact with them again. So, they had no contact with most of their family, and the one relative who hadn't disowned them was a grandparent without the resources to do much, even if anyone knew how to reach them. Even calling the police was a questionable choice (which we ended up not doing), because they had warrants, and had traumatic interactions with police in recent months. X had been in public housing for a short time a couple years before, but had been kicked out because their partner visited too often and stayed overnight too many times (only married couples can do that, you see, and only in designated housing), and due to some "behavioral issues" that stemmed from X being on the autism spectrum (another reason to not call police) and the rules of public housing being unforgiving. I've visited other folks in the same building, and the rules are absurd. It's like a low-security prison; visitors have to check-in/out, there is a curfew, etc. Long story short, this was someone who's had a lot of setbacks in life, and that night they just couldn't see a way forward. But, the most tremendously horrific thing about it, to me, was that it mostly boiled down to no ID and no clear path to get them an ID. Without ID, no job. Without ID, no housing (public or otherwise). Without ID, no future. The steps to getting an ID are crazy difficult for a homeless person with no family ties and no records available. One of their exes found them a couple hours after our search started, and we were able to get them committed voluntarily to a psych hospital while we sorted out what they'd find when they got out. When a few people stepped up to help get the ID sorted, and some other folks raised enough money from friends to cover their rent in co-op housing for a few months, they were able to get back on their feet. They're holding down a job, paying their own rent and expenses, and have been doing well for a couple years now. But, it took a fucking team to get the ID problem solved, and that's ridiculous. If you ever go to any organization that provides services to the homeless, you'll find that getting ID is one of their most used services. And, also a challenging one in many cases. It's just one that nobody who's never lived it really ever thinks about. But, think about having to keep all of your paperwork on your person or being always at risk of losing it. That's the situation homeless folks are in. This is further complicated by police who arrest homeless folks on spurious charges and make them leave their things behind, where they'll be stolen or thrown away before they're able to return. A life of total impermanence is just unimaginably difficult. I've rambled a lot here, but it's easy for me to get riled up on this issue. Knowing what I know, and having seen what I've seen, it'd be very easy to convince me that our system is built to intentionally destroy the lives of a few at the bottom, and make it all but impossible for them to climb out, all while people demonize the homeless as being a nuisance that should be pushed out of cities (San Francisco, Austin, Portland, Los Angeles, liberal cities, I'm looking at you, too). It's all inflicted via mostly tiny cuts, that don't look like a big deal if you've got a house, a job, an ID, a family, a filing cabinet with all of your records, a bank account, a credit card for emergencies, etc. Even tiny things can spiral into a disaster quickly for the very poor.
mobilefriendly 9y ago
It isn't cruel, there are legitimate reasons the process is and should be difficult. Document fraud helped the 9/11 attackers get driver's licenses and ID fraud is a major part of many other terror attacks and funding. This is also an identity theft vector, and numerous welfare/tax scams are built on multiple and fake identities.
- Retra 9y ago
  To paraphrase maxerickson in this thread: the process should be secure, not difficult.
fooker 9y ago
How do you differentiate between 'poor with no ID' and someone overstaying a Visa?
- Retra 9y ago
  Light background check. Validate their fingerprints/photo against database of Visa holders.
rayiner 9y ago
I lost my wallet last year and simultaneously needed to get a passport on short notice for a business trip. I borrowed $200 bucks from my dad to pay the expedited passport fee, bought an Amtrak ticket with saved CC information to get to the same-day passport office in Philadelphia, and proved my identity to the passport office with copies of government employee ID cards and my law licenses. Even then I dealt with administrators who didn't realize that the regulations permitted you to get a passport with something other than a driver's license. (I nearly had a breakdown when, after going through the whole rigmarole to get them to issue me a passport without a driver's license, I came back a couple of hours later and they wanted a driver's license to let me pick up my already-printed passport. I was like "look at the f--king passport you're holding, it's got a photo with the same shirt I'm wearing now.") But I did get it, in the end, and getting a new driver's license was easy once I had my passport. Through the whole thing, I couldn't help but think how Kafkaesque this process is, and what happens to people who don't have responsible parents who still have their birth certificates, or who can loan them money to pay the necessary fees, or who can't afford to pay extra to cut in the line? (And, frankly, what happens to people who aren't blessed with the level of cognitive functioning most of us take for granted, and can't figure out the dense procedures for replacing their ID?) There is nobody in government who is actually out there thinking of whether there is a path through this system for the most vulnerable people; the people who have lost everything. They don't care.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Or even just parents that are alive. I needed a birth certificate a few years ago and the expedient option was to have my mom (who still lives in my hometown) request one.
- techsupporter 9y ago
  > There is nobody in government who is actually out there thinking of whether there is a path through this system for the most vulnerable people; the people who have lost everything. They don't care. I vehemently disagree with the stance that "they don't care." I've been on the other side of the partition before. Do people come to their government needing help with having fallen through the cracks? Absolutely, quite often. On the other hand, do scammers do the same thing? Yep, even more often. There are a myriad of reasons to be cautious with identity paperwork, especially in our "digital but not really because a lot of stuff is still shuffled around in paper form" era of underfunded, understaffed, overworked, and occasionally disinterested civil service. "But, have a fucking heart and do what's right!" Damn straight, and every day I tried my best to do that. But here's the thing: in my position, in a county office that was a "jack of all trades" that handled many things from marriage licenses to vehicle registration to property records, we lived in perpetual fear of the local TV stations coming in to do some "sting" on how incompetent we all were. In the two years I worked there, three out of the four TV news departments sent "informants" in to try to catch us in some trap where we weren't following the laws and rules To The Exact Letter. (It didn't help that this was a relatively wealthy county sitting right next to one of the poorest, and minority-population-level, in the entire state.) If you drew the unlucky straw and unwittingly wound up with one of these ringers and you didn't do everything exactly By The Book, usually because you tried to help by being maybe a little lenient on the exact list of documents needed to get a certified copy of some record, you could count on having your face-with-blurred-out-eyes plastered all over ad spots for the next week. "Is the [county] County Clerk office putting YOUR CHILDREN at risk for IDENTITY THEFT?! Are the government employees at the downtown office UNTRAINED or MALICIOUS? Find out, when KZZZ NEWS AT TEN goes UNDERCOVER to expose WASTE AND FRAUD in our county government. EXCLUSIVELY, TONIGHT." So, yeah, I see the rock and the hard place that people of all stripes are in.
SeanBoocock 9y ago
This echoes my experience working with homeless and at-risk people in DC during the 2000s. Nearly everyone I knew who had been on the streets for a significant length of time (> 3 months) was caught up in the bureaucracy of securing housing assistance. Many of them faced the issues described in the article around proper identification. All of them were frustrated by waiting lists for affordable housing that stretched into multiple years. I empathize with everyone involved here and I hope to see greater public and political will around solving identification (and voter registration) issues for disadvantaged populations.

71 points by dankohn1 9y ago

Got to keep those poor people away from the polls. It's interesting how the government here - NL - makes it mandatory for those over 14 to have a photo ID of sorts at all times and charges money for those. A government issued ID should be free of charge, especially if it is required by the government to have one, and they set the prices. That's still a lot better than the situation described in the article which seems to be engineered to simply keep people in the hole once they through misfortune or carelessness slip up. It's sad too that it should come to volunteers to correct such situations, you'd think that the government would really like its citizens to be able to take part in society rather than to be pushed even further into the fringes.

darrylb42 9y ago
Like the John Oliver episode where they found a DMV that was only open on the fifth Wednesday of the month, those months that have a fifth Wednesday. Super easy to get an id.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
Malice seems unlikely. There has to be some way to prove your identity, and people have tried to impersonate others. Is there a way to offer that kind of system while avoiding the concerns about identity theft? EDIT: After thinking it over, I guess identity theft isn't a big concern. It seems pretty unlikely that someone would actively exploit this system to get someone's ID, then their birth certificate, then somehow get a loan in their name, or something along those lines. I hope someone with more experience can chime in either way.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  How unlikely does it seem to you? A case was just before the Supreme Court: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/us/politics/voter-id-laws-supreme-court-north-carolina.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/us/politics/voter-id-laws...
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > Malice seems unlikely. On the contrary, I suspect that is the most likely explanation. See, if there were any other explanation then the government would go out of its way to provide people without identification with the right identification. > There has to be some way to prove your identity There are many ways, for instance in some countries several citizens themselves in the possession of valid identification go together with you before a judge and swear on the penalty of perjury that you are who you say you are. > and people have tried to impersonate others. Yes, and guess what that valid ID is meant to reduce? > Is there a way to offer that kind of system while avoiding the concerns about identity theft? Well, given that we have fingerprinting and biometric information these days it is hard to think of what else - short of DNA - we could give up to offer 'that kind of system' but don't worry, it will still happen and probably in your lifetime.
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    There are many ways, for instance in some countries several citizens themselves in the possession of valid identification go together with you before a judge and swear on the penalty of perjury that you are who you say you are. I like that approach. I wonder if there's some way to campaign for it here in the US. It seems more likely that the lack of this system is just what you get with lowest-common-denominator governance, so there are probably ways to change it for the better. If we could think of a way to add economic incentives to implement it, then it might have a chance.
  - bluedino 9y ago
    Even if the government issues me a free ID I don't have to carry it and I can tell anyone who asks that I am my brother
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      And I could say I am you. That wouldn't make it true though.
    - Swizec 9y ago
      Except in most of Europe where not having ID if you are an adult is illegal. Not in the "We will go after you if you don't have ID" way but in the "If shit happens and you can't prove your identity you are in serious deep shit" Just like snow equipment is mandatory to have in your car but nobody cared until you cause an accident or traffic jam because you didn't put chains on.
- tomjakubowski 9y ago
  > Is there a way to offer that kind of system while avoiding the concerns about identity theft? I know there are other cases where you must prove your identity, but in the case of voter impersonation fraud, to pull that off at a scale large enough to affect a major election requires a massive logistical effort. You must: * Obtain the registered voter rolls for every polling place. This is the easy part. * Know a priori which registered voters will and won't vote on election day. Why? Because if you show up and say you're John Doe, and the polling place has marked that John Doe has already voted, you won't get to vote. If that happens enough times—especially if it happens to the real John Doe, after a fake John Doe voted on his behalf—alarm bells are raised. * Shuttle your team of voter impersonators across the city or county or whatever N times so that they can each fraudulently vote enough to tip the election in your favor. This enormous scope is why almost all known cases of voter impersonation fraud are in elections for offices like "dog catcher" in a rural town: the scale is small enough that you can tip an election with a handful of your closest friends, and you might also know a corresponding handful of registered voters around town who have said they're not planning to vote. Laws that require a photo ID to vote are malicious at worst, and wrongheaded and pointless at best.
- adamcharnock 9y ago
  I think a distinction between personal malice and systemic malice could be useful here.
Banthum 9y ago
>"engineered to simply keep people in the hole once they through misfortune or carelessness slip up" This seems like a pretty extraordinary claim made pretty casually. What would motivate someone to intentionally prevent poor people from helping themselves? It seems much more likely a case of straightforward government dysfunction enabled by all the usual factors that make the government suck at accomplishing things. If the government ID infrastructure ran as well as Facebook's ad targeting department, we would have no problems of this kind whatsoever.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > What would motivate someone to intentionally prevent poor people from helping themselves? Less social security to be paid out. Once homeless the way back is super hard, and to receive social security you have to have a registered address and to have a registered address you need ID. So good luck reversing that.
  - lisper 9y ago
    > Less social security to be paid out. That, and fewer people voting for democrats.
- typomatic 9y ago
  > If the government ID infrastructure ran as well as Facebook's ad targeting department, we would have no problems of this kind whatsoever. You might want to rethink that statement. I suspect that the government ID infrastructure works flawlessly for about 99.9% of users. The FB ad infrastructure does not work that well.
- Avshalom 9y ago
  >What would motivate someone to intentionally prevent poor people from helping themselves? A theology that holds that god rewards the just and thus the poor must be so because they're wicked and/or a fucked up reading of the phrase "the poor will always be with you" A desire to 'prove' an economic philosophy that the poor brought it on themselves by creating a self perpetuating spiral of doom and then pointing to people that get caught in it as proof. Racism and a general supposition that these policies affect those people over there to a sufficient degree that these people over here are an acceptable loss. Just being a fucking dick.
typomatic 9y ago
> the situation described in the article which seems to be engineered to simply keep people in the hole once they through misfortune or carelessness slip up. It's sad too that it should come to volunteers to correct such situations, you'd think that the government would really like its citizens to be able to take part in society rather than to be pushed even further into the fringes. You'll find that Americans really believe in personal responsibility to an absurd extent. And if you're irresponsible enough to lose all your ID (forget why, who cares?) then you clearly deserve to die in a ditch somewhere. It's a brutal philosophy that permeates everything about the country.
- throwanem 9y ago
  Yes. That explains why Americans give up time, money, effort, and care, to help other Americans back up out of the hole our government does not give a damn if it puts them in.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Which is really nice, but not very effective and besides should not be necessary in the first place. Systemic failure and bureaucracy can't be effectively countered by relying on volunteers. In fact, the article is a good illustration of how ineffective this is.
    - throwanem 9y ago
      Oh, I agree. I suspect we might differ on the question of whether the best answer to bad government is more government, though. Wouldn't it be a remarkable thing if, for example, it were possible to exist without any number of pieces of paper and corresponding database records to prove that you do? I think it would be a remarkable thing. But I've often been called a dreamer.
mobilefriendly 9y ago
LOL yeah because DC, where the op-ed is focused, has a 76-6 Democratic to Republican party registration advantage.

koolba 9y ago

So she didn't have any opportunity over the forty years prior to secure any of those documents? Having to deal with something like this at the same time as being evicted and losing your mother is very sad, but that's not an excuse. It's a human interest story.

SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
Mate ID's expire every 6 years. Expired ID's are not valid ID's.
- koolba 9y ago
  Social security cards and birth certificates do not expire. Drivers licenses do expire, generally at 4-6 year time frames. Assuming you're still at the same address (which she was), most states allow one to renew it through the mail. Checking a box, signing a card, and paying a nominal fee once every four years does not seem particularly onerous to me. Though if it were up to me the fee would be entirely eliminated.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    Assuming you're still at the same address (which she was) She was evicted from her previous address!
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      And the older comment by that same user already acknowledges that.
      - koolba 9y ago
        She didn't have ID when she was evicted which means she had plenty of time to get one. If she had a license/state ID and answered the expiration mailer she would have had one.

Animats 9y ago

If you've been fingerprinted and identified, ever, you should be able to get copies of all necessary IDs from that alone.

SwellJoe 9y ago
You'd think. But, you can't. The process depends on the state, but usually requires a birth certificate and social security card, at the minimum.

kevindong 9y ago

I always wondered how people get IDs if: 1) they never got one while under an age when someone else could vouch for them, and 2) they didn't have any of the documents needed to an ID because to get those documents, you need an ID.

jacquesm 9y ago
One example: in Canada you get your house doctor and the principal of the school you went to as a kid to give you a letter that verifies your identity. Other options are several people that themselves have valid ID and you go before a judge and they swear you are you.
jandrewrogers 9y ago
There is a surprising number of Americans in this situation, though less than their used to be, partly by virtue of the fact that having an ID is not required and unnecessary as a practical matter for much of the 20th century. You'd have Americans with no birth records (used to be pretty common) who grew up overseas when a passport was not required, such that they didn't even have incidental records of their existence. It also used to be somewhat common in very rural areas. Consequently, there used to be a significant number of Americans who basically have no discernible record of existence prior to their teenage or early adult years. My mother is an example in fact. It used to be, as of a few decades ago at least, that you were whoever you said you were and the ID offices would happily accept informal artifacts (like family Bibles) as corroborating evidence, particularly in regions where record-less Americans were endemic. Once you got your first ID, you could chain off of that. These days I think it would be viewed with much more suspicion if a person was record-less.

thro808 9y ago

Let's see how racist voter id laws really are: https://youtu.be/llDM-44Zb8w https://youtu.be/llDM-44Zb8w

jubabuba 9y ago
This is really eye opening
- osdiab 9y ago
  There are papers that demonstrate the discriminatory effects of voter ID laws on minority turnout [1], and these sorts of interview videos are easy to produce in a way that selectively validates the statement you want to convey. I don't know the data on a regional basis, but it could be the case that residents of places like New York City are better informed than those in other regions of the country. [1] http://pages.ucsd.edu/~zhajnal/page5/documents/voterIDhajnaletal.pdf http://pages.ucsd.edu/~zhajnal/page5/documents/voterIDhajnal...

SwellJoe 9y ago

I've volunteered on homelessness issues over the past few years, and many of my friends are homeless or have been homeless in recent memory. This is one of the most frustrating and pointlessly cruel aspects of the society we've built (among many frustrating and pointlessly cruel aspects). I can sum up just how evil it is with one anecdote: One night a few years ago, I got a frantic message from a friend on facebook, something along the lines of, "Look at X's wall. Nobody has been able to reach them." So, I looked at X's wall, and the last post looked very much like a suicide note. Brief and somewhat cryptic, but given the circumstances of X's life and some of the things they'd said and done in recent weeks made it pretty worrying. X, at that time, had been homeless for some time, off and on for years. They'd been couchsurfing but felt like they'd worn out their welcome and didn't want to be a bother. They'd been kicked out of their parents' house when they were younger because they were gay. They were literally terrified of their parents, and never want contact with them again. So, they had no contact with most of their family, and the one relative who hadn't disowned them was a grandparent without the resources to do much, even if anyone knew how to reach them. Even calling the police was a questionable choice (which we ended up not doing), because they had warrants, and had traumatic interactions with police in recent months. X had been in public housing for a short time a couple years before, but had been kicked out because their partner visited too often and stayed overnight too many times (only married couples can do that, you see, and only in designated housing), and due to some "behavioral issues" that stemmed from X being on the autism spectrum (another reason to not call police) and the rules of public housing being unforgiving. I've visited other folks in the same building, and the rules are absurd. It's like a low-security prison; visitors have to check-in/out, there is a curfew, etc. Long story short, this was someone who's had a lot of setbacks in life, and that night they just couldn't see a way forward. But, the most tremendously horrific thing about it, to me, was that it mostly boiled down to no ID and no clear path to get them an ID. Without ID, no job. Without ID, no housing (public or otherwise). Without ID, no future. The steps to getting an ID are crazy difficult for a homeless person with no family ties and no records available. One of their exes found them a couple hours after our search started, and we were able to get them committed voluntarily to a psych hospital while we sorted out what they'd find when they got out. When a few people stepped up to help get the ID sorted, and some other folks raised enough money from friends to cover their rent in co-op housing for a few months, they were able to get back on their feet. They're holding down a job, paying their own rent and expenses, and have been doing well for a couple years now. But, it took a fucking team to get the ID problem solved, and that's ridiculous. If you ever go to any organization that provides services to the homeless, you'll find that getting ID is one of their most used services. And, also a challenging one in many cases. It's just one that nobody who's never lived it really ever thinks about. But, think about having to keep all of your paperwork on your person or being always at risk of losing it. That's the situation homeless folks are in. This is further complicated by police who arrest homeless folks on spurious charges and make them leave their things behind, where they'll be stolen or thrown away before they're able to return. A life of total impermanence is just unimaginably difficult. I've rambled a lot here, but it's easy for me to get riled up on this issue. Knowing what I know, and having seen what I've seen, it'd be very easy to convince me that our system is built to intentionally destroy the lives of a few at the bottom, and make it all but impossible for them to climb out, all while people demonize the homeless as being a nuisance that should be pushed out of cities (San Francisco, Austin, Portland, Los Angeles, liberal cities, I'm looking at you, too). It's all inflicted via mostly tiny cuts, that don't look like a big deal if you've got a house, a job, an ID, a family, a filing cabinet with all of your records, a bank account, a credit card for emergencies, etc. Even tiny things can spiral into a disaster quickly for the very poor.

mobilefriendly 9y ago

It isn't cruel, there are legitimate reasons the process is and should be difficult. Document fraud helped the 9/11 attackers get driver's licenses and ID fraud is a major part of many other terror attacks and funding. This is also an identity theft vector, and numerous welfare/tax scams are built on multiple and fake identities.

Retra 9y ago
To paraphrase maxerickson in this thread: the process should be secure, not difficult.

fooker 9y ago

How do you differentiate between 'poor with no ID' and someone overstaying a Visa?

Retra 9y ago
Light background check. Validate their fingerprints/photo against database of Visa holders.

rayiner 9y ago

I lost my wallet last year and simultaneously needed to get a passport on short notice for a business trip. I borrowed $200 bucks from my dad to pay the expedited passport fee, bought an Amtrak ticket with saved CC information to get to the same-day passport office in Philadelphia, and proved my identity to the passport office with copies of government employee ID cards and my law licenses. Even then I dealt with administrators who didn't realize that the regulations permitted you to get a passport with something other than a driver's license. (I nearly had a breakdown when, after going through the whole rigmarole to get them to issue me a passport without a driver's license, I came back a couple of hours later and they wanted a driver's license to let me pick up my already-printed passport. I was like "look at the f--king passport you're holding, it's got a photo with the same shirt I'm wearing now.") But I did get it, in the end, and getting a new driver's license was easy once I had my passport. Through the whole thing, I couldn't help but think how Kafkaesque this process is, and what happens to people who don't have responsible parents who still have their birth certificates, or who can loan them money to pay the necessary fees, or who can't afford to pay extra to cut in the line? (And, frankly, what happens to people who aren't blessed with the level of cognitive functioning most of us take for granted, and can't figure out the dense procedures for replacing their ID?) There is nobody in government who is actually out there thinking of whether there is a path through this system for the most vulnerable people; the people who have lost everything. They don't care.

maxerickson 9y ago
Or even just parents that are alive. I needed a birth certificate a few years ago and the expedient option was to have my mom (who still lives in my hometown) request one.
techsupporter 9y ago
> There is nobody in government who is actually out there thinking of whether there is a path through this system for the most vulnerable people; the people who have lost everything. They don't care. I vehemently disagree with the stance that "they don't care." I've been on the other side of the partition before. Do people come to their government needing help with having fallen through the cracks? Absolutely, quite often. On the other hand, do scammers do the same thing? Yep, even more often. There are a myriad of reasons to be cautious with identity paperwork, especially in our "digital but not really because a lot of stuff is still shuffled around in paper form" era of underfunded, understaffed, overworked, and occasionally disinterested civil service. "But, have a fucking heart and do what's right!" Damn straight, and every day I tried my best to do that. But here's the thing: in my position, in a county office that was a "jack of all trades" that handled many things from marriage licenses to vehicle registration to property records, we lived in perpetual fear of the local TV stations coming in to do some "sting" on how incompetent we all were. In the two years I worked there, three out of the four TV news departments sent "informants" in to try to catch us in some trap where we weren't following the laws and rules To The Exact Letter. (It didn't help that this was a relatively wealthy county sitting right next to one of the poorest, and minority-population-level, in the entire state.) If you drew the unlucky straw and unwittingly wound up with one of these ringers and you didn't do everything exactly By The Book, usually because you tried to help by being maybe a little lenient on the exact list of documents needed to get a certified copy of some record, you could count on having your face-with-blurred-out-eyes plastered all over ad spots for the next week. "Is the [county] County Clerk office putting YOUR CHILDREN at risk for IDENTITY THEFT?! Are the government employees at the downtown office UNTRAINED or MALICIOUS? Find out, when KZZZ NEWS AT TEN goes UNDERCOVER to expose WASTE AND FRAUD in our county government. EXCLUSIVELY, TONIGHT." So, yeah, I see the rock and the hard place that people of all stripes are in.

SeanBoocock 9y ago

This echoes my experience working with homeless and at-risk people in DC during the 2000s. Nearly everyone I knew who had been on the streets for a significant length of time (> 3 months) was caught up in the bureaucracy of securing housing assistance. Many of them faced the issues described in the article around proper identification. All of them were frustrated by waiting lists for affordable housing that stretched into multiple years. I empathize with everyone involved here and I hope to see greater public and political will around solving identification (and voter registration) issues for disadvantaged populations.