Political talk glues two facts together. A citizen who does not have a current photo ID is described as if he had never been issued a birth record, a Social Security number, or a file at SSA. Those are not the same sentence.
The first is a replacement problem. The second is a life almost no American who went to school, worked, used a hospital, or collected a benefit has actually lived. SSI is an electronic transfer into an account. That account sits on an SSN. Spend the card at Walmart and the cashier still asks whose card it is.
Disenfranchised should not mean only a polling place. Without usable ID you cannot finish an I-9, open a bank account, cash a benefit, clear HUD, or fly. The United Arab Emirates requires an Emirates ID and treats it as how you use the country. Mexico issues a free INE card and asks for it at the polls and the bank. The American war cry is the outlier.
Groups that spend retainers and ad buys to call voter ID racist should spend the same dollars on birth certificates and DMV appointments. A functioning state issues the document, asks for the document, and does not apologize for knowing who is legally there.
Read the essay: www.jamesfrinzi.com
