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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> According to a 1996 publication by Privacy International, around 100 countries had enacted laws making identity cards compulsory.[1] In these countries, the card must be shown on demand by authorised personnel under specified circumstances. In some countries alternative proof of identity, such as a driving licence is acceptable. Privacy International said that "virtually no common law country has a card".[1]
> The term "compulsory" may have different meanings and implications in different countries. Possession of a card may only become compulsory at a certain age. There may be a penalty for not carrying a card or other legally valid identification (a passport, for foreigners); in some cases a person may be detained until identity is proven. This way the police can identify fugitives
On the list are 14 out of 28 EU countries if my count is correct. And a few more European non-EU countries.
By that list, it does not sound like many EU countries require you to keep it with you with threat of penalty. Certainly very far from "most". Netherlands sounds like a strange exception to the rule with otherwise liberal society. Serbia is a relatively recent civil war zone so kind of understandable.
NL is shameful in this respect. What's even worse is that the general public totally bought the line that this would reduce crime. Instead, people are now somewhat routinely booked for not being able to identify themselves even though that's the only thing they are doing wrong at that moment.
> 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.
>"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.
> 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.
> 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.
>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.
Yes. This is why you find people of Christian faith volunteering to...you know what, never mind. I wish I lived in a world as simple as the one you seem to.
I mean, religion isn't a homogeneous thing. There are folks like the ones in the article, for sure, but there are also ones who buy into the whole gospel of prosperity thing.
>“Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us,’” he said. “There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.”
>Pressed on that point, Marshall shrugged.
No seriously, some people have a really fucked up reading of "the poor will always be with us" and some of those people are actually in charge of things.
for some context on that particular bible quote: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2017/03/03/ignorant... Jesus is solid on this one, that doesn't mean people don't build their beliefs on some weird interpretations of what some one once told them Jesus said.
I'm not sure why it makes sense to dismiss the entire faith on the basis of some sinners who twist Christ's words against Christ's example. I hope for the sake of his soul that he doesn't realize what he's doing.
You...kind of did? I mean, I get that the people you're talking about call themselves Christian, but they no more merit taking at their word on the matter than if I say I'm vegan while halfway through a porterhouse.
You know Mark and Deuteronomy. Do you know Matthew? "You shall know them by their fruits." And: "[T]hen will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."
Christ himself would not call these men Christian. Why should you or I take them at their word when they call themselves so?
You didn't use the word, but I think it's a real stretch to argue that that wasn't your meaning.
Can we compromise on "heretical corruption of Christianity"? I should think that'd be imprecatory enough for just about anyone - it certainly has more and sharper teeth than inaccurate and mere milquetoast 'theology'! - and it has the added virtue of not perpetuating a condition in which one such as myself finds it every bit as difficult and trepidatory to come out as Christian as, in an earlier time, he did to come out as gay. Perhaps that's not something with which you feel any need to concern yourself, even to this quite literally nominal degree; I can't say that isn't fair enough, but I would esteem it a kindness if you did.
You should read up on the prison industrial complex. I think a very strong case can be made that homelessness, and the implicit threat of homelessness, is part of the prison pipeline.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No, it means that she went from a situation in which she still had plenty of time to get one into a situation where she suddenly had no time at all anymore.
> If she had a license/state ID and answered the expiration mailer she would have had one.
That assumes she had one to begin with. I know lots of Americans that don't even have a passport or driving license.
Anyway, you're a cold one to stick to your theme of victim blaming, take into account that not everybody is able to navigate the bureaucracy as well as you or I and that there are other factors (for instance: analfabetism) that can land people in very difficult situations which even an expert would have a hard time to reverse.
And in case it wasn't clear to you yet: And it shouldn't be that way, if you're a legal citizen of a country and you lose all your identification due to theft, fire or some other reason and/or you are homeless then your government should go out of its way to help correct the situation. Because it is the decent thing to do.
This is essentially where I was coming from. In the article, we meet her in crisis. That she maybe could have renewed a license prior to being evicted doesn't help her any.
Pointing out facts that would have prevented the situation isn't victim blaming. It's being truthful. The alternative is to accept that there is no personal responsibility (which I reject).
As to the process of reestablishing a new set of identity docs. It's clearly overly onerous and just like everything else in life, even more so when you're poor.
The decent thing to do for the government isn't just to make the edge case of the destitute easier. It's to make the general case easier. Getting an ID or renewing one should be so easy that there is no excuse.
I sincerely hope that you will never be in a position to realize just how your comment comes across to me. At a guess you're young, well educated and compared to the lady in the article filthy rich.
Your 'personal responsibility' works well for you given your background and status in life. But it's an easy argument to make when the results are not your problem. It does handily allow you to ignore the fate of those that are not as fortunate as you are, after all, if they had taken their responsibilities seriously then they would have nothing to complain about, case closed.
> I sincerely hope that you will never be in a position to realize just how your comment comes across to me.
Am I to interpret that as a threat, a la "If you said that to my face and I'd punch you in yours!"?
If so, I'd expect more from what I presume to be a grown man.
> At a guess you're young, well educated and compared to the lady in the article filthy rich.
In the interests of preserving pseudo anonymity I won't confirm or deny any of those guesses.
The addition of "filthy" in the third piece of that does show more than a hint of inherent bias though. There's nothing virtuous or vile in being poor or rich, and discounting someone's opinions based on your presumptions of their economic status can only end badly.
> Your 'personal responsibility' works well for you given your background and status in life. But it's an easy argument to make when the results are not your problem. It does handily allow you to ignore the fate of those that are not as fortunate as you are, after all, if they had taken their responsibilities seriously then they would have nothing to complain about, case closed.
Not once did I say the situation is not unfortunate nor did I say things should be this difficult. I merely pointed out that it could also have been avoided and she had ample opportunity to do so.
If resources are to be dedicated to helping out someone in this situation (which they should!), then they should also be dedicated to preventing it in the first place. A key part of that is acknowledging the personal responsibility component. Otherwise you're stuck repeatedly curing situations that could have otherwise been prevented.
The real world is full of a lot more variance than you seem to believe. It is possible to do everything possible within your power correctly and still fall victim to this kind of misfortune.
You're trying to force the world to fit your model. Instead, you need to fix your model to allow for non-100% ID coverage, because reality is always going to have complications, errors, mistakes, and unexpected interactions.
If more people were guided towards having proper identification and said ID was easier to attain/renew, then you'd have less of this extreme edge case. Arguably that'd lead to more resources to dedicate to better helping someone in this situation. For every person that is robbed, evicted, or some other misfortune, I'm sure there are plenty more that face no such immediate calamity.
It's like medicine, a ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Social security cards and birth certificates are not a form of photo ID. Furthermore renewing an ID costs $30 which is a roundabout way of instituting a poll tax.
> 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.
...and paying a fee. Given that the article is about being poor, that's a non-trivial omission.
> 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 the perfect excuse. Once you have no registered address it is only a matter of time before you gain the accumulated 'benefits' that come with having no status at all. Essentially you become an un-person, and your life is just about forfeit. [1]
I take it that you have not experienced homelessness?
> It's a human interest story.
Yes, indeed. So take an interest in how these situations could be avoided rather than blaming the victims of the system, it should be fairly obvious that she's making a significant effort to regain her status as a documented citizen.
Also note how IDs tend to expire and that if you have no registered address you may not be able to apply for a new ID.
I was homeless for two years living out of my car. I used a mail forwarding service to maintain proof of residence and get id and stay registered somewhere.
Think back to when you signed up. What did you need? When I signed up, I had to fill out USPS form 1583, and show two forms of government identification (I used drivers license and passport; the list of accepted ID for this form is strict and non-obvious). My girlfriend couldn't be added to my account when she started traveling with me because she didn't have the second acceptable form of ID.
Now, imagine you also had to choose between your next meal and paying your mail forwarding service bill.
I live in an RV and travel mostly full-time, and I use a mail forwarding service, myself...but, even with that, it's sometimes a pain in the ass to deal with the government. And, it's also not all that cheap. I spent about $400 last year on mail forwarding for my personal account, and about the same for the business.
Look, I don't want to diminish your experience here. You've been there, to some degree, and I'm glad you got out of homelessness. But, just because you've shared some of the experiences of being homeless, it doesn't mean everyone who deals with this can follow the path you followed successfully.
Don't you think it is curious how the phrase "human interest" has come to mean "I don't care, and I don't see why anyone else should either"? I think it's curious.
What does it mean, to be disinterested in "human interest"?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ...
To piggyback on your example, I volunteered at an organization who were working with someone who had recently been released from prison but had no ID and no access to any supporting documents.
The organization spent months going back and forth with the state to get an ID issued. The state was sure he was the guy who had done the crime and should spend years locked up, but wouldn't confirm he was the same person for ID purposes. It was maddening just watching the process unfold.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 166 ms ] threadIt'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.
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.
A case was just before the Supreme Court:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/us/politics/voter-id-laws...
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.
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.
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.
> The term "compulsory" may have different meanings and implications in different countries. Possession of a card may only become compulsory at a certain age. There may be a penalty for not carrying a card or other legally valid identification (a passport, for foreigners); in some cases a person may be detained until identity is proven. This way the police can identify fugitives
On the list are 14 out of 28 EU countries if my count is correct. And a few more European non-EU countries.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_ca...
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.
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.
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.
That, and fewer people voting for democrats.
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.
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.
>“Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us,’” he said. “There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.”
>Pressed on that point, Marshall shrugged.
No seriously, some people have a really fucked up reading of "the poor will always be with us" and some of those people are actually in charge of things.
for some context on that particular bible quote: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2017/03/03/ignorant... Jesus is solid on this one, that doesn't mean people don't build their beliefs on some weird interpretations of what some one once told them Jesus said.
You know Mark and Deuteronomy. Do you know Matthew? "You shall know them by their fruits." And: "[T]hen will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."
Christ himself would not call these men Christian. Why should you or I take them at their word when they call themselves so?
I said fucked up theology (among other possibilities) is a reason people would intentionally prevent poor people from helping themselves
Can we compromise on "heretical corruption of Christianity"? I should think that'd be imprecatory enough for just about anyone - it certainly has more and sharper teeth than inaccurate and mere milquetoast 'theology'! - and it has the added virtue of not perpetuating a condition in which one such as myself finds it every bit as difficult and trepidatory to come out as Christian as, in an earlier time, he did to come out as gay. Perhaps that's not something with which you feel any need to concern yourself, even to this quite literally nominal degree; I can't say that isn't fair enough, but I would esteem it a kindness if you did.
I'm aware that this isn't a nice thing to say, but are you really disputing that the sentence stands alone as a fact?
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.
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.
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.
She was evicted from her previous address!
> If she had a license/state ID and answered the expiration mailer she would have had one.
That assumes she had one to begin with. I know lots of Americans that don't even have a passport or driving license.
Anyway, you're a cold one to stick to your theme of victim blaming, take into account that not everybody is able to navigate the bureaucracy as well as you or I and that there are other factors (for instance: analfabetism) that can land people in very difficult situations which even an expert would have a hard time to reverse.
And in case it wasn't clear to you yet: And it shouldn't be that way, if you're a legal citizen of a country and you lose all your identification due to theft, fire or some other reason and/or you are homeless then your government should go out of its way to help correct the situation. Because it is the decent thing to do.
As to the process of reestablishing a new set of identity docs. It's clearly overly onerous and just like everything else in life, even more so when you're poor.
The decent thing to do for the government isn't just to make the edge case of the destitute easier. It's to make the general case easier. Getting an ID or renewing one should be so easy that there is no excuse.
Your 'personal responsibility' works well for you given your background and status in life. But it's an easy argument to make when the results are not your problem. It does handily allow you to ignore the fate of those that are not as fortunate as you are, after all, if they had taken their responsibilities seriously then they would have nothing to complain about, case closed.
Am I to interpret that as a threat, a la "If you said that to my face and I'd punch you in yours!"?
If so, I'd expect more from what I presume to be a grown man.
> At a guess you're young, well educated and compared to the lady in the article filthy rich.
In the interests of preserving pseudo anonymity I won't confirm or deny any of those guesses.
The addition of "filthy" in the third piece of that does show more than a hint of inherent bias though. There's nothing virtuous or vile in being poor or rich, and discounting someone's opinions based on your presumptions of their economic status can only end badly.
> Your 'personal responsibility' works well for you given your background and status in life. But it's an easy argument to make when the results are not your problem. It does handily allow you to ignore the fate of those that are not as fortunate as you are, after all, if they had taken their responsibilities seriously then they would have nothing to complain about, case closed.
Not once did I say the situation is not unfortunate nor did I say things should be this difficult. I merely pointed out that it could also have been avoided and she had ample opportunity to do so.
If resources are to be dedicated to helping out someone in this situation (which they should!), then they should also be dedicated to preventing it in the first place. A key part of that is acknowledging the personal responsibility component. Otherwise you're stuck repeatedly curing situations that could have otherwise been prevented.
> If so, I'd expect more from what I presume to be a grown man.
Strawman ignored.
The real world is full of a lot more variance than you seem to believe. It is possible to do everything possible within your power correctly and still fall victim to this kind of misfortune.
You're trying to force the world to fit your model. Instead, you need to fix your model to allow for non-100% ID coverage, because reality is always going to have complications, errors, mistakes, and unexpected interactions.
It's like medicine, a ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
...and paying a fee. Given that the article is about being poor, that's a non-trivial omission.
What reasons are there for the system to be structured such that obtaining an ID is difficult?
It isn't a reason that it should be byzantine or difficult.
It's the perfect excuse. Once you have no registered address it is only a matter of time before you gain the accumulated 'benefits' that come with having no status at all. Essentially you become an un-person, and your life is just about forfeit. [1]
I take it that you have not experienced homelessness?
> It's a human interest story.
Yes, indeed. So take an interest in how these situations could be avoided rather than blaming the victims of the system, it should be fairly obvious that she's making a significant effort to regain her status as a documented citizen.
Also note how IDs tend to expire and that if you have no registered address you may not be able to apply for a new ID.
[1] http://forum.schizophrenia.com/t/homeless-person-has-a-life-...
Now, imagine you also had to choose between your next meal and paying your mail forwarding service bill.
I live in an RV and travel mostly full-time, and I use a mail forwarding service, myself...but, even with that, it's sometimes a pain in the ass to deal with the government. And, it's also not all that cheap. I spent about $400 last year on mail forwarding for my personal account, and about the same for the business.
Look, I don't want to diminish your experience here. You've been there, to some degree, and I'm glad you got out of homelessness. But, just because you've shared some of the experiences of being homeless, it doesn't mean everyone who deals with this can follow the path you followed successfully.
Polish proverb: I thought I was as low as I could get and then I heard knocking from below.
What does it mean, to be disinterested in "human interest"?
Other options are several people that themselves have valid ID and you go before a judge and they swear you are you.
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.
https://youtu.be/llDM-44Zb8w
[1] http://pages.ucsd.edu/~zhajnal/page5/documents/voterIDhajnal...
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 ...
The organization spent months going back and forth with the state to get an ID issued. The state was sure he was the guy who had done the crime and should spend years locked up, but wouldn't confirm he was the same person for ID purposes. It was maddening just watching the process unfold.
The machine in which we live does not hate. The machine in which we live does not care.
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.
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.
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.
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.