Wake County Public School Proof Of Residence 2011: Fill & Download for Free

The short answer is yes—voter ID laws make it harder to vote and that is the true intent of those laws.I have seen this first hand. I lived in Wisconsin in 2011 when the Republican legislature passed a very strict version of Voter ID and the bill was signed by the Republican Governor. I was an active member of the League of Women Voters, an organization that promotes civic participation in many forms and in a non-partisan fashion. We had always registered people to vote. Now we, along with other groups, turned to ensuring that those who were already registered would be allowed to vote. And here are a few examples of what happened.First, due to the “real ID” bill sponsored by Wisconsin Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner, one now needs a birth certificate to obtain a drivers license or state ID. If a woman marries and changes her last name, she also needs a marriage certificate to prove the name change.In Milwaukee, a number of African-Americans were born in Chicago and moved to Wisconsin. A number of them had neither Drivers Licenses nor IDs. We raised money to help them get copies of their birth certificates. But Cook County would not issue copies unless you applied along with a copy of your state ID. Catch 22. Some spent 6 to 8 months wrestling this problem. As far as I know, this has not been resolved. (note: I needed a copy of my birth certificate and had to pay $20 to get it. Now I would consider that a poll tax).I met several elderly women who no longer had driver’s licenses or IDs because they did not need them. They had voted for decades. In one case, when a woman got a copy of her birth certificate, she found out she had a different first name than the one she had always used. She had to go to court to get that matter dealt with—it took several months. In another case, the courthouse had burned down years ago and no one had any record of her birth. The officials there said they might be able to recreate one if she had proof of going to school and her baptismal certificate. That woman was 72. She never got an ID and was unable to vote.In the northern part of the state, an 18 year old came in on election day to vote. You can register on election day in Wisconsin. He was accompanied by his parents. He had no ID—did not yet have a drivers license. And he had no proof of residence since the parents had not put any electric bills in his name. He could not register. And he could not vote.And then there were the logistical problems. People took time off from work to go get an ID, waited as we all do, only to be told they needed one more document and to return when they had it. Many of these people work hourly, low wage jobs. In the rural parts of the state, there are few DMVs and most of those are open for only a few hours a month. One man I met, had ridden with a friend for an hour to get to one and the DMV was closed. The month before, they had changed their time of operation and failed to publicize it.If there is any voter fraud that Voter ID would catch, it is tiny. There were always rumors in Wisconsin that buses of black people would be driven up from Chicago to vote in Wisconsin. No one ever took a picture. No one ever saw the bus. It was a scare tactic rumor.The real issue we have as a country is to figure out why only about 50 percent of the eligible voters exercise their right. Voter ID is one reason. And likely the feeling that even if they do, nothing will be changed. Putting up unnecessary barriers in order to keep one party in power is shameful. Unfortunately, it stems from a long history of voter suppression from denying certain groups (blacks, women, Native Americans) the right to vote to Jim Crow laws to odd voter registration laws. As a country, we have the ability to become better—to form a more perfect union. I just hope that soon we wake up and aim for that more perfect union soon.