Show Your Papers to Vote?

[DFW]

6. Here in Germany, every eligible voter is sent a card in the mail.

You need it to vote, but I have never heard of someone wanting one who didn't get one.

Still, they do have their glitches. About 35 years ago, my wife went to vote, and the poll workers told her she couldn't vote here (Düsseldorf) because she lived in München (Bavaria, the other end of Germany). She said she had never lived in München in her life. The poll workers said that their computer showed her as living in München, so she lived in München and couldn't vote here. A social worker by profession, she then told them to look up our two children, then 5 and 7 years old, and see where they lived. Sure enough, they lived right here, where they had since birth. My wife then said either they let her vote, or she would call the police and say that the poll workers had formally and falsely accused her of child abandonment.

They let her vote.

In the fifties and early sixties in the South, the white election workers had all sorts of schemes to prevent black people from voting. All sorts of jokes about it made the rounds. One involved a literacy test, something that was indeed really used. According to the stories, one locale had two newspapers for the literacy test. The white people had to read a big headline saying "Rain Expected Tomorrow." The black people were shown a newspaper entirely in Chinese. A black guy stood in line, and came up for the literacy test. He was shown the Chinese newspaper, and asked if he could understand what it said. He said, "sure, I know what that says." Incredulous, the white poll workers asked again, "you know what THAT says? What does it say?" The black guy calmly said, "it says that here is one black dude that won't be allowed to vote this year."