General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: 69 year old black woman in Virginia brought 4 forms of ID to polls & still couldn't vote [View all]Igel
(35,386 posts)I have a BC and SS card that shows I'm a citizen, but if I vote locally (meaning "anywhere" I need to show that I'm a local resident. Neither does that, they've been valid in half a dozen states.
After that she had a presumably valid NC drivers license, showing her place of residence ... presumably in NC. And an expired VA DMV card. Reasonable inference: She moved from VA to NC and wanted to retain her VA voter registration, or perhaps she neglected to register to vote in NC and wanted to vote someplace. But "someplace" should be local, since most primaries also include local elections. Why should a NC resident vote in local VA elections? Even if she had recently moved, it pays to understand that the US does not have national elections. We have state-level elections. Esp. when it comes to presidential primaries.
When I moved from Oregon to California I knew to get a new drivers license to establish residency. I rightly had no say in Eugene local elections at that point.
BTW, it took over a year for me to get all the various statements forwarded to me by the USPS sent to the right address. So a local bank statement sent to my old address would have been fairly meaningless. Well, no. It would have been misleading, and fraudulent if I had used it as evidence of my current address.
Then again, I'm a bit rule bound. When I moved from one side of Eugene, OR, to the other side and didn't update my registration, I didn't vote. Too many local elections at stake.
When my roommate moved from Eugene to Roseburg, he returned to his old precinct to vote. Yes, he had sufficient ID to "establish" himself as a current resident of south Eugene, even though he lived an hour's drive away in a different city. That's what happens when you move fairly close to an election or neglect to update your registration. (This was years ago, before all the concern about voter fraud. Like my old roommate committed. He never voted in the truly local elections, as far as I know, just state and national elections, so there was no foul. Just the de jure crime of voter fraud.)
As it was Okiakpe got valid ID. Presumably it's something she'd have done soon enough anyway. Had to do much in a modern society with a strong central government without government-issued ID.