Did you know that in the last 38 years there have been only two cases of voter fraud in Maine? Both were effectively taken care of and did nothing to alter election results. Yet, for some reason, talk of voter ID won’t go away.
Instead of securing election systems, voter ID laws create unnecessary obstructions to voting. Take Nancy Wilde, for example. She has been voting since 1957 when she was 21. Unfortunately, Wisconsin recently passed voter ID laws that have complicated Nancy’s attempt to vote in this fall’s election.
As their story goes, Nancy was born on a weekend and the doctor who delivered her didn’t finalize the birth certificate paperwork. To obtain a state ID, she went to the doctor’s office to discover that there was no record of her birth. She was given a delayed birth registration form to fill out and proceeded to meet with school officials, church officials, and medical records personnel to complete the document.
Nancy is a senior citizen with a disability, so the onus for this work fell on her husband, who had the added difficulty of needing a notary present when each person signed the record. So in addition to the 20 dollars for a birth certificate, it costs money and time to let Nancy vote.
It shouldn’t be bad luck to be born on a weekend. Let’s stop proposing useless obstructions to voting and simply let people vote.