Voter Suppression

Today I went to the grocery stores.
Yes I go to two-one for organics, the other to pick up things I can't get at the organic one, the crazy things my Mom asked for-strange things-grampons (don't ASK), black olives, specifically Ajax, and today sardines. And, no, this isn't about that.
While I was traveling I listened to NPR News.
I need to find a way to normalize doing that when I'm NOT driving. Not driving I have no radio. This summer I drove under 50 miles, and set a record for not using any form of transportation but my legs. BUT I miss hearing the radio going to and from work. Not missing driving.
On NPR today was this piece on Voter Suppression in North Carolina.
Over time NPR has recorded pieces on voter suppression, doing it very well, and this was no exception. This is the link.
If you have not listened- it will be 8 minutes you will be glad to spend learning about HOW this will work, and who it affects. Effects. It will help you better consider the laws that were put in in NC, law put through responding apparently to record turn outs in the last general election in NC-not to ANY actual voter law breaking in elections.

My mother does not live in North Carolina. She couldn't get to a poll if we didn't take her now at 86. She's too fragile. She, like a person in the story, insists on voting ON the day of an election. Absentee ballots to her are a hot bed for very big electorial problems. She constantly questions what is going on at the poll, wants to see the ballot go in whatever box. She's demanding about it. Years ago my mother worked at polls. I remember her doing that for many elections. Her cryptic comment is, "If there is a way to cheat you out of your vote- they'll find it."
She doesn't specify who. She chuckles and says, "You figure it out."
One year, well later in  my time in WV-so around 1980- I remember driving a car full of older folks to polls.Some were people I knew well, some I made friends with through this. Mom got me into a basically all day long thing (many times after I drove), possibly for the League of Women Voters. I just recall it-I drove to wherever/whomever she directed. Listening to this report today I learned how and who will be kept from voting now in NC. It will not be the wealthy. It will not be the highly educated. It will not be those that have traditionally had the vote.

My mom does not have a photo ID. She has things like her birth record, social security card. But she did not learn to drive. She learned to fly a plane, and has her pilot's license. She has her military ID's. But, alas, no photo ID. And what to do to get one for some reason we didn't resolve the last time this started to really bother me.
I heard David Brooks tonight on PBS news blubbering on about how people just need to have photo ID but in the radio piece we learn that those without birth certificates CAN'T get them. Like the elderly woman born to a mid-wife in an old farmhouse. There are barriers but these folks have no reason I can think of to lose their right to vote.

 Mom, we thought, lost her purse in Carrow's before we discovered she hid it in my son's room. She had us search a good while before she revealed her secret hiding place. She gets confused. Since she insists every important record be in the purse I was facing trying to get the all of her ID again -realizing how easy it is to be a person with no papers- and as she is now she cannot visit offices and get everything again, she'd "play a trick" and say something making it even harder.
If we were adding in years of illiteracy and deep poverty to the mix-I cannot imagine.
"Just" showing a photo ID turns out to be a difficult thing. For some of us.

Also I listened hard to what a difficulty it is for those driving these folks to the polls, especially in rural areas. So that expanse of time prior to the election matters. Having a period of time to vote of days does help. I never realized how much until it was explained here. In West Virginia I recall how important all those volunteer drivers were. I know I drove a lot of people, never knowing HOW they voted,  and each one was so far out of their experience of normal it took time and care to do this-a very slow process. It was really something where I always thought-how do you make it day to day, even to the store. Like my own grandmother. I imagine my aunt probably took her to vote, and I'm sure many times to the store-but when I visited her in Florida I was astounded how hard it was for her to get her groceries. Much less to vote. How did she do it?
The elderly truly suffer these laws.

So I'm appalled by things that make it harder to vote or those that dismissively say, "How hard is it to just show an ID?" It's just so callous.
It's awful. 

The poor so poor they have nothing to give, the rich so rich they want nothing. It sticks in my head. But I think that quote applies. When did we get to the point where we did not have the compassion to care for seeing our citizens to the polls allowing them to exercise the most important right we have.