That’s the rub. It is not convenient at all here to get ID. The joke universally understood here is that the DMV (the place where the vast majority get their ID) is the worst run, least efficient government body, taking hours to days to navigate.
Add to this that getting to and from the DMV is mostly car dependent. If you’re extremely lucky, you live in NYC that has good* public transportation. If you’re regular lucky, you live in a large city with a very unreliable bus system that might come by your stop once an hour. Going to the DMV becomes a day long chore. If you’re not lucky, you live in a rural area where the DMV is miles away from where you live, underfunded, and understaffed. If you don’t have car (elderly? disabled?) or you’re too busy to make it during business hours (can’t take off work? tough shit) you’ll be out of luck.
And none of this is to say that it is easy to acquire the ID once (if) you arrive. You need various forms of paperwork that may or may not be readily available to you. Sometimes you have to get paperwork from other government bodies, which are also cumbersome. Also the backlogs. In my state, the backlog for driver license renewal is months long.
To summarize: nothing is really made for convenience here as it concerns voting. Decades of Republican sabotage has put as many obstacles in place to make voting (and registering to vote) difficult as possible. Even getting ID is cumbersome and relies on being healthy enough and well-off enough to be able to afford the trouble of getting it.
That’s the rub. It is not convenient at all here to get ID. The joke universally understood here is that the DMV (the place where the vast majority get their ID) is the worst run, least efficient government body, taking hours to days to navigate.
Add to this that getting to and from the DMV is mostly car dependent. If you’re extremely lucky, you live in NYC that has good* public transportation. If you’re regular lucky, you live in a large city with a very unreliable bus system that might come by your stop once an hour. Going to the DMV becomes a day long chore. If you’re not lucky, you live in a rural area where the DMV is miles away from where you live, underfunded, and understaffed. If you don’t have car (elderly? disabled?) or you’re too busy to make it during business hours (can’t take off work? tough shit) you’ll be out of luck.
And none of this is to say that it is easy to acquire the ID once (if) you arrive. You need various forms of paperwork that may or may not be readily available to you. Sometimes you have to get paperwork from other government bodies, which are also cumbersome. Also the backlogs. In my state, the backlog for driver license renewal is months long.
To summarize: nothing is really made for convenience here as it concerns voting. Decades of Republican sabotage has put as many obstacles in place to make voting (and registering to vote) difficult as possible. Even getting ID is cumbersome and relies on being healthy enough and well-off enough to be able to afford the trouble of getting it.