[EL] Disenfranchised?

Fri Apr 14 08:54:44 PDT 2017

Message from Ari Berman (who is not on the listserv but who got forwarded some of the posts by a list member):

My mom doesn’t know if my grandmother still had a copy of her naturalization papers (they’re traveling now and her papers are somewhere in a box in Iowa). But even if she did, the naturalization papers would’ve had her maiden name, not the married name she used on her Medicare card & all other documents, which would’ve posed an additional problem for obtaining a voter ID. The point of my story was that she did not possess any of the forms of ID now required by Iowa to vote.

From: "Smith, Brad" <BSmith at law.capital.edu>
Date: Friday, April 14, 2017 at 4:54 AM
To: Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu>, Election Law Listserv <law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: Disenfranchised?

Would Ari Berman's mother really have been "disenfranchised" by the voter ID law advancing in Iowa? Since his mother voted, she presumably was a U.S. citizen. Since, as Berman explains, she was a U.S. citizen by naturalization, she would have naturalization papers. A resident of Iowa may obtain an Iowa non-operator ID by presenting naturalization papers.

Bradley A. Smith

Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault

   Professor of Law

Capital University Law School

303 E. Broad St.

Columbus, OH 43215

614.236.6317

http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx

________________________________
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] on behalf of Rick Hasen [rhasen at law.uci.edu]
Sent: Friday, April 14, 2017 12:05 AM
To: Election Law Listserv
Subject: [EL] ELB News and Commentary 4/14/17

“Iowa’s New Voter-ID Law Would Have Disenfranchised My Grandmother”<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http://electionlawblog.org/%3fp%3d92105&c=E,1,C9OAPqCKAeuoTXE_mGBWWArfcsI_76elRWG2P7qcZhoeY0QNPM2Ve6KZzFGXM0e5bkV1HktGfG9eIDYpjPR21xOOoY6LR-C4drh_16jkgw,,&typo=1>
Posted on April 13, 2017 8:42 pm<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http://electionlawblog.org/%3fp%3d92105&c=E,1,VnCEQ3mCsZCCznHbcEfii25IY-6p2jt_JNCPbS9-kx39oQvRyZ05hD8i2WhWppYg-r_-OpcBR13rLq3m627RjgZg22D4y-g2wuQYcuL9JPNRRKAhwCqPfr8,&typo=1> by Rick Hasen<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http://electionlawblog.org/%3fauthor%3d3&c=E,1,AD3FMWkZ_opU-kOi7HchsPP4PPAl2j_6lRTHpYTatZ1B2BaTgx6LhkkLv3nunE7UeKaxdgBVIPIB5guKTrdo-yFEAfZ1ZmXnNTiyUZjK8Ih_NHG-Yliv&typo=1>
Ari Berman<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https://www.thenation.com/article/iowas-new-voter-id-law-would-have-disenfranchised-my-grandmother/&c=E,1,H8Qusc_Z_TMks7CEzwpIcMVZrL0ZvjUjWjBGc5QnqxvnNN9qpqzWj_ofqpTIjYA0duU9eapZ1U4eIb_viXWUeBN2f8Qsd9RKYfiAUq50_A,,&typo=1> for The Nation:
My grandmother Sylvia moved from Brooklyn to Iowa when she was 89 years old. It was a culture shock, to say the least. When my mom took her to vote, she complained of the candidates, “There isn’t anybody who’s Jewish!”
I thought of my grandmother, who passed away in 2005 at 99, when the Iowa Legislature passed a strict voter-ID law<https://twitter.com/desmoinesdem/status/852563709536948224> today. She didn’t have a driver’s license because she never drove (she’d frequently walk two miles from her apartment to the grocery store). Her passport expired long ago. She never had a US birth certificate because she was born in Poland and fled the Holocaust. She used her Medicare card as identification. She didn’t possess any of the forms of government-issued photo identification that Iowa will soon require to vote.
The ACLU of Iowa reports that 11 percent<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https://www.aclu-ia.org/en/news/paul-pates-voter-id-bill-would-disenfranchise-thousands&c=E,1,F1-C0_f3nZI6mikvKtekrDHg05zRlj4hZMHBOwK3fDthAb98cstWgsXinQfw5Ci7Bf47d1SfKiO_wG4sfjphu4UNWWhBuWrcDR_AVJ3v0c6ryRalqsg,&typo=1> of eligible Iowa voters—260,000 people—don’t have a driver’s license or non-operator ID, according to the US Census and the Iowa Department of Transportation, and could be disenfranchised by the bill. My grandmother, if she were still alive today, would have been one of them.
[are]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D92105&title=%E2%80%9CIowa%E2%80%99s%20New%20Voter-ID%20Law%20Would%20Have%20Disenfranchised%20My%20Grandmother%E2%80%9D>
Posted in election administration<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http://electionlawblog.org/%3fcat%3d18&c=E,1,6qt50-zEJUrKUqay1YsX0SdjxKrg_UirZuJ5MS3SW3_nsZDIZ0V5Ue_BvMl1Jnt8w0s9E-xr-Rf3xwoZ72EjuNgxo9Pzj-3sjPUJNgPAH-7yzXEUgd5P&typo=1>, The Voting Wars<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http://electionlawblog.org/%3fcat%3d60&c=E,1,VExGirTTZjDLhTjtE992whiGfmPuaJom-T0JQbHuevYyCTdH0XUhpSCpZLotC73A4SDGIYGCCjAbh1nuHhJI8wwO5-w2pqDM1IBHrdriIOlvVM60eEE124y2ZA,,&typo=1>

p://electionlawblog.org<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http://electionlawblog.org/&c=E,1,7gaHX-BQW9Vrb3Uxxaeybky5_oJIyRVvq193iFmHsmQKB9Vpu9Erc6H_M0PpiAMlQLR8pIxGUJ9wbNknJAvpXqdsDA5J4qRasN5KFQU,&typo=1>
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