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Comment by 0x457

1 day ago

Real ID is/was needed because every state has different requirements to get one.

The whole debate is hilarious, you need one or two extra documents to get RealID. The exact same amount of time and trips to DMV.

The fact that Real ID was introduced when I was in college and has been pushed back every year since shows that we don't actually need it.

  • That's because many Americans are against national ID at all cost for some reason. The very same Americans think that immigrants need to have their "I'm legal" folder with them at all times.

    • What are the practical benefits we're supposed to get from the RealID system? All I've ever heard is "national security" which is the excuse for every harmful thing.

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    • > The very same Americans think that immigrants ...

      Only half of the opposition to federal IDs comes from the right wing people who are hand wringing about ""The Mark of the Beast"" while saying that immigrants need to identify themselves. The other half of the opposition to federal IDs comes from the left who insist that federal IDs are a conspiracy to stop poor people from voting. This is a bipartisan issue, but you only acknowledged one half.

    • Blatant strawman. I'm a concrete counterexample if you insist on having one. The federal government should not have any involvement in routine photo ID. If that makes certain things difficult I see that as a feature, not a bug.

Major points are also missed. The fee is enabled at the federal law level: 49 U.S.C. § 114 & 49 U.S.C. § 44901

I had the option to get a "Real ID" the last time I renewed my driver's license, and did not. I forget which stupid bit of paper gave me trouble, but I had a valid passport (the Mother of All IDs), which was both insufficient to get a "Real ID" and sufficient to fly. It's a joke, a nuisance, and now a revenue source.

A general reminder that every extra obstacle to getting a valid ID (or voting) disproportionately impacts the poor. They often lack the paperwork, the free time, and the money to deal with the extra process involved.

  • Absolutely. With Real ID, the biggest pain for a lot of people is proof of residency.

    Rich people just print out some combination of a bank statement, a pay stub, and a copy of their mortgage or lease or the electric bill, but poor people may not have much of that. Think of someone staying with family and getting paid by a gig economy job to a Cash App card or just working under the table/doing odd jobs.

    Once you start with less common documents, there seem to be more arcane rules, and the documents poor people do have often don’t quite fit the rules that were basically written around what people middle class and up are likely to have.

    • You need two documents for proof. It's really not that hard. Poor that can't produce these documents probably can't afford a plane ticket either, so how is it a problem? Y'all have some weird ideas about how poor people are incapable of have two pieces of paper that have: 1) their name 2) their address

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