Brentin Mock,
contributor to the Nation, spoke with voting-rights "evangelist" Faye
Anderson, who said that the focus of the voter-registration movement
should be re-evaluated. Instead of concentrating on registering elderly
persons, Mock argues, the movement should target middle-aged women
without driver's licenses.
"Advocates
have done themselves a disservice by bringing up these 80- and
90-year-old voters. Those are not the votes who are disproportionately
impacted by voter ID laws," said Anderson in a phone interview. "As an
advocate you want to influence public opinion and you’re not
influencing them if you are putting up the faces of 80- and 90-year-old
voters."
Elderly
voters losing out on voter participation is a very real thing, as
evidenced recently in Wisconsin. But instead, she says advocates should
be focused on voters who resemble her: A middle-aged New York
transplant living in Philadelphia, who commutes up and down the East
Coast, traveling without a driver’s license. Like many New Yorkers,
Anderson doesn’t drive so she doesn’t need one. She has a non-driver’s
photo identification from New York, and other than that she has a
passport. It wasn’t easy getting a New York ID, Anderson told me, and
she’s concerned chiefly with women like her who might also have
troubles getting the ID they need to vote, especially if they’ve been
recently married, divorced or if they’ve moved, all of which could lead
to name and address mismatches on Election Day.
The
new Pennsylvania photo voter ID law is "disenfranchising by
design to make voters jump through all these hoops," said Anderson.
"It’s unreasonable that women, with all that’s going on in their lives,
will then have time to sit down and Google ‘where do I get my birth
certificate,’ ‘where do I find my marriage certificate,’ ‘where to find
the closest social security office,’ the hours they’re open, how to get
there, and once there do they have all the documents they need."
