Black woman in rural Texas unable to vote, advocates say system is unfair

[MissMillie]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/black-woman-in-rural-texas-unable-to-vote-advocates-say-system-is-unfair/ar-AAP93t7?li=BB141NW3&ocid=U483DHP

Like many Black elders in the South, Hicks was born with the help of a midwife, at a time when records weren't kept. She never had a birth certificate. Her daughter, Jonita White, has helped her apply for one. The pair battled in court over the issue. A judge even ruled in their favor. Still, they said the Office of Vital Statistics has rejected Hicks on a technicality.

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I'll bet this situation is more common than incidents of voter fraud.

[Walleye]

1. Much more common. They hope to wear people down so they just give up.old racist tactic

[walkingman]

2. Disgusting!

[Farmer-Rick]

3. Here in the TN Smokey Mountains

Most of the people who have no birth certificates are white, rural, poor, who grew up in a log cabin in the mountains. They are easily manipulated into voting for GOPers.

They passed similar voting laws here in TN and just alienated their own voters. But they are poor so GOPers don't care.

[StarfishSaver]

4. This happens all the time

[mountain grammy]

5. My husband's 96 year old aunt is white..

She had the same problem in El Paso, where she's lived since in her 20's. She's always been active with local Dems and worked on Beto's campaigns. She doesn't have a birth certificate which was never a problem until a few years ago when the state of Texas questioned her citizenship. She managed to resolve everything, but it's not for nothing that Democrats are marginalized in that rotten, stinking state.

[SheLiberal]

6. It is very common

I have a family member that works in that office and it happens often. In Jim Crow Texas some counties would not allow African Americans to register their births, so no record. It is very difficult to get all the paperwork required, some of the vital statistics office staff have complained but they are told they have to follow the law. We know the law was written to make it difficult for people of color to vote.

[Tommymac]

7. Thanks for sharing!

Welcome to DU!

[calimary]

13. Welcome to DU, SheLiberal!

How convenient. The law should be there for the general health and welfare and the greater good, NOT as some construct to hide behind so you can obstruct or defeat those goals.

[Lonestarblue]

8. A lot of older Hispanics also were born at home and have no birth certificate.

They, too, have trouble proving they were born in the US, even though many of their ancestors were here long before Texas even became a state. White Texans like to forget that Texas was a part of Mexico and that the Hispanics living here became US citizens the minute Texas became a state.

[marble falls]

9. By a factor of 1000. If she were white, they'd have accepted a family Bible entry of her birth and .

baptism.

[RobinA]

16. Nope

This is not a race issue. I was a social worker during which part of my job was to get these vital papers for people. It can be very difficult when people have been under the radar most of their lives or when they don't know information that it is commonly believed "everybody knows." Naturalization papers are the worst, but birth certificates and SS cards are also tough. You have to have the right IDs or Sayonara. No family Bibles or other informal proofs, it doesn't much matter who you are.

The best thing would be for a get-out-the-vote effort to start NOW in areas where there are a lot of people in this fix. Get volunteers who have some knowledge of a state's requirements and a high frustration tolerance to start working on getting these people ID NOW. They will be dealing with a bureaucracy who loves to pick nits as well as would-be voters, many of whom, frankly, aren't used to doing things in a systematic way. It can be done.

[DFW]

10. It's incidents like this that permit Republican voter fraud

The less "real" people there are, the less opposition they have to worry about.

[AllaN01Bear]

11. no taxation wo represntation.

[moose65]

12. It IS common

Having all this paperwork to "prove" who you are is a relatively recent thing. I can't help but think of my own grandmother, who passed away in 2012 at the age of 92. She was born in 1920 in rural NC, at home. No birth certificate, because they really didn't exist at that time - all they had was a name written in a Bible, and later her name showed up in census records.

People like this lady, who were either born at home or in a "Colored Hospital" as they were referred to back then, fall into the same boat. Many of those hospitals later closed or burned down, and the records were lost. People in rural areas were often born at home well into the 1940's and even 1950's in a lot of cases. This stuff isn't ancient history.

It would be a good idea if all of these voter ID laws would exempt people born before the Voting Rights Act in 1965 from these onerous requirements. Of course, that's a feature of these laws, not a bug!

[RobinA]

17. The Worst Of It

started with 9/11. I'm not sure if the hijackers had fake IDs or what, but now the way is that no one is getting an official document without 10 kinds of ID, five of them with pictures.

[Retrograde]

14. What is it about Texas?

Being born at home doesn't necessarily mean that you can't get your birth registered. My parents were both born at home in New York state in the early 1920s (being born in a hospital was still a new-fangled thing in their economic range) and they both had official birth certificates.

There are ways for people to establish their identities, using church baptismal records or the equivalent, or testimony from people who remember them from early childhood, or school records - but it seems that Texas is just ignoring these and sticking to the absolute letter of the law despite legal rulings. Maybe she should get an NRA membership card and use that as an ID.

[RobinA]

18. My State Is PA

and no baptismal record would fly here. It's got to be government issued. They will take utility bills as a proof of address for benefits

My Grandmother, born in 1910 at home, had an official birth certificate with what at one time was a raised seal.

[rdking647]

15. id love to see a judge declare that any election in that county is invalid

[halfulglas]

19. I was born at home during World War II.

But I was delivered by a doctor, so he apparently registered my birth with the state, so when I needed the birth certificate as a teenager it was available. But my grandmother came from Poland at 16. She became a citizen which wasn't such an arduous process in the very early 1900's, got married, had children, collected Social Security, etc. but never voted. Comes 1960 she wanted to vote for JFK and on trying to register to vote they wanted to see her citizenship papers. Well, in all the moves she had made over the years, she couldn't find them. She tried to tell them she has lived in this country for 60 years and been a citizen for almost as long, but they insisted. She was so insulted she said she would never even try to vote again.

[JustAnotherGen]

20. It's by design

My grandparents paid taxes to the Fed and Alabama as a married couple for 60 years (20's to 80's).

They paid for services, hospitals, records offices, etc. etc. that they were not allowed to use.

So my grandma had 9 out of 10 births at home. My Uncle Otis' and dad's record of birth were good enough for them to fight in Korea and Vietnam - but not good enough to vote.

I hope folks understand why I'm a strong proponent of reparations via the tax code.

[Trueblue1968]

21. YEAH THERE ARE VOTING IRREGULARITIES ALL RIGHT ... all over the US especially in the South

all over the US especially in the South (RED STATES !!)