Reply #147: A few years ago I took my mother to get a state id card [View All]

[dflprincess]

I was having a fit of paranoia that ids would be required to vote.

So, the old one is in her 80s and showed up at the DMV with a copy of her birth certificate and a copy of her marriage license. The clerk, who was very young, was completely thrown by her birth certificate because it happened to be a copy she had picked up in 1942 and it was TYPED. The clerk at the next station (more my age) leaned over, looked at the certificate and said "It's good - there's the county seal. That's how they used to do 'em."

Next, he was thrown my her marriage certificate (issued 1946), I was afraid we'd have trouble with this because her middle name has an extra letter in it that isn't on the birth certificate. He shows this to the older clerk who said - "They were always doing things like that back then. It's just a typo, don't worry about. " But, the young one wasn't satisfied, he pointed out that nothing on the certificate said what last name my mother would use after she was married. To which the older clerk said "It was 1946 - it was a given she'd use her husband's name."

Finally the kid stamps all the new documents, takes the Mom's picture for her id and tells her what the cost is. She was going to write a check, but he told her he couldn't take that because she didn't have a photo id (I swear to God, he said that) - fortunately she had cash.

So, my point is, even with the correct documents, we could have had a fight getting the id because a younger clerk wasn't familiar with how older documents looked or what social customs assumed was necessary on them.