What It Takes

The line went down the stairs and wrapped around the library lobby, but I got through it in less than half an hour.  That was better than the two-hour wait for early voting.

I had checked in, and was waiting to get my signature verified, when I caught a snippet of a conversation going on behind me, between the lady two back, whose bad back had caused her fellow line mates to go to great lengths to find her places to sit along the queue, and one of the volunteers, who was a soccer-mom looking lady, probably in her 40s.

“They should be asking for IDs,” the lady in line said.

The volunteer gave her a gentle smile.  “Fortunately, this isn’t the South.”

“I want there to be voter ID laws everywhere,” the lady in line replied.  “There’s too much voter fraud.”

The young man two back from her shook his head and rolled his eyes.  “There’s no voter fraud.”

“Yes there is!” The lady insisted.  “When I vote today, how are they going to know it’s me?”

“They verify your signature,” the volunteer explained, obviously trying hard to keep her voice polite.

“How do they know it’s my signature and not my sister’s?” The lady pressed.

“Your signature is different from your sister’s,” the volunteer said.  Her voice was dripping with sarcasm now.

“They should be looking at our IDs,” the lady repeated.

“That’s called voter suppression,” the volunteer said.  It’s unconstitutional.”

“It’s not suppression!  Everyone has an ID!”

I finally chimed in.  “Do you know what it takes to get an ID in some states?”

The lady pretended she hadn’t heard me.

“You have to take the whole day off work, then drive half an hour to the nearest DMV,” I began.

The lady finally reacted to my words.  She scoffed as if that wasn’t a big deal.

“There are no buses,” I continued.

“There are people who will drive you,” she said smugly.

“Oh, are there?” I asked, my own voice dripping with sarcasm this time.

“Yes, there are!” She insisted.

“–and then you have to wait for eight hours,” I finished.

Her look told me that 1) she didn’t believe me, and 2) she still didn’t think that was a big deal.

I rolled my eyes at her.  “You’ve obviously never lived anywhere but suburbia,” I said, whirling around to face front.  It was almost my turn to get my signature verified.

***

September, 2005

I really couldn’t avoid it any longer.  I had a full time job in Florida–it was time to get a Florida driver’s license.  Is been meaning to get one for months, honestly, but the DMV was only open on weekdays from 8 to 5, and I was usually working.  Today was a rare day that I was working the dinner shift, though–probably my only chance for a while to get it done.

I left my apartment around noon, struggling through the sluggish traffic of the ugly, rainy day, and arrived at the DMV a good half hour later.  The squat, dated little building stood alone, surrounded by cow pastures, just off of a two-mile stretch of four-lane highway with no stop lights, no intersections, no sidewalks…a whole lot of nothing, really.

I stepped inside and was immediately transported to bureaucratic hell.  Twenty or so people were sitting around in uncomfortable plastic chairs.  The expression on their faces told me they’d been there…a while.  At the row of counters in the back, a lady occasionally leaned over a crackly microphone and called out a number.

I was at a loss.  The last time I’d been to a DMV was junior year of high school, with my mom.  There was a pleasant looking, grey haired gentleman at what looked like a check-in counter–I decided to start there.

“Hi,” I said, with a friendly smile.  “I just moved here from Illinois.  I need a new driver’s license.”

The man nodded expectantly.  “Did you make an appointment?”

“…Appointment?” I repeated.  I didn’t remember that being part of the process in Illinois.

“You make an appointment on the website,” the man explained.  “If you don’t have one, you wind up waiting… quite a lot longer.”

“…Oh,” I said.  “…I don’t have an appointment.” I looked at all the miserable faces in the sea of plastic seats.  This was going to be unfortunate.

“That’s okay!” He gave me a crinkly smile.  “Go home and make one, and come back another day.”

I ran through my work schedule in my head.  There really wouldn’t be another day in the foreseeable future.  “That’s okay.  I’ll wait.”

He gave me a pitying look.  “Sweetie, take my advice.  Go home, make an appointment, and come back another day.  Trust me.”  His tone and expression implied:  yes, the wait really will be that bad.

I headed back to my car, thoughts swirling in my mind.  Make an appointment.  How far in advance would I have to make an appointment?  There wasn’t another free day on my current schedule when the DMV would be open, and I’d have to wait until Saturday night to see the next work schedule.  What if the appointments are booked weeks out?  …I might wind up having to call in from a shift to get my new driver’s license.  I winced at the thought of the lost money and the attendance record penalties.  My budget was already precariously balanced, as it was.

Lost in thought, I began to pull out onto the highway when movement caught my eye.  A woman was standing at the exit to the parking lot, in the rain, waving me down.  About my age.  Circles under her eyes.  Obviously pregnant.  She wanted me to stop.

My mind was racing.  I was 22 and living alone in a state where I had no family and few friends (yet).  My mom would yell at me for picking up strangers on the side of the road (and did scold me for it, later).  But what danger did a pregnant woman pose to me?  In fact…she was probably in way more peril than I was.  I thought about the other unsavory faces I’d seen inside the DMV.  If I was forced to hitchhike on the side of the side of the road, I thought, I would wait for someone like me.  She’s safer with me, anyway.

I rolled down my window, a few errant raindrops splashing into the car.  “Do you need a ride somewhere?”  I asked.

“Yes!”  She said gratefully, hurrying around to the passenger side and collapsing into the seat.  “There’s a Sonic at the end of the road.  Could you take me there?”

‘The end of the road’ was a couple miles, at least, and I knew that it did dead-end at a Sonic.  “Just to Sonic?”  I asked doubtfully.

She gave me a weak smile.  “I’ve been here for three and a half hours.  I didn’t have anything to eat or drink before I came.  I had no idea it would take this long.  I’m starting to get lightheaded.”

I didn’t think lightheaded was a good way for a pregnant woman to be.  Sonic it is, I thought, turning out of the parking lot.  “I don’t want you to miss your number getting called, though.”

She laughed cynically.  “Oh, I won’t,” she said.  “They’re nowhere close.  Apparently, you have to make an appointment online, and if you don’t–”

“You have to wait forever–so I just heard,” I agreed.  The guy in the DMV hadn’t been kidding.  This lady had waited more than three hours and there was no end in sight for her?  “They told me to make an appointment and come back another day.”

“I wish I could.”  She sounded exhausted.  “I gave my shift away today so that I could do this.  I can’t afford to do that again.  Besides, I need a state ID or I can’t get insurance…and I’m going to need insurance soon.  I have to do this today, or there won’t be another time.”

There was a lot to unpack in that statement.  I cringed at the mention of giving away a shift–it looked like I would have to do the same.  It was hard enough to make ends meet without a huge chunk missing from your paycheck.  Missing a single shift could mean coming up short at the end of the month.  I imagined she probably had the same nervous butterflies about it that I usually got.

But even beyond that…I’d never gone a moment in my life without having either of those things–an ID or insurance.  I couldn’t wrap my head around someone whose norm was not having them.

“And,” the woman continued, “it’s not like I have a way to get on the internet.”

“I think they have free internet at the library,” I offered.  I actually wasn’t even sure where the library was around here.  Pretty far off the beaten path, I thought.

“I have no way of getting there,” she said, with an edge in her voice.  “The bus doesn’t go near it.”

That was likely true, wherever the library was.  Orlando might as well just not have a bus system for all of its usefulness.  I wouldn’t even be able to get to work on the bus, if I had to.

“Is that how you got here today?”  I asked, raising my eyebrows.  She nodded.  I tried to remember where I’d seen the nearest bus stop–certainly not anywhere on this highway.  I pictured this pregnant woman trudging a couple miles through the mud, in the rain, along the side of a highway with no sidewalks.  To get an ID.  To get insurance.  For her baby.

She’s trying to do everything right, I thought.  It shouldn’t be this hard.

Finally, we reached the first intersection in miles, and the Sonic stood there, an oasis in the rainy wasteland.  I pulled into the lot and she wearily got out of the car.

This doesn’t feel right, I thought.  I can’t just abandon a pregnant woman at a fast food restaurant.  I don’t know how she’ll get back.  There’s no bus here.  She would have to hitch another ride.  I don’t want her to miss her number.

“…Do you want me to wait for you?”  I called out the window uncertainly.

She shook her head.  “That would be weird.  I’ve already asked too much of you.  But…thank you.  Seriously.”  She looked at me for a moment with absolute, weary sincerity, then turned and trudged into Sonic.

***

A lot has changed since 2005, obviously.  I understand that they did away with the online appointment thing, but even if they hadn’t, in this day and age, most people have smart phones. Of course, despite the fact that it’s well-nigh impossible to navigate in the 21st century without a phone number, the fact that they literally don’t make non-smart phones any more, and the fact that you can buy a no-frills smart phone for about $30 nowadays… If you’re a person of limited means, and you have a smart phone, people will make judgements.  Like, maybe your means aren’t so limited.  Like, maybe whatever aid you may be getting from our social safety net is undeserved.  It flies in the face of reality, but it’s a real stigma… And a discussion for another time.

Ride sharing wasn’t a thing in 2005, either.  That doesn’t mean my temporary passenger could have called an Uber.  A ride to and from the DMV (or my polling place, for that matter) from my apartment, I figure, would have cost me most of a day’s take-home pay at the minimum wage I was making in 2005 (and minimum wage has barely changed since).  A copay for a doctor’s visit would have sometimes put me in the red, back then.  An Uber would have been a luxury I couldn’t justify.  Uber and Lyft will now give you a free ride to the polls; for legal reasons, they cannot give you a free ride home as well, though.

Of course, some things have stayed the same since 2005…or gotten worse.  Most DMVs continue to stubbornly only open their doors when most people have to work, and huge chunks of America don’t get any paid time off.  I looked into that lady’s claim that you can get a free ride to the DMV, and that appears to depend on where you live, as it can vary even county by county within a state, depending on how much they want to make it look like they care that you vote.  In South Carolina, when they enacted their voter ID law in 2011, it appears they offered free shuttle service to the DMV… for a single day.  Perhaps there are charitable organizations that offer this service?  If there are, I had trouble finding them, and I have unlimited access to the internet.

Of course, that’s only if you have the necessary documentation, like a copy of your birth certificate, or a fixed address.  If you don’t have a birth certificate, you can get a copy from the state… for a fee.  Not to mention the voter ID law in North Dakota that has PO-Box using native Americans scrambling to be assigned an address so that they’re allowed to exercise their voting rights.

Meanwhile, that woman’s arduous quest to get an ID all those years ago is becoming voter reality for many people.  Do you know how many voting precincts they’ve eliminated in Georgia?  How many hours people there are waiting in line to vote?

So, yeah, whenever somebody glibly states that there should be voter ID laws everywhere, I get upset, because clearly, there are no hoops THEY would have to jump through; no hardships it would cause THEM, to meet that requirement.  Whenever someone casually states that they’re not going to vote because all the candidates are equally bad, I get upset, because clearly, they don’t realize what a privilege it is to be able to say that.

Whenever someone elicits a dismissive opinion on the matter from their position of relative comfort, I can’t help but imagine some pregnant woman, somewhere.  Losing a day’s pay.  Jumping on the bus.  Walking through the mud, in the rain.  Waiting for hours.  To get an ID.  To go vote.

It SHOULD be easy.  It’s not.