Guess Who?
By: Kirsten—January 26th, 2011
During yesterday’s marathon voter ID hearing, Sen. Judith Zaffirini found a unique way to make a very important point about flaws in the proposed legislation.
Sen. Zaffirini produced a large-sized version of a man’s Texas driver’s license, with the personal info blocked out. She told her fellow senators this was a current license belonging to someone on the Senate floor and invited everyone to “guess who”. There were no guesses, so Sen. Zaffirini revealed the license belonged to her chief of staff, known to all the senators and seated right next to her.
The point was made: Voter ID legislation assumes voters look like their driver’s license photo, and many of us do not. In Texas, your license is good for 6 years and you can renew your license online every other time you renew. And you can renew online up to 2 years after your license expires. This means a voter could present a driver’s license up to 14 years old – and many of us looked very different that many years ago. Case in point: these Texas Republican lawmakers. Compare their official state photos (all less than 14 years old and all currently used on the State House and Senate website) to what they actually look like these days.
If you were the election judge, would you allow these people to vote if they presented the photo ID at left, while looking like the photo at right?
We have a challenge/request to the bravest among our readers. Do you look almost nothing like your current Texas driver’s license photo? Email us two digital photos: one of your license and one of you. We will submit the entries as public testimony against SB 14 when the House hears the bill, and we might post your entries on this blog, too. If you’re up for it, email those photos to yellowdog@txdemocrats.org with the subject “Voter ID Photos”. We will crop out just the driver’s license photo so your name and personal information is hidden – or you can do that before sending to us.