I wonder what Cathy Engelbrecht from True the Vote would say to this 80-year old woman who just wants to cast her vote the way she has in every election before the last one.
Both times she tried, she was told there was something else, another document, another piece of proof she needed to convince the clerks that she's the woman pictured in her expired Texas driver's license.
"I just don't understand why they're trying to keep me from voting," says Troth, a former licensed vocational nurse who considers herself an independent. "To me, they're taking my rights away."
The feisty mother of seven - grandmother and great-grandmother to many more - doesn't take kindly to such things. Her ordeal started last year, when Troth says she was turned away from her voting precinct because she had only her voter registration card, not a photo ID.
Determined to vote, Troth says she had a friend of the family drive her to the DPS office that day to get a Texas ID. She presented the woman at the front desk with various forms of identification - her old driver license, her Social Security and Medicare cards - but was told she needed her birth certificate.
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Troth says the same "rude" woman was at the front desk and, this time, the woman told her the birth certificate wasn't good enough because the name on it differed from her married name.
"I told them I didn't get married out of the womb," Troth says.
The elderly widow was instructed to come back with her marriage license. And not only that. Because she lives with her other daughter, Alana Troth, that daughter would have to come in person to verify her mother's residency.
That last part is the same barrier I encountered when trying to renew my California drivers license. I produced a birth certificate and a marriage certificate but because I had no photo ID with my first married name they wanted to deny me the right to change my name. California was participating in the RealID program at the time that required drivers' licenses to align with Social Security cards.
What happened to Troth and me is something that only happens to women. Men do not have this problem. This stupid law designed to solve a non-existent problem only makes it worse.
Besides, it's a dumb idea to make a Texas granny mad. They don't cotton to snippy bureaucrats telling them they have no right to vote. As for the idiots who passed this crap law, let's hope Troth gets her ID and votes their asses out of office.
