Charly recently raised a question that on the surface seems reasonable, but when applied to ameriKKKa, becomes a bit of a mess.  Why is there a problem with requiring ID to vote here?  Wasn’t that already required?

It depends on a lot.  I don’t recall specifically presenting my ID to vote, maybe once at an in-person location a few decades ago?  You have the option of registering to vote any time you renew your photo ID or driver’s license, and I think also when you submit a change of address at the post office.  I’ve been doing mail ballots for ages now.

But this is a state that isn’t powerfully motivated to suppress voter will, unlike the rethuglican political establishments of the Southeast, where black people are often a majority in urban centers.  In those states, ID requirements are a very useful tool of voter suppression, precisely because on the face of it, they’re a reasonable requirement.  The trick is how difficult it has become to obtain and maintain a photo ID.

ID requirements are also a great tool for kicking the poor off of social benefits, of keeping them homeless or imprisoned, of getting them to die from preventable health conditions.  The closer you live to the ground here, the more likely you are to be evicted and lose all of your possessions.  To be incarcerated and have your wallet “lost” in the process.  Old folks and people with vices are easy to rob.  At the level of the homeless, they tend to have their every last possession stolen at least once a year, by other homeless people or by corrupt cops.

Over-policed populations like people of color, lgbtetc people, the poor, the homeless, can be arrested at higher rates and lose their rights and possessions that way.  If your ID expires in prison, good luck getting it renewed when you get out.

At the federal level, “Real ID” (a creation of the fascist Patriot Act) or a passport is required for air travel and a few other circumstances.  States can require it for a lot more than that, at their discretion, including voting.  To get one of those, you need your social security card, birth certificate, a mailing address, and more.

Mailing address is tougher than you’d think.  Poor people get priced out of their circumstances often enough that we move a lot.  I’ve moved well over a dozen times in my adult life; some move every few months.  To get my birth certificate took three months.  What if I didn’t have the money to pay for it?  Very few parts of this process are free.

There’s a lot more that could be said on these things but I don’t have much time these days for research.  Some amount I know of due to my job, but I can’t elaborate on that.  I wonder sometimes if the sheer size of this country makes it harder to administer than Europe, even if the colonial linguistic hegemony makes many things easier.  Certainly the lack of political will to properly fund the government is a problem.

If you live in the USA and you have all your papers in a row, keep them in a safe place, as much as that’s possible.  If you don’t have all your papers, get crackin’ whenever you’ve got a stable circumstance, because you never know when you’ll lose that, and potentially lose much more.

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Oh yeah, I named this article before I wrote it.  What’s with the title?  I thought I was going to get into this more.  You may have heard people use the phrase “legal name” as if there is one definitive database where these things are kept.  There isn’t, and even where there is, you might be surprised by what’s filling out the fields on those computer screens.

Did you remember to update your citizenship when you got it?  Your name when you got married?  Divorced?  Did you do it with just the court, the DMV, Social Security, or all three?  What about your passport, if you have one?  Department of Education for your student loans?  The IRS?  All of these agencies could have different names on file for you.  Maybe even different dates of birth or places of birth, due to typos.  If DE for Germany was mistakenly entered in a state of birth field, congrats, you were born in Delaware.  That doesn’t automatically make you a citizen because that’s a separate field that could say anything as well.

That’s probably the most important thing of all now – consistency.  Government computers have become more integrated in recent years and people who never had a problem from these inconsistencies in decades of life are suddenly having problems with them now – couldn’t file taxes, couldn’t fill a prescription, couldn’t vote.  Make sure your biographical details are accurate.  Pick a name and go with it, and make sure all of the agencies have all of your names in all the right fields – first, middle, last, suffix.  Honestly suffixes can be more trouble than they’re worth, might consider losing that.  Some computers have a separate field for it, some just tack it onto the last name, and if they disagree you could find yourself locked out of something.  Whatever you do though, do it consistently, because this is not automatically done for you.

Legal name evokes the old magical idea of a “true name.”  Who are you?  Your name is words that, like all others, are trying to simplify a reality that can be much more complex than syllables can convey.  Even your own country may, in important ways, have no idea who you are.  Fascism’s trying to fix that for you.  Thanks?

Financial institutions and government have relied on Social Security Number to verify people’s identity for a long time, but with leak after hack after leak, practically every SSN that exists is compromised.  Hell, does DOGE still have read access to the Social Security Administration and Department of Treasury?  I’ve heard they have been reduced in prominence, but never heard anything concrete about them being shut out of the access they were initially granted.

But fuck all that.  Maybe we should have code names known only to our favorite people.  Or is that what internet handles are?  Boochie Flagrante and Buttfucker3000 are truer names than any birth certificate can contain, I say.  Power on, comrades.

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