We talked about how shameful it is that conservative elected leaders in Tennessee are working hard to deny this person the right to vote:
Dorothy Cooper is 96 but she can remember only one election when she’s been eligible to vote but hasn’t. The retired domestic worker was born in a small North Georgia town before women had the right to vote. She began casting ballots in her 20s after moving to Chattanooga for work. She missed voting for John F. Kennedy in 1960 because a move to Nashville prevented her from registering in time. So when she learned last month at a community meeting that under a new state law she’d need a photo ID to vote next year, she talked with a volunteer about how to get to a state Driver Service Center to get her free ID. But when she got there Monday with an envelope full of documents, a clerk denied her request.
She just wants to be able to vote. In her decades of going to the polls, “I never had any problems,” she said, not even before the Voting Rights Act passed in the 1960s. In her 50-plus years working for the same family, she never learned to drive so she never needed a license. She retired in 1993 and returned to Chattanooga from Nashville. Now, on occasion, one of her bank’s tellers or a grocery store clerk will ask for photo ID when she writes or cashes a check, Cooper said. “I’ve been banking at SunTrust for a long time,” she said. “Sometimes they’ll say, well, do you have a Social Security card?” And she shows it to them. She also has a photo ID issued by the Chattanooga Police Department to all seniors who live in the Boynton Terrace public housing complex, but that won’t qualify for voting.
And we talked about how democracy enthusiasts in Tennessee were fighting back:
In Nashville on Tuesday afternoon, a coalition of organizations announced an effort to repeal the law. Groups such as the ACLU of Tennessee, various chapters of the NAACP, the AFL-CIO and Tennessee Citizen Action announced a petition drive and get-out-the-vote effort.
“This is a nonpartisan issue. It’s a fair voting issue,” said Mary Mancini, executive director of Citizen Action, in a phone interview. “It’s all about the legislators seeing that the people of Tennessee don’t want this law.”
Mary Mancini sent us a thank you:
Thank you so much for covering the story of Dorothy Cooper. It’s funny, I had a call from the Lt. Governor’s office to tell me that the state Dept. of Safety was bending over backwards to help Ms. Cooper and that she would get her ID. I told them that was great but there are thousands of Mrs. Cooper’s across the state and then asked, what’s being done about them? There was a very long pause on other end of the phone.
Tennessee Citizen Action and other groups have formed a coalition and are getting signatures on a petition to repeal. More info is at http://www.tnca.org
Thank you again for your coverage of this issue.
Mary
Mary Mancini
Executive Director, Tennessee Citizen Action
If you’re in Tennessee and are a supporter of the traditional US view that Dorothy Cooper holds, and you believe eligible citizens have a right to vote whether they have a driver’s license or not, here is where you can go to help to restore that old-fashioned idea in Tennessee.
Andy Hall
I guess this “Dorothy Cooper” person also expects the taxpayers to support her through Social Security and Medicare, too.
Get a job, you lazy oldster!
Dee Loralei
Signed and tweeted, Kay thanks. I’ve book marked if on my phone, so I can hand it out when I make it to the Occupy Memphis rally later this week.
kay
@Dee Loralei:
Good. There were repeal 194 petitioners (Ohio’s voter suppression law) at Occupy Toledo, and they fit right in.
El Cid
__
‘You mean, we’re supposed to do something about them, too? Where’s this gonna end? You people. No, I didn’t mean ‘you people,’ I meant, um, you know…’
jwest
Although the worker at the Driver Service Center was a bit too anal about seeing whatever documents are required, they didn’t exactly use a fire hose or turn the dogs loose on her.
And can we all agree that, most likely, the worker in question probably votes democrat?
Dorothy may have been slightly inconvenienced, but she can sleep better knowing that because of this law her vote will not be diluted or negated by someone who doesn’t have the right to vote.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@jwest: You really need to eat a nice big bag of salted dicks, white boy.
NonyNony
@jwest:
What happened to you man? Your schtick used to be much less obvious.
I’m worried about you jwest. You’re really off your game today. I hope you’re not getting sick.
Mnemosyne
@jwest:
Given that there are NO ID requirements to vote absentee (which was what the worker advised her to do since she didn’t have an ID), I’m not sure how you think making her vote in a way that requires NO ID is better than one that requires an ID.
I mean, if you’re so desperately worried about voter fraud, shouldn’t we be cracking down on absentee ballots and making sure that the people filling them out are actually the people they were sent to?
kay
@jwest:
No. You’re wrong. That’s misinformation. You were lied to.
Let me tell you about the laws of the country that you live in. Voter ID laws were (ostensibly) designed to combat ONE problem; “voter impersonation fraud”. That’s where a voter would enter a polling place and impersonate another lawfully registered voter.
Think about that. Think thru voting process, all by yourself. The fraudulent voter would enter the polling place, sign the book as another voter, risking that the voter he is impersonating has already voted, or is standing next to him. It’s a felony.
We already have laws (one of them a federal law, HAVA) that compel states to put in a process where voters have to prove they are who they say they are at registration. It makes much more sense to verify identity at registration because Bds of Elections have databases they can cross with their own, and they have time before the election to do that.
Voting and registration are not the same thing, despite what you have been told by both the WSJ and Fox News.
kay
@jwest:
jwest, why do we register voters in the US? Why do we do that?
NonyNony
@kay:
kay, I appreciate that you’re trying to debate in good faith with jwest, but jwest doesn’t argue in good faith. Read what he wrote there again – he’s just trolling. And pretty obviously too “she can sleep better knowing that because of this law her vote will not be diluted or negated by someone who doesn’t have the right to vote.” Seriously? That’s like something a liberal would say to mock a conservative, not something a real human being would say.
He’s just trolling. At best he’s a well-crafted sockpuppet for one of the regular around here. At worst he’s just a typical troll who is getting bored with his schtick (and seriously – he’s had some weak tea today with his posts. I’m only slightly kidding when I say above that I’m worried that he’s getting sick – he usually manages to make his “conservative voice” sound a bit more realistic than he has today).
Mnemosyne
@kay:
Don’t forget, kay, if you’re denied your Constitutional rights by a faceless bureaucrat who doesn’t have you beaten on the spot, it’s not racism.
That’s really what jwest’s argument is.
kay
@NonyNony:
The stupidity of believing in “voter impersonation fraud” just kills me. It doesn’t make any sense, and it’s never made any sense.
I listen to media and I’m like, “don’t any of these people vote?”
Can they not just think this through all by themselves?
danimal
@jwest:
No, you simplistic idiot. True, there are more Dems in public service, but it is nowhere near unanimity. Besides, civil servants are trained to uphold the law for all citizens, regardless of their personal views. That’s why we have a civil service. It’s also why these right-wing governors are trying to privatize critical public sector jobs, so they are beholden to the governor, and not to the citizens of the state.
And the GOP is really pissing off conservative public service workers with their broad brush attacks on government workers’ wages and retirement plans. Keep up the stupid politics, right-winger.
/end rant
NonyNony
@kay:
Oh I know. Trust me – I’ve been down this road with conservative family members before who are absolutely certain that illegal immigrants are lying their way into polling places to vote. And therefore we need photo ids.
When I point out that this is about the dumbest thing anyone can do ever, they come back with examples of voter registration fraud. Which is of course NOT the same and could be easily solved by registering EVERYONE who has a social security number. Problem solved – you have an SSN you’re registered. No extra steps needed. Somehow this solution never seems to work for them…
Paul in KY
I don’t understand why anyone would respond to the dick named ‘jwest’. I might have myself, but only to mock it, never to try and reason with that entity.
giltay
In Canada, you can register at the polling station on election night, and if you don’t have ID, you can swear an oath as to your identity and residence if you can get a neighbour in your polling district to confirm. We do not have any significant voter registration fraud.
PS: This is, like, the third comments thread that jwest has derailed today. Can’t we all just pie him/her and move on (to the next troll)?
PurpleGirl
@jwest: I sincerely hope that you have something like Ms. Cooper’s experience happen to you when you’re 96…
PurpleGirl
Whatever happened to that fraud case against Ann Coulter in Florida? And why didn’t Connecticut prosecute her for two instances of voting in Connecticut when she lived in NY? Or is voter fraud Okay If You’re A Republican?
Dinah
Followed the link, found the organization opposing this. Signed its petition and made a fair-sized contribution. Many thanks to jwest for the inspiration. Hope that others will look upon his comments as a call to action.