Why I oppose photo ID requirements for voting

“General Glass, Clegg speaking,” was how my grandfather answered his phone at work. I know, because he sometimes brought my sister and me along during our summer vacations, and I remember thinking it was strange.

Because “Clegg” wasn’t his first name.

As far as I knew, his name was Otis. My grandmother called him Otis. His brother and sister called him Otis. Everyone I knew called him either Otis or *Uncle* Otis. So why did he say his name was Clegg? I asked him about that one time.

He explained, “Because the military messed up my birth certificate.” I don’t remember if that was it, or if there was some fuller explanation, but it satisfied my curiosity, and I didn’t think too much about it after that.

But it came up when he passed away in 2017. All his personal records from 1948 onward list him as Clegg Langley. His driver’s licenses, his military awards -- everything. In his warrant officer packet from 1968, “Otis Clegg Langley” is listed as an alias, but as far as the military was concerned, his official name seems to have been Clegg (NMN) Langley. (NMN meaning “No Middle Name”)
I have wondered why -- for the last 70 years of his life -- my grandfather was content to live his life by a different name than the one he was given. My only guess is that, for him, fixing it would have been more trouble than it was worth.

It was his business, I suppose, but the issue has stayed with me. The funeral home obituary listed him as Clegg “Otis” Langley, as though "Otis" was just some weird nickname he’d picked out at random one day. Even now, as he rests, he lies under a grave marker that puts his middle name first. I feel kind of bad about that, even if he didn’t.
It’s a situation that was a lot more common in previous generations. My grandfather was born in 1927 -– in Michel Martin's words, “a time when there was not a lot of attention paid to these sort of details.” Yet it has recently become an issue as states have tightened voter identification requirements in the past decade.

For example, Wisconsin resident Ruthelle Frank (née Wedepohl) had her maiden name misspelled on her birth certificate, but she never really needed to correct things until Wisconsin changed its voter identification laws in 2011. At that point, the steps required to correct the issue were cost prohibitive for a person on her income. After decades of being able to vote, she suddenly found herself ineligible.

With support from the ACLU, her case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 (Frank v. Walker). Unfortunately, the majority sided with the state, and Wisconsin’s restrictive law remained intact.

Ruthelle Frank died a year later – in the same year and at the same age as my grandfather – having been unable to exercise the right she’d had since 1948.

Ruthelle Frank was hardly alone -- nearly three million Americans were in the same predicament as of 2012. As an NPR article explained, those on the outskirts of society “never had birth certificates to begin with, and if they did … their names were incorrectly put onto these documents. And if that's the case, then you're not going to get an ID. They will not accept discrepancies between your birth certificate and other forms of ID that you may have, like a Social Security card and those kinds of things.”

For a person like me, the situation is hard to imagine. I’ve had a photo ID since I was 14, and a U.S. passport since I was 16. My children have had passports from just about the time they were born. So how can someone live their entire lives without a photo ID that has their proper name?

In my grandfather’s case, he was … well, grandfathered … into the photo ID system by his military ID. His 1940s driver’s licenses, his passports, and the plethora of other IDs he held over the years were based on that, so he never had to worry about not being able to get a photo ID. Plus, for those who register to vote in advance, New Jersey has never required a photo ID – only a signature card. (The only concern was that the IDs he had didn’t give his correct birth name.)

(His 1949 driver's license. Notice the misspelling of his last name.)

Other people aren’t as fortunate. So while I recognize that there are now fewer than 3 million people who can’t get a photo ID in the United States (the effect of attrition over the past nine years), the margins in key swing states are small enough that unreasonably tight voter regulations will probably have an effect. In Michigan last year, 11,400 voters cast ballots without a picture I.D. – “a tiny proportion of the electorate, but almost exactly the margin by which Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the state in 2016.” [Source]

I don’t think it’s right to shave people off the outskirts of society in an effort to fix a systemic voter fraud problem that doesn’t exist. Yet even after the round of stricter laws in 2011, Texas is preparing to go further this year. [Source]

Texas Democrats have fled the state to prevent the special session from reaching the necessary quorum. It was a hypocritical fit of pique to – essentially – filibuster legislation at the state level when they condemn similar actions at the federal level, but I agree with their motives.

I should clarify that I agree with the Democrats and Republicans who recognize the need to confirm voters’ residency and citizenship when they register. [Source]

And yes, we need to investigate reports of voter fraud, as Texas has done with the 23 complaints they received from the 2020 election. (Just 23? Yup. Just 23, in a state of 30 million. And those were the complaints, not even the cases or prosecutions. Makes me suspect TX AG Ken Paxton hasn’t been fully supportive of the former president.) But there's a distinction to be made between reasonable measures and the *unreasonable* legislation taking effect in many states to excessively restrict eligible voters' ability to vote.

We should not make things more difficult than they need to be for people on the margins.