Mark Twain once wrote, “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
Substitute “member of Congress” with Roanoke Times writer. That’s Dan Casey. Roanoke Times Metro Writer.
Roanoke Times Metro Writer. Kinda sounds like a Super Hero, doesn’t it?
Dan’s a pretty good writer and I usually enjoy his column. Today [Thursday] he appears totally clueless. Or just plain mean.
He writes today about a sweet little old lady who had some difficulty registering to vote. Most of Dan’s stuff is human-interest stories like that. Often with a leftist political twist at the end. Mostly I overlook that.
This particular little old lady’s daughter, who lives in Franklin County, took her to the local DMV office to register to vote. Don’t ask me why she chose the DMV. He doesn’t say.
“She said she’d moved here from New Jersey, and she wanted to vote in November,” [The daughter] told me. A clerk gave them an information sheet that listed the forms of identification that would be necessary.
Turns out the DMV lines were long so they didn’t wait around and instead finished their errands.
Later the daughter returned to Roanoke to take her mother to try again at the DMV there. Again no explanation as to why they chose the DMV instead of the registrars office. She had with her all the information she thought she would need, but her birth certificate had “baby girl” instead of her first name. DMV couldn’t accept it.
Anyway, to shorten this story a bit, an old passport was found, another trip to the DMV resulted in a picture-taking session, and an ID scheduled to be mailed. (They are built in Danville now, by the way.) Mission accomplished.
Dan speaks.
I told this story Wednesday to some officials at the state board of elections in Richmond, as well as to Roanoke Registrar Lavern Shepherd. They were rather incredulous.
Because, as board of elections spokesman Justin Riemer told me, “there is no requirement to have identification to register to vote.” The DMV is required by law to accept the voter registration application, he added.
It appears that what happened is that [the lady] and the clerks at the DMV got some signals crossed. [the lady] thought she was asking to register to vote, and they believed she was requesting an official Virginia photo ID to replace her New Jersey driver’s license.
The requirements for the latter are far more stringent.
So the two ladies, whom I assume are perfectly delightful, went to the DMV and got exactly what they asked for. Not what they wanted. Just what they asked for, but more than they wanted.
And Dan did too. He got a whole column out of this story. A column he could use to disparage voter ID laws and Republicans. Both at once.
Those Republican-foisted measures are supposedly designed to protect against “voter fraud,” even though there’s little or no proof that occurs. Democrats have charged it’s designed to suppress the vote — in a state where a Democrat coincidentally won the last presidential election.
The kicker is that [the lady, no sense tossing her name around here, let Dan do it], God bless her, always votes Republican, her daughter told me.
“They have no idea the people they’re trying to suppress the vote on could very well be Republicans,” [the daughter] said.
Dan’s column is not on the opinion pages. It’s on the news pages. It’s supposed to be news. It’s often not. It’s opinion.
Now Dan knows very well that I could borrow my aunt’s electric bill, which is still in her deceased husband’s name, and go vote in his stead. Of course that might rattle a few tombstones in the cemetery where he’s reposing.
You see my uncle Raleigh, a man I loved with all my heart, would pitch a fit from within his grave.
Raleigh, a staunch Teamster and Democrat to the end, would not lie still, even in death, to know I voted his proxy for a Republican.
