Shocking Vice article reveals an out-of-state driver’s license doesn’t count as valid voter ID in Tennessee

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To vote in the state of Tennessee, one must produce either state or federally issued photo identification.

Valid forms of photo ID include up-to-date or expired state driver’s licenses, U.S. passports, and U.S. military photo IDs. If a resident does not own a state or federally issued photo ID, Tennessee provides would-be voters with the option of acquiring a free Department of Safety and Homeland Security-issued photo ID from driver service centers throughout the state. This option has been available to voters since 2013 – again, at no monetary cost. The state even advertises it all over its voter ID requirement pages.

But this is all too difficult for the state’s younger, less affluent, and newer residents, argues Vice contributing essayist Davis Winkie. Worse still, he says, the photo ID laws, which he claims are intentionally restrictive and oppressive, amount to voter “disenfranchisement.”

“I had a birth certificate, a photo ID, and utility bills proving my residency. But Tennessee decided that wasn’t good enough,” Winkie opines in an essay titled, “What It Feels Like to Be Disenfranchised by a Voter ID Law.”

The essay, which is part of a larger Vice series, titled “Why I Didn’t Vote,” reads, “When I was preparing to vote in 2016, my wife and I were living in north Nashville while I was playing football at Vanderbilt University. … We had valid Georgia IDs, and assumed we could use those at the polls to satisfy Tennessee’s voter ID law.”

There’s his first mistake: Assuming an out-of-state driver’s license would cut it. Why he thought that would work is anyone’s guess. Also, let’s not lose sight of the fact that Tennessee’s voter ID laws passed in 2013, one year before Winkie attended Vanderbilt as a freshman. It’s his responsibility to educate himself on local laws. That he didn’t bother to figure out the state’s ID requirements until shortly before the 2016 election is on him.

Winkie continues, writing:

It’s nice that he believed his personal interpretation of the state’s law entitled him to vote as one of its residents, but that’s generally not how things work.

“I didn’t know it was possible, but I came away a little more cynical about the voter registration processes and the ways that various states make it harder to vote rather than easier,” he writes. “[W]ithout a doubt voter ID laws are being used [to] specifically target vulnerable groups of would-be voters. I really, truly came to realize that because of my experience.”

Winkie explains he and his wife ignored Tennessee’s law requiring that new residents “obtain a Tennessee driver license no later than thirty (30) days after establishing residency” because their insurance agent said it would be cheaper to keep their Georgia IDs and to leave their cars were registered in their Georgia-dwelling parents’ names. He also says he didn’t apply for a U.S. passport because it would’ve been too costly. Lastly, he explains he didn’t apply for a free Department of Safety and Homeland Security-issued photo ID because it “would have necessitated that I surrender my GA driver’s license.”

“Voter fraud, which studies have shown to be very rare, is being used as a pretext to strip people of the vote. [S]tories such as mine really show that. I’d like to challenge state legislatures to start acting in good faith and taking common-sense measures to protect the vote while also encouraging it, rather than swindling Americans out of one of their most basic rights,” he concludes.

At this point, I’d like to call your attention to a separate but similar article Winkie authored in 2016, just days before the presidential election, wherein he first alleged Tennessee had denied him his right to vote.

In that article, he wrote that he and his wife, “planned to maintain our voter registration and residency at my parents’ home, our permanent address in Georgia, so I kept my Georgia driver’s license when moving to Tennessee. … we also continued to pay Georgia state income tax.”

He added, “Recently, when my parents moved from what we considered our permanent address, my wife and I decided to become residents of Tennessee, so on October 11, we registered to vote in Davidson County. Our voter registration cards came in the mail about a week afterwards.”

This can’t possibly be true. The state of Tennessee didn’t implement its online voter registration system until 2017.

For those of you keeping track, the Vice essayist claims he decided in the summer of 2016 that he wanted to become a resident of Tennessee, but without changing a single thing about his lifestyle. He didn’t register his vehicles in Tennessee and he didn’t apply for a driver’s license. He didn’t even apply for a free State-sponsored photo ID from one of Tennessee’s driver centers. The only effort he put into meeting the state’s requirements for voting was when he supposedly registered online, but even that claim is doubtful given it’d be another year before this was even an option for state residents. Basically, he was a Georgian who thought he should be allowed to vote in Tennessee simply because he said so. The Volunteer State didn’t accommodate his whims and he has been crying foul ever since.

If the point of the Vice article was to get readers to take allegations of voter disenfranchisement seriously, I’m not sure an essay written by a guy who’s outraged Tennessee wouldn’t accept his Georgia driver’s license is the way to do it.