re: #436 Sergey Romanov

How does a student get the uni ID without some sort of a prior ID?

You bring your acceptance letter when you show up for registration, they take your picture and make an ID card on the spot.

I’ve only had to show my birth certificate twice in my life — when I got my first drivers license at age 16 (since then, they just use the expiring one as sufficient proof that I’m entitled to a new one), and I enclosed a copy when I mailed in my passport application.

At this stage of my life, I have no clue where my birth certificate has gotten to. It would require many, many hoops to get a new one (certified letters and notarized declarations plus several months of waiting, or else a physical trip thousands of miles to spend a day wading through the county recorder’s office). My passport has expired, I don’t expect to need one again so I haven’t bothered to get a new one. My drivers’ license has expired, because I’m now living in a place where I don’t drive. I get to my bank account through the ATM, I don’t have to show anything to anyone and my bank card has no picture. When I spend money on my bank card, I enter a number into the gadget and no clerk has ever asked for any further proof that it’s mine. My bills are paid either on-line, or through the mail.

I really do get by just fine with no official, legal ID. If they changed the voter rules here, it would take me a whole day of effort, weeks in advance, to be able to scrounge up something. And a lot of my neighbors, the ones who need a walker to get to the grocery store, couldn’t do it at all.