What’s Up, Documents?

If you’ve been following the news about GOP voter-denial drives, you know that new registration requirements just happen to exclude folks who tend to vote for Democrats. But we’ve never come across an example that puts the problem into focus.

Until now.

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.

Well, heck, we didn’t vote for JFK either. Of course, we were still shitting our diapers.

As it happens, Tennessee has one of those new laws that require a photo ID to vote. So civic-minded Dorothy did the right thing:

That morning, Cooper slipped a rent receipt, a copy of her lease, her voter registration card and her birth certificate into a Manila envelope. Typewritten on the birth certificate was her maiden name, Dorothy Alexander.

“But I didn’t have my marriage certificate,” Cooper said Tuesday afternoon, and that was the reason the clerk said she was denied a free voter ID at the Cherokee Boulevard Driver Service Center.

After “at least” a couple of phone calls to the state and one to the county, Dorothy finally arranged for an absentee ballot — no photo required for those — so she’ll be able to resume fulfilling her duties of citizenship. And, of course, everybody else affected by the new law will be as determined in dealing with the new bureaucracy that’s been hoisted between them and the ballot box.

Oh, and did we mention that Dorothy is black? But you probably guessed that.

96-year-old Chattanooga resident denied voting ID [Times Free Press, via jwmcsame]