Member-only story
How Would You Vote?
I hate the way Paul votes, but what I hate more is that he wouldn’t have been able to vote in the 2016 election without the financial support of my sister. Yes, you read that correctly. He needed someone to give him money in order to vote. Let me explain.
Back in the late summer of 2016, my sister, Susan, invited Paul (not their real names), to live with her in Northern Virginia. Paul had been struggling significantly financially, so Susan and her husband invited Paul to stay with them to help him get back on his feet. Paul does not drive and that drastically narrowed the number of places he could work. Susan helped Paul find some local job opportunities to which he could walk or ride a bike. After a few weeks, he landed a job a the local grocery store. This is where things got very complicated. In the story that follows, Susan provided all of the transportation.
In order to be employed by the grocery store, Paul had to provide photo identification. As a non-driver, his North Carolina state ID had expired, and Paul hadn’t realized it. Neither Paul nor Susan understood the expensive and time-consuming journey that they would endure in order to obtain a photo ID for him. In the meantime, the 2016 election was quickly coming, and Paul realized he would need a photo ID in order to vote because Virginia had passed a Voter ID bill.
