Sunday, April 8, 2007

And over in South Carolina...

Per an article in The State (Columbia, SC's newspaper), the South Carolina state Senate rejected participation in the Real ID Act unless the federal government pays the additional costs associated with it AND addresses concerns about the rules. One interesting specific in the article points to a huge potential problem with the Real ID Act:

Lawmakers also are concerned about what Real ID would mean to S.C. residents, especially the estimated 700,000 retirees who might not be able to produce the birth certificates, Social Security cards or other documents required to receive a new ID.

Clearly not all the 700,000 would have a problem, but just as likely there are many non-retirees who would. This is where the exceptions and workarounds built into the Act come into play... and by their very nature end up weakening the efficacy of the proposed program itself.

1 comment:

jon said...

My mom lives in South Carolina, and when I was first telling her about the Stop Real ID Now activism campaign, she said "I can't picture that being popular around here!" I assured her that this wasn't one of those red state/blue state or "westcoast" kind of things, and she kinda believed me, but it's nice to get some concrete evidence. Thanks, South Carolina Senate, for backing me up on this!

jon