This is a follow-up to a thread about a very hysterical DU thread about these AL DMV office closures being part of a conspiracy to suppress "the black vote". I went 10 pages deep in the Index to this forum and tried the Search function to try to find that thread so I could post this as an update, to no avail. Maybe some one with a better memory and/or better skill in using SMF's Search function could find and post a link to that thread. Anyway:
Alabama Officials Say Democrats Blowing DMV Closures Out of Proportionby Rod Kackley
pjmedia.com/blog
October 10, 2015 - 7:34 pm
Alabama’s secretary of state and the head of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency are pushing back against a congresswoman who wants a federal investigation of an $11 million budget cut that will close 31 Department of Motor Vehicle offices in the state.
Many of the closures will occur in Rep. Terri Sewell’s district, and she has asked Attorney General Loretta Lynch to get involved.
The only Democrat in the Alabama congressional delegation, Sewell sees the DMV closures as a direct attempt by the GOP to keep African-Americans from voting in November 2016. Sewell worries poor, rural blacks won’t be able to get the photo ID that’s required to vote in Alabama without the convenience of a local DMV office.
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Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill and Spencer Collier, the Alabama secretary of law enforcement, accuse Sewell and other Democrats of sounding the voters’ rights alarm like Hillary Clinton, of screaming “fire†even though there is no smoke.
To begin with, state officials said the budget cuts came about as a result of simple arithmetic. They had no alternative but to close the offices. The $11 million cut to the Law Enforcement Agency budget was only a portion of $200 million worth of spending reductions agreed to by the Legislature in a September special session.
Alabama officials also said whether Sewell and Clinton want to admit it or not, the offices slated to close don’t deal with very many driver’s license requests.
Spencer Collier said the DMV offices that will close are all part-time facilities that handled less than five percent of all of the requests for driver’s license transactions in Alabama in 2014.
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Alabama Secretary of State Merrill also pointed out a driver’s license is not the only alternative for residents who need a photo ID that will allow them to vote.
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“All 67 counties in Alabama have a Board of Registrars that issue photo voter ID cards. If for some reason those citizens are not able to make it to the Board of Registrars, we’ll bring our mobile ID van and crew to that county,†Merrill promised.
“By October 31 our office will have brought the mobile ID van to every county in Alabama at least once. ...
IOW, no conspiracy: the closures are a small part of a larger package of budget cuts (A D upset at real budget cuts? Who'd athunk it?!). The closed offices are part-time, i.e. not enough volume to justify being full-time. There are permanent offices in every county where residents can get picture IDs for voting, and there are mobile ID vehicles that have visited every county. If, as this race-baiting Rep. claims, "they don’t have a car to take them to the mobile ID sites," or permanent voter ID offices, that same limitation would hinder access to the closed part-time DMV offices.
IOW, this is just a fauxny race-baiting attack on voter ID laws and a southern state.
