Thanks for your support!


** Today I had a small election adventure.
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Every election day we get very late requests for help. Hopeful voters go to the polls, discover that they need an ID, find us, and ask if we can help them. Often, it's so late that we can only help them get an ID for the next election, and their lives in the meantime. Sometimes, we can do it.

Today at about 4pm Texas time I got an email. A gentleman in Houston had tried to vote and couldn't. He needed an ID. Could we help? We didn't have any available volunteers at the moment so I got his phone number and said I'd text him through it. We had two hours until the DMV closed and three hours until the polls closed.

By the time he got back to me and we were able to start texting it was 4:45pm. I checked that he had the right documents. He'd had a Texas ID previously, but a few months ago Texas changed the rules and now you need a birth certificate even to just replace an ID. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that they made that decision a few months before the election.

Miraculously, he not only had a birth certificate but transportation. I gave him the address to the closest DMV that was open until 6pm (many close at 5). By the time he headed out it was 5:36. Incredibly, he made it, he got in, and he got his ID.

Huge win.

Then we had to get him to the polls.

Luckily, while he was at the DMV a judge had decided to keep the polls open until 8pm because of some polling place challenges earlier in the day. And in Harris County you can vote at any polling place, not just one that you are assigned to. The voting gods were with us.

I found the closest polling place for him. It was 9 minutes away. 13 minutes later he texted that he was there, and in line. There were 12 people ahead of him.

I waited anxiously.

At 8:33pm he sent a text: "I voted, so that's that."

HE VOTED!!!

I am thrilled that I was able to help this gentleman vote today, but we work every day of the year to avoid this kind of edge of your seat voting. Every day we help people get IDs so that they can go to the polls with confidence. Voting should not feel like an action movie.

Thanks to you, we have been able to help more than 10,000 people get the IDs they need to live their every day lives, and to vote. So this was just a little story to say thank you. I'm not asking for a donation. If the polls are still open where you are I am definitely going to ask that you vote if you haven't yet. But otherwise I just want to say thanks, from me, and from my new friend in Houston who got to make his voice heard today.

I don't know about you, but I'm already ready for 2024.
Kat

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