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** Why IDs?
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So, what’s the deal with IDs anyways? A reasonable question. For an in-depth look, I recommend you pre-order my upcoming book, American Identity Crisis, which will tell you everything you need to know about about the ID crisis in America and how we can solve it. But we’re friends, so I’ll give you a sneak preview.
Pre-Order American Identity Crisis ([link removed])

Most people don’t know that over 26 million American adults do not have photo ID. That is 11% of the adult population of this country. ONE TENTH. That is a massive number, and it makes it even more shocking that we do not recognize this as the national emergency that it is.

26 million adults without ID means 26 million adults who cannot legally work, 26 million adults who cannot sign up for social services, 26 million adults who cannot get housing.

Pretty surprising, right?

So your first question is probably, why don’t these people have ID? Think back to your last visit to the DMV. You probably just shivered. I spend a lot of time at the DMV. I’m at the DMV as I write this. Just getting to the DMV is a challenge, as over 10 million Americans live more than 10 miles from the DMV. And, if you don’t have ID, you don’t have the driver’s license you need to get there. But then you also need a large stack of documents, including a birth certificate which 15-18 million American adults do not have. That’s 6-7% of American adults! So you have to get a birth certificate, but if you go to vital records and ask for a birth certificate, guess what they’ll ask for- your ID. I ran into this problem three times in the last two hours. Fortunately, our 501c3 has been doing this long enough to know the various methods of getting birth certificates without IDs in most states, but I still had to bring our general counsel into two situations where the usual methods wouldn’t work.
We make it almost impossible to get birth certificates without ID but require birth certificates to get an ID. And then the cost, our average birth certificate cost is $51, that is 7 hours of working at the federal minimum wage.

Then add on the challenges of proving residency when you’re unhoused, getting every document to show you have changed your name if you have been married, divorced, and/or widowed or if you were a foster kid who had one or more name changes. And of course many of these things cost money. Our average ID cost is $40, which is about 5.3 hours of working at the federal minimum wage. And that’s if you’re lucky enough to have a job.

You add all of this together along with the every day challenges of being at-risk, unhoused, unstable, and vulnerable, and you can see how getting, keeping, and replacing an ID becomes an impossible task. Our c3 has helped people get IDs who haven’t had them for 20, 30, even 40 years. And without an ID, as so many of our clients say, you’re not a person.

That’s why we’re working to change this on a national scale. Whether through a variety of state legislation (stay tuned!) or through the IDs for an Inclusive Democracy Act in Congress ([link removed]) , we are working to ensure that every American has the ID they need to live.
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