Alabama Closes Driver’s License Offices After Implementing Voter ID Law

So outrageous that enough people questioned it to cause Snopes to investigate it, and verify it.
http://m.snopes.com/2015/10/01/alabama-drivers-license/

http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/09/alabama_sends_message_we_are_t.html

By John Archibald
The Huntsville Times
Sept. 30, 2015

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Because Alabama just took a giant step backward.

Take a look at the 10 Alabama counties with the highest percentage of non-white registered voters. That's Macon, Greene, Sumter, Lowndes, Bullock, Perry, Wilcox, Dallas, Hale, and Montgomery, according to the Alabama Secretary of State's office. Alabama, thanks to its budgetary insanity and inanity, just opted to close driver license bureaus in eight of them. All but Dallas and Montgomery will be closed.

Closed. In a state in which driver licenses or special photo IDs are a requirement for voting.

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Every single county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters will see their driver license office closed. Every one.

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Look at the five counties that voted most solidly Democratic? Macon, Greene, Sumter, Lowndes and Bullock counties all had their driver license offices closed.

Look at the 10 that voted most solidly for Obama? Of those, eight – again all but Dallas and the state capital of Montgomery – had their offices closed.

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Because the same Alabama Legislature that could not raise enough money to properly run the state in three sessions this year decided in 2011 that all voters must have a photo ID. It was such a great idea that Gov. Robert Bentley signed that bill into law despite complaints that such a move would disproportionately disenfranchise black voters.

It went into effect last year. And now this.

This. And true enough, department heads have to make terribly difficult decisions.

So Alabama closes 31 driver license offices. And while the cuts come across Alabama, they are deepest in the Black Belt. The harm is inflicted disproportionately on voters who happen to be black, and poor, in sparsely populated areas.

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