Voter suppression has been the bogeyman the Democrats try to unleash around Election Day and they’ve done so since at least the early 80s. Now VICE turns its steely gaze on that bane of the American political system to show how even white millenials can be disenfranchised by a cruel and heartless GOP run state. Our narrator is Davis Winkie who

I had my:
• valid driver's license
• student ID
• voter registration card
• a copy of my birth certificate
• my lease

and that still wasn't enough. I couldn't vote. https://t.co/GOUQlFWlRe

— VICE (@VICE) November 1, 2018

When I was preparing to vote in 2016, my wife and I were living in north Nashville while I was playing football at Vanderbilt University. We registered to vote—that went off without a hitch, because Tennessee has online voter registration. We found that very convenient and we didn’t really think too much more of it. We had valid Georgia IDs, and assumed we could use those at the polls to satisfy Tennessee’s voter ID law. My wife was born in 1995 and I was born in 1996, so we were both really excited to participate in something bigger than a local primary for the first time.

As a second lieutenant I learned that if you assume anything you make an ass of you and me (ass-u-me, cute, huh?). Let’s see how this plays out.

My wife and I were the a strange situation of being young and married, but still somewhat financially dependent on our parents. Our vehicles were registered in our parents’ names, and we had Georgia driver’s licenses. Registering the vehicles in Tennessee would have incurred a pretty significant tax burden, and getting a Tennessee driver’s license, we were led to believe by our insurance agents, would be a problem for us to since then we’d be listed as drivers on our parents’ cars without Georgia licenses. So we were in this space where we feared losing our transportation or having to incur a significant financial burden if we tried to get Tennessee driver’s licenses. By the time we figured this out, it would have cost hundreds of dollars to rush a passport just for the purposes of voting. We were young undergraduates. I was trying to survive on the NCAA’s poverty stipend—I had to give up my meal plan to be able to afford rents in that city.

I probably laughed for five minutes after reading that.

Tennessee requires that you have a state or federally issued ID in order to vote. And Tennessee offers state issued identification cards for a nominal fee.

If you’ve read this far you’ve probably figured out what happened to our narrator/moron.

On Election Day, my wife did not go to the polls, but I did. I had my valid Georgia driver’s license. I had my Vanderbilt University student ID. I even had my voter registration card, a couple of utility bills, my lease, and a copy of my birth certificate. I have doubts about the prevalence of in-person voting fraud and therefore the necessity of voter ID laws—but there are three reasonable components to test for: identity, citizenship, and residency, which I felt I was able to supply with everything I had with me.

However, that did not meet the legal standard to vote in Tennessee. So I had to cast a provisional ballot, which was ultimately not counted.

More accurate headline: "I tried to vote in Tennessee when I'm registered to vote in Georgia and they wouldn't let me, and now I'm a victim." https://t.co/HeaKR6w5yN

— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) November 2, 2018

Also admits to scamming insurance company with fake home address. How does this get printed? https://t.co/WauJ93TaAh

— Karol Markowicz (@karol) November 2, 2018

This guy’s problem was not voter suppression by the state, his problem is that he’s equal parts stupid and self-entitled. He’s obviously never had to obey any rules and is nonplussed when he finds that he’s actually not a special snowflake. This goof had multiple options open to him, like not defrauding his insurance company by giving them a false address, or getting a Tennessee ID for $12, or driving home to vote, or voting by an absentee ballot. He chose to do none of the above even though he knew what the law required.

In my view, this is the kind of ass who shouldn’t be allowed to vote. They have no sense of civic responsibility or respect for the law. They want what they want when they want it and get all pissy when that doesn’t happen. I’m sure he’ll get a better perspective on the importance of following directions once he has that nice PhD in military history and is working at Starbucks.

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