The devastating personal impact of denying people the right to vote because they can't get hard-to-get photo ID and birth certificates is best illustrated by a heart-breaking story I reported earlier in the week . I spoke to 97-year-old Shirley Preiss about her efforts to vote in Arizona after having voted for every Democratic Presidential candidate since FDR in 1932. I quote an ACORN organizer about the use of immigrant-bashing as a lever to block American citizens from voting, then I went on to tell Shirley's story. It bears repeating, because what happened to Shirley could happen to every poor person, disabled person, elderly person and minority who doesn't have the ready access to the funds, time and ability to navigate bureaucratic hurdles to obtain government-issued embossed birth certificates and other ID:



Perhaps no one knows that as well as 97-year-old Shirley Freeda Preiss. She was born at home in Clinton, Kentucky in 1910, before women had the right to vote, and never had a birth certificate. Shirley has voted in every presidential election since FDR first ran in 1932, and proudly describes herself as a "died-in-the-wool Democrat." After living in Arizona for two years, she was eagerly looking forward to casting her ballot in the February primary for the first major woman candidate for President, Hillary Clinton. But lacking a birth certificate or even elementary school records to prove she's a native-born American citizen, the state of Arizona's bureaucrats determined that this former school-teacher who taught generations of Americans shouldn't be allowed to vote.

"I have a constitutional right to vote, don't I?" she asks with her soft Southern drawl. "I didn't get to vote because of a birth certificate. What am I going to do now?"

Her strong-willed 78-year-old son, Nathan "Joey" Nemnich, a World War II veteran, is infuriated. "I'm pissed. She's an American citizen who worked her whole life and I want her to vote," he says. He went down to the local Motor Vehicle Division to get her an Arizona ID and register her to vote, armed with copies of his mother's three drivers' licenses from her previous home in Texas, along with copies of her Social Security and Medicare cards. All that wasn't good enough for the state of Arizona. "The sons of bitches are taking away our Constitution," Nemnich says.