who claim poverty.  Further, in states such as Michigan, one can still vote at the poll without an ID, their ballot simply becomes provisional.  And if a 90-something person has no driver's license, my guess is that they can vote by absentee ballot.

At least I suspect those are some options of which some of my elderly relatives, who no longer drive and whose family arrived in present-day New York about the same time yours did in Virginia, will avail themselves.

She doesn't drive any more (thank God!), and her license is expired.  She doesn't travel any more and her passport is expired.  Florida requires a "valid government-issued ID" and will not accept one past its expiration date.  She doesn't need a current version of either of those documents for any other purpose in her life.  Everyone else (her bank and her doctor's office--no one else has asked for her ID in the two and a half years she has lived with me) accepts her expired DL as "valid" ID.  The picture still looks exactly like her, and it was clearly authentic, so no one questions it EXCEPT the voter registration office.  

To get a new ID, with all the post-911 requirements, she would need an official copy of her birth certificate (OK, I think we have that) and an official copy of her marriage license to prove why her name is different from her birth certificate.  She doesn't have that.  Her husband has been dead for over 20 years, and she has moved about six times since his death, so no one has a clue where it is, and no one else has ever required it for anything.

So, to get her eligible to vote in November, which she would very much like to do, and as an American citizen she has a right to do, she will have to (a) find her birth certificate (which means going through boxes of old files), (b) apply for (and pay for) a new official copy of her marriage license, (c) go sit at the DMV to get a state ID (which will require that I take a day off work to take her), and (d) go to the voter registration office with all this documentation (hopefully on the same day). Yes, we'll do all this to ensure she is able to exercise her right to vote, but how many people in her shoes don't have someone who can ensure they make it through the process?  We're talking about a WWII veteran's widow who, without substantial support from her family, would be denied her right to vote because she let her DL expire.

It's easy to say that having a "valid government-issued ID" should be the minimum requirement to vote until you take a look at what that really means.