Cashless Tolling coming soon to Oklahoma

[bwana39]

This is today's fun at work:

08/18/2024 — Tech driving company vehicle goes through 'Plate Pay' lane
12/05/2024 — Company sells vehicle
04/10/2025 — Company receives statement for toll, with posting date 03/27/2025

WTF???

For some reason or another, the electronic scanner could not read the plate. It had to be sent for manual observation (generally with prison labor) .

[kphoger]

For some reason or another, the electronic scanner could not read the plate. It had to be sent for manual observation (generally with prison labor) .

I find it unlikely to be mere coincidence, that it's both a vehicle we sold and also a license plate that used to be on another one of our vehicles.

[plain]

This is today's fun at work:

08/18/2024 — Tech driving company vehicle goes through 'Plate Pay' lane
12/05/2024 — Company sells vehicle
04/10/2025 — Company receives statement for toll, with posting date 03/27/2025

WTF???

For some reason or another, the electronic scanner could not read the plate. It had to be sent for manual observation (generally with prison labor) .

This doesn't make much sense.

It actually sounds like the OTA took seven months to process that toll.

[Scott5114]

It actually sounds like the OTA took seven months to process that toll.

It took the Oklahoma Department of Health about that long to process a birth certificate request.

[Bobby5280]

It took the Oklahoma Department of Health about that long to process a birth certificate request.

That's not good. I had to send off for a certified copy of my birth certificate from New Mexico and got it via express mail in just a couple of days. If Oklahoma is taking months to do the same thing they could be in deep trouble soon. Various "red" states like Oklahoma are wanting to adopt Trump's voting ID requirements, even if his effort dies in the US Congress. IIRC, not even a Real ID-compliant driver's license would be accepted. Gotta have a real birth certificate. The notion of voters having to bring birth certificates to a polling location might present itself as a great opportunity for criminals: mug someone for their birth certificate and other info they have on their person.

[kphoger]

Various "red" states like Oklahoma are wanting to adopt Trump's voting ID requirements, even if his effort dies in the US Congress. IIRC, not even a Real ID-compliant driver's license would be accepted. Gotta have a real birth certificate. The notion of voters having to bring birth certificates to a polling location might present itself as a great opportunity for criminals: mug someone for their birth certificate and other info they have on their person.

I've also known a surprisingly high number of people who don't have their own birth certificate.  And a not-nearly-zero number of people who've run into problems getting one.

[vdeane]

It took the Oklahoma Department of Health about that long to process a birth certificate request.

That's not good. I had to send off for a certified copy of my birth certificate from New Mexico and got it via express mail in just a couple of days. If Oklahoma is taking months to do the same thing they could be in deep trouble soon. Various "red" states like Oklahoma are wanting to adopt Trump's voting ID requirements, even if his effort dies in the US Congress. IIRC, not even a Real ID-compliant driver's license would be accepted. Gotta have a real birth certificate. The notion of voters having to bring birth certificates to a polling location might present itself as a great opportunity for criminals: mug someone for their birth certificate and other info they have on their person.

I thought people needed to show proof of citizenship when registering under this policy, not at the polling location.

[Scott5114]

It took the Oklahoma Department of Health about that long to process a birth certificate request.

That's not good. I had to send off for a certified copy of my birth certificate from New Mexico and got it via express mail in just a couple of days. If Oklahoma is taking months to do the same thing they could be in deep trouble soon. Various "red" states like Oklahoma are wanting to adopt Trump's voting ID requirements, even if his effort dies in the US Congress. IIRC, not even a Real ID-compliant driver's license would be accepted. Gotta have a real birth certificate. The notion of voters having to bring birth certificates to a polling location might present itself as a great opportunity for criminals: mug someone for their birth certificate and other info they have on their person.

This was all during Oklahoma's first attempt at issuing Real IDs, so I imagine part of it was people like me who had never needed a birth certificate to renew their driver license, so they had a huge backlog of requests. Still, it was nerve-wracking to pay all the fees and then not hear anything back for months and months.

In the end, I never did get a Real ID from Oklahoma—my license expired before I got my birth certificate, so my last Oklahoma DL was one of those "Not valid for federal purposes" ones (and was also inexplicably printed as an old-style blue license, even though they'd already started issuing the state-capitol ones). I only ended up getting a Real ID from Nevada (for as much as Nevadans bitch about the DMV, they seemed downright orderly and efficient compared to the Real ID debacle going on in Oklahoma).

I thought people needed to show proof of citizenship when registering under this policy, not at the polling location.

Who the fuck knows? It's probably changed four times since You-Know-Who first dreamed up the idea.

[vdeane]

I thought people needed to show proof of citizenship when registering under this policy, not at the polling location.

Who the fuck knows? It's probably changed four times since You-Know-Who first dreamed up the idea.

I think I've even heard multiple versions of what documents would count.

[MikieTimT]

Not everyone has a birth certificate.  My wife is one of them as her family escaped Laos after years in "re-education camps" when the communists took over.  Yet, she has a Real ID now and will shortly have her passport as well.  They take more forms of ID other than birth certificate.  Her citizenship certificate and SS card were all she needed for both.

[Bobby5280]

I thought people needed to show proof of citizenship when registering under this policy, not at the polling location.

I don't know the requirements in other states. Oklahoma currently only requires a voter to show his driver's license or some other similar form of ID.

The legislation certain people are trying to push through at the state level would require voters to bring a certified birth certificate. Not even a Real ID-compliant driver's license would be satisfactory. This legislation isn't about "voting integrity." It is designed to disenfranchise voters, plain and simple. They don't want to say the quiet parts out loud, but the thinking is more darker-skinned people wouldn't be able to get copies of their birth certificates than the fairer-skinned people. If voter turnout numbers are pushed way down it supposedly helps the white/right-wing candidates win. The truth is plenty of white folks don't have copies of their birth certificates and not every white person has their shit together enough to obtain one. So this "voter integrity" strategy may not work as intended.

For all the talk about voter fraud the actual numbers are extremely low. That's because the risk/reward equation is really shitty for anyone who would want to vote fraudulently. Doing so is a federal crime. If someone was going to affect the outcome of an election they would literally have to get inside the system to affect hundreds, thousands or even millions of votes. They're not going to do that standing in some fucking line with other people at a voting poll. The voter fraud hysteria coming from certain people is a red herring. The real goal isn't voter integrity; it's about preventing certain legal citizens from voting.

If it was up to me I'd let anyone who files a tax return to vote. If you're paying into the system you should be able to vote. Otherwise it's taxation without representation. But that's just me.

[kphoger]

The truth is plenty of white folks don't have copies of their birth certificates and not every white person has their shit together enough to obtain one.

Very true.  And a lot of the time, it's not even a matter of having their shit together.

My closest co-worker was born in 1969, and she just recently attempted to obtain her birth certificate from Topeka.  The only reason she needed it was to get a Real ID driver's license.  Her mom was 16 years old when she had her, so there was a bunch of legal hand-off early on between her mom and her grandparents.  Her old tattered birth certificate has her mom's name on it;  when she requested a nice new one to present at the DMV, the one Topeka sent her had her grandparents' names on it instead.  She's not exactly sure how everything transpired back then, and neither her mom nor her grandparents are still alive to ask.  None of this is her fault, because she was a baby when everything went down, and it never mattered for more than a half-century.  She also found out that her marriage license is a duplicate, so she'll need to obtain an original in order to account for her married name.  So yeah, she still doesn't have a Real ID, and you can't really blame her for it.

[Bobby5280]

Yesterday after work I was donating platelets at OBI, and the Real ID topic came up. One of the phlebotomists there was in the process of getting her Real ID. She was born in Germany; her dad was in the Army. It took a few weeks to get another copy of her birth certificate. The bigger problem was getting other info. She had been previously married twice, but one of her divorce decrees got lost. She needed all that stuff to show the last name changing situation. Now that all the paperwork is in she's hoping to get her Real ID some time in June.

While some people face difficult situations getting their ID documentation other people just generally have a lazy lack of follow-through to get it. I guess it's like same groups of people who start a new job and not even a month into it they're already missing days from work. I try to look at the bright side of this. I'm starting to get up there in age and worry about things like age discrimination if I had to find another job. Considering what's going on, the fact that I'm willing to show up on a dependable basis gives me some job security.

[vdeane]

The legislation certain people are trying to push through at the state level would require voters to bring a certified birth certificate.

Ah.  I was thinking of the federal efforts, not state.