SUBJECT: We got your email about voter registration
Dear Lieutenant Governor Patrick and the Texas Grand Ole Party (GOP).
First, I’d like to thank you for your concern about the Kempf household’s voter registration for the upcoming election. I’m not exactly sure where your voter information was sourced, but it is apparently gravely in error and should be updated. I’d like to correct a few errors and save the Texas GOP some money on mailing costs.
My son does not reside in Texas. He resides in Oakland; California and he has never been a resident of Texas. He is a registered voter in California and is an active participant of the Democratic party.
My wife Anna and I are both registered voters in Williamson County, Texas and have participated in both elections since our arrival in July 2016. This was in no way due to the assistance of the state of Texas whom it appears makes it the most inhospitable place in the United States of America to transfer a voter registration.
In our thirty-eight years of marriage, and residency in Texas, Tennessee, Indiana, Kentucky, Alaska and Germany (I also resided in South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, Hungary and Iraq while deployed in the US Army) we never encountered anyplace that put as many roadblocks to voter registration as we have encountered in Texas. When submitting paperwork to the US State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, The Department of Defense, the Veterans Administration, the IRS and other various government agencies, my wife and I had never been required to present a copy of our marriage certificate. When moving from Indiana, to Alaska, to Alabama, to Indiana, to Tennessee all of these states accepted each other’s driver’s license as a valid ID and it was sufficient in and of itself to obtain a local driver’s license. But not in Texas. NOPE, we got to vet you like you are trying to get a Visa from Iraq.
If you haven’t figured out yet, you guys have struck a raw nerve that I had suppressed until now. While all I had to do as a male to get my Texas driver’s license was produce a Xeroxed copy of my DD214, a copy of my VA disability letter (Neither of these had a seal or notary stamp, and thanks for the Veteran discount) and my Tennessee driver’s license, my wife however, was put through several hoops to get her Texas driver’s license.
She was required to provide her birth certificate, SSAN Card, Marriage Certificate with raised seal and provide her driver’s license from Tennessee. We were married thirty-eight years ago in Indiana. I had to enlist a cousin, who had to physically go to the county clerk where we were married and make an in-person request for the document, then overnight it to us in Texas (That was $40 I could have used elsewhere.) We then went to the Social Security office in Georgetown where we used my wife’s TSA approved Tennessee Driver’s license as a photo ID to get a new copy of her SSAN card. (I found the Social Security Administration’s acceptance of an ID that Texas would not accept to get an ID that Texas would accept quite ironic!) Then there was the $22 I spent with the State of Kentucky to get an OFFICIAL COPY of her birth certificate. Lucky for me Kentucky will let you do this on-line and they mailed the document in 3 working days.
So, after spending over 24 man-hours and over $100 getting redundant documentation that we had never needed in almost four decades of marriage, my wife finally got her driver’s license and I registered her as a voter in the great state of Texas. No wonder people complain about voter suppression in this state. It took us six weeks to get all that crap together, so a Trooper could glance at it and throw it into a pile of documents to be filed and never seen again.
For your information, we are registered Democrats.
Thank you for your concern about our voter registration and if this was truly a cause that you guys believed in, you would make it at least as easy as getting a mortgage, which I did with much less effort and definitely a lot more cooperation from the state of Texas. (Oh. Yeah, I forgot, you guys are killing me with Taxes too. Only 4x the rate I paid over the past 20 years in Tennessee.)
We moved to Texas only because it served as a good career move. God knows it wasn’t because the government here makes anything easy for a married woman. Only 3,891 more days until I retire and we flee this oppressive state and move back to Tennessee.
Respectfully, Texas resident under duress, and lifelong Tennessean,
Donald P. Kempf
As satisfying as writing that was, I really never expected any reply at all. But to my surprise, two days later I received a reply for the Lieutenant Governor’s office. I found it quite amusing and I am sure you will too.
SUBJECT: I would like to thank you for taking the time to write to me about issues impacting Texas.
Dan Patrick
Lieutenant Governor of Texas
President of the Senate
Dear Mr. Kempf:
I would like to thank you for taking the time to write to me about issues impacting Texas. I always appreciate hearing from great citizens like you who care about the future of our great state of Texas.
This legislative session, I presented the legislature a strong conservative agenda that affirmed my commitment to property tax reform, women's privacy, life, the second amendment, border security, religious liberty and a lean and efficient government. The Texas Senate was able to deliver on many of those promises to Texans. Under my leadership and through the hard work of every senator many of the 30 priorities I announced in January have become law.
I am very proud of what we were able to accomplish in the recent legislative sessions and I give all the credit to the vigilance and hard work of every senator.
I invite you to visit my official website, at https://www.ltgov.state.tx.us/ to view all of my legislative priorities.
Again, thank you for sharing your comments with me. I encourage you to continue making your voice heard to the officials who represent you, and stay involved in the issues affecting our great state of Texas.
Sincerely,
Dan Patrick
As you can see, I got Macro form letter in response, but that is still more than I expected. I’m tempted to send a reply back, but I’m going to dwell on that a bit as I don’t want to end up on a FBI watch list or get flagged somehow by the TSA as a troublemaker. I’ll post the reply if and when I write one. But this was my laugh for the day.
