On deathbed, father told her to vote Democratic

Shirley Freeda Preiss of Surprise is one ticked-off little old lady.

And who can blame her? The 97-year-old retired schoolteacher and onetime traveling showgirl has voted in every presidential election since 1932 when she cast a ballot for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But thanks to the state’s voter identification requirements, it’s looking unlikely that she’ll be able to vote in the upcoming presidential election.

She simply can’t prove her citizenship as required by a 2004 law passed by Arizona voters.

“I am an American. How ’bout this? I never drew a breath anywhere else but America. I have been here all of my life,” Preiss told me emphatically in a phone interview from her home.

Proposition 200, a sweeping measure aimed at illegal immigrants, required Arizonans to present proof of citizenship to register to vote and proof of identity at the polls.

At the time, Preiss was living and happily voting in Texas. Her son Joe Nemnich, 78, a World War II veteran and retired industrial engineer, moved his mother to Arizona a couple of years ago. Late last year, Preiss wanted to register to vote in the Democratic presidential preference race. But meeting the requirements has proved impossible.

She doesn’t have an Arizona driver’s license, or the documents required to get a nonoperating identification card. She has never traveled out of the country and, thus, never obtained a passport. She isn’t a Native American, so she doesn’t have any of the acceptable forms of tribal ID. She was born in Clinton, Ky., in 1910, one year before the state began issuing birth certificates. She can’t get a delayed birth certificate because any witnesses to her birth are dead. School records are long lost.

Preiss has old Texas driver’s licenses, but Arizona rejects them as an acceptable ID for obtaining an Arizona ID because Texas doesn’t verify lawful presence in the U.S. She has a Social Security card and Medicare card, but those don’t stand alone as proof of citizenship. Nemnich has collected 1920 census data to present to the state with hopes of getting his mother an ID.

Preiss, who describes herself “as a dyed-in-the wool Democrat,” considers it her patriotic duty to vote and her familial duty to vote Democrat. She’s still angry at the Republicans for the Great Depression, which began in 1929 on the Republicans’ watch.

“My daddy went to bed a pretty wealthy man, but the next morning when he got up, he didn’t have money to buy his family a loaf of bread,” she said.

Preiss said her father told his family on his deathbed, “If you ever vote for a Republican, I’m coming back to get you.”

Preiss has voted in 19 presidential elections, never violating daddy’s dying wish. Born before women had the right to vote, she was excited about the prospect of voting for Hillary Clinton and still plans to vote for Clinton as a write-in if she gets to vote in November.

Preiss believes that Prop. 200 violates the 14th, 15th, 19th and 26th amendments of the Constitution. The 14th Amendment gives all people the equal protection of our laws, while the 15th, 19th and 26th amendments deal with voting rights and ban federal or state governments from abridging or denying those rights.

The Arizona Advocacy Network and other activist groups filed a lawsuit challenging the voter identification requirements shortly after Prop. 200 passed. A federal judge held a hearing last month in Phoenix and is expected to rule soon.

Early rulings have gone the state’s way, and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding Indiana’s voter ID law was a blow to Arizona’s challengers.

The voter ID section of Arizona’s Prop. 200 was born of a Republican-led national movement pushing such requirements. Backers tapped into anti-illegal immigrant sentiment to sell Arizonans the idea that voter ID rules would prevent fraud – ostensibly by illegal immigrants storming our borders just so they can cast a ballot and get food stamps.

The problem is the premise. There’s no proof that illegal immigrants are trying to vote. In fact, there is little evidence of widespread voter fraud of any type, despite a major effort by the Bush administration’s Department of Justice to find and prosecute such fraud since 2002. And guess what? The people behind voter ID laws know this. The illegal immigrant issue is a red herring.

Voter ID requirements are just another suppression tactic – like the literacy tests and poll taxes of old – designed to target poor and minority voters who tend to vote Democratic.

The problem is the shrapnel hit Preiss. And this is one little old lady who is not going down without a fight.

Anne T. Denogean can be reached at 573-4582 and adenogean@tucsoncitizen.com. Address letters to P.O. Box 26767, Tucson, AZ 85726-6767. Her columns run Tuesdays and Fridays.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Elections, Local. Tags for this post: Anne T. Denogean, Arizona, Columnist, Elections-Columnist, History/Culture, Local-History/Culture, Local-History/Culture-Arizona, Local-Sci/Tech, Local-Sci/Tech-Columnist, page-a01, Sci/Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.