I put off getting my REAL ID as long as possible. But the May 7 deadline was looming, and my license was set to expire Wednesday. Just like with death and taxes, I couldn't avoid the certainty of the REAL ID ordeal.
I had heard that the process was a bureaucratic nightmare.
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One of my editors kept talking about how he had tried to get his REAL ID the last time he renewed his license. But he was turned away because what he thought was his birth certificate was just a certificate of live birth that did not have the official raised emboss. He had to order a copy of his stamped birth certificate from New Jersey. His wife had actually gotten a REAL ID early on and had even renewed it once. But she recently received a letter saying that although her REAL ID driver's license was "valid," PennDOT had identified that some documents were missing or incorrect and that to rectify the issue and maintain her "REAL ID product" she needed to present the necessary paperwork in person at a state driver license center.
My husband had secured his REAL ID a couple weeks ago, the same day his license expired. He had waited four hours in line, much of it outside on a blustery March day, at the King of Prussia Driver License Center where I was headed last week. It dawned on me too late that I should have done a Cory Booker and dehydrated and starved myself to wait in the line that snaked out of the building and up the parking lot, all the way to the back exit.
It was 9:37 a.m. when I took my place at the end. I had a flashback to queuing with friends outside a Tower Records in Seattle where I grew up, hours before Pink Floyd concert tickets went on sale. Except now I was decades older, standing under ominous skies in the parking lot of one of the nine circles of bureaucracy hell with a hoard of testy Pennsylvanians.
People waited in line for about three hours at the King of Prussia Driver License Center on Friday morning. Many people were trying to get their REAL IDs before the May 7 deadline.
Tony DeMarco, in line behind me, was trying for a third time to get his REAL ID. Two weeks earlier, he had traveled from his home in Harleysville, Montgomery County, to the driver license center in Norristown, waited in line for about three hours and was turned away because of an issue with his social security card.
"They wanted the entire thing, not just the card," DeMarco said. "All I had was the card, 'cause you get it when you are a kid. Nuts right? Nuts."
So DeMarco went home, dug through old tax returns and found a 2019 pay stub with his full social security number on it. He went back the same day, this time to the driver license center in King of Prussia, where he hoped he'd have better luck. But after another three hours, they turned him away again, DeMarco said.
"I just said to the lady, 'What am I supposed to do? This is all I have.' She said, 'I'm really sorry.' She didn't offer an explanation. It wasn't just me. There were a lot of people being turned away."
Having served as an officer in the military with top-secret clearance – and an ID to prove it – didn't matter to PennDOT, DeMarco said. If he didn't have to fly every week for his job as a regional manager for a food company, he would have given up, DeMarco said. Instead, he had to apply for a new social security card, which he hoped would get him through this time.
REAL IDs are federally mandated, and after May 7, the only acceptable forms of identification a person can show to board a domestic flight or enter a military base or federal building will be a REAL ID or a passport.
These driver's licences and ID cards are mandated by a 2005 law enacted by Congress at the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, which called for government to establish national security standards for state-issued identification documents. The IDs have enhanced security elements, like anti-counterfeiting technology, and in order to get one a person must present documentary evidence they are who they claim to be.
The federal government has postponed the REAL ID enforcement deadline multiple times, most recently in 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, pushing it back from May 3, 2023 to the current cutoff date. PennDOT and NJMVC have information on their website's about how and where people can get their READ IDs.
Like DeMarco, Nathan Carr-Whealy's also was making his third attempt to get his REAL ID last week. Carr-Whealy, an attorney from Lansdale, Montgomery County, was born in Japan, so he has a certification of birth abroad instead of a birth certificate.
"For 39 years, I've used a hyphenated name on every document," Carr-Whealy said. "My law license in Pennsylvania is "Carr-Whealy". My taxes are "Carr-Whealy". My Social Security is "Carr-Whealy". My address is "Carr-Whealy". Every document in existence is "Carr-Whealy", except for the certificate of birth abroad, which is Whealy. So they threw me out of here two months ago saying that I couldn't get the ID."
Carr-Whealy had to pay $160 to file a court order to change his name, advertise the notice in two newspapers of record, wait two months for a hearing and attend the hearing to formally add his hyphenated last name on his certification of birth abroad so it matched his other documents.
"I thought I had it bad," DeMarco said have hearing Carr-Whealy's saga.
I was starting to feel that if my documents didn't pass muster, it would somehow be a moral failing.
I had read the PennDOT REAL ID explainer several times and gathered all the necessary paperwork, I thought. But my identity was actually a bit of a mess. I never legally changed my last name to Bond when I got married, even though I go by Courtenay Bond socially. My byline is Courtenay Harris Bond, an optimistic gesture that I might have a few readers tracking my work since I started reporting a couple decades ago as Courtenay Harris. My driver's license says Courtenay Harris, but my birth certificate and passport read Courtenay Payne Harris and my W2 and social security card are Courtenay P. Harris.
According to Mildred "Mia" Wesner, who was in front of me in line, these discrepancies were going to be a problem.
Mia Wesner, of Haverford, Delaware County, missed her birthday lunch to make her second try to get her REAL ID at the King of Prussia Driver License Center on Friday.
She was rejected the first time she tried to get her Real ID because some of her documents had her legal first name, Mildred, and others her nickname, the name she prefers and has always gone by: Mia. After her initial fail, Wesner, from Haverford, Delaware County, said she was going to put off getting a REAL ID until her license expired in April 2026.
But then she realized at 2 a.m. that it actually expired in a couple of days. So instead of attending her birthday lunch with her three friends and four siblings, she was back outside the driver license center with the rest of us. Wesner said she sent her birthday lunch party a picture to show them how dire things had gotten.
"Mia, your birthday, you're standing in line," she said they responded. "But I am not going home. If they reject it (her documents) I will turn on the tears."
DeMarco's phone rang. We FaceTimed with his 2 1/2-year-old granddaughter.
Finally, we made it inside.
Wesner regaled us with stories about how she would talk her way out of trouble with the nuns at Catholic school. She also admitted that her tummy felt "kind of funny," as we watched an official vet people's documents, letting some folks through and sending some away.
"If someone were to offer me peanut M&M's right now, I’d have to say, 'I don’t think so,'" Wesner said.
She pulled another paper out of her purse.
"Do you think this will work? What about a Bloomingdales bill with my address on it?"
"You're asking me?" DeMarco said. "I've gotten turned away twice!"
Sadly, Wesner failed again because she hadn't brought her marriage certificate to prove she had legally changed her name.
I was luckier. The PennDOT employee checked my passport, driver's license and social security card and passed me through with some more paperwork to fill out and a number that slotted me into the next queue.
DeMarco also succeeded this time. We high-fived.
"I'm actually shaking," I said to DeMarco.
"I know," he said. "Me, too!"
When I walked out of the building another hour later, past all the people, necks bent, looking their phones in line, I felt like I had made it through the McCarthy hearings. I was official, and I had my REAL ID to prove it to whoever wanted to know – at least for the next five years.