House passes SAVE Act. Plus the REAL ID deadline & DMV disarray (04-10-2025--Hour1)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] All righty, so a couple of things happening up on Capitol Hill. We had the House within the last half hour, they've agreed to go along with that Senate budget. It's on a bill.

[00:00:46] Going to go, going to go along with the Senate spending plan. And as I understand it, it's like $4 trillion in tax cuts and $5 trillion increase in the debt ceiling. So things are going well. Yes, we're getting our fiscal house in total order.

[00:01:01] And then this is actually good news. Well, not this first part. Only four Democrats joined the House Republicans, but they did. So credit where it is due. They joined House Republicans to pass legislation that would impose stricter regulations to ensure that only U.S. citizens are participating in federal elections.

[00:01:35] No, we can't have that. Gosh, the House of Representatives voted 220 to 208. In favor of House Resolution 22. It's called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act or the Save Act.

[00:01:54] The bill would require states to obtain proof of citizenship prior to registering an individual for any federal election and also requires state officials to remove all noncitizens from the existing voter rolls. And if the North Carolina Board of elections is left to do that on their own, I suspect they will get around to that sometime in around 2055 or so. That's generally the pace at which they operate.

[00:02:24] Democrats. Democrats. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Marie Gluzenkamp Perez of Washington and Ed Case of Hawaii were the four Democrats to vote in favor of the bill. So I think we are at the point in this this story.

[00:02:48] You know, the story arc, the trajectory of the tale here is I think we're at the we're at the beginning stages where the left is going to tell us that this does not happen. Because this is what we were told, remember, when the state did this, when the state of North Carolina passed its own version of this. You know, you have to have citizenship in order to vote in North Carolina elections.

[00:03:16] We are not allowed to to have noncitizen voting. And when the state House Republicans, I think it was the House when the Republicans in Raleigh introduced this legislation, we were assured that this does not happen. And the response was, well, it does happen.

[00:03:38] In cities and counties and states that allow it in their city, county and state races, there are several examples. This has been one of the incursions of leftists across America in, you know, jurisdictions that they control. To change law to allow for noncitizen voting in their elections.

[00:04:04] There was a court case actually up in New York because New York City attempted to do this. And there was a lawsuit filed and they won that lawsuit. The challengers won that lawsuit because the state of New York, I think it had I want to say it was in their constitution. And so it prohibited this kind of a local law and they won that case. But if you don't have that in your state constitution, then you're going to be in trouble.

[00:04:34] And so this is what we were all I think. Yeah, I think the House I'm trying to remember. Did we get to vote on this or is this going to a referendum? Oh, yeah, it was last year. Yeah, we voted for it. Yeah, we put it into our constitution, right? We voted for this last year. Yeah. So the argument was that this is not it's not even happening. Nobody's introduced anything like that. Nobody wants to do this thing that other people have been doing in other cities and states around the country. But so that's the beginning of the story arc.

[00:05:03] And I suspect that's the beginning of this story arc at the national level, the Save Act. It's it's fixing or it's a solution in search of a problem, right? That's usually what they start off with. That the thing that you are worried about. Is not happening. So we should not erect any kind of safeguards to prevent that thing you are worried about from happening from happening. And then, of course, when you find out, oh, actually. There are cases of this happening.

[00:05:33] Then the next step is to say, OK, fine, it may be happening, but it's just a teensy weensy little bit. It's not a lot. OK, and then you're like, oh, actually, we have we have like all of these examples. You cite different cities that have allowed noncitizen voting and then it shifts to, OK, it may be happening. Maybe it's a little bit more than a teensy weensy bit, but it's not enough to affect the outcomes.

[00:06:01] And then you end up in the final stage, which is, OK, fine, it is happening. And here's why it's a good thing. Right. So we still have a ways to go on the Save Act in this story arc. But for now, let's celebrate the win. The Save Act passed the House. And here we go. This is from the Independent Journal.

[00:06:30] In the run up to the vote, Democratic House lawmakers claimed the legislation, here it is, would make it harder for individuals without proper documentation to vote. Yeah, correct. Correct. You are correct. That is actually yes, because when the left talks about people without proper documentation, they're talking about noncitizens. They're talking about people who are oftentimes illegal aliens. Right.

[00:06:55] And this is why they corrupt the language so they can then conflate different things and confuse the debate so they can get what they want. Right. Right. So they say, in particular, married women. See, because married women, they they take their husband's last names. Because patriarchy, you know, so they take their husband's last names.

[00:07:20] And so they would be prevented from voting because their surnames no longer match the names on their birth certificates. Except for the fact that the bill had provisions to allow married women to register to vote in federal elections. So it's a stupid argument. Read the bill, said Florida Representative Kat Kamek. Page 14.

[00:07:47] If you are registering to vote, there is a process by which the state establish the states establish if you are already registered to vote, you are fine. Please read the bill, she said, and stop insulting women. But if the leftists can't insult women along with minorities, because in their minds, I guess women just can't possibly figure out how to register to vote and minorities can't figure out how to get a driver's license or photo ID. Right.

[00:08:17] This is always a very odd argument that the leftists make, you know, the ones who are the champions of these people while also denigrating them as too stupid to function in our current society. The legislation would bar state governments from accepting or processing any application to register to vote in a federal election unless an applicant provides documentary proof of their American citizenship.

[00:08:40] The legislation also specifies what documents are deemed acceptable proof of American citizenship, such as documentation that complies with the Real ID Act of 2005. By the way, the deadline for the Real ID is it's coming up. All right. So spring is here, a time of renewal and celebrations. You got graduations, weddings, anniversaries, and the special days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime.

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[00:09:59] Alrighty, so the real ID deadline, don't call it a deadline, deadline, is approaching. But good luck, because you're going to have to go to the DMV. And, yeah, that's an issue.

[00:10:19] So, officials say, according to the story at WBTV by Dalford Jones, officials say they do not consider the May 7th deadline a deadline, per se, because you will still be able to get your real ID after May 7th.

[00:10:37] But if you are, you know, going to be flying on an airplane on May 8th, then you're going to have to bring a passport with you or something, because the real ID is now going to be required, right? This has been the case. Like, they've been telling us to get our real IDs for, like, 20 years. Classic GovCo rollout, am I right?

[00:11:06] Yeah, they're like, hey, everybody, we want these real IDs, more secure, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, really important, we get this done immediately. And then they extended it, and then they extended it, and then they extended it, and then they extended it. I don't even know how many times. Like, I had forgotten that there was a deadline on this thing. I just happened to go in there at one point. I had to re-up. Oh, gosh, don't even get me started. Okay, I'm already started.

[00:11:31] So, like, I had to go in because I got a notice in the mail that said I have to get a new driver's license. I had to renew my driver's license. And I said, well, that's weird because I was just in the DMV office, like, a year ago, because when I moved back to Charlotte and we moved into a house, it was new construction in a new neighborhood that got built, and our address did not exist.

[00:11:59] And so we had to wait for the builder and whoever in the city or county or whoever to turn, like, the papers of legitimacy over to the Postal Service. And apparently all of the, well, everything, the banks, the Amazon, like, all of them, they all rely on what's called the Red Book, the U.S. Postal Service Red Book. And as I understand it, back in the day, it used to be, like, a big, fat red book,

[00:12:29] and they would write everybody's address in them as the addresses came online. We did not get mail at our house for over two months. My neighbor couldn't get mail. She had, like, the thing where they, like, take pictures of your mail and give you a picture of it. I forget what the Postal Service thing is called, but it's, like, on their app or something. And so they send you pictures of your mail.

[00:12:56] But she would go down to the mailbox, and the key wouldn't work in the mailbox. And so she's getting these, like, hostage pictures every day of her mail, and she can't get to it. And she's trying to figure out how to fix this, and the Postal Service is not very helpful. I know that's going to come as a shock. But, yeah, so that's the problem is you've got to go to the DMV in order to get the real ID. And so what, you know, when I went to the DMV to get my license renewed and my concealed carry,

[00:13:26] you know, I had to do that in a very time-sensitive fashion, which don't even get me started. I got the paperwork for that, for the renewal on the concealed handgun permit, and oh, my gosh. List every prior address? Sir, I work in radio, okay? I have a lot of prior addresses. That's ridiculous. And not just prior addresses. You've got to list the dates that you lived in them. That's nuts. I already have a permit.

[00:13:56] I'm just renewing. Classic, not-my-fault McFadden right there. Anyway, so I go into the DMV, and I'm like, I need to, you know, give you, I show them, like, the deed of the house, and, like, here's the register of deeds documentation. This address does exist. He had to override his computer system. I had to do this at all my banks. I had to do this everywhere. And so he's like, well, we'll go ahead and take another picture. And so I got a new license.

[00:14:24] Or so I thought. It was not a new license. It's, even though it was a new picture, new address, it was what they called a duplicate. It's a duplicate. Even though it wasn't a duplicate. It was a new license with a new photo. So they send me this renewal. I said, I already did the renewal. And they're like, that wasn't a renewal. That was a duplicate.

[00:14:51] So I had to, I could not get an appointment at the DMV anywhere nearby. I had to go all the way up to the Hickory area. I took a day off of work to drive to Hickory to get an appointment. And it took me, like, five minutes. Yeah. That's the state of our North Carolina DMV. But don't worry. Don't worry. The DMV communications manager, Marty Homan, says, we now have 92 offices that are open

[00:15:19] 10 hours a day from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. That's 80 percent of our 115 offices. That's an effort to try to stretch more out of the folks that we have. So we're thankful to our employees for working overtime necessary to allow us to be open for 10 hours a day. For nearly a decade, state leaders across the country have been pushing people to get their real ID. The enforcement date has been pushed back several times, most recently due to the pandemic.

[00:15:48] If you do not have your real ID by next month, you will be able to use your passport or a passport card as a valid form of identification. Which I'm waiting for the leftists to come out and say, but how will the women and minorities be able to? They can't get a passport. They're too... Yeah. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina,

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[00:16:43] Centrally located between Asheville and the entrance of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, it's the perfect balance of seclusion and proximity to all the local attractions. With hot tubs, fireplaces, air conditioning, smart TVs, Wi-Fi, grills, outdoor tables, and your own private covered porch, choose from 13 cabins, 6 cottages, 2 villas, and a great lodge with 11 king-sized bedrooms, Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you for any occasion.

[00:17:12] And they have pet-friendly accommodations. Call or text 828-367-7068. Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Let's jump over and talk to Rob. Hello, Rob. Welcome to the program. How are you? Hey, how are you, Pete? Good. I'm going... What's going on? I'm going... So I flew in and out of Dayton, Ohio a couple weeks ago and... I'm sorry. On a return trip. Yeah.

[00:17:40] On a return trip, I went to go through TSA through PreCheck and gave them my new North Carolina Real ID license. It's the new multi-security feature license. It's this new and... Is it black and white? Does it look sort of black and white versus color? Correct. Uh-huh. That's what I got. Yep. And so the TSA officer would not take the ID.

[00:18:09] He requested that I present a passport or the old form of the driver's license that their verification equipment wouldn't recognize the new license. Is that because it's in black and white? I have no idea. I think... It was kind of bizarre. Yeah, I think that's what it is. So, yeah. Yeah. Funny story. Um... The, uh...

[00:18:35] Apparently, the North Carolina DMV put out for proposal for bids, um... Some vendor, you know, to get a vendor to do the IDs. And apparently, they awarded the bid and then the vendor began producing the IDs. Uh... And nobody ever checked to make sure that they would be compliant, I think, with the real ID color requirements.

[00:19:01] So, we've been making IDs in North Carolina, apparently in violation of the law by not having them full color IDs. Yeah. Pretty crazy. Just the DMV experience overall is just... It's totally absurd. Yeah. I had to go through a few months ago. Uh... They... They revoked my license for a 35-year-old fine that they say I never paid. And, yeah. Yeah.

[00:19:29] I've renewed my license numerous times, you know, over the years, over that 35 years. And, without any warning, I just happened to be looking on the DMV app or website and saw that my license was eligible for reinstatement with no explanation. So, that was... Took about a week to get it cleared up and about six different DMVs to finally get in.

[00:20:00] And, that took... Going in at 6 a.m., standing in line, I was about number 30. And, you know, once you get in, you know, they ask for your insurance. And, the image of the phone of your current insurance wasn't good enough. It had to be printed. And, yep. And then, so it came back and... Oh, my gosh. To pay the fee. To pay the fee, I paid cash. One of the bills had a tear in it.

[00:20:29] They wouldn't accept it. It was just crazy. Wow. Wow. So, where was the... Where was the fine out of... You said it was an unpaid... What was the... What was... It was a ticket or something that was unpaid? It was a reinstatement fee for the license where it had been revoked and... Oh, I got you. So, it took 30 years to track you down. And, so, what was the originating county?

[00:20:59] Was that... The originating was Jackson. Oh, okay. Because I was thinking maybe it was tied to the problems that they've been having in the court systems with their migration over to a new software platform or something. And there have been a lot of problems with that. So, but I don't know if Jackson County was one of those counties that did it. Yeah. And maybe that's why it popped up or something. I don't know. But that's...

[00:21:25] I mean, that's kind of nuts that they didn't know for 30-something years and then they finally figured it out. With no notification and not been in the same address for 15 years, so... Did they charge you any penalties on that? No, just the fee and the reinstatement fee. Well, okay. Well, at least they didn't nail you for 35 years of penalties. Like, that would have been nuts. So, yeah. No, that seems to track. Rob, I appreciate the call, man. Thanks, sir.

[00:21:55] All right. See ya. Have a great day. You too. So, this is from John Boyle. He's a writer. He used to write for the Asheville Citizen Times. And then, you know, after they fired like 99% of their workforce from that newspaper. He's now at a non-profit left-wing website called AVL Watchdog, AshevilleWatchdog.org.

[00:22:18] And he wrote about the DMV and getting his real ID and the problems at the DMV. And this would be up in Buncombe County. But there is a bit of a helpful tip, apparently, on how to beat the broken appointment system. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do too.

[00:22:47] And you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why? Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with Ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check.ground.news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description too.

[00:23:13] I started using Ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The Blind Spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check.ground.news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.

[00:23:40] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. And OK, we got Robert on. Hello, Robert. Welcome to the show. Pete, how are you doing today? I'm good, man. What's up? I just wanted to add comment to you. You said you moved into a new house a couple of years ago and the challenges that you had on getting your address and everything changed over. Well, just recognize. It's like it didn't exist. Yeah. All right. So that's one topic.

[00:24:10] That's called the AMS system today. And there is a backlog of people getting their addresses into the AMS system. It's not. That's the new term instead of Red Book. Oh, AMS. OK. Well, I don't need to know this anymore, hopefully. So, yeah. All right. So here's the better part of the story. So when you move into a new neighborhood, as you know, you don't have your mail delivered to your house anymore. It gets delivered to a mail kiosk. Right. And the actual little box that they put it in is called a CBU.

[00:24:39] It's a clustered mailbox. And so the postal carrier has a key that unlocks that box and they stick all the mail in it one time. And postal carriers were being robbed of that key so that bad people could get into your mailboxes and steal all your checks. Ah. And so they quickly realized this is a bad problem, that they needed to have a more secure lock. And that secure lock is called a MAL. I can't remember what the MAL stands for. M-A-L.

[00:25:07] And there's a shortage of 49,000 of these locks that they're changing out through every place in the country that has existing neighborhoods. And so new neighborhoods that when you install these things, the CBUs, it is taking up to eight months before that map. You can have the little box there, but the lock will not be on the mailbox, the MAL lock. And it's taking up to eight months to get that lock because they're trying to replace all the other ones.

[00:25:37] And so you could be living in your house for eight months and you're having to go to the post office to get your mail because they do not have any locks. So they won't even deliver it to the CBU without the MAL. Correct. Under the AMS. Correct. I think I got that. Now, what a mess. It is a huge mess, but not surprising either with the bureaucracy of our post office.

[00:26:03] Well, and there's another facet here that I have some personal experience with in my own neighborhood where apparently they have not, the builder did not do the pull-off area at the CBU. So they're supposed to apparently be, according to the Postal Service, they're supposed to be like a little parking pad or something where you can pull over and get out of the car safely, you know? Right.

[00:26:28] And they didn't install any of those at any of the CBUs all around the neighborhood. Yeah, they're supposed to be handicap accessible. There's a special design. And if they didn't do it, they're not going to deliver. Well, they've been delivering. So I probably have said too much. But they have been delivering. So at least they're doing that. But yeah, we saw that. Some of the residents saw that a couple of weeks ago. And it's like, oh, that might be a problem. But we shall see.

[00:26:58] Robert, I appreciate the intel. Thank you, sir. Enjoy your day. All right, buddy. You too. John Boyle at the avlwatchdog.org writes, in a topsy-turvy, unreliable world, you can always count on the North Carolina DMV driver's license offices to provide some constancy as far as providing reliably long lines and frustrated human beings, that is. Or as I say, DMV going to DMV.

[00:27:27] North Carolina contracts out for the DMV license plate and title offices. These are the tag offices, right? And you might notice there are a bunch of them. They generally run a little bit better than the driver's license offices, which are run and staffed by the state NCDMV. There are about 130 tag offices statewide compared to 115 driver's license offices, according to

[00:27:55] the DMV spokesperson, Marty Holman. In 2022, the big problem with the driver's license offices was staffing and filling vacancies. Back then, Holman said the vacancy rate in Buncombe County and 15 other offices was about 36.5% vacancy. So one out of three spots were empty. The DMV has tamed that problem. The vacancy rate now is about 10%.

[00:28:23] So it's not a problem of the DMV hiring and training employees and filling the seats that are allocated in the state budget. It's a math problem, he says. It just needs more of those positions to address the growth that we see. There are hundreds of people moving into the state every single day. By the way, there are people moving out of the state too. But anyway, the DMV has a two-part ask in the budget. So it's any more money, of course. Of course, it's a budget ask.

[00:28:51] Part one of the two-part ask is to add 61 employees across the state. These would be driver's license examiners who do the renewals, the road tests, and other work involved in getting you a driver's license. Part two is for 24 additional employees to staff two new offices, so they want to add two new offices, and one that would move into a new location.

[00:29:19] These employees would be targeted for Cabarrus County, Brunswick County, and Durham County. While the DMV dysfunction frustrates a lot of people, a lot of folks who have just moved here and don't really understand the political lay of the land, for example. And for people who are under the age of 65, the renewal is good for eight years, so we tend to forget over time what a pain in the butt getting our license appointment actually is.

[00:29:45] Chris Cooper, Western Carolina political scientist guy, he says, quote, it's the bureaucratic version of getting a colonoscopy, which is very accurate. So here is the hack. If you go on the DMV site for the real ID appointments and you keep hitting the refresh

[00:30:09] button, you have a good chance of getting lucky with an appointment that just becomes available. His wife got an appointment within an hour, went in about a week later at the set time, came out 20 minutes later with a new real ID. And he says, and now I have to hear about this for the rest of my life. But he says, you can benefit from my laziness. Here's why this hack works.

[00:30:36] Holman said that we were in sort of this darned if we do something and darned if we don't. February of last year, we started doing real ID confirmations. We were having 33% of people not show up for their appointments. So many missed appointments did not help with the DMV efficiency. So it started a system where after you book an appointment, you get a confirmation text and an email and you get that right away.

[00:31:03] And then you have to act on that within 15 minutes. And that holds your appointment. The next step is where the refresh button trick comes into play. Holman said four days before your appointment, you get a reminder message asking you to confirm the appointment. So you get that four days in advance and you have 24 hours to respond to that text or email. And if you don't, you lose it.

[00:31:29] And then those are the appointments that pop up and get taken all throughout the day. So if you're, so if you just like sit on that website and hit refresh for an hour, maybe two, maybe three, whatever, right? At least you're sitting and waiting in the comfort of your own home versus sitting in a DMV line.

[00:31:54] You know, it's not really a time saving, I guess, but it's a quality of life upgrade. You can be hanging out in your jammies, drinking some coffee or something. Now they do say that this new system of the constant barrage of texting and emails, making you confirm within, you know, a certain amount of time that that has helped reduce the no show rate for real ID appointments, taking it from 33% down to below 8%.

[00:32:25] This is, this is the problem when you're building any kind of the system. Um, people, yeah, the users, which really makes sense because have, if you've ever seen the people that they give licenses to, you've seen them out on the roads. It makes perfect sense. Like those are the people that you're fighting in line for to get the appointments on the website and you've seen the way they behave on the roads.

[00:32:53] So it does, that it, that does track, you know, um, there are changes planned for North Carolina's DMV. They want it to be more streamlined. They want it to be more efficient. They want, I'm serious. No. Okay. That's what they say. That's what they're saying. They want, they want to improve the DMV. How? Not sure yet, but no, I'm, but they're working on it. All right.

[00:33:22] That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecalendorshow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening and, uh, don't break anything while I'm gone.