If you're living in one of the four largest states -- California, Texas, Florida or New York -- you probably haven't noticed much in the way of changes since they introduced the Real ID requirements. You can have your ID or driver's license mailed to you, or, you can pick it up on site, right? Usually you can pick it up on the same day, if you're willing to wait around a while. And, that's very convenient sometimes, right? However, if you're living in many of the smaller states, things have changed a great deal. Whereas, previously, you could pick your license or ID up very conveniently and very quickly at any of perhaps hundreds of locations, now, you may well have to wait a couple of months or more to get your license or ID, if you get it at all, by mail. And, of course, they mails have no accountability whatsoever. Most inconvenient.

Now, what's happened, is that the U.S. federal government has threatened to cut funding to states that aren't in compliance with Real ID security requirements. In the case of very large states, of course, this is no threat at all, since they can do as much damage to the Feds as the Feds can do to them -- bring it on, guys! However, in the case of not so big states, particularly states like, say, Virginia, which are massively dependent on federal funding and investment, this is a very compelling threat. So, in Virginia, Illinois and Indiana, for example, Real ID's are now produced at a single in-state facility, secret, and heavily guarded, and totally inaccessible. And, residents have to depend on the uncertainties and lack of accountability of the mail services to get their credentials, because the state is too frightened of the possibility of federal sanctions to provide a convenient service. You don't get them when you need them, your problem!

In other states like Washington, Oregon, Oklahoma, Kansas and New Mexico, the states are subcontracting to other states to have their credentials mailed in from these states, making the process even more time consuming and unpredictable. In Oklahoma they went from having 300 fully equipped license production facilities to having none at all, almost overnight, in November 2022. Now, Oklahomans have to get their credentials imported from Indiana at their own risk. Boy, the Feds must have really put the fear of God into Governor Stitt of Oklahoma, right guys!

Of course, some small states are sticking up to the Feds quite well. In Missouri, Arkansas and Kentucky, for example, people can pick up their licenses at any dmv facility, just like before. Apparently, this isn't really so hard to do, if the state governments have the guts and the brains to do it! Unfortunately, quite a few have neither the one, nor the other!