Remember this was passed in 2005….Washington has been out of compliance with federal rules for REAL ID for over 17 years. At one point Washington DOL had created 400,000 non resident licenses because of lax attitudes and policies from DOL leadership.

Washington when tasked with creating an Enhanced License, with safeguards guaranteed under the US Department of State, refused to use the facial recognition software to check standard license applicants for fraud. The fraud was multiple licenses under multiple individuals who just rearranged their last names and birthdays. Only because Jessie Jones took a whistleblowers complaint to Rob McKenna (then the Attorney General) to inform him that DOL ‘leadership’ deemed fraud ‘too expensive’ to fight at a ‘cost of 1 million dollars a year to run’.

Rob was like…I can get a federal grant to cover that cost to fight identify theft in a week. Only then did DOL execs reluctantly process new applicants for facial recognition. The craziest thing was individuals with 3 or 4 license…who’d signed a criminal perjury statement to get their ‘new identify’ (bank accounts, loans, mortgages, marriages, credit cards)…not a single person was charged from DOL referral and DOL chalked it up to ‘misunderstanding of our laws’…the media buried the story - only Jessie Jones coverage - which is also largely retcon’d out of memory told the crazy details. Many of the people had multiple warrants for their arrest, multiple DUI’s amongst other crimes. DOL’s fraud investigation team is historically staffed by retired WSP sergeants who don’t do much in referring cases to local prosecutors.

Also a side story…it was reported in the times. The CIA exploited Washington States lax ID requirements to get their operatives valid ID. I once met a Venezuelan lady in Spain who told me she’s dated a guy ‘from Washington who worked for the government but was frequenting visits to Venezuela’…I was like here read this story. Her face went white.

Nice to see the ineptitude of Washington’s pushback to comply with the federal mandate has been overcome.

Edit - bravely downvoting Washington’s failure to be a persistent fraud factory….how ‘progressive’.