In August 2014, a 92-year-old woman presented a Bible to her state’s chief elections official. The presentation of a Bible is nothing new: they are common gifts among the politically connected, and elected officials will swear their oaths of office on those Bibles. But Evelyn Howard had a different intent. Having already voted in 18 presidential elections, Howard was put in a difficult position as she prepared to register and vote having moved from one state to another in 2013. Howard moved from Missouri to Kansas and fell afoul of a new state law that requires new registrants to provide a birth certificate or other proof of citizenship when completing their paperwork. Howard, who was born in 1922, did not have a birth certificate, so despite having voted in many elections before, she was placed in a probationary category that may have denied her the right to vote in the 2014 general election. A family Bible provided the evidence needed to complete her registration. The Kansas Election Board approved her registration when Howard and her daughter presented copies of U.S. Census records and a page from a battered family Bible to prove that she was born in the United States. The Bible had her father’s nearly 100-year-old notes recording Howard’s birth and that of her siblings. Her mother noted on a page in the Bible when and where her children were born (Oberholz 2014). There is no more fundamental right in a republican democracy than the right to vote. Other rights are certainly vital and necessary. But the very definition of a representative form of government involves the selection, retention, and removal of lawmaking officials on a regular basis by the public. Speech and redress of grievances are important rights to be certain, but if those pleas are ignored by those in positions of authority, then the voters have the ultimate ability to remove them via the ballot box. Because of this centrality of importance held by the vote, the administration of the right to vote is an equally central topic of discussion.