Five More States Submit REAL ID Compliance Packages

By Janice Kephart on March 8, 2013

With states facing a new REAL ID compliance deadline of July 15, 2013, and DHS enforcement action tentatively set to begin as early as autumn 2013 (DHS hopes), DHS tells me that five more states have submitted compliance packages to the DHS REAL ID Office that DHS says meet the law's certification requirements. These five all have submitted the compliance packages since the December 21, 2012, DHS press release setting forth its compliance and enforcement policy.

While formally known as the DHS REAL ID Office within the DHS Office of Policy Screening Coordination Office, the program has been given a more politically palpable name: "Office of State-Issued ID Support". This office tells me that the driver's license-age populations of the current total of 19 states asserting compliance collectively represent a little less than 30 percent of the entire driver's license-age population. The new states include Alabama and Florida, both of which were predictable from my 2012 annual assessment of REAL ID compliance. Also new to compliance are Kansas, Nebraska, and Vermont.

The full list of states that have submitted compliance packages are: Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.