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Posted by  JanetK_CA on 7/26/11 2:49am
Personally, I think this is another slightly grey area, open for *some* interpretation. But I do quote exactly from the law in the forms I have CWs sign.
What concerns me about using CWs was summed up in something I heard just this past weekend. I was told that there was a study done that showed how powerful an influence acceptance is on people's behavior. They found that most people would rather say what they think will be accepted by others than to say what they really believe.
So how are most neighbors going to react when someone whose home is right next door to them asks them to vouch for them? IMO, it's the rare individual who is going to say to themselves, "Gee, do I really know for certain who this person is?" and then take it the next step and tell this person they have to live next to that they wouldn't be comfortable acting as their witness. So using CWs doesn't give me warm fuzzies as an alternative in every situation and I don't believe we necessarily have an obligation to offer that to everyone who has an ID issue.
On the "difficult or impossible" scale, there's a very wide divergence. Some are very clear cut, like the house-bound, infirm, etc. In other situations, it's not so clear - and I agree that things are not always what they seem. But again, I do believe that we should have *some* discretion as to whether or not we even mention CWs as an option. Just for example of the other extreme, there's the situation where a person has changed their name, doc is in the new name, but they "just haven't gotten around to it yet" when it comes to getting a new ID.
I don't know if I'm making any sense here, but I guess my point is trying to be that I believe there will always be a need for us to use some degree of judgment in executing our responsibilities, since the law isn't going to be able to directly address every possible situation. (And we'd go nuts if it tried!)
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