‘Do you have a New Mexico passport?’ DC clerk fails at US geography

A man trying to get a marriage license was told he would need an international passport instead of his New Mexico driver’s license, because a clerk thought he was from a foreign country.

Gavin Clarkson was applying for a marriage licence at the District of Columbia Marriage Bureau when he was told his New Mexico driver’s license would not suffice as a form of identification.

The clerk, and later her supervisor, appeared to think New Mexico was a country and not a US state, and told Clarkson he would need an international passport instead.

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“You know you are from flyover country when you are applying for a marriage license, give them your New Mexico driver’s license, and they come back and say ‘my supervisor says we cannot accept international driver’s licenses. Do you have a New Mexico passport?’” Clarkson tweeted.

“They went back to a supervisor to check if New Mexico was a state ... TWICE!” he added.

Clarkson was a candidate to be New Mexico’s secretary of state and is a member of the Choctaw Nation. Eventually, he managed to convince the clerk that New Mexico was a part of the US, and was given his marriage license.

“We understand that a clerk in our Marriage Bureau made a mistake regarding New Mexico’s 106-year history as a state,” Leah H. Gurowitz, director of media and public relations for D.C. Courts, told the Las Cruces Sun-News. “We very much regret the error and the slight delay it caused a New Mexico resident in applying for a DC marriage license.”

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