Voter suppression just had a bad night in Texas

Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed a law last night which significantly rolls back the state’s efforts to make it harder to cast a ballot. Though the state’s new voter ID law is not a total victory for supporters of voting rights, it is a major shift in the state’s law — brought about by the fact that the state repeatedly lost its efforts to defend its previous law in court.

All voter ID laws are, to some extent, voter suppression laws. They make it harder to vote, while addressing a problem — voter impersonation fraud at the polls — that is virtually non-existent. Twenty million Texas votes were cast in the ten year period before the state enacted its voter ID law in 2011, but only two people were convicted of the kind of fraud that is supposedly targeted by such a law.

Indeed, Texas’ 2011 voter ID law doesn’t even try very hard to pretend that it exists for some purpose other than keeping certain people from casting a ballot. The law permitted voters to cast a ballot if they showed a gun permit(something Republicans are more likely to carry than Democrats), but it didn’t allow someone to vote with a student ID (students are especially likely to favor Democrats). A federal court also found that the law was “passed, at least in part, with a discriminatory intent in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”

That law, however, has now been significantly watered down.

After a conservative federal appeals court rejected Texas’s 2011 law, Texas agreed to be bound by a court order limiting its ability to enforce the law during the 2016 election. Under that court order, registered voters who “present a valid voter registration certificate, a certified birth certificate, a current utility bill, a bank statement, a government check, a paycheck, or any other government document that displays the voter’s name and address” may cast a regular ballot if they “sign a reasonable impediment declaration” — a document stating that the voter was not reasonably able to obtain the forms of ID mandated by the 2011 law.

The bill signed into law by Gov. Abbott on Thursday night mirrors much ofthis court order, making similar restrictions on the Texas voter ID law permanent.

Again, this is not a total victory for voting rights. The law still imposes an ID requirement on most voters, and some voters may be intimidated by the fact that they risk jail time if they make a false statement on their declaration of reasonable impediment.

Texas also filed court documents Thursday night claiming that its changes to its voter ID law should erase the federal court’s finding that the state acted with racially discriminatory intent. If the courts ultimately agree with this argument, that will limit the remedies available to voting rights advocates who want to ensure that Texas does not engage in additional voter suppression.

But the new Texas law also locks in place restrictions on the state’s voter suppression efforts that it could have just as easily fought in court. The Supreme Court, which once again has a Republican majority, signaled that it is eager to expand states’ ability to enact voter suppression laws. Texas could have fought for their 2011 law in the Supreme Court, and there’s a very good chance that the state would have won.

Instead, the state elected to take a partial loss rather than pushing on for a full victory. It’s unclear whether it will retain that posture if the Supreme Court eventually does legalize new forms of voter suppression. For the time being, however, Texas’ efforts to suppress the vote are hobbled, if not entirely dead.

Texas Attorney General Almost Disenfranchised By His Own Voter ID Law

BY AVIVA SHEN/Think Progress

As early voting begins in Texas, the state’s new, strict voter ID law has thus far flagged a judge, gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, and another state senator as potentially illegitimate voters. Attorney General Greg Abbott (R), voter ID’s most strident defender, was also flagged as a suspicious voter under his own law’s strict criteria.

Abbott was flagged because his license lists his name as “Gregory Wayne Abbott” while his voter registration record simply calls him “Greg Abbott.”

Longtime voters, particularly married women who have taken a spouse’s name, are being stopped at the polls because their names on their drivers’ licenses differ from their voter registration forms. Thanks to an amendment added by Wendy Davis, voters who clearly have “substantially similar” names can still cast a regular ballot by signing an affidavit affirming their identity. If the law had gone through unmodified as Abbott originally supported, he would have disenfranchised himself.

Though Davis’ amendment will allow many legitimate voters to vote, the process to determine “substantial similarity” and organize affidavit-signing will inevitably clog up Texas electoral processes with unnecessary confusion. Come November 5, Texas’ polling places may resemble Florida’s in 2012, where Republicans’ election law changes created marathon lines and pollworker confusion.

The law has also affected countless ordinary Texans who do not attract as much media coverage as Davis or Abbott. People of color, low-income voters, seniors, and students are most likely to lack the required ID and may not have their votes counted as a result. While Texas officials claim it is easy for these people to get a free voter ID, just 41 out of 1.4 million eligible Texas voters have received one as of the middle of last month. ThinkProgress interviewed one 84-year-old woman who was denied the ID three times despite providing extensive proof of her identity.

GOP Official Resigns After Saying Purpose Of Voter ID Is To Suppress Votes Of Democrats, ‘Lazy Blacks’

BY IAN MILLHISER/Think Progress

Until Thursday, Don Yelton was a precinct chair in the Buncombe County, North Carolina Republican Party. That ended after a Daily Show interview riddled with racism and candid admissions about the purpose of a voter suppression bill enacted by Republican lawmakers in his state. Over the course of the interview Yelton admitted that he supports requiring voters to show ID, in addition to the other, many voter suppression provisions included in the North Carolina law, because “the law is going to kick the Democrats in the butt.” He also denied that the law is racist during the course of an interview where he both used a particular racial slur that begins with the letter “n” and claimed that he is not racist because he “one my best friends is black.” Watch it:

Yelton also offered several other reasons why he supports the voter suppression law. Among them, “[i]f it hurts a bunch of college kids that’s too lazy to get up off their bohunkus [sic] and get a photo ID, so be it,” and “if it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that wants the government to give them everything, so be it.”

In the wake of Yelton’s confession that a Republican voter suppression law will suppress Democratic votes, the Buncombe County Republican Party asked him to resign his position within the party, and the country GOP chair says Yelton did so. The party also claims that Yelton was “recently reprimanded and removed from his position as a precinct chair in Buncombe County for a period of time in 2012 through 2013,” though he was reelected at a very sparsely attended party convention.

Nine Term North Carolina Senator Resigns To Fight New Voter Suppression Law

BY IAN MILLHISER/Think Progress

North Carolina state Sen. Ellie Kinnaird (D) announced today that she is resigning her seat in the state legislature after 17 years of service. Instead she will work full time to reverse the blizzard of right-wing legislation enacted by Republicans since they took over the state government last January. In a message posted on her website, Kinnaird wrote that a major focus of her post-legislative work will be “a grass-roots project to make sure everyone in the state has a proper voter ID so that no votes are denied, even though” a recently enacted voter suppression law “is aimed at exactly that – repressing the vote.” Kinnaird’s replacement will effectively be chosen by Democratic officials.

In 2010, Republicans took over both houses of the state legislature for the first time since 1870, thanks in no small part to the spending of a single very wealthy Republican — wholesale magnate Art Pope. After Republican Gov. Pat McCrory took office last January, state lawmakers have pursued an agenda focused on voter suppression, shutting down abortion clinics, shifting the state’s tax burden onto poor people, and allowing gun owners to bring firearms into bars.

Earlier this month, McCrory signed into law the nation’s strictest voter suppression law. Among other things, this law includes cuts to early voting, a strict voter ID requirement and prohibitions on certain kinds of voter registration drives. All of these provisions are likely to restrict low-income and minority voters from exercising their right to vote — thus making the electorate more Republican and less Democratic.

Voter ID laws speak louder than words of outreach

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One Day After RNC Calls For Minority Outreach, Arkansas GOP Passes Bill To Suppress Minority Vote

By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

Monday morning, the Republican National Committee released a lengthy “autopsy” of their 2012 electoral loss, much of which was devoted to the GOP’s weak standing among people of color. “It is imperative that the RNC changes how it engages with Hispanic communities to welcome in new members of our Party” the autopsy proclaims, and “the Republican Party must be committed to building a lasting relationship within the African American community year-round, based on mutual respect and with a spirit of caring.”

One day later, Arkansas Republicans showed their mutual respect and spirit of caring for people of color by passing a law that will keep many of them from casting a vote.

Yesterday, the Arkansas Senate passed — on an entirely party-line vote — a so-called voter ID law requiring voters to show photo identification before they can cast a ballot. The same voter suppression measure already passed the state House with all but one of the votes for the bill coming from Republicans. These laws, which are popular among Republican lawmakers, accomplish little more than disenfranchisement. Even conservative estimates suggest that these laws will prevent 2 to 3 percent of registered voters from casting a ballot. And this impact is felt hardest by low-income voters, students and people of color — all of who tend to prefer Democrats to Republicans.

The most common argument raised in favor of voter ID laws is that they prevent in-person voter fraud, but this claim cannot be squared with reality. A person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud at the polls. A Wisconsin study found that only 0.00023 percent of votes are the product of such fraud. So voter ID laws disenfranchise a large chunk of voters — between 2 and 9 percent, according to different reports on their effect — in order to prevent a virtually non-existent form of voter fraud.

The bill will now go to Gov. Mike Beebe (D-AR), who should veto it.

O'Reilly Argues With Both Colin Powell And The Facts On Voter Suppression And Voter Fraud

SERGIO MUNOZ/Media Matters for America

In an interview with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly ignored key legal problems for photo voter ID laws under the Voting Rights Act and dismissed concerns of voter suppression, claiming in-person voter fraud was a problem.

On the January 29 edition of the O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly hosted Powell to discuss "racial politics," voter suppression, and voter fraud, but failed to provide important context, including any mention of a crucial Voting Rights Act case set to be argued before the Supreme Court on February 27. In part, this case will turn on the historic civil rights law's efficacy at preventing the type of race-based voter suppression Powell described.

The problem that recent photo voter ID laws purport to address - voter fraud committed in person - is "virtually non-existent." Nevertheless, in the past two years, state Republican legislators and right-wing allies have aggressively pushed such laws that add another identification requirement for voting, even though voter identification is already required across the country. Under the Voting Rights Act, federal courts have recently confirmed that new voter ID laws in jurisdictions with a history of voter suppression have a prohibited effect on African-American and Hispanic voters.

O'Reilly refused to acknowledge any of these facts in his interview with Powell, even as Powell tried to explain them to him:

POWELL: One more point.

O'REILLY: All right. Go ahead, go ahead.

POWELL: You can't have policies that try to make it harder for minorities to vote. I think one of the most terrible things that happened in the past election season is when we had a number of states that were going out of their way, claiming there was outright fraud, when there really wasn't any fraud to be of concern to us.

But we were doing things to -- making it more difficult for those people to vote.

O'REILLY: I want to get very micro on this.

POWELL: Well, but you're --

O'REILLY: Voter ID -- wait, wait, wait.

POWELL: Go ahead.

O'REILLY: The voter ID, you object to showing an identification card when you vote?

POWELL: No. Of course not.

O'REILLY: Well, that's all the Republican Party wants. That's all they wanted is the voter ID.

POWELL: I object to putting in place additional levels of voter ID that --

O'REILLY: One, show one.

POWELL: -- disenfranchise, disenfranchise those of our fellow citizens. I want to see a Republican Party that, rather than trying to make it more difficult to vote and restricting the number of days and hours you can vote, a Republican Party that says we want everybody to vote and we're going to give you a reason to vote for us.

O'REILLY: All right. But I don't --I don't know if asking for an ID is trying to restrict the vote -- I mean, I'm sorry. You should be able to prove who you are before you cast a ballot.

POWELL: No, you should be able to prove who you are when you register to vote. And when you make the proper registration and identify yourself, you shouldn't have to go to some higher level which is going to restrict some.

O'REILLY: But surely you know how fraud is committed. I mean Boston, in Chicago, you register and then you show up and it's not you.

POWELL: I have not seen any study that says fraud is a problem of such significance that these kinds of procedures were in place. And I'm glad to see that Governor Scott in Florida has recently said he is turning this back over to his -- his local communities to handle.

O'REILLY: All right. I just think showing an ID to vote is the bare minimum.

O'Reilly's effort to discuss the topic in "micro" contained multiple inaccuracies and completely ignored the recent and relevant challenge to the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. For example, O'Reilly seems to be under the misimpression that "all the Republican party" wanted this past election cycle was "an identification card when you vote." Powell tried to correct him by noting the new voter ID laws were actually "additional levels" of already-required documentation. As detailed by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, it was precisely these redundant and unnecessary "additional levels" of identification which made this initiative pushed by state Republicans so troubling:

Currently, every state in America requires voters to prove their identities before receiving a ballot; different states require different levels of proof.  Legislators in states across the country are now promoting bills that would require voters to meet more stringent documentation requirements before voting--including presenting photo identification at the polls on Election Day in order to cast a ballot. While the details of the proposals vary, these bills all would deny the right to vote to some or all citizens who are unable to produce a photo ID.  Studies show that as many as 11 percent of United States citizens--mostly older, low-income, and minority citizens--do not have government-issued photo IDs.

As of last year, ten states have new "unprecedented" voter ID laws. In-person voter fraud of the type O'Reilly describes has been repeatedly shown to be a fabricated problem to justify the "solution" of government-issued photo voter IDs mandated under the recent legislation. State Republicans are beginning to admit these types of laws are purely a prohibited race-based voter suppression tactic, as Powell argued during his O'Reilly Factor appearance. O'Reilly did not mention these documented admissions.

O'Reilly also notably left out the fact that federal review has documented this phenomenon through the "pre-clearance" process under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which forbids jurisdictions with a history of impermissible racial discrimination - such as states in the South - from enacting changes in election practices without approval. As election law expert Professor Rick Hasen recently explained, these are the examples of illegal voter suppression that O'Reilly was searching for:

Like many other states with Republican majority legislatures acting over the last few years, South Carolina adopted a tough photo identification law before the 2012 election. The state's Republican legislature likely acted out of the belief that such laws would marginally depress Democratic turnout and help Republicans at the polls. Controversy over voter ID laws also motivates the Republican base to turn out to vote. (What voter ID laws don't do is prevent a lot of real voter fraud, though that's the rationale their supporters cite.)

The U.S. Department of Justice blocked South Carolina's voter ID requirement under Section 5. The process sounds technical, but it's important. Nine full states and parts of other states with a history of racial discrimination in voting must get approval from either the Department of Justice or a three-judge court in Washington, D.C. before making any changes in their voting practices and procedures--from changes as small as moving a polling location to as large as enacting a new redistricting plan. 

[...]

Voter ID laws have also passed outside the South in recent years, in states such as Indiana and Kansas. Because Section 5 doesn't apply there, no federal law prevents the voter ID requirements from going into effect, though some state courts have blocked them for other reasons. By contrast, because of Section 5, South Carolina's law automatically went on hold until it was softened. Texas, meanwhile, lost a bid to impose an even stricter voter ID requirement enacted in 2011.

Because GOP legislation of this sort is not going away, other media outlets are reporting on the clear and important link behind recent voter ID laws and the Voting Rights Act's prohibition of certain voter suppression that discriminates on the basis of race. In the coming weeks before the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the "pre-clearance" requirements of the Voting Rights Act, hopefully O'Reilly will finish the conversation he started with Powell and include this crucial context.   

Romney Co-Chair: Romney Would Have ‘Absolutely’ Won Wisconsin With Voter ID Law

By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

In an interview with Milwaukee’s ABC affiliate, the Romney campaign’s Wisconsin co-chair, state Sen. Alberta Darling (R), suggested that her candidate would have won Wisconsin but for the fact that the state’s voter ID law was declared unconstitutional by a state court:

HOST: Do you think photo ID would have made any difference in the outcome of this election?

DARLING: Absolutely, I think so. We’re looking at all different kinds of precincts and all sorts of same-day registrations and I know people will go “oh, we don’t have fraud and abuse in our elections,” but what can’t we have voter ID when the majority of the people in Wisconsin wanted it. We passed it. The governor signed it. Why should one judge in Dane County be able to hold it up?

Watch it:

There is a simple answer to Darling’s question about why voter ID cannot exist in Wisconsin — the state constitution does not allow it. Under the Wisconsin Constitution, “[e]very United States citizen age 18 or older who is a resident of an election district in this state is a qualified elector of that district,” regardless of whether or not they have an ID.

But, more importantly, Darling’s suggestion that the only thing standing in between Romney and Wisconsin’s ten electoral votes was a law targeting the virtually non-existent problem of voter fraud at the polls is ridiculous. President Obama currently leads in Wisconsin by more than 200,000 votes. So Darling is suggesting that 200,000 people somehow managed to vote twice without anyone noticing — or perhaps that one person voted 200,001 times. Either one would require a conspiracy so massive it would make Fox Mulder blush.

In reality, a study of the 2004 election in Wisconsin found that of the approximately 3 million votes cast, “only seven were declared invalid—all of which were cast by felons who had finished their sentences and didn’t realize they were still barred from voting. As a result,Wisconsin’s overall fraud rate came in at a whopping 0.00023 percent.”

Supreme Court to hear Voting Rights Act challenge

By Samantha Kimmey/Think Progress

A cornerstone of the Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965 to protect minority groups in southern states from unjust voting laws, could be overturned this year, reported Bloomberg.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments challenging the part of the law that requires all or part of 16 states in the south to receive federal approval before enacting laws that impact voting.

The Obama administration used that provision this year to stop voter I.D. laws in Texas and South Carolina from taking effect. Overall, the Justice Department has stopped 2,400 changes since 1982.

Preclearance “has been one of the most powerful tools in the civil rights arsenal,” according to Yale Law School professor Heather Gerken. “It’s made more of a difference in improving the civil rights of African Americans than any other statute I can think of.”

Originally the law impacted states with the worst records on racial discrimination, in order to ensure that African Americans would no longer face insurmountable barriers to voting. In the 1970s, “language minorities” were added as a protected class.

The ruling will come in June after arguments are heard in early 2013.

Judge blocks Pennsylvania voter ID law

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BREAKING: Pennsylvania Supreme Court Puts Voter ID Law In Jeopardy

By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

Last month, a Pennsylvania trial judgeupheld that state’s Voter ID law, in an opinion that relied at least in part on Nineteenth Century precedent which claimed that vote suppressing laws may be permissible to protect against ‘rogues,’ ‘strumpets,’ and ‘wandering arabs.’ Today, the state supreme court vacated that order, noting that the law is not living up to its own promises of ensuring voters will have access to ID:

[T]he Law contemplates that the primary form of photo identification to be used by voters is a Department of Transportation (PennDOT) driver’s license or the non-driver equivalent provided under Section 1510(b) of the Vehicle Code. Furthermore, the Law specifically requires that – notwithstanding provisions of Section 1510(b) relating to the issuance and content of the cards – PennDOT shall issue them at no cost . . . . As such, the Law establishes a policy of liberal access to Section 1510(b) identification cards.

However, as implementation of the Law has proceeded, PennDOT – apparently for good reason – has refused to allow such liberal access. Instead, the Department continues to vet applicants for Section 1510(b) cards through an identification process that Commonwealth officials appear to acknowledge is a rigorous one. Generally, the process requires the applicant to present a birth certificate with a raised seal (or a document considered to be an equivalent), a social security card, and two forms of documentation showing current residency. The reason why PennDOT will not implement the Law as written is that the Section 1510(b) driver’s license equivalent is a secure form of identification, which may be used, for example, to board commercial aircraft.

The Department of State has realized, and the Commonwealth parties have candidly conceded, that the Law is not being implemented according to its terms. . . . Overall, we are confronted with an ambitious effort on the part of the General Assembly to bring the new identification procedure into effect within a relatively short timeframe and an implementation process which has by no means been seamless in light of the serious operational constraints faced by the executive branch. Given this state of affairs, we are not satisfied with a mere predictive judgment based primarily on the assurances of government officials, even though we have no doubt they are proceeding in good faith.

Today’s decision is not a victory against voter ID, yet. The state justices merely “return[ed] the matter to the Commonwealth Court to make a present assessment of the actual availability of the alternate identification cards on a developed record in light of the experience since the time the cards became available.” Nevertheless, the supreme court also makes clear that the lower court must suspend the law if “liberal access” to voter ID is not ensured, or if voter disenfranchisement will result in the 2012 election.

Advancement Project Co-Director Penda D. Hair called today’s decision “a big step in the right direction.” It appears much more likely today than it did yesterday that Pennsylvania’s voter ID law will not be in effect this November.

Decision Upholding Pennsylvania Voter ID Law Relied On 1869 Case Warning Of ‘Rogues,’ ‘Strumpets,’ and ‘Wandering Arabs’

By Nicole Flatow/Think Progress

As the Pennsylvania Supreme Court prepares to review the constitutionality of the state’s photo ID law, a University of Pittsburgh law professor flagged the flimsy and offensive precedentupon which the lower court relied when it upheld the law. In rejecting the plaintiffs’ argument that the law violates the state Constitution’s guarantee of “free and equal elections,” the court cited the 1869 case of Patterson v. Barlow, which, Professor Jessie Allen points out, serves as a “blatant example of the anti-democratic voter suppression alleged by plaintiffs in the current voter ID case.”:

The law approved in Patterson enacted a complicated set of registration procedures for Philadelphia (with its large working-class and immigrant populations) and a simpler procedure for the rest of the state. . . . The opinion justifies a tougher process for Philadelphia voters because “rogues and strumpets do not nightly traverse the deserted highways of the farmer. Low inns, restaurants, sailors’ boarding-houses and houses of ill fame do not abound in rural precincts, ready to pour out on election day their pestilent hordes.”

For good measure, the court explained that to overturn the tighter procedures for Philadelphia voters “would be to place the vicious vagrant, the wandering Arabs, the Tartar hordes of our large cities, on a level with the virtuous and good man.”

If the language of the opinion isn’t offensive enough, the dissenting opinion makes clear that, even by the standards of the time, the law’s crippling impact on the right to vote should have been obvious. Amusingly, Judge Thompson’s dissent also reveals that the exaggerated fears of voter fraud have been with us for a very long time.

The professed, and possibly the real object of the law, was to prevent fraud in elections by voters. If this was the view of the framer of the act, I must in charity believe that it so engrossed his attention, as to lead to forgetfulness that among the barriers so ingeniously contrived to prevent it, the defeat of the duly qualified voters must inevitably occur. A remedy for a disease must be regarded as empirical, which would only eradicate it by producing a worse. If frauds were imminent by simulated voters, let penalties be provided for the rogues, and set honest and vigilant men to watch them, but let not the rights of honest voters be sacrificed to these apprehensions.

In her op-ed, Professor Allen points out that the Supreme Court could clearly distinguish the law at issue in the 1886 case from today’s photo ID law. But the “generalized and biased fears about fraudulent voting” could be applied equally to the present case, in which Pennsylvania has admitted there are “no investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania,” and that they “do not have direct personal knowledge of any such investigations or prosecutions in other states.” Meanwhile, the law threatens to disfranchise as many as 750,000 state citizens, with new anecdotes of trouble obtaining a photo ID emerging every day.

Federal Court Rejects Texas Voter ID Law

By Aviva Shen/Think Progress

A federal three-judge panel has struck downTexas’ restrictive voter ID law, finding it would suppress minority voting. The Department of Justice blocked the measure after it failed to get the pre-clearance required under the Voting Rights Act for states with a history of discrimination. The DOJ concluded that Latino voters would be disproportionately affected by the ID law.

Now, Judges Rosemary Collyer (a George W. Bush appointee), David Tatel, and Robert Wilkins have agreed, finding that the law “imposes strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor” and that “a disproportionately high percentage of African Americans and Hispanics in Texas live in poverty.”

Texas’ law is one of the most extreme of the voter ID laws that have become the new fad among Republican lawmakers in the past 2 years. Under its provisions, Texan voters who show up at the polls without ID would not even fill out a provisional ballot ; they would simply be turned away. The law also has a very specific list of allowed IDs. For instance, expired gun licenses from other states are considered valid, but student IDs and Social Security cards are not.

The court was careful to “emphasize the narrowness of this opinion,” noting it is possible to implement a photo ID law without discriminating against minorities. This leaves open the possibility that Texas could write a less blatantly discriminatory measure before the November election. This is the second Texas election law struck down this week for suppressing minority votes; another panel found the Legislature’s new redistricting map violated minority voting rights.

UPDATE

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) says Texas will appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. He has also promised to appeal the redistricting decision to the Supreme Court. There are two explicit challenges to the Voting Rights Act already in the Supreme Court docket.

Voter ID opponents expect slam dunk victory in PA

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Carol Aichele, Top Election Official, At Voter ID Trial: 'I Don't Know What The Law Says'

by Luke Johnson/Huffington Post

Secretary of Commonwealth Carol Aichele on the fifth day of a trial over Pennsylvania's voter identification law testified at one point that she didn't know what the law said.

She was asked about the details of the law by a lawyer for the plaintiffs, and at one point responded, "I don’t know what the law says," according to CBS.

Aichele also said the state doesn't know the number of voters who would need a new photo ID to vote. She said that an earlier estimate by the state of 759,000 people who lacked a driver's license or alternative ID was released after she was told she needed to come up with a figure.

At the trial, she disagreed with a state official's estimate that the number of people who lack the proper ID to vote could be more than 1 million. "We think the number is substantially less," she said. "We planned on less."

She also stood by a claim that 99 percent of voters have the correct ID.

The law passed in March by a GOP-controlled legislature and signed by Corbett requires voters to show a form of identification before polling. A driver's license, passport, in-state student ID, military ID, local government employee ID or nursing home ID are accepted. The state recently announced that it would introduce a new voting photo ID for voters without any of the forms.

The ACLU and NAACP filed a lawsuit on behalf of 93-year-old Vivian Applewhite, who is the lead plaintiff in the case. She has never had a driver's license, and had herpurse snatched with her Social Security card in it, but has consistently voted since 1960.

The state has already 
stipulated in an agreement with the plaintiffs that it has no evidence of past voter fraud, and will not offer evidence that it has occurred or is likely to occur in the 2012 elections.

The Justice Department has launched its own investigation into the law.

Why Pennsylvania’s Voter ID Law Will Create Chaos On Election Day

By Aviva Shen/Think Progress

As states fight to implement voter ID laws in time for the November election, it is becoming glaringly obvious that the current election system cannot handle the added burden of implementing voter ID laws. Judging from a new report on ballot design flaws by the Brennan Center for Justice and a recent study of chaotic election procedures in another swing state, Ohio, voters with or without an ID stand to be disenfranchised through a fragile bureaucratic maze likely to collapse under the extra burden of the new voter ID laws.

Pennsylvania, currently mired in a legal battle over its voter ID law, is one of the states facing an impossible logistical burden of getting voters the proper identification in the next 100 days.

During a call about the voter ID lawsuit Tuesday, State Senator Vincent Hughes (D-PA) stressed how unprepared Pennsylvania is to implement the law without disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of people.

“It is absolutely unequivocally clear that the state cannot pull this off by Election Day,” he said. “There’s not enough information or staff time to implement this in time, and it will cost the state an extra amount of millions of dollars to get this done.”

A state court is expected to rule on the law in August, giving the state just a few months to implement a voter ID structure certain to tax an already overtaxed system.

Hughes said he and other district officials have encountered many individuals who were given mixed messages about what kinds of identification were permitted and what exactly they needed to do in order to get the proper photo ID. He blamed the confusion on lack of training:

We don’t fault those staffers. This is completely brand new to them and not part of their historic responsibility. Their responsibility in PennDOT is to work on drivers licenses, not to focus on the proper info for photo ID measures. But what we do fault is the training that is clearly not occurring at the executive level for these individuals so they can do their job or do this new responsibility as part of this law.

What’s more, handling the number of voters who need the ID — a conservative estimate foundmore than 750,000 people without ID — is far beyond these offices’ resources.

“There’s no way PennDOT could process anywhere near that number of IDs, even if people could get the documents and the transportation to get there,” said Penda Hair, co-counsel for the voter ID lawsuit.

Pennsylvania has the lowest percentage of government workers in the nation. When Republicans took control of the legislature in 2010 and slashed public sector jobs, the number of government employees dropped by more than 3 percent in a year, among the sharpest declines in any state. Republican legislators now expect the remaining employees to take on even more responsibility with no preparation.

In a weak attempt to meet this challenge, the state may expand the hours of some PennDOT offices, many of which are only open two or three days a week and will only process ID applications within limited hours during the work day. But Hughes remains skeptical, pointing out the “hidden costs” of expanding office hours, coordinating services and data between offices and departments, which requires even longer hours from the reduced workforce.