Pennsylvania House debates bill requiring IDs to vote

Published: Tuesday, March 13, 2012, 1:25 PM Updated: Tuesday, March 13, 2012, 4:00 PM

Protect Our Vote, a coalition of 45 organizations opposed to House
Bill 934, holds a rally at the state Capitol Rotunda. The Voter ID law,
if passed, would require every state citizen to present photo identification
as a condition for voting in primary and general elections. J. Whyatt Mondesire,
president of the conference of Pennsylvania's NAACP branches, speaks in the
Capitol Rotunda. 03/05/2012 DAN GLEITER, The Patriot-News

Republicans pressed against Democratic opposition for passage of a bill in Pennsylvania's House of Representatives that would require voters to show photo identification before voting, beginning with this year's presidential election.

Debate began before noon today and is expected to last for several hours. The Republican-controlled Senate approved the bill last week, and House approval would send the bill to Gov. Tom Corbett, also a Republican, who plans to sign it.

The bill, which would give Pennsylvania one of the nation's toughest voter ID laws, is touted by Republicans as a way to prevent voter fraud, but Democrats responded that Republicans have no evidence that voter fraud is a far-reaching problem that could be stopped by a photo ID requirement.

It may generate a court challenge by the ACLU or Senate Democrats, while other groups that oppose the bill, such as AARP and the Philadelphia-based Committee of Seventy, plan to mount public information campaigns to help voters understand the changes.

In particular, the elderly, disabled and poor will be hard-pressed to satisfy the ID requirement, Democrats said.
The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania has said that, urban legends aside, there is no proof that voting fraud is a problem and it warned that the mandate will unnecessarily increase the length of lines at the polls, create confusion for some voters, and result in no greater security of the ballot.

But Republicans countered that IDs are used widely as part of daily interactions in society and that the law comes with adequate safeguards for them.

PennDOT will provide free photo IDs for those who have no ID that would satisfy the new requirement, and voters who show up at polls without proper ID could cast a provisional ballot and get a six-day grace period to get ID and submit it to election officials, they said.

Republican legislatures around the country are pressing voter ID bills, and Pennsylvania would become one of 16 states that either require or request photo IDs from voters, according to information from the National Conference of State Legislatures.

On Monday, the U.S. Justice Department blocked a similar law designed to take effect in Texas this year, saying it could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of registered Hispanics. The move means that now a federal court in Washington will decide whether Texas, as well as South Carolina, will be allowed to enforce its new voter photo ID requirements.

Pennsylvania is not subject to the same federal review, required by Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act, because the state is not deemed to have a history of restricting the opportunity to register and vote.

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