PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Editorial: In tossing out Pennsylvania’s oppressive voter-ID law, Commonwealth Court Judge Bernard McGinley stated the obvious: “Voting laws are designed to assure a free and fair election; the Voter ID Law does not further this goal.”…
Voter advocates argued that the law would effectively disenfranchise hundreds of thousands because the types of identification deemed acceptable, like driver’s licenses and certain college IDs, were not readily available to many poor, elderly, disabled, and young residents. In an attempt to address that concern, the state began issuing special voter-ID cards, but shifting requirements for obtaining them only added to the confusion. So did the state’s puzzling ad campaign suggesting photo IDs were required at the polls even though the law remained tied up in court.
The state’s case disintegrated when it could not provide a single example of voter impersonation, the type of fraud the law supposedly addressed. Meanwhile, critics of the law had no trouble producing examples of legitimate, longtime voters who would be unjustly and needlessly hampered by the requirement… (more)
EDITOR: The whole Voter-ID effort was simply a Gov. Tom Corbett ‘Jim Crow’ effort to disenfranchise African-Americans.
