Politics makes for strange bedfellows, we’re often told, and proof of it could be found in Thursday’s Photo voter ID hearing in Commonwealth Court in Harrisburg.
The state Republican Party — normally a group that rails against bureaucracy, red tape, and big government — today found itself advocating cumbersome Byzantine procedures and bureaucratic hurdles involving a confusing number of forms in order for some citizens to vote in Pennsylvania.
One witness, Slava Likowicz, of Philadelphia, testified that her mother, 87-year-old Eugenia Zwir, encountered days of confusion and runarounds when she sought a voter photo ID.
Her mother is infirm, confined to a wheelchair, and only speaks her native Ukrainian, Likowicz testified.
Even so, her mother has exercised her right to vote in every election since becoming a naturalized American citizen in the early 1960s, Likowicz testified.
Likowicz explained that voting is very important to her mother.
“She was born in the Ukraine under the Communists,” Likowicz testified, “and then she was taken away by the Nazis to Germany when she was a little girl.”
“Once she was voiceless and now she can vote,” Likowicz said.
Every year at Thanksgiving the family goes around the table to say what they’re thankful for, and her mother says, “God bless America. It’s the greatest country on earth.”
But getting a photo ID for her aged mother proved to be a three-day ordeal, Likowicz testified.
Because her mother is confined to a wheelchair and can’t speak English, Likowicz had to accompany her mother.
“I took her to what I thought was a DMV,” Likowicz explained. There, they were given a wrong form (a voter registration form, and not the photo ID form.)
Then they were told they did not have the required forms of identification, Likowicz testified.
They returned on a second day with the required papers — naturalization papers, Social Security papers, and two forms of ID — only to be told that they must go to a “full service” PennDot licensing center.
So on yet another day they set out for the PennDot center at Huntingdon.
This time, because her mother is in a wheelchair, Likowicz said she left her mother in the car and went in alone to make sure it was the right place.
They finally got a photo ID for her mother to vote, but it had taken them three days and many hours fighting the bureaucracy.
“It took three trips,” Likowicz testified. The last day Likowicz and her mother were engaged from 10 p.m. to 4 p.m. before Zwir received her photo ID for voting.
Another witness, Jessica Hockenbury, of Pittsburgh, testified it also took her three days and multiple visits to PennDot offices to attain her voter ID.
Like Likowicz, she spoke of PennDot employees who were confused about which papers and forms were required.
In the end, before she was given her voter ID, Hockenbury said her boyfriend had to fill out a two-page form attesting to Hockenbury’s address.
“Do you think the process was too complicated?” I asked Hockenbury.
“I do,” she said simply.
Other complained they had to pay a $13.50 fee to get a photo ID voter card.
Commonwealth attorneys, defending the Corbett administration in court on the matter, pointed out in each case that the potential voters who testified eventually did get their photo IDs — even if it took days and multiple trips to PennDot.
The problem is, nobody knows how many potential voters may yet be unable to get a photo ID before the November election.
The state Supreme Court ordered today’s hearing in Commonwealth Court to determine whether the new law would disenfranchise voters.
Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson is under orders to reach a decision by next Tuesday, October 2.
