Voter ID cards: a hot button political issue in PA

Issue breaks along party lines

By FRITZ MAYER

HARRISBURG, PA — If the Pennsylvania Legislature has its way, voters in the Keystone State will be required to show identification every time they go to the polls. The Voter Protection Act, which passed the legislature last week, had lawmakers splitting mostly along part lines. Republicans said the bill would prevent voter fraud, while Democrats said it would discourage voting among the most vulnerable of the state’s residents. Democratic governor Ed Rendell has promised to veto the bill.

According to Cindy Furman, an election data manager in Wayne County, residents are only required to show identification the first time they vote in a district. Thereafter, the signature of the voter is compared to the one on file. The new law would require voters to produce some form of identification in each election. Acceptable identification would include a valid driver’s license; a U.S. passport; a student, employee or government ID; a county voter-registration card; a firearm permit; or a current utility bill.

Rendell said he is concerned that the legislation will disenfranchise people living in nursing homes, a displaced family or the state’s poorest residents, who may not have any of those forms of identification.

Lynn Swann, the former pro-football player, who will most likely run against Rendell in the election this fall, said, “The idea that presenting a form of identification would somehow disenfranchise people is as ridiculous as it is untrue… The reality is voters are disenfranchised every time a fraudulent vote is cast.”

The League of Women Voters in Pennsylvania sided with Rendell, and said the bill is a solution looking for a problem. Chairman Elizabeth Milner said supporters of the bill “have failed to document a single instance in which the outcome of a Pennsylvania election was affected by individuals posing as registered voters.”

Fourteen other statewide organizations wrote letters to the governor in opposition to the legislation, including AARP Pennsylvania, the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia NAACP. The organizations expressed concern that elderly, poor and disabled voters would be disenfranchised.

Republican state representative Stephen Barrar, on the other hand, argued, in a letter to Rendell, that no voter would be disenfranchised. Under the legislation, he wrote. “…Voters who do not have proper identification may indeed vote by provisional ballot. Please explain to me who exactly you consider disenfranchised, since nobody will be turned away?” But for the provisional ballots to count, voters would have to obtain an acceptable form of ID and take it to the county board of elections.

On the issue of provisional ballots, Rendell said, “far too many of those ballots will not be counted because the very individuals who use them, such as the homebound or those in nursing homes, will be unable to attend a challenge of their provisional vote. They will not be able to go to a courthouse to defend their rights and, as a result, their right to vote will be stolen.”

On Friday, some Democrats in Harrisburg, including representative John Siptroth of Smithfield Township, said that Republicans have started using automated phone calls to residents to attack Rendell’s position on the bill.