Earlier this year, Pennsylvania lawmakers passed [1] HB 934 [2], a voter ID law whose original sponsor, Daryl Metcalfe, is an ALEC [3] member [4]. Voting rights advocates filed a lawsuit [5] in May, and in June, Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald announced that he, too, plans to challenge the law in court [6]. Fitzgerald and local officials cite the legislation as being too expensive and too difficult to implement [7]by November, among other major flaws.
Even Secretary of State Carol Aichele, who has been touring the state to defend the law [8], seems to have fallen prey to one particular flaw – the restrictive expiration date clause, which is expected to bar a large chunk of the student population [9] from the polls. When displaying her own ID, it was noticed that it lacked an expiration date [10], automatically invalidating it for voting purposes.
Aichele and other proponents claim that HB 934 [2] will minimize so-called widespread voter fraud. There is a reason the Right Wing has been so eager to invent such a problem and then offer gratuitous solutions: to disenfranchise the voters least likely to back conservative politicians. Indeed, House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, a one-time [11] ALEC [3] member [12] recently suggested [13] that the new law will deliver Pennsylvania for Mitt Romney in November.
The first of the HB 934 [2] trials is set to begin at the end of July, setting the stage for what will surely be a long battle.
Until then, check out The Right to Vote under Attack: The Campaign to Keep Millions of Americans from the Ballot Box [14], a Right Wing Watch: In Focus [15] report by PFAW Foundation.
