Pennsylvania turning back the clock
Fourteenth.
Fifteenth.
Seventeenth.
Nineteenth.
Twenty-fourth.
Twenty-sixth.
The Constitution has been amended six times to expand the right to vote — more than any other purpose. The 14th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 24th and 26th amendments all seek to grow the electorate, on the path — eventually and incrementally — toward universal suffrage.
Of course, this was not an easy march. We look back in shame at the periods of our national history where race, religion and gender were once disqualifiers, and when poll taxes, literacy tests and outright intimidation were used to keep Americans from the polls. Few see these tactics of voter suppression as anything other than a black mark, a stain that mars our heralded democracy.
Yet here in Pennsylvania, we’re apparently interested in turning back the clock.
We’ve now passed a law that, as of this moment, makes 9 percent of Pennsylvania voters unable to vote. That’s because 758,000 Pennsylvanian voters don’t have the photo identification that is now required to vote in Pennsylvania. In Greene County, 1,237 voters (5.5 percent) don’t have sufficient identification. In Fayette County, the new law disenfranchises 8,455 voters (9.3 percent of all county voters) who don’t have ID.
(For the record, during debate on the bill, Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele assured lawmakers that 99 percent of Pennsylvanians possess the necessary ID. Eh, she was only off by three-quarters of a million people.)
The 758,000 voters won’t be able to vote because the law, which will be in effect for the November presidential election, sets strict new rules to prevent voter fraud in Pennsylvania. Only one small problem — and it’s a minor one. You see, there isn’t a problem with voter fraud in Pennsylvania. (It’s not just the Keystone State, nationwide the Department of Justice prosecuted a grand total of 17 individuals for casting fraudulent ballots from October 2002 through September 2005.)
So, in an attempt to fight the specter of a problem, the state GOP rammed through the bill to keep honest Pennsylvanians from voting and will waste taxpayer money to enforce it. (Ah, the beauty of controlling both houses of state government and the governor’s mansion.)
But I’m being cynical. Proponents say this law is necessary (despite there not being a problem) and that, by golly, should be enough for me, right?
After all, it’s easy to get a photo ID, they say. PennDOT will even give you one for free!!
It’s a super easy process: You only have to go to the DMV (everyone loves that!), fill out a form, present your Social Security card AND either a certificate of U.S. Citizenship, certificate of naturalization, valid U.S. Passport or birth certificate with a raised seal AND two proofs of residency “such as lease agreements, current utility bills, mortgage documents, W-2 form, tax records.”
Like I said, super easy.
I mean, I can’t imagine that anyone who doesn’t have a photo ID would have any trouble laying their hands on a Social Security card AND a passport AND a birth certificate AND mortgage or tax records.
Oh, did I forget to mention that the Voter ID bill is supported by just about every state Republican and no Democrats? I’m sure that is just coincidence. It has nothing to do with the fact that those demographics least likely to have photo ID (minorities and young people) are also most likely to vote for Democrats. (Nope, not at all.)
And, of course, it’s not like keeping 758,000 voters from voting is enough to sway elections or anything. Wait — what’s that? Barack Obama’s margin of victory over John McCain was 620,478 votes? That was the largest margin of victory in more than three decades?
Oh, and then there’s the little nugget that there are huge swaths of now disenfranchised voters in Democrat-friendly areas: in Philadelphia, 18 percent of voters don’t have ID and Allegheny County, 11 percent don’t have ID. That those two areas are key to Obama’s re-election hopes is merely happenstance.
After all, at least the GOP still has deniability, right? They at least have the guise that this is anything other than a nakedly political hack job. After all, no prominent GOP official has said that the Voter ID bill was going to mean victory for Mitt Romney in November.
Huh? State House Majority Leader Mike Turzai said exactly that? Really? On video!? You don’t say.
Perhaps the GOP goal is to roll back voting access all the way to 1787, when only white men over 21 could vote. Considering Obama trails Romney among white males by 26 points, I wouldn’t rule that out as an end goal.
Despite how “easy” you might think the above process might be (especially if you don’t have to jump through the hoops) it still presents hurdles to voting, you know, the stuff we’ve spent much of our national history removing.
If you’d like to check his ID, Brandon Szuminsky can be reached at bszuminsky@heraldstandard.com.