Unless civil rights groups suing, incredibly enough, for the right of legal voters to cast their legal vote in Pennsylvania this year are successful in blocking the new GOP law, hundreds of thousands of voters — of all parties, but disproportionately Democratic-leaning — could be disenfranchised in the Keystone State alone this November, under the Republicans’ new polling place Photo ID restriction.
Democrats now have to make sure voters are aware of the law, know whether they comply, know how to meet the requirements if they don’t already – and do it all before Election Day. This could be a steep climb. Only one of five voters approached by TPM at Obama’s Pittsburgh rally Friday knew the law existed.
“I heard about it in Florida but not here,” said Martin Hoberman, a voter from the Pittsburgh area.
At the same time, AP reports today that based on its study of recent elections in Indiana, Georgia and Tennessee — states where GOP-backed polling place Photo ID restrictions have already been in effect for some time — “legitimate votes rejected by the laws are far more numerous than are the cases of fraud that advocates of the rules say they are trying to prevent.”
That, of course, is the point.
As the AP story points out in its opening grafs, perfectly legal votes of Republican voters will also be tossed out (in the story they mention a 90-year old WWII veteran and his wife who had no idea their votes for Romney in this year’s Indiana primary were never counted) along with the disenfranchisement of untold numbers who don’t even bother to show up to vote at all because they don’t own one of the very narrowly defined state-issued Photo IDs approved for use under these new voter suppression laws.
And, yes, when Republicans lose their right to vote, it pisses us off just as much as when Democrats lose their right to vote, even when it happens under voter suppression laws passed by Republicans.
We can think of little that is more blatantly and appallingly anti-American than what the GOP is now doing in hopes of purposely and systematically undermining the very core of democracy in this nation.
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania admitted in writing that there is no evidence of in-person voter impersonation fraud, which is the only type of fraud a requirement that voters show ID at the polls possibly could prevent:
http://freeandequalpa.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/the-commonwealth-stipulation/
So we are risking disenfranchising voters, why?