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Judge Blocks PA Voter ID Law

Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson has blocked Pennsylvania's voter ID law. He ruled it could go into effect for next year's election, but cannot be implemented for the November elections.

His ruling came after listening to two days of testimony about the state's eleventh-hour efforts to make it easier to get a valid photo ID. He also heard about long lines and ill-informed clerks at driver's license centers and identification requirements that made it hard for some registered voters to get a state-issued photo ID.

The ruling, available here, was not based on constitutional issues.

Rather, the state Supreme Court had ordered him to stop the law if he thought anyone eligible would be unable to cast a ballot because of it or if he found the state had not complied with the law's promise of providing liberal access to a photo ID that voters were required to carry on Election Day.

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  • Display: Sort:
    Poll workers will still be allowed to ask (5.00 / 2) (#1)
    by Anne on Tue Oct 02, 2012 at 11:54:18 AM EST
    for photo ID, but it appears that not having one will not prevent the voter from casting a regular ballot.

    I think a lot is going to depend on how the poll workers are trained, and how much effort is made to distort the ruling; if poll workers make those without ID cast provisional ballots, or if they tell voters that their provisional ballots will not be counted, there could still be enough chaos and enough doubt to make the results less than credible.

    I guess we'll see soon enough.

    For the kinds of reasons identified by Anne (5.00 / 3) (#2)
    by Peter G on Tue Oct 02, 2012 at 12:28:03 PM EST
    it is by no means certain that the state Supreme Court will approve so narrow an injunction.  It is still subject to their review, within the next week or ten days.  Still, a great win for the ACLU-PA (brag: I am a board member) and the Advancement Project.

    Remember what Uncle Joe said... (5.00 / 4) (#3)
    by unitron on Tue Oct 02, 2012 at 03:08:39 PM EST
    It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes.

    That's what worries me. (5.00 / 4) (#4)
    by Angel on Tue Oct 02, 2012 at 04:25:29 PM EST