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Pennsylvania judge strikes down state's voter ID law

Photo ID will create hurdles for otherwise eligible voters

While many people can easily reach into their wallet and produce a current ID that shows who they are and where they live, that is not true for everyone. At any given time, many eligible voters do not have the types of ID that are called for under photo ID proposals. Who is least likely to have a photo ID?

18 percent of elderly citizens do not have a government-issued photo ID.
15 percent of voters earning less than $35,000 a year do not have a photo ID.
18 percent of citizens aged 18-24 do not have a government-issued ID with their current address and name.
10 percent of voters with disabilities do not have a photo ID.
25 percent of African-American citizens of voting age do not have a current, government-issued ID

Voters who are least likely to have ID also are more likely to experience barriers that would prevent them from getting an ID. They are more likely to have low incomes and not have the money for transportation and to acquire supporting documents to qualify for the ID - ordering a birth certificate from another state can be both time-consuming and expensive. People with disabilities and elderly citizens, especially in rural communities, who no longer drive may have difficulty getting to a county office and waiting in the necessary lines to update their identification.

Protecting Voter Rights-Photo ID - League of Women Voters Minnesota (LWVMN)
 
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Unitedwestand13 said:
this requirement was a new one and only came into effect last october, and for 50 years she had been able to vote without problems.
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Telling the truth to the DMV is not a new law nor is the fact that she had to identify herself truthfully and accurately on many other occaisions that require ID.
 
Deuce said:
And now you're trying to pass judgment on who should or should not be allowed to vote. Yeah, keep telling yourself this isn't Jim Crow 2.0.
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Where did I say she shouldn't be allowed to vote (I said she should be allowed to be a judge since she has demonstrated she doesn't know the law and continues to break it)? Put you race card away, it's worn, debunked and not applicable here.
 
clownboy said:
Without ID requirement we have little chance of catching the offenders, and they know it. The penalty for pot use and possession was once draconian (in some places it still is), people still did it in numbers. Also, without ID requirement we have no idea of how large or small the problem is. However, we cannot deny the dead vote has been used significantly in some locations in the past.
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Voter ID wouldn't catch most of the voter fraud, actually. Because most of it occurs via absentee, or votes cast by ineligible felons. The first doesn't involve an ID check and the second wouldn't work because it doesn't say "FELON" on anyone's driver's license.

But cracking down on absentee votes would hurt R more than D, so you ignore it completely.
 
11 percent of American citizens do not possess a government-issued photo ID; that is over 21 million citizens.
http://www.brennancenter.org/sites/...es in 2012 Fact Sheet Four Pages Separate.pdf

"...The Brennan figure has been cited widely and comes from a 2006 survey conducted by an independent polling firm, Opinion Research Corp. Respondents were asked whether they have a current government-issued ID with their photo on it, like a driver’s license or military ID. If they answered yes, they were asked if this photo ID had their current address and current name, as opposed to maiden name.

They also were asked if they had a U.S. birth certificate, naturalization papers or passport in a place they could easily get to if they had to show it the next day and whether those documents had their current name.

According to the Brennan Center, as many as 11 percent of U.S. citizens — more than 21 million — did not have current government-issued photo identification. This was based on a sample of 987 randomly selected voting-age citizens contacted by telephone. The pollster reported a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points...


We looked for other data and made some calls to ask. A 2005 report from a federal voting rights commission chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker said in a footnote that about 12 percent of the United States voting-age population did not have driver’s licenses. The figure came from U.S. Department of Transportation and Census Bureau data.

We also found a May 24, 2011, report from Norman Robbins, research director for Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates, that examined driver’s license data specifically in Ohio. The report concluded that 940,000 Ohioans over age 18 lacked driver’s licenses. That’s nearly an 11 percent rate, higher than figures cited by proponents of Ohio voter ID laws. Robbins said in his findings that previous figures were erroneous because they failed to take into account such factors as deceased license holders and Ohioans who had moved out of state but were still in the state license database...

We start with the fact that a number of authorities say her source is credible. Daniel Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University, told us that he, too, thinks the Brennan figure "is in the ballpark." He cited another study, "The Disproportionate Impact of Voter ID Laws on the Electorate," done recently by researchers at universities in New Mexico, Arizona and Washington who used national survey data from the 2008 election. From 4,563 respondents, they found that 95 percent of registered white voters said they had current drivers licenses or state-issued photo IDs, while 90 percent of black voters, 89 percent of Latino voters and 86 percent of Asian voters did..."

http://www.politifact.com/ohio/stat...rcia-fudge-says-11-percent-eligible-voters-l/
 
"Using calculations based on turnout figures for the past two presidential elections, researchers at the University of Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis concluded that overall turnout this year by young people of color ages 18-29 could fall by somewhere between 538,000 to 696,000 in states with photo ID laws.

"Our estimates are conservative. We are looking at demobilization from 9 to 25 percent," said Cathy Cohen, a University of Chicago expert on young and minority voters, who worked on the study with Jon Rogowski of Washington University. "If young people really have valid IDs at a rate of only 25 or even 50 percent, the number of young people of color disenfranchised will be even greater than what we estimate."

The analysis by Cohen and Rogowski was released this week by the Chicago-based Black Youth Project, a nonpartisan effort launched in 2004 to examine the political participation of African-Americans aged 15 to 25. It estimated that new photo requirements potentially could turn away:

170,000 to 475,000 young black voters.
68,000 to 250,000 young Hispanic voters.
13,000 to 46,000 young Asian-American voters.
1,700 to 6,400 young Native American voters.
700 to 2,700 young Pacific Islander voters."

Study: Voter ID law would exclude up to 700,000 young minorities - CBS News

link the cited study: http://research.blackyouthproject.com/files/2013/03/voter-ID-laws-feb28.pdf
 
Why do these people choose to not get ID?
 
Carjosse said:
Usually young people easily college students have sort of student I.D. card, ...
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Most of the recent voter ID laws have specifically disallowed use of student ID cards.
 
Didn't Texas have a voter ID law that disallowed military ID laws.
What ID folks won't do is read the fine-print of the ID law, not to mention the REAL suppressions of the vote in the rest of the law .
Hard Truth said:
Most of the recent voter ID laws have specifically disallowed use of student ID cards.
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Hard Truth said:
Most of the recent voter ID laws have specifically disallowed use of student ID cards.
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Then why not use a driver's license or a passport, which are also accessible to students. Here you can even use a library card or public transport card along with proof of residence.
 
Carjosse said:
Then why not use a driver's license or a passport, which are also accessible to students. Here you can even use a library card or public transport card along with proof of residence.
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Only specific and many times different IDs are used from one state to the next, another problem with the 10th amendment.
For federal elections within any of the 50 states, the ID laws should be the same .
 
clownboy said:
She gives a false name to the DMV for her DL and thus violated the law she is sworn to follow and uphold as part of her position.
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why are you so sure she intentionally lied to the dmv? she may have been married at one time and forgot to update her driver license or voter registration form so that the middle names are not the same.
 
Peter Grimm said:
While I don't particularly like voter ID laws because I think they're motivated by prejudice, I also don't like it when judges overrule the will of the people because who gave them that right?

We're either a democracy or we aren't, and rulings like this are by definition un-democratic.

I would rather live with a law that I don't like, that's my personal opinion.
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Laws passed with a prejudicial motive that target a group of people without solid evidence that they are intended to address a legitimate problem in the fairest way possible should be struck down by judges per the equal protection principals of the constitution.
 
Hard Truth said:
Laws passed with a prejudicial motive that target a group of people without solid evidence that they are intended to address a legitimate problem in the fairest way possible should be struck down by judges per the equal protection principals of the constitution.
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We leave it too open to interpretation by these judges, and that equates to putting too much power in their hands. The judiciary can do any sort of mental gymnastics to support whatever their ideology is - just look at the way people on this forum defend whatever idea is dear to them, however silly it is.

I think that, as people, we're not very good at thinking objectively, even when we seriously try to do so. We're too colored by our ideologies. So unless there is a clear delineation of power and the laws are spelled out such that they can't be interpreted subjectively, an inordinate amount of power will rest with the judicial branch and that, constitutional or not, doesn't sit well with me as it is by nature non-democratic.
 
NIMBY said:
Only specific and many times different IDs are used from one state to the next, another problem with the 10th amendment.
For federal elections within any of the 50 states, the ID laws should be the same .
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As per federal law, it's not even required that states allow people to vote, much less that they vote according the same ID laws.
 
Deuce said:
Attempting to disenfranchise the poor isn't economics, it's class warfare.

But at least you're honest enough to admit it's about disenfranchising the poor and not this bull**** about securing the election.
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Yeah how does tha feel when it used against the Left? Conservatives have been putting up with that crap for decades.

I'll go a step further and say if you're too inept to procure a FREE photo ID you don't deserve the right to vote in this country.

You make yourself a slave to the state...you get what is coming to you. Pretty harsh eh?
 
Peter Grimm said:
We leave it too open to interpretation by these judges, and that equates to putting too much power in their hands. The judiciary can do any sort of mental gymnastics to support whatever their ideology is - just look at the way people on this forum defend whatever idea is dear to them, however silly it is.

I think that, as people, we're not very good at thinking objectively, even when we seriously try to do so. We're too colored by our ideologies. So unless there is a clear delineation of power and the laws are spelled out such that they can't be interpreted subjectively, an inordinate amount of power will rest with the judicial branch and that, constitutional or not, doesn't sit well with me as it is by nature non-democratic.
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Good point, but I generally disagree. In many cases the courts have protected unpopular minorities from the bigotry of the majority to everyone's benefit.
 
WCH said:
Yeah how does tha feel when it used against the Left? Conservatives have been putting up with that crap for decades.
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LOL. Ah, those poor poor rich people. :roll:

Pretty much since Reagan, the GOP has essentially **** all over the poor with their "welfare queens" rhetoric. So spare me the lamenting for how bad the rich have it in this country.
 
To tell me that federal law does not require any individual state to let me vote
shows how far the GOP will go to stop DEM voter groups from voting.

To be reasonable, I believe all voters should have to produce the same ID; no more games fom the RED states.
And no foot-dragging in getting an ID .
Taylor said:
As per federal law, it's not even required that states allow people to vote, much less that they vote according the same ID laws.
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WCH said:
I'll go a step further and say if you're too inept to procure a FREE photo ID you don't deserve the right to vote in this country.
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Mis-statement.
Due to states' wrongs, different IDs are required for different states.
And, different forms of proof, which cost money, are required to get the ID.
Yet I believe in a National ID, which shuts up the GOP .
 
Peter Grimm said:
We leave it too open to interpretation by these judges, and that equates to putting too much power in their hands. The judiciary can do any sort of mental gymnastics to support whatever their ideology is - just look at the way people on this forum defend whatever idea is dear to them, however silly it is.

I think that, as people, we're not very good at thinking objectively, even when we seriously try to do so. We're too colored by our ideologies. So unless there is a clear delineation of power and the laws are spelled out such that they can't be interpreted subjectively, an inordinate amount of power will rest with the judicial branch and that, constitutional or not, doesn't sit well with me as it is by nature non-democratic.
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You only say that when judges rule in a manner you disagree with. If SCOTUS had overturned the entire ACA as unconstitutional you wouldn't have said **** about judicial activism.
 
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