Democracy Activists Hone in as Discriminatory Pennsylvania Voter ID Law Bars Almost One Out of Ten

Democracy, elections and voting at Democracy Chronicles

Thanks to Rick Hasen at Election Law Blog for the link to “Neil Young Discusses Politics and Sings “Americana” about Pennsylvania voter ID law”. The post he referred us to is from Bloomberg Businessweek:

Three-quarters of a million Pennsylvanians may be denied a chance to vote in November unless they can come up with an acceptable form of identification, a tally released by the state suggests. In a move lawmakers said would deter fraud at the polls, the Republican-led Legislature passed a law in March requiring voters to have a photo ID to obtain a ballot. A comparison of registration lists and state Transportation Department records showed 758,939 people don’t have either a driver’s license or an alternative state ID, the secretary of the commonwealth said.

Rick Hasen explores what this means in a broader context:

As Justin reported, it is not clear how accurate this count is. I would suspect that the number of voters affected will be much lower. Of course, even if the number is orders of magnitude lower, there’s no good reason for this Pennsylvania law and it should not have been passed. What we need is a national voter id with universal voter registration done by the government.