Voter ID effort is a ruse
Here's hoping that expected legal challenges of a requirement that Pennsylvania voters show photo identification at the polls will occur before the ink is dry on Gov. Corbett's signature on legislation racing through Harrisburg.
A Wisconsin judge has halted implementation of that state's voter identification law before its April primary, responding to an NAACP lawsuit that contends voters without driver's licenses are "disproportionately elderly, indigent, or members of a racial minority." Likewise, the Republican proposal in Pennsylvania is nothing more than a new form of a poll tax, similar to those imposed to turn away black voters in the old, segregated South.
So-called voter-ID rules would hit the old, young, poor, and minority voters the hardest - a slice of the electorate least likely to have government-issued identification of the type required under the measure approved Wednesday by the state Senate.
The fact that this group of voters disproportionately leans toward Democratic candidates, particularly in Philadelphia and other urban areas, uncovers the voter-ID proposal for what it is - a blatant bid for a GOP advantage at the polls.
It's all the more outrageous that this tactic would be employed in a presidential decision year, given that the Nov. 6 election would be the first in which a photo ID would be demanded of every Keystone State voter.
The claim by advocates is that it's needed to prevent fraud. Yet, neither GOP senators during the debate last week - nor election experts who have studied the issue - can point to any level of voter fraud that would require such draconian steps.
Even though the voter-ID bill is a fix in search of a problem, its otherwise cost-conscious Republican backers in Harrisburg are prepared to squander from $5 million to $11 million a year to set up the additional bureaucracy needed to provide non-drivers with special identification.
The state Senate's supposed broadening of the forms of ID to be required at the polls doesn't make this proposal any more acceptable, since the inevitable delays that will occur on Election Day while people's documents are being checked could disfranchise other voters who will be turned away.
Similarly, the proposed option that would allow challenged voters to reappear within six days at their county board of elections bearing photo identification is no reassurance, since it's hard enough for many people to get to the polls in the first place.
For Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware) to link this outrageous version of a new poll tax to "the very foundation of our democracy" demonstrates a depth of cynicism that's astounding.
Corbett earlier demonstrated there are limits to the extent to which he would join such a blatant power grab when he backed away from the goofy idea of apportioning the state's Electoral College votes. He should show the same common sense by vetoing any version of a voter-ID law that reaches his desk.
If the governor won't do that, let the legal challenges begin.
