Great Column on GOP Plans to Make it Harder to Vote in PA.

[JPZenger]

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/white/mc-bill-white-voter-id-20110610,0,1054377.column

Great column by Allentown Morning Call Columnist Bill White about plans lead by perpetual flake Representative Darryl Metcalf (Teabagger Party- representing Arkansas County, PA) to make it harder for people to vote. The proposal would particularly affect city residents and older persons, who are least likely to have a valid driver's license.

The whole column is worth reading. Here are excerpts:

"Voter ID law: A way to waste $11 million.

Bill White provided his translation of what Metcalf and his co-conspirators are trying to really do:

"(To preserve our freedoms, we intend to pass a law that will make it more difficult for many elderly, students, poor and disabled Americans to vote and will create check-in logjams in presidential election years that may drive some voters away. We're doing this in a state where turnout already is abysmal, not because there's an actual problem but because it's perceived to be politically advantageous for Republicans. That's why it passed the committee on a straight party line vote and why Republicans rejected numerous attempts by committee Democrats to make the law less likely to turn legitimate voters away.)

(It is modeled after Indiana's photo identification law, about which the American Civil Liberties Union has written: "Indiana has adopted the most onerous voter ID law in the nation, which has the effect of disenfranchising thousands of registered voters in the state who do not have, and, in many instances, cannot obtain the limited identification that Indiana will accept for voting.")

(It would help if there were evidence that Pennsylvania has problems with voter impersonation. But there's none, which means this legislation is "solving" a "problem" that doesn't exist — at a projected cost to the state budget, according to the nonpartisan Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, of $11 million in the first year. It's a good thing Pennsylvania doesn't have any pressing fiscal needs that could be addressed with that money.)

(Many of the people who will be affected by this law don't fly, don't drive and don't cavort at pools and amusement parks. Since there's no evidence that the integrity of the voting process is under any kind of threat from the boogeyman "forces of corruption" or anyone else, why would we spend millions of dollars we don't have to make it more difficult for people to vote?) "