As most of you know, I worked for ACORN/Project Vote during the 2004 election as a county coordinator. As a result, I have direct experience working with people of color in Philadelphia’s inner city and I am not at all surprised to see the following information about how many people there lack photo identification.
An astounding 758,939 registered voters in the state, or nine percent, do not have PennDot IDs, according to data released last Tuesday by the Department of State. In Philadelphia, it’s even worse: 186,830 registered voters, or 18 percent, do not have ID. Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele had previously assured lawmakers that 99 percent of Pennsylvanians possess the necessary ID―based on what, I have absolutely no idea.
The state released this astonishing data on July 3 in what seems like a transparent effort to ensure that the bomb-like news would drop like a dud on the July 4th holiday. And they did so with the almost-unbelievably-Orwellian title “Department of State and PennDOT Confirm Most Registered Voters Have Photo ID.”
Corbett has rebuffed a call from rights advocates and civic groups to delay voter ID implementation. But a legal challenge presses on. 93-year old Germantown resident Viviette Applewhite, who has been unable to obtain a Pennsylvania birth certificate, is the lead plaintiff in the ACLU and NAACP lawsuit. Other plaintiffs include “three elderly women who say they cannot obtain necessary ID because they were born in the Jim Crow South, where states have no records of their births.”
Under Pennsylvania’s new law, there are some other forms of acceptable identification, including a valid and current passport, military IDs, and photo IDs from Pennsylvania-accredited universities. As you might imagine, these alternative forms of identification are unlikely to put even a small dent in the 18% of Philadelphians who are currently disenfranchised.
This isn’t complicated. A large percentage of Philadelphians do not own a car and therefore do not drive with any frequency. In the poorer neighborhoods, many people do not engage in banking or other economic activities that require photo ID, so they don’t bother obtaining photo ID. The city does not have many Division of Motor Vehicle centers so, for most people, obtaining an ID requires a bus ride with at least one transfer. It appears that about 18% of the city’s residents have never felt sufficient motivation to bother with the hassle, and their desire to vote in November is really the only reason they would go to the trouble now.
I know of no examples of voter fraud occurring in Pennsylvania in recent years. It’s conceivable that these new onerous voter registration laws could prevent a handful of fraudulent votes, but that will come at the expense of disenfranchising a substantial percentage of the state’s voters who are already registered to vote.
In 2008, Obama carried Pennsylvania by a little more than 600,000 votes. He netted 478,000 of those votes out of Philadelphia County. An 18% percent reduction in the Philadelphia County vote would be about 130,000 people who are disenfranchised . Obama carried 83% of the county vote, meaning that he’d lose about 108,000 votes, while Romney would theoretically lose about 22,000. However, at least 99% of Romney’s votes in the county will be cast by people who have a valid driver’s license or passport, so that 22,000 number will never happen.
The new voter ID law is intended to have this consequence. Under the pretense of fighting voter fraud that does not exist, they are eliminating tens of thousands of Democratic votes in Philadelphia alone. And many other states are implementing similar laws that all have the intention of disenfranchising legitimate Democratic voters. And these voters are overwhelmingly people of color, students who don’t have a current address, and the elderly who don’t drive and cannot locate the proper documents to obtain a state-issued photo ID.
If the intent of these laws to rig elections, the effect is racist and discriminatory, and should be illegal under the Voting Rights Act.
