Voter ID is, well, IDed
House GOP leader Mike Turzai says the controversial new voter ID bill will "allow" Romney to win Pennsylvania.
Voter ID is, well, IDed
John Baer, Daily News Political Columnist
In case you missed it, House Republican Leader Mike Turzai seems to have confirmed Democratic assertions that the state's new Voter ID law is intended to help Republican candidates win elections rather than combat voter fraud.
During remarks to a Republican State Committee meeting Saturday, Turzai was ticking off GOP agenda items and said:
“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation – abortion facility regulations – in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”
The new law mandates photo ID be shown before voting in the fall elections. Many Democrats argue the requirement puts an extra burden on voters and could tamp turnout especially among poorer minority and urban elderly voters who tend to vote Democratic and may not have drivers' licenses or other readily available forms of ID.
Republicans maintain the law fights voter fraud.
Turzai's remarks were reported by PoliticsPa.com, picked up by the national news service Politico and ended up on youtube.com.
Turzai's spokesman Steve Miskin said Turzai was simply playing to a partisan audience.
Montco Democratic state Sen. Daylin Leach issued a statement Monday saying Turzai was making, "a remarkably blunt admission that the true intentions of Voter ID are to stop Democrats from voting and to rig elections in favor of Republicans."
Gov. Corbett signed Voter ID into law in March.
Quit crying. The Paper's Party, the Democrats, hates voter ID because they thrive on voter fraud. People seem to figure out how to get an ID to buy smokes, booze, drive, get food stamps, a credit card, cough medicine, guns, airplane tickets, car loans, etc., etc. They will figure out how to get one to vote. No more having 16 Democrats registered to a parking lot - too bad for your party.— ObamaSolyndra- Hey doofus, here's news for you and you can look it up: the only person convicted of voter fraud in PA in a generation was a REPUBLICAN from DelCo last year. How about that? Maybe we should ony have photo IDs for all repug voters, since they are the crooks. You righties are so full of it. — mike l
- While I do not support the photo ID law, it sounds like your mother may qualify to vote by absentee ballot due to her medical condition. If so, even under the new law, she only will need to provide the last four digits of her social security number to obtain an absentee ballot: http://www.votespa.com/portal/server.pt/community/how_to_vote/13515/voting_by_absentee_ballot/585300 — freeandequalpa
- Sorry, posted above in response to wrong comment. Re-posted below in the correct place. — freeandequalpa
- If you want Dems to quit crying, you should tell the Republicans to quit lying. It's the Republicans who are the big liars and committers of voter fraud. When are you going to realize it's all a stunt to repress votes that will win and enhance democracy? Take a look at the exposure of vote hacking.
New Court Filing Reveals How the 2004 Ohio Presidential Election Was Hacked
Monday 25 July 2011
by: Bob Fritakis, The Free Press | Report
http://www.truth-out.org/new-court-filing-reveals-how-2004-ohio-presidential-election-was-hacked/1311603015
— truthreseeker - The TRUTH is Conservatives and Republicans can't handle a fair fight in the election booth because they're soooo scared of losing fair and square. They have to resort to trickery, subversion and LIES to win an election. They create these scams like redistricting, Voter IDs to try to tip the scales in their favor to win. Just look at the new voter laws they created in Florida. It's a perfect example of how they try to take away the votes of legal Americans. Republicans are the scum bags in America. — CommonSense in Philly
Comment removed.- A better question is why are Republicans saying there's an issue with voter fraud when none exists. All statistics indicate that voter fraud in the US is at a negligible rate. And where there are reported cases, it is much cheaper to investigate those frauds than the money Republicans want to spend on implementing this new law. — CommonSense in Philly
- Amazing that Corbett can't find money to fund edcuation and healthcare for poor folks, but can find $7-10 million for this repub scheme to keep American voters away from the polls. Repubs are truly the biggest frauds going. — mike l
- Some people, like the voters who sued to challenge the law, do not have and, more importantly, cannot obtain one of the approved forms of photo ID, no matter how much time you give them. More details here: http://freeandequalpa.wordpress.com/summary-of-applewhite-petition/ — freeandequalpa
- Why not just finger print everybody who votes, as they vote. If Disney can do it instantly at their gates, the technology is there. No difficulty making sure everybody votes once and only once and is who the same person that voted under that name the last time.— chuck.goodwin
- Perhaps John should read his own paper that wrote an article about the "Over-votes" in Philadelphia. Over-votes are when more people vote in an election than are registered in a precinct. This was a problem in many states.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/20120417_Philadelphia_election_commissioners_probe_excessive_vote_counts.html— tina848 - "Over-votes are when more people vote in an election than are registered in a precinct."
You misread the article you linked. In some precincts, the election results showed that more votes were cast than the number of people who signed in to vote that day. So, to take the example at the end of the article, you might have a precinct reporting 108 votes when only 100 people signed in. In an election with 20% turn-out, that means that, of the 500 registered voters in the precinct, 108 showed up to vote, but the records only show that 100 people signed in. The article suggests that such discrepancies may well be clerical errors (for instance, the poll workers simply forgot to have 8 people sign the book). Contrary to your assertion, the article cites no situation where more people voted than were registered in the precinct.— freeandequalpa 
and holder is opposed to Fla.'s voter ID law on principle. if you're dumb enough to believe that, i have a bridge in brooklyn to sell you— barry m goldwater- I agree that showing an ID to vote is really no big deal. IDs are cheap and not overly difficult to get. However, the motives the Republicans have for passing such laws are flat out discriminatory. They want to suppress people, who are more apt to vote Democrat than they are Republican, no matter what color they are. That is just fact. No matter what party you are, it is pretty clear that is what is going on, and if you can't admit that, then you really aren't living on this planet. Just get an ID and vote for the people you want in office. End of story.— ragecage22
John is the author of the book "On The Front Lines of Pennsylvania Politics: Twenty-Five Years of Keystone Reporting" (The History Press, 2012). Reach John at baerj@phillynews.com.
