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This week in voting rights (or lack thereof): More tests for voter ID, redistricting (updated)
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This week in voting rights (or lack thereof): More tests for voter ID, redistricting (updated)
Despite the enthusiastic tone of this week's press release from the Pennsylvania Department of State and PennDOT — "Department of State and PennDOT Confirm Most Registered Voters Have Photo ID" (exclamation point implied only) — voting rights activists didn't take the news that 91 percent of registered Pennsylvania voters have PennDOT IDs all that well. After all, that's 9 percent of voters without PennDOT IDs, compared to the 1 percent previously estimated. And, it leaves 186,830 registered Philly voters (136,182 of whom are considered to be active voters), unaccounted for, enough to potentially spin an election. Which is exactly what House Republican leader Mike Turzai proudly pointed out in the video above was the point all along.
But as the general election creeps closer, more challenges to the law are popping up.
Rep. Frank Dermody (D-Allegheny) this week sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, (who in any case may be preoccupied with more immediate concerns of his own), seeking a federal review of the law and its compliance with the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the Constitution. “The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania – controlled by a Republican House, Senate and Governor’s Office – has let its citizens down by eviscerating the most fundamental of Constitutional rights. We need your help to change that. We need your help to protect the most sacred right we have as American citizens – the right to vote,” the letter reads.
As well, there are already legal challenges planned at the county level and a lawsuit from the ACLU on behalf of several Pennsylvania voters.
The Committee of Seventy today issued a statement along with 100 other local and statewide organizations urging the voter ID law's implementation to be delayed a year. From the statement:
"Barry Kauffman, Executive Director of Common Cause PA, said the plea for delay follows this week’s stunning revelation that 9.2 percent of the state’s 8.2 million registered voters – nine times more than state officials originally estimated – do not have photo identification cards issued by the state Transportation Department (PennDOT), the most common forms of identification voters will bring to the polls on November 6, when the law goes into full effect.
In Philadelphia, 18 percent, or nearly one in five (186,830) of the city’s just over one million registered voters, do not have PennDOT-issued photo identification cards. Between 10 percent and 12 percent of voters in nine other Pennsylvania counties are similarly impacted."
Meanwhile, there's a separate voting rights issue at play here: redistricting. On this topic, LatinoJustice-PRLDEF has filed its own lawsuit, insisting that special elections be held in 2013, with a new and improved voting map. The argument is that the voting map now in use — which refers back to the 2000 census, since a court struck down a redistricting plan that had been offered by the legislature — effectively disenfranchises the state's growing Latino population.
A statement from advocacy group LatinoLines reads:
"Plaintiffs Joe Garcia, Fernando Quiles, both residents of Philadelphia, and Dalia Rivera Matias of Allentown request the court to order a 2013 special election to remedy the unconstitutional effects of the upcoming 2012 election cycle proceeding based on Pennsylvania’s 2001 Plan in violation of the One Person, One Vote doctrine of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In the court papers filed this past Friday, plaintiffs’ lawyers, LatinoJustice PRLDEF and Jose Luis Ongay, Esq. of Philadelphia , explain that under the present 2001 redistricting scheme, recent Latino population growth within Philadelphia, Berks and Lehigh counties has not been recognized, effectively diluting the Latino vote while disproportionately strengthening that of other communities within the state. In fact, applying 2001 district lines in 2012 results in a 29.4% total population deviation within the State Senate and 42.8% for the State House, well in excess of the 10% required to establish a prima facie violation of the One Person, One Vote doctrine of the Fourteenth Amendment."
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