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New research outlines voter ID impact on PA black, elderly, students. GOP chief calls Obama supporters retarded.
You probably didn't know that Pennsylvania maintains a "Voter Hall of Fame." But nearly one-quarter of those elderly who have voted 50 elections straight may not have ID necessary to vote this November.
New research outlines voter ID impact on PA black, elderly, students. GOP chief calls Obama supporters retarded.
“Oh no they didn't” is Daniel Denvir's weekly blog post on last week's state politics. Philadelphians know precious little about the legislature or governor, but pretending that Tom Corbett doesn't exist will not make him go away. Follow on Twitter @DanielDenvir.
You probably didn't know that Pennsylvania maintains a “Voter Hall of Fame” honoring citizens who have exercised the franchise in every November election for fifty years straight. 1,384 of the 5,923 Hall of Famers analyzed, or nearly 25-percent, may not have the identification necessary to vote this November thanks to the state's controversial new voter ID law.
“I just read it in the paper just recently,” says Edith Haagen, a 91-year old from Clinton County who does not have ID. Haagen, a Democrat who worked for the state as a clerk-typist before her retirement, remembers casting a vote for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “I've done it all my life. And it's a shame when you can't.”
The Hall of Fame was created at a time, it seems, when the government at least pretended they wanted people to vote.
“These are 1,384 individuals who have not missed a general election since at least 1961 – but who may very well be prevented from voting for the first time this year – if they are unaware of the new Voter ID Law, or unable to obtain the proper ID in time for the election,” says Yuri Beckelman, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, which analyzed the data.
The state's controversial new law, which requires that voters present one of a set of valid forms of ID at the polls, is currently being challenged before Commonwealth Court. The law's Republican supporters claim that ID is necessary to stop voter impersonation fraud. But while they have acknowledged that they cannot prove that such fraud even exists, there is ample evidence that the law could keep huge numbers of Democratic-leaning voters from the polls.
City Paper has reported and broke news on the twists-and-turns and turns of the law: Governor Tom Corbett hired a Mitt Romney fundraiser, pharmaceutical lobbyist and school voucher advocate/middleman to assist a voter ID PR campaign; the number of Pennsylvanians who potentially don't have ID more than doubled to 1,636,168; Corbett admitted that he didn't understand the law; and City Commissioner Al Schmidt's report on voting irregularities was brazenly mischaracterized by state Republicans.
The bad news for the Corbett Administration, which initially made what now appears to be an absolutely false claim that 99-percent of Pennsylvanians had proper ID, keeps coming.
New data analyzed by the mapping and data nerds at Azavea demonstrates what everyone had long suspected: Philadelphia African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and students seem most likely to not have voter ID. Azavea matched 2010 Census data with the lists of voters who might not have PennDot IDs and those who could have one-year or more expired IDs (and thus invalid to vote) released by the Secretary of State.
“The map makes clear that the spatial distribution of those who lack ID is non-random,” writes Azavea's Tamara Manik-Perlman. “Voters without ID are heavily concentrated around the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University in West Philadelphia, as well as parts of North, West and Southwest Philadelphia. The rates of voters without ID are relatively low in the Northeast, Northwest, Southeast and Center City.”
Philadelphia Ward-divisions (Precincts), showing percentage of voters with either no ID or expired ID. Blue means lower percentage of voters with problems; yellow and orange means a higher percentage with problems. (Azavea)
North, West and Southwest Philadelphia, you might know, have large black populations. Azavea found that the blacker a neighborhood is, the more likely it is that residents have voter ID problems. And so, writes Manik-Perlman, “it appears that Pennsylvania’s new strict photo ID requirement may be in effect a racially discriminatory voting procedure.”
The U.S. Department of Justice is currently investigating whether the law violates the federal Voting Rights Act, which bars states from imposing a “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure" that would “deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”
Exhibit A, Mr. Holder.
Journalist Tom Boyer, who collaborated with Azavea, breaks down the analysis in plain English on his blog.
“A voter who lives in the city’s most heavily African American voting precincts is 85% more likely to lack a valid ID than a voter who lives in a predominantly white precinct. Voters who live in heavily Hispanic areas are 108 percent more likely to lack valid state ID than those from predominately white areas. Heavily Asian neighborhoods show the same pattern”
Leader of state GOP, which slashed spending on disabled, calls Obama supporters “retarded.”
Allegheny County Republican Committee Chair Jim Roddey said on Tuesday that Obama supporters are “mentally retarded.”
"There was a disappointment tonight,” Roddey told a crowd of Republicans, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Tim McNulty. “I was very embarrassed. I was in this parking lot and there was a man looking for a space to park, and I found a space for him. And I felt badly -- he looked like he was sort of in distress. And I said, 'Sir, here's a place.' And he said, 'That's a handicapped space.' I said, 'Oh I'm so sorry, I saw that Obama sticker and I thought you were mentally retarded."
It's worth noting at this point in my blog post that Pennsylvania's Republican-dominated legislature and Governor Tom Corbett slashed funding to programs that assist the mentally and physically disabled in this year's budget―though not as much as as was initially proposed.
And Roddey, apparently, thinks most Pennsylvania voters are “retarded.” A Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll released last week found Obama leading Romney in the state by a healthy 11-percent.
Allegheny County Democratic Committee Chair Nancy Mills called on Roddey to apologize and resign for the comments, which he made at a special election night victory party for Rep. Randy Vulakovich (R-Shaler).
Roddey is a critical supporter of presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney in Pennsylvania―a state that Romney desparately needs to win.
This Voter ID bill is based on a model pushed by a Koch Brothers' front group, ALEC, so the Republicans had already did all this demographic analysis before they even submitted this bill, so they know EXACTLY who this bill will disenfranchise. This bill, along with similar bills being pushed by ALEC in other states, is part of a scheme to steal the 2012 election. That's why Republican Mike Turzai was bragging that this bill was going to help Romney win Pennsylvania.— Blanketman
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