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State Politics
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It's set: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court last week announced that it will decide whether the state's controversial voter ID law is constitutional. And in Philadelphia! Come on down: Sept. 13, City Hall.
A Republican Commonwealth Court judge upheld the law, which requires voters to present one of a set of valid forms of ID to vote and could disenfranchise thousands, earlier this month. The Supreme Court is split 3-3 because Justice Joan Orie Melvin was suspended after being charged with corruption, and a 3-3 split automatically upholds the lower court's ruling.
One legal expert is not optimistic the Supremes will overturn the law, but court watchers are waiting to see whether Republican Chief Justice and former Philly DA Ron Castille might switch sides to join Democrats, as he has before.
“Oh no they didn't ...” is Daniel Denvir's weekly blog post on the past week in 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.
Mitt Romney's selection of Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate signals his desperation to shake up a race that seems increasingly tilted in favor of his opponent, President Barack Obama. It also promises to transform the presidential campaign into a national debate in which progressives are eager to engage: Should social safety-net programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security be defended or destroyed?
That debate will dovetail with the political conflict underway in Pennsylvania, where Republican Gov. Tom Corbett has slashed spending on education, and on programs for the poor and disabled.
Progressives are excited about this debate because the majority of the public backs spending on education and aid to the safety net. The “Ryan budget” (which House Republicans have now passed twice) would scrap Medicare and instead give the elderly vouchers that would not keep up with medical costs, cap and block-grant Medicaid spending to the states, and deeply cut spending on pretty much every federal program that is not the U.S. military.
Ryan's plan, according to polls, is unpopular. So was George W. Bush's failed proposal to privatize Social Security which, incidentally, Ryan pushed him to introduce.
“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.
“Oh no they didn't” is Daniel Denvir's weekly blog post on last week's state politics. Follow on Twitter @DanielDenvir
"To ask me to enforce something that violates civil rights is ludicrous and absolutely something I am not willing to do,” Colwyn Democratic inspector of elections Christopher L. Broach told the Inquirer last week.
In a little-remembered moment during the 2010 campaign, Governor Tom Corbett told a gathering of suburban Republicans to “keep down” Philadelphia's Democratic voter turnout.
“We want to make sure that they don't get 50-percent [voter turnout],” he said, referring to Philadelphia Democrats. “Keep that down."
The item generated some news media attention at the time but has gone unmentioned during the current debate over the state's contentious new voter ID requirement, which could keep Democratic-leaning student, black, Latino, poor and elderly voters from the polls this November.
“It is extremely disturbing, but not surprising, that Tom Corbett is actively working to suppress the vote in Philadelphia,” State Democratic Chairman Jim Burn told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette two years ago.
Pennsylvania Republicans drew loads of unwanted attention to the law when House Majority leader Mike Turzai boasted in June that the law is “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”
The law is currently being challenged in Commonwealth Court, and the ACLU and other rights groups intend to play the video of Turzai's speech at trial.
“Any doubt,” according to the plaintiff's pretrial brief, that the law is not about “ensuring political advantage through the exclusion of qualified voters who are perceived supporters of the opposition” was “dispelled when the House Majority leader, Mike Turzai, candidly boasted to his colleagues.”
The U.S. Department of Justice has also opened an investigation into whether the law violates the federal Voting Rights Act.
The new law requires voters to show ID at the polls (see the valid forms of ID here). But the state, which originally said that 99 percent of voters had valid ID, has absolutely no idea how many people might be impacted.
Yesterday, City Paper reported that up to 43 percent of Philadelphians may not have valid ID. And Corbett earlier this week expressed confusion about the law's requirements when questioned by a reporter.
Follow on Twitter @DanielDenvir
The number of Pennsylvanians who might not have the photo identification necessary to vote this November has more than doubled: at least 1,636,168 registered voters, or 20 percent of Pennsylvania voters, may not have valid PennDOT-issued ID, according to new data obtained by City Paper. In Philadelphia, an enormous 437,237 people, or 43 percent of city voters, may not possess the valid PennDOT ID necessary to vote under the state's controversial new law.
“Those are the numbers we sent,” says Nick Winkler, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, when asked to confirm the data. “If you want to add them together, I think it's misleading.”
“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.
Pennsylvania's new law requiring voters to present ID at the polls is, critics say, a solution in search of a problem — and one that could needlessly suppress the votes of hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians, disproportionately impacting students and the poor, black and elderly (i.e. Democrats).
And so right-wing state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe was thrilled by Republican Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt's new report on voting irregularities, declaring that it “finally confirms what leading Democrat opponents of voter photo ID and those in the mainstream media have been denying all along. … Philadelphia is without question one of our nation’s most infested epicenters for rampant election fraud and corruption.”
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to support the Affordable Care Act's controversial individual mandate to buy health insurance. But the justices also delivered conservative governors more wiggle room to opt out of the law's enormous expansion of healthcare for the poor, declaring it unconstitutional for the federal government to require states to participate in an expanded version of Medicaid as a condition of participating in the entire program.
Some conservative Republicans are vowing to reject that part of the law: Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Texas Gov. Rick Perry quickly announced that their states would not participate. Yet there's a possibility that Republican Gov. Tom Corbett may quietly acquiesce. He's still deciding whether to accept Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, which is set to provide health insurance to a huge chunk of currently ineligible poor people ― estimated at up to 682,880 Pennsylvanians―living under 133 percent of the federal poverty line.
“There is no decision on that, and we are still reviewing the law,” says Department of Public Welfare spokesperson Donna Morgan.
Conservative governors say their states cannot afford the increased cost to the state-federal program, which in Pennsylvania could be a hike of between 1.4 percent and 2.7 percent in state Medicaid spending. The federal government, however, will pick up most of the tab, starting at 100 percent in the first three years of implementation, through 2017, and gradually declining to 90 percent by 2020.
“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.
Republican Gov. Tom Corbett's administration has signed a $249,660 contract with a company run by Mitt Romney fundraiser, former state GOP party executive director, pharmaceutical lobbyist, and school voucher advocate Chris Bravacos to direct a media campaign promoting the state's Voter ID law.
Yes, that very same law, requiring that voters present identification at the polls, which critics contend will suppress Democratic-leaning non-white, poor, elderly and youth voters and which House Majority Leader Mike Turzai recently boasted (video) is “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”
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