Advancement Project

by Jeremy Leaming

Pennsylvania’s top court has ordered a lower court judge to reconsider whether a preliminary injunction should be entered against the state’s ridiculously rigid voter ID law. Pennsylvania’s voter ID law signed into law by the state’s Republican governor creates significant hurdles for people to vote, especially for some of the state’s most vulnerable. Other states, mostly controlled by conservative policymakers, have also pushed through stringent voter ID requirements.

In August, a state judge dismissed arguments that the new law, enacted “along purely partisan lines,” as the Philadelphia Inquirer puts it, would hinder the ability of minorities, students, low-income people and the elderly to vote in the forthcoming general election. (A report by The Brennan Center for Justice, which examined the Pa. voter ID law along with similarly onerous ones in other states such as Texas and Wisconsin, found that the process for obtaining voter identifications was so onerous that more than a million people in the studied states could be barred from voting. “These voters can be particularly affected by the significant costs for the documentation required to obtain photo ID. Birth certificates can cost between $8 and $25. By comparison the notorious poll tax – outlawed during the civil rights era cost $10.64 in current dollars,” The Brennan Center stated.)

The Sept. 18 order from the Pa. Supreme Court first noted that the state’s Constitution declares that “elections must be free and equal and ‘no power, civil, or military, shall at any time interfere to prevent the free exercise of the right of suffrage.’” The high court tossed the case back to the lower court judge with the order to ensure that implementation of the Voter ID law did not unconstitutionally interfere with the right to vote.

by Jeremy Leaming

All too often proponents of ridiculously rigid voter ID laws cite voter fraud as justification. It is, those supporters argue, the integrity of the nation’s elections that need to be protected. But the argument is not only tired, it’s wobbly. It also masks the pernicious impact these laws have on low-income voters, minority voters, and the elderly.

As noted in this post last week, Viviette Applewhite, a 93-year-old Philadelphian is fighting back against Pennsylvania’s new voter ID law. Represented by the ACLU of Pennsylvania, the Advancement Project, the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia and the D.C. law firm Arnold & Porter LLP Applewhite is challenging the law as a violation of the Pennsylvania Constitution. The lawsuit argues the voter ID act subverts the state’s constitution “by depriving citizens of their most fundamental constitutional right – the right to vote.”

Reporting for TPM, Ryan J. Reilly notes that as the lawsuit proceeds to trial, state officials have “formally acknowledged that there’s been no reported in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania.”

The state officials, Reilly continues, “signed a stipulation agreement with lawyers for the plaintiffs which acknowledges that there ‘have been no investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania; and the parties do not have direct personal knowledge of any such investigations or prosecutions in other states.” Moreover, Reilly notes that the state acknowledges in the stipulation agreement that it “will not offer any evidence in this action that in-person voter fraud has in fact occurred in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.”

For proponents of the harsh voter ID laws, the state's stipulation is likely disappointing. It should not be surprising, however, to anyone paying attention to the machinations behind the creation of the onerous laws.  

In a recent ACS Issue Brief, Loyola Law School Profess Justin Levitt examines the new restrictions on civic participation, highlighting the numerous studies and examinations that undermine claims of voter fraud.

“There have been credible allegations of impersonation at the polls,” Levitt says. “But they are notable for their rarity. In the most prominent forum to date for collecting such allegations [a 2008 case before the Supreme Court], proponents of these rules cited nine votes since 2000 that were caused by fraud that in-person identification rules could possibly stop … or by mistake. During that same period, 400 million votes were cast, in general elections alone. Even assuming that each of the nine voters were fraudulent, that amounts to a relevant fraud rate of 0.000002 percent.”