Saturday, August 18, 2012

The Voting Nightmare in Pennsylvania

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This story keeps getting worse. I'm losing sleep over it because the whole thing is diabolical and shouldn't be happening in the United States.

The Voter ID Law was upheld yesterday by a Republican judge who saw no harm in disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters. The next thing to do is appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court which is deadlocked 3-3, Dem against Republicans. Time is of the essence, but there just seems to be no answer.

CNN Political Ticker Report:
Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania Judge Robert Simpson issued an order on Wednesday saying there was no constitutional reason to stop the law from taking effect. In his opinion, however, he wrote that he had "sympathy" for the witnesses.

The coalition, however, seeks to appeal the law in the State Supreme Court, requesting that the court hear the case on an expedited basis because the election is less than three months away.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania, the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, the Advancement Project and the law firm of Arnold & Porter filed the appeal jointly.

"The fight in this case could go on after the election. Judge Simpson's ruling was on the request for a preliminary injunction. There could still be a hearing for a final injunction," said the ACLU of Pennsylvania in a statement.

On the same day as that ruling - no coincide - the State of Penn decided to drop a plan to allow online absentee voter registration.

Talking Points Memo
A spokesman for the Department of State said county elections officials told the agency that implementing the new online initiatives as well as voter ID requirements was too much to handle less than three months before the election.

*sigh* I've lived half a century and I just can't believe this is happening in every presidential election.

"You Better Stop, Hey, What's that Sound?
Everybody Look What's Going Down."


3 comments:

  1. Voter ID laws are the tip of the iceberg. What if someone presents an ID and doesn't match the description? If the license says this Democrat-looking woman weighs 115 lbs, but the person standing there looks 150, would the Tea Party recruited Election Judge challenge the voter? Irrationally (where's your long form photo ID?) partisan election judges and poll watchers are being recruited. See http://www.ragingwisdom.com/?p=1131

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    1. Thanks for the comment ~ yes, I've been following the "poll watcher" thing on Rachel Maddow and it scares me. They could even turn someone away, technically, if the eye color on the ID doesn't match what they see. Also knowing that there are college students whose IDs don't have expiration dates really bothers me as well. It's just a terrible feeling to know there are people who will get turned away on election day. I'm furious about the cancellation of early voting, too. That's unbelievable.

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    2. You spurred me to activity ~ I wrote up a post on "True the Vote" - here it is: Vigilante Poll Watchers

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