McKinley: Halting the voter ID law is a start, but let’s work to overturn it

Good news Pennsylvania: With a judge’s halting of the new voter ID law, we will have democracy…Good news Pennsylvania: With a judge’s halting of the new voter ID law, we will have democracy restored.

Perhaps when our state legislature declared this the “Year of the Bible” — so much for the separation of church and state — we should have expected 2012 to be an embarrassing time to be a Pennsylvanian. To the rest of the nation, we have become a state defined by ugly and embarrassing incidents.

There’s been the contentious environmental issue of fracking. We gave national late-night talk show hosts a wealth of comedic material by offering up our very own Rick Santorum, a presidential candidate so outrageous he audaciously compared homosexuality to bestiality. Most notably, our flagship collegiate football team was mired in the biggest scandal in sporting history.

Needless to say, it is time for some positive Pennsylvania publicity. The halting of the highly controversial voter ID law passed in May of this year is exactly that good press.

Ever since its passage into law, this restriction of voting has been carefully scrutinized — and often ridiculed — by legal experts from across the country. Groups nearly synonymous with voters’ rights, like the NAACP and ACLU, have openly criticized the law. And with Tuesday’s halting of the law, Pennsylvania regains some pride.

But the law has not been thrown out; its implementation has merely been delayed until after this election.

So if the law is getting halted before the election, why was it ever enacted in the first place, and why should we demand it be overturned for future elections as well?

Republicans claim the law is an attempt to block voter fraud. According to the GOP, Pennsylvania needs to make voting more restrictive to prevent voting abuses.

If voting fraud in Pennsylvania sounds like news to you, it should. Pennsylvania doesn’t actually have a voting fraud problem.

When pressed in an interview with National Public Radio, Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler County, who championed the bill, could only cite one minor voting fraud offense. According to Metcalfe, once in 1999 a man was prosecuted for breaking absentee voting rules. Even the bill’s major proponent struggled to argue why this law was necessary. In short, voter fraud is a Republican construct.

It is as though Metcalfe and the bill’s other supporters are suggesting we take an expensive trip to the doctor’s office, fearing we have a life-threatening illness even though we have no symptoms. Or imagine if Pitt were to suddenly require us to bring multiple forms of identification to finals even though there is neither a threat nor a history of cheating scandals here.

Even if there were evidence of voting law violations, a restrictive voter ID law would soon become outdated. In the 2008 presidential election, 25 percent of voters used absentee ballots. One voting expert predicts that number could rise to a third of all voters this year. If you are filling out an absentee ballot — as a significant portion of voters do — you do not need voter ID.

So if there is no history or imminent threat of voter fraud, and if voter ID requirements will become outdated as the use of absentee ballots increases, what exactly does a stricter voter ID policy accomplish?

The voter ID law disenfranchises an estimated 100,000 eligible Pennsylvania voters simply on the grounds that they do not have approved IDs. Those Pennsylvanians are disproportionately likely to be minorities from urban and impoverished areas who are more likely to vote Democratic. As Rep. Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny County, happily stated, the Pennsylvania voter ID bill was to “allow Gov. [Mitt] Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”

Similarly to other Republicans, Metcalfe has labeled Pennsylvanians prevented from voting by the law as “too lazy” to get the proper identification. Now, I don’t know when the last time was that you had to go to the DMV or deal with bureaucracy generally, but you can count on it to be time-consuming, inefficient and confusing. Republicans understand the annoyance of working with the government. That’s why they claim to be guardians against big government and increased government regulation. As Metcalfe states on his website, “since being elected to office in 1998, I have fought for limited, more efficient government.”

Why the sudden contradiction? Metcalfe and other Republicans know that increasing government bureaucracy through stricter voting laws makes voting more difficult and disproportionately discourages minorities and those living in poverty from voting.

Pennsylvania is a proud state. The GOP should be ashamed for politicizing our elections and knowingly marginalizing thousands of eligible voters across the state with the goal of getting their presidential candidate elected. As Pennsylvanians, we should celebrate that the law has been halted and demand that it be overturned entirely.

Write Rosie at romckinley@gmail.com.