While Pennsylvania’s new voter ID law is under federal investigation and on trial in a state court, new figures show that more than 1.6 million Pennsylvanians might not have the photo identification necessary to vote this November, including 43 percent (437,000) of Philadelphia’s voters.
The U.S. Department of Justice has launched a formal investigation into Pennsylvania’s new voter ID law that, by some estimates, could disenfranchise nearly one in 10 eligible voters—mostly people of color, students, seniors and low-income voters. The bill mirrors other voter suppression laws Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed in recent years based on model legislation from the extremist American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
A second Wisconsin judge has found that the state's voter ID restriction—built on a template from the extremist American Legislative Exchange Council ( ALEC )—creates a “substantial impairment of the right to vote” and violates the state’s constitution.
Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan wrote the law:
tells more than 300,000 Wisconsin voters who do not now have an acceptable form of photo identification that they cannot vote.
The AFL-CIO today announced a far-reaching, multi-partner campaign to register voters, ensure they can cast their ballots without intimidation and follow through to make sure those votes are counted. Speaking at a press conference here in Washington, D.C., AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker said this campaign represents the union movement’s most aggressive push ever because:
the attacks we are seeing on the right to vote are unprecedented.
New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O'Brien's dictatorial attitude hasn't helped him pass "right to work" for less laws, collective bargaining restrictions or a voter ID law. Now that heavy hand appears to be coming back to haunt him in major ways.
Over the past few years, dozens of states have passed restrictive voter ID and other voter suppression laws that could disenfranchise an estimated 21 million eligible voters, mostly people of color, young voters and senior citizens. The United Steelworkers ( USW ) just posted three videos of people—including a former congressman—who have recently been denied the right to vote because of new state laws.
The past few weeks have not been kind to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and it couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.
Donna Gratehouse, who blogs at Democratic Diva and elsewhere on all things Arizona, sends us this.
The past few weeks have not been kind to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). and it couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of people. Rising GOP superstar and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is in furious denial and damage control mode over multiple reports of the striking resemblance of bills he is pushing in his state to ALEC model legislation. A nationwide petition effort by Color of Change to persuade major corporations to drop their support of ALEC appears to be wildly successful, with companies such as Coke, Pepsi, Kraft Foods and others saying adios to the organization.
Color of Change chose ALEC's attacks on the voting rights of minorities as a main issue for its campaign because it is one of the most insidious ways that ALEC achieves its harmful goals. And my state, Arizona, has been at the forefront of ALEC's voter suppression agenda.
Pennsylvania has become the latest state to pass a voter ID law in the Republican-led nationwide effort to deny the vote to millions. H.B. 934, which Gov. Tom Corbett signed into law last Wednesday, will effectively disenfranchise 691,000 Pennsylvanians who do not currently have a driver’s license, according to a 2006 Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) estimate. African Americans, seniors, people with disabilities, the working poor and students are twice as likely as others to lack ID. Voter ID bills introduced across the country would disenfranchise more than 21 million eligible voters .
What has caused the sudden obsession over “voter fraud” that has seized Corbett and other Republican politicians all across the country?
The better question is not “what” but “who.” And for whom.
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