Given the fact that many Americans are not buying the poisonous agenda that the Republican Party is selling, in states with Republican controlled legislatures - including Virginia - a way of dealing with the unpopularity of GOP candidates and policies is to seek to limit the ability of unfriendly voters to vote at all. Perhaps the most egregious example was the law rammed through the Pennsylvania legislature where a GOP sponsor of the law openly admitted that his goal was to limit the voting rights of those likely to vote Democrat so that he and his Republican cohorts could allow Mitt Romney to win Pennsylvania. Thankfully, the Pennsylvania courts, including that state's Supreme Court have torpedoed this blatant effort to disenfranchise voters. The Washington Post looks at the court ruling barring enforcement of this foul law. Here are details:
A Pennsylvania judge on Tuesday ordered state officials not to enforce the commonwealth’s tough new voter-ID law in the November election, a political victory for Democrats who say the measure is an attempt to discourage support for President Obama in a battleground state.
Pennsylvania has occupied a particularly important spot in what has become a series of partisan skirmishes over new laws on who will be allowed to vote this fall and how their votes will be counted.
With five weeks until the election, voters around the country face new requirements when they go to the polls, and some have more limited opportunities to vote before Election Day.
But those opposed to the changes have won key victories in the courts, where judges have had to balance a state’s traditional right to make rules for the electoral process with citizens’ fundamental right to vote.
A panel of federal judges blocked a new law in Texas, saying the state had not proved that the changes would not disproportionately harm minorities. State judges in Wisconsin stopped the statute there. South Carolina’s measure is under federal judicial review, with little time for implementation even if it is approved.
Pennsylvania is emblematic of the partisan dynamic that has motivated the changes. As in many other states, a resurgent Republican leadership elected in 2010 moved quickly to enact one of the toughest ID laws, which required specific forms of photo identification that many residents — the number is disputed — lack. Lawmakers and new Republican Gov. Tom Corbett say the changes are necessary to combat voter fraud and restore confidence in the integrity of elections.
Democrats and civil rights groups say there is almost no evidence of the kind of voter-impersonation fraud that ID requirements would remedy. They allege that the real purpose of such laws is to suppress turnout of poor, urban and minority voters, who are the most likely to lack photo IDs.
The partisan bickering over the measure ratcheted up this summer when a video surfaced of Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R) bragging about the law at a meeting of GOP activists. “Voter ID — which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania — done,” he said.
David Gersch, a Washington lawyer who represented the individuals and civil rights groups that challenged the law, called the decision “a big win” that can be reduced to a simple message: “You don’t need a photo ID to vote in November.”
[W]hile the Obama administration opposed the laws in Texas and South Carolina, it approved such measures in New Hampshire and Virginia. Virginia’s law closed a provision that had allowed residents to vote without showing identification but also expanded the types of ID accepted.
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