Voter Photo ID Law Upheld in Pennsylvania

It’s gonna be tougher for some in PA to cast their vote in November. A Pennsylvania Judge decided the new regulations were not unconstitutional even though they could make it incredibly harder for the elderly, disabled, poor, and young adults to vote.

Strategies will shift as the first court battle over Pennsylvania’s new law requiring voters to show valid photo identification heads to the state Supreme Court, while other legal hurdles could surface and political campaigns lumber toward the November election.

The law’s Republican backers and, they say, the integrity of the Nov. 6 presidential election were the winners of Wednesday’s decision by a state appellate judge to reject an injunction that would have halted the law from taking effect in November, as part of a wider challenge to its constitutionality.

About a dozen rights groups and registered voters filed an appeal Thursday. Democrats say the law will trample the right to vote for countless people in an echo of the now-unconstitutional poll taxes and literacy tests once designed to discriminate against poor and minority voters.

The GOP-penned law, signed by Republican Gov. Tom Corbett in March and opposed by every Democratic lawmaker, has ignited a furious debate over voting rights in Pennsylvania, which is poised to play a starring role in deciding the presidential contest.

Democrats say the law is a thinly veiled attempt to help the Republican presidential challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, beat President Barack Obama, a Democrat. Republicans, who for years have harbored suspicions of ballot-box stuffing in the Democratic bastion of Philadelphia, say the law is a commonsense measure.

Republicans lauded Simpson’s decision, while Democrats blasted it, and both parties sent out fundraising appeals spinning off Simpson’s decision. Meanwhile, the Obama campaign had a lower-profile response, saying it would continue its efforts to register voters and educate them about the law, and it urged the state to follow through on its plan to make available free photo IDs to any registered voter who needs one.

Please get online and check out the regulations in your state. Georgia and Tennessee are a few of many that have new laws in effect this election year.

Know your rights and don’t let these scumbags keep us out of the votin’ box November 6th!

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