d72bd39d   
   XPost: alt.politics.bush, pa.politics, soc.culture.african.american   
   XPost: alt.politics.republicans   
   From: perryneheum@hotmail.com   
      
   Pennsylvania's Republican majority leader, Mike Turzai, boasted that   
   the new law “is going to allow Governor Romney to win” the state."   
      
   Of course Romney, gutless bastard that he is, has never uttered a   
   public word about the unfairness of voter ID laws.   
      
   ========================   
      
      
   "Pa.’s new voter ID law sends non-drivers on a bureaucratic journey"   
      
      
   By Ann Gerhart   
   September 16,   2012   
      
      
      
   Philadelphia — Cheryl Ann Moore stepped into the state’s busiest   
   driver’s licensing center, got a ticket with the number C809 on it and   
   a clipboard with a pen attached by rubber band, and began her long   
   wait Thursday to become a properly documented voter.   
      
   Six blocks away, inside an ornate and crowded City Hall courtroom, a   
   lawyer was arguing before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that the   
   state’s controversial new voter ID law would strip citizens of their   
   rights and should be enjoined. Just outside, on Thomas Paine Plaza,   
   the NAACP president was inveighing against a modern-day poll tax at a   
   boisterous rally of a few hundred opponents.   
      
   Moore bent over a folding table and carefully filled out the form a   
   Pennsylvania Department of Transportation worker had given her, in the   
   first line she would stand in that day. Her ticket was time-stamped   
   11:38 a.m. and gave an estimated wait time of 63 minutes, which, said   
   Moore, didn’t seem so bad.   
      
   She had been registered to vote since she was 19, and now she was 54.   
      
   “I’m on vacation this week,” she said, “so I thought, ‘Let me just get   
   this done now,’ because by the time we get to November, you won’t be   
   able to get in this place.”   
      
   She looked around. Nearly all of the 200 plastic chairs in the long   
   room were filled with her fellow citizens — people trying to get   
   licenses to drive mixed in with people trying to get licenses to vote.   
   The bin on the wall that held applications for the “Pa. voting ID” was   
   empty.   
      
   When the state’s legislature in March enacted one of the toughest ID   
   laws in the nation, with the support of no Democrats and all but three   
   Republicans, Gov. Tom Corbett (R) said it would “prevent people from   
   cheating in our elections” in a state where Democrats have a   
   registration advantage of 1.1 million people. The Republican majority   
   leader, Mike Turzai, then boasted that the new law “is going to allow   
   Governor Romney to win” the state, which inflamed an already charged   
   debate.   
      
   The governor estimated that 99 percent of the state’s 8.3 million   
   voters already had an acceptable PennDOT ID, and other Republicans   
   questioned how any responsible grown-up wouldn’t already have the   
   right card, in a society where photo ID is required to use a credit   
   card or buy alcohol or cash a check.   
      
   Cheryl Ann Moore was such a grown-up.   
      
   She owns her home, a small rowhouse in South Philadelphia. She’s held   
   the same job for 24 years, as a custodian at Thomas Jefferson   
   University Hospital, where she works the 4-a.m.-to-noon shift. To get   
   there, she takes the bus in the middle of the night. She doesn’t have   
   a driver’s license, like thousands of working people in a city with   
   one of the lowest rates of car ownership in the country.   
      
   She doesn’t have a bank account. “I pay cash or do layaway,” said   
   Moore. “No credit cards; they’re dangerous.”   
      
   On Thursday, she slept in, until about 7 a.m., then got herself   
   dressed to spend the day in Center City in a pair of pressed gray   
   capris, a pink-and-white T-shirt and a pair of pink patent leather   
   sandals.   
      
   She stopped at work to pick up the paycheck she gets every two weeks,   
   then went to cash it at the same place she’s been going for years.   
      
   “They know me there,” she said, “I don’t need ID for that.”   
      
   But she had heard on the news she needed ID to vote, even though “I   
   never had no problem before,” and her daughter, Sharia, who works in   
   day care, had been pressing her. “She already has that non-driver   
   license, so she told me I better get myself one.” Figuring there would   
   be a crowd at the center, she hadn’t stopped for breakfast, and now it   
   was 12:30 p.m., and she was hungry.   
      
   On the electronic board overhead, the number being served was C765, so   
   Moore went to Subway and got lunch. There were no more chairs, so she   
   sat down on a heating vent at the back of the room.   
      
   Paper chase   
      
      
   There has been confusion for six months about how many registered   
   voters do not have proper ID and about how exactly they can acquire   
   it.   
      
   Opponents of the new law have asked the state Supreme Court, which   
   currently has six members (a seventh justice was suspended this year   
   on corruption charges), split evenly among Democrats and Republicans,   
   to block it. The court is expected to rule this month, and some of the   
   justices’ questions on Thursday showed concern that voters might not   
   be able to get their papers in order before Election Day. The latest   
   poll, conducted by the Philadelphia Inquirer, indicates that some 65   
   percent of Pennsylvania voters support the law. The same poll shows   
   Obama leading Romney by 11 points in the state.   
      
   Meanwhile, the voting-access groups have banded together to try to   
   educate the citizenry   
      
   The law initially stipulated that the only acceptable proof of   
   identity at the polls was a driver’s license or what PennDOT calls the   
   “non-driver” card. Both required a raised-seal birth certificate from   
   the state and a Social Security card, as well as two proofs of   
   residency.   
      
   The law later was amended to include a narrow set of other photo IDs:   
   a U.S. passport; an ID issued by local, county, state or federal   
   government; a military ID; an ID from an institute of higher learning   
   for students or employees; an ID from a state-recognized care   
   facility, such as a nursing home. All had to have expiration dates.   
      
   Then the state had to define what constituted an institute of higher   
   education, and it turned out that of 110 universities, 91 didn’t   
   include expiration dates on their IDs.   
      
   “I have a training manual I use, and I have rewritten it eight or nine   
   times,” said Ellen Kaplan, the policy director for the Committee of   
   Seventy, a political watchdog group in Philadelphia.   
      
   Finally, on Aug. 27, with 10 weeks to Election Day, the state issued   
   what it termed the “card of last resort.”   
      
   To get one of those, a person had to first fill out form DL-54A, to   
   apply for a PennDOT free photo ID for voting, then have a PennDOT   
   staffer certify that the applicant did not have suitable documents to   
   get that first ID, then sign an oath that he or she did not have   
   another acceptable form of ID as stipulated by Pennsylvania Election   
   Code Section 102 (z.5) (2), then fill out the Request for Initial   
      
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