A new report suggests that voter ID laws in Pennsylvania could disenfranchise a three quarters of a million voters or 10 percent of that state’s population. The Republican bcked legislation was signed into law earlier this year. The Huffington Post reports:
Pennsylvanians will be required to show government-issued photo identification in order to cast votes in November, thanks to a GOP-supported voter ID law signed by Gov. Tom Corbett (R) earlier this year. While supporters argued that it was a simple measure meant to combat voter fraud, figures released this week show that the law may affect more than 750,000 Pennsylvanians who don’t currently possess identification cards issued by the state Department of Transportation.
According to the report, which compared voter registration rolls with transportation department ID databases, more than 758,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania have no driver’s license — a primary form of identification. That’s 9.2 percent of the state’s 8.2 million voters, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. In Philadelphia, the state’s biggest city, that number balloons to 18 percent of the city’s total voting population — around 186,830 registered voters, according to the newspaper.
The Corbett administration maintained earlier that 99 percent of Pennsylvania voters already had proper identification, and therefore wouldn’t need to take additional steps to cast their ballots. The voter ID law does allow for the use of other forms of identification, including U.S. passports, student ID cards with expiration dates and military ID. Because of that, state officials have shown little concern over the latest numbers.
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