OUT & ABOUT: Protesting Voter-ID Law In Harrisburg

BY DENISE CLAY/ If you look at the history of any movement designed to get or maintain the right to vote for various groups in America, that historical timeline most likely includes a bus trip.

So it was probably not a surprise to anyone in Harrisburg that a whole bunch of buses filled with people from all walks of life were headed their way on Tuesday to take part in a rally protesting the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s four-month old Voter ID law. The Philadelphia Chapter of the NAACP sponsored the bus that brought me to Harrisburg for what would wind up being one of the more interesting days that I’ve had in journalism in a while.

The Pennsylvania NAACP is one of the groups that had joined with the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union to sue the Commonwealth to block the bill that would require a state-sponsored ID in order to vote. By the time this column hits the streets, it’ll be Day 2 of those hearings.

As she worked on my receipt for the $15 I gave her to make this trip (which included a fairly decent box lunch and, most importantly, the water needed to survive an outdoor rally), Theresa Spotswood, the Philadelphia chapter’s secretary, told me she didn’t think the Voter ID law would reach as far as it has when she first heard about it. But it did. And it bothers her. “Basically, it made me very disturbed,” Spotswood said. “I didn’t think the law would go to the extent that it did in terms of the ID requirements. But when it comes to the court challenge, I’m a skeptic. [The Commonwealth] is going to push as hard as it can to make this bill pass.”

Under the new law, you must have a state-issued (or, in the case of your passport or military ID, federally issued) photo ID to vote. In order to get this piece of identification, you must produce a birth certificate and a Social Security card for the folks at PennDOT. Your ID must also have an expiration date, which means if you’re using a college ID, or in the case of workers in Harrisburg, your employee ID card, you can vote provisionally, but you have to send proof of ID to your local Elections Board within seven days, or your vote doesn’t count.

Now, Secretary of State Carol Aichele has since said PennDOT will be able to issue you an ID for free that will allow you to vote … and nothing else. But the original proposal for those seeking an ID included $1 million to provide non-driver IDs and licenses to EVERYONE needing them, gratis. Since it would cost $1 million to take care of the 186,000 in Philadelphia alone, much less cover the 785,000 without IDs statewide, I knew that wasn’t going to work.

What we’re finding out is there is a whole gang of kinks in this new law that need to be worked out. Some are minor on their face, but they’re nonetheless important. A woman on the bus named Jordan Gwendolyn Davis took great pride in telling me she’s never missed a primary vote. In fact, I had overheard her talking about some campaign work that she had done over the years. She has an ID, a driver’s license, but Davis worries that it might not match the way she looks now. Why might she have a problem? Well, she might, because Jordan Gwendolyn Davis … well, I’ll let her tell you.

“I’m a transsexual woman,” she said. “The Trans Community might have a problem with IDs because they may not match and it may not be counted as real. The photo on my license was taken before I started hormone treatments. I’m hoping I don’t have to deal with this issue due to gender stereotypes, but I’m preparing myself.”

Most of us are never going to find ourselves in Davis’s shoes. But as the rally progressed, we found kinks that are going to impact a whole lot more people.

About 25 speakers, ranging from ministers, to voter advocates, to union leaders and legislators, catalogued them. State Rep. Rosita Youngblood told the story of a woman who had been to PennDOT five times trying to get an ID and had been turned away due to slight inconsistencies in her paperwork. A representative of the League of Women Voters said women who had changed their names due to marriage had to not only produce a birth certificate, but also a marriage license to secure ID.

And don’t even get me started on Puerto Ricans. Because some of their birth certificates were declared invalid by the Federal government a few years back, folks are really having a problem getting ID in this community.

For the most part, the speakers believed this law was designed to do what State Rep. Mike Turzai said it was designed to do: put Pennsylvania in Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s win column come November. Perhaps they’re right. When the State presents its case to Commonwealth Court this week, it won’t present any instances of voter fraud that the Voter ID law would help prevent.

Then spoke J. Wyatt Mondesire, president of the Pennsylvania and Philadelphia chapters of the NAACP, a man who has never minced a word in the entire time I’ve known him. While he told the crowd it was important for them not to rely on the courts to strike down the law and continue their work connecting voters with IDs for November, he also let everyone know what he thought of it. “Voter ID is a lie,” he said. “It’s a lie told by liars. And I want you to hear me say this … Tom Corbett is a liar!”

Since Gov. Corbett is a bit tone deaf, I wasn’t surprised to hear Secretary of State Carol Aichele had scheduled a press conference in the Senate Caucus room after the rally. She shouldn’t have been surprised that folks from the rally wanted to attend.

Because it was being held in the Senate Caucus Room, State Sens. Anthony Hardy Williams and Vincent Hughes were prepared to act as tour guides to the assembled masses. But while the Capital Police would let them in, they wouldn’t let the crowd in, which is why Sen. Williams promised this was going to court at a news conference that followed Aichele’s. “This is the Senate chamber,” he said. “The Senate is a separate branch of the government. We’re allowed to bring guests here. Not allowing us to do so is a violation.”

So Aichele’s press conference wound up with a soundtrack that included chants of “Let us in!”, a couple of choruses of “We Shall Overcome” and other sounds not usually heard during a news conference.

Aichele’s response to a question about the protests included a suggestion she hoped the assembled media would pass on. “I hope they’ll listen to what we’re saying and that they’ll take this energy and help people get IDs,” she said.

As justification for the law, which she believes will withstand the court challenge, Aichele said its purpose was to make sure all elections were fair ones by making sure your face matched your ID photo. “We just want to make sure that you are who you say you are when you go to the polls,” she said. “We encourage everyone to get ID because if it’s a close election we’ll know who has cast a provisional ballot. Everyone, including elected officials, should be encouraging people to get ID.”

Aichele also said she hoped it would increase voter turnout because a similar bill did so in Georgia. But according to my sources at Who Can Vote, the Carnegie-Knight Foundation’s investigative-reporting project on voting, that increase was due to increased interest, not the voter-ID law.

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