Pennsylvania's House of Representatives is delaying a vote on a measure to establish one of the nation's toughest photo identification laws for voters.
House Speaker Sam Smith said the debate would continue a third day Wednesday after almost six hours of debate Tuesday.
Approval by the Republican-controlled chamber would send the bill to Gov. Tom Corbett, also a Republican, who says he'll sign it immediately.
It may generate a court challenge by the ACLU or Senate Democrats, while other groups that oppose the bill, such as AARP and the Philadelphia-based Committee of Seventy, plan to mount public information campaigns to help voters understand the changes.
On Monday, the U.S. Justice Department blocked a similar law designed to take effect in Texas this year, saying it could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of registered Hispanics. Pennsylvania is not subject to the same federal review, required by Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act, because the state is not deemed to have a history of restricting the opportunity to register and vote.
Still, Democrats plastered it as the ``Republican voter-suppression bill'' and tantamount to the latest in a long line of attempts through history to intimidate or suppress voters.
“The essence comes down to one basic truth: That it stifles our fundamental right to vote that is enshrined in our Democracy,” said Rep. Daniel Frankel, D-Allegheny. “Any attempt to infringe that right is an affront to the constitution and it is an affront to the founders of this nation.”
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In particular, the elderly, disabled and poor will be hard-pressed to satisfy the ID requirement, Democrats said.
Asked during floor debate to detail examples of voter fraud, the bill's sponsor, Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler, brought up two cases of absentee-ballot fraud from the 1990s, including one in which a judge overturned a state Senate race in Philadelphia and another in which a congressman was sentenced on a misdemeanor count of violating the state election code.
“I believe every single individual has a right to have their vote counted and if any individual vote is being canceled out by a fraudulently cast vote, that is one too many,” Metcalfe told his colleagues.
PennDOT will provide free identification cards for those who have none that would satisfy the new requirement and voters who show up at polls without proper ID could cast a provisional ballot and get a six-day grace period to get ID and submit it to election officials, they said.
Under the bill, many government employee photo IDs would be acceptable, as would student IDs from colleges and universities in Pennsylvania and IDs for people who live in elder-care institutions in the state, as long as they show a name, photo and expiration date that makes them current.
Last year, the House passed a more restrictive bill before the Senate expanded it to include other forms of identification.
The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania has warned lawmakers that adding the additional step of requiring poll workers to check photo IDs will create longer Election Day lines at polling places, but provide no extra security for ballots.
Republicans say that county election officials should have time to give the concept a test run during the April 24 primary elections -- asking people for ID, but not requiring it -- and it would become effective for the Nov. 6 general election.
