We talked last week about how Pennsylvania now has one of the most restrictive voting laws in the country, and how very few people in Pennsylvania know about the new law, so may find it difficult to comply with it.
Well, Governor Corbett is taking swift and decisive action to fix the problem that he created. He’s hired a GOP operative and Romney bundler to educate the common people (who have the right to vote) on the new law:
Republican Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration has signed a $249,660 contract with a company run by Mitt Romney fundraiser, former state GOP party executive director, pharmaceutical lobbyist, and school voucher advocate Chris Bravacos to direct a media campaign promoting the state’s Voter ID law.
Yes, that very same law, requiring that voters present identification at the polls, which critics contend will suppress Democratic-leaning non-white, poor, elderly and youth voters and which House Majority Leader Mike Turzairecently boasted (video) is “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”
One sample PSA on the Bravo Group’s Vimeo page portrays voter ID as just the latest installment in a bright history of American voting rights, and features anodyne black and white photos―including one of suffragettes.Another spot portrays a lot of shiny-toothed middle class models holding ID cards. [note: Bravo removed the two videos this morning but Occupy Harrisburg has reposted them here and here.] An astounding 758,939 registered voters in the state, or nine percent, do not have PennDot IDs, according to datareleased last Tuesday by the Department of State. In Philadelphia, it’s even worse: 186,830 registered voters, or 18 percent, do not have ID. Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele had previously assured lawmakers that 99 percent of Pennsylvanians possess the necessary ID―based on what, I have absolutely no idea.
The state released this astonishing data on July 3 in what seems like a transparent effort to ensure that the bomb-like news would drop like a dud on the July 4th holiday. And they did so with the almost-unbelievably-Orwellian title “Department of State and PennDOT Confirm Most Registered Voters Have Photo ID.”
A Commonwealth Court hearing in a case to decide whether the law is indeed tantamount to the reimposition of Jim Crow voter suppression tactics is scheduled for July 25 in Harrisburg.
The Department of State approved the $249,660 contract with the Bravo Group on June 25, according to public documents collected by the Cost of Freedom Project and sent to City Paper. The Bravo Group is run by Mitt Romney fundraiser Chris Bravacos, a pharmaceutical industry lobbyist who also operates the Bravo Foundation, which funnels donations to private schools in a voucher-like program for corporations looking for a legalized taxpayer kickback (see this New York Times report).
“It’s outrageous that Pennsylvania is using money appropriated by Congress to help Americans vote to hire a lobbying firm, founded by a former executive director of the Pennsylvania Republican Party and Mitt Romney fundraiser to develop the ‘community outreach and public relations portion of the 2012 general election voter education media campaign,'” said an incredulous Cost of Freedom leader Faye Anderson. “Are we really to believe that a Republican operative will draft a plan that will empower the very voters targeted by the GOP’s voter suppression by voter ID scheme.”
As many of you know, ALEC and their corporate partners also support both public school deregulation/privatization and voter suppression laws. Interesting alliance, there. Keeps cropping up.
RepubAnon
Wow, a Republican-dominated government is hiring a well-connected Republican (with the taxpayers’ money, of course) to do outreach on this issue. Call me cynical, but why do I get the feeling that the outreach efforts will be designed to:
1) defend the need for the law
2) miserably fail at reaching demographics likely to vote for non-Republicans.
Nina
You’d think that the Libertarians would be all up in arms about the government requiring IDs for allowing someone to vote.
Kay
@RepubAnon:
It’s a PR effort for voter suppression laws, generally.
It’s useless to an ordinary voter looking for information.
I’m still wondering why the top elections official in Pennsylvania can’t count. She said repeatedly that “99%” of voters there had the photo ID required to qualify for a ballot. She was wrong. Where’d she get that number? Does she always pull numbers out of her ass? That’s comforting.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Kay: Hasn’t the “pulling out the ass” thing become SOP for Republicans lately? If RomneyBot can do it so very well, why not his followers?
PeakVT
Nine percent. Neuf. Neun. Novo. Nueve. 九. Chín. 9.
Where’s the injunction already?
John S.
@The Fat Kate Middleton:
“I reject your reality and substitute it with my own” has become the GOP raison d’être.
amk
Guess which msm pundtwit is talking about this ? Eugene Robinson!!! Where are rest of the white pundtwits?
debbie
This guy gets a quarter of a million bucks, even as Scranton employees are reduced to minimum wage? Is Corbett serious?
This better get plenty of publicity.
c u n d gulag
Typical – it takes a weekly independent “newspaper” to uncover the truth.
In the meantime, the dailies do whatever it is they think will keep them from being completely irrelevant – which, of course, means the editors want their reporters to cover things that are completely irrelevant – like some new mall going up, or who has the best hoagie.
Yeah, that’ll save the daily newspapers!
Not to say there aren’t fine reporters in Philly – there are. But like in all cities, fewer and fewer every year.
As for the National MSM, which should also be covering voter suppression, since it will, or can, affect the coming election.
Where are they?
I want to change that Main Stream Media description, to “The Sgt. Schultz Media” – TSSM.
“I see nothing… NOTHING!!!”
PurpleGirl
I’ve had a NYS non-driver ID since sometime in the 1980s. The only reason I have it is that I once tried to buy sneakers with a check and the store wouldn’t take a check absent the ID. I’ve kept the ID up out of inertia since then. (That became even easier when NYS went to digital pictures which they keep on file.) But I never knew about non-driver IDs until I went looking for it after the store turned down my check. I suspect a lot of non-drivers don’t know about the ID or how you get it.
Brian R.
@Nina:
Nah, most libertarians are well enough off to have driver’s licenses.
And with libertarians, if it doesn’t affect them personally, they couldn’t care less. It’s a reason they fit in so well with the “I Got Mine, Fuck You” philosophy of the modern GOP.
Kay
@The Fat Kate Middleton:
The state needs to prepare. When Ohio went to voter ID (the Ohio law is much less restrictive) I was a poll worker. It was a mess, and it was an “off year” election. They’re going to be using FAR MORE provisional ballots, and provisional ballots take 10x as long as a first class ballot. Ohio has an advantage over PA, too, OH has “no fault” early voting (absentee) so millions of people vote early, which takes a lot of the pressure off polling stations on election day.
It’s an incredibly dumb idea to put huge changes in during a Presidential election year. There are going to be long lines and massive screw ups.
Besides the MALICE and BAD INTENT behind this law, it’s just stupid. They have now guaranteed that there will be voting issues and bad blood in a presidential election. Good job, conservatives!
Brian R.
@amk:
Where are rest of the white pundtwits?
Like libertarians, if it doesn’t affect them personally, they couldn’t care less.
The Morning Joke crew was clutching its pearls over the president’s proposal to end the Bush tax cuts for the very rich this morning, because those are people like them.
But poor and/or non-white people being denied the right to vote? Meh.
Kay
@Brian R.:
It really is true. Federal courts could not imagine a situation where a person didn’t have ID. Why, one needs a photo ID to board an airplane! How do these people vacation?
There’s a cluelessness here that really makes me think they need to get out more. Jesus Christ. Take a walk around the block occasionally. Look around. I’m not saying they actually have to mingle. Just observe.
PeakVT
Never mind the pundits. Has Casey said much about this?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a Claude!
This event win’s the week’s Claude Rains Memorial Gambling Awareness Award. And it’s only Tuesday.
Should OH and PA go for Rmoney, you can betchyer ass it’ll be the result of voter suppression efforts….which we’ll see repeated again and again and again for the next 2 decades.
Just another example of how the Repups long-game stragety (win massively at the state and local level) pays off at the federal level.
Patricia Kayden
Why doesn’t DOJ step in and block PA’s ID law like it did in FL with the purge? This law impacts way too many people and should be challenged.
Litlebritdifrnt
Kay, Dave Weigel just tweeted this
Do you know the answer to that?
ericblair
@Kay:
Isn’t that what they want? They want to delegitimize an Obama win in any way they can. Any fuckups, including those that could only possibly benefit goopers, will be spun as Chicago! Style! Politics! Dead! People! Voting! and whatever other crap to justify complete and constant insubordination to the duly elected federal government.
john b
@Patricia Kayden:
i assume it has to do with the fact that PA isn’t one of the states that has to comply with the VRA for any new voter laws like the southern states do.
Kay
@Patricia Kayden:
Because they need a specific federal law that applies. The FL law violated a federal law that says that they can’t remove voters w/in a certain time period prior to an election.
Sometimes they’re using a section of the VRA that only covers some areas of the country, in SC for example.
john b
@Patricia Kayden:
i assume it has to do with the fact that PA isn’t one of the states that has to comply with the VRA for any new voter laws like the southern states do.
mai naem
@Patricia Kayden: I thought it was being challenged. I can’t keep track of the voter suppression lawsuits from the DOJ. I thought that was the reason the Repubs were ramping up on Fast and Furious – trying to keep Eric Holder busy.
Anyway, anybody want to bet voter education is going to involve telling people to show up on Wed instead of Tues and telling them if they have parking tickets, they may get arrested and telling people that they don’t go to the polling station they’ve been going to thirty years, but to some new one?
NonyNony
@Nina:
Let’s see – does it impact their ability to surf for porn or buy dope? Nope.
Does it impact their taxes? Nope.
Does it impact their ability to generally be an asshole to people around them for no good reason? Nope.
Are most self-identified Libertarians well-off enough that they have a driver’s license and will not be impacted by this law at all? Yup.
Sorry, I can’t see any reason why Libertarians would be up in arms about stuff like this. Civil libertarians sure, but the Vote Ron Paul people? This kind of stuff doesn’t affect them so they don’t care.
The first time a large number of white libertarian college kids are denied the right to vote because they don’t have ID you’ll see some outrage. Maybe. But until that happens who cares?
PeakVT
@Patricia Kayden: I think PA isn’t subject to the pre-approval restriction that southern states like FL are. So the DoJ would have to go to court, like anyone else trying to block the law.
ETA: Slow this morning. Need my caffeine drip.
ETAA: There’s also the SCOTUS ruling on the Indiana law to deal with. That makes building a legal case for an injunction harder for everyone, I think.
rikyrah
I was wondering if you had seen this story, Kay.
I just shook my head in disgust when I read it yesterday.
Brian R.
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I think it would likely be legal, if only because the connection between ID and voting is a fairly recent invention of the GOP.
Kay
@PeakVT:
FL has VRA pre-clearance areas, so that’s true, but I believe they violated another federal law w/the purge, where they aren’t permitted to take voters off the rolls so close to an election.
The Texas case is in court now. It started yesterday. The DOJ are alleging discriminatory intent, which is great and aggressive and they should do that.
Brian R.
@Kay:
For some it’s cluelessness, but as the quote from the Republican leader in Penn. makes clear, for many of them this is feigned stupidity.
“Golly, I just can’t imagine anyone wouldn’t have an ID. What’s that? Lots of Democrats don’t? Well, shucks. Too bad.”
Litlebritdifrnt
@Brian R.:
Thanks. I know during 2008 that the Obama campaign spent as much time registering voters than it did actual “campaigning” if you will. It was deemed MUCH more important to get non-registered voters signed up. I would have thought that if registering voters and transporting them to the polls is legal then certainly helping people to get voter IDs would be legal.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I saw it yesterday but I’m not familiar with the newspaper so I wanted to see if it was legit. It seems to be.
Kay
@Brian R.:
Right, they have bad intent, but I’m disappointed in federal judges. Reading the SCOTUS opinion that allowed these laws to spring up all over, I felt as if they were looking at their own situation re: ID. Come on. They’re not your average person.
Brian R.
@Litlebritdifrnt:
That’s just a guess on my part, but it certainly seems plausible, for the reasons you note. And important, too.
Hopefully, the story of this $250K contract to this GOP crony will do as much to educate the voters in Penn about the ID law as, well, the GOP crony. More, ideally.
Brian R.
@Kay:
Ah, good point. You’d think a judge would be able to see past his or her own reflection.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
You would think this would be a national story. Its beyond outrageous.
sherparick
I would really like to read a study of what happen to the Republican Party of Pennsylvania over the last 24 years, and how it came to be part of the “Confederate Party” north. I went and read the comments on the linked article. The responses from his conservative readers simply repeated that since “Corbett was not raising taxes” to help “those Philly” people (e.g. Black Americans), this was all okay.
Geeno
The campaign can set up a voter/ID assistance program, but they can’t actively campaign to those they’re assisting. Like they can’t turn down registrations for the other party that are submitted to them.
Kay
@Brian R.:
They sort of lost the thread, missed the point, forgot what they were doing. If we’re going to spend years idly musing on whether people have ID, or why people don’t have ID, we’re losing the urgency here. Do they not believe people don’t have ID? What might it take to convince them? Is the goal here to photo ID everyone in the country or are we still on voting? Because VOTING has a certain “unique opportunity” quality that seems to be ignored. If one misses AN election, that chance is GONE. It can’t be remedied.
japa21
@sherparick: Every state Republican Party anywhere is now part of the “Confederate Party.” Fortunately, a judge just threw out the WI voter ID law.
ET
I am curious as to why Republicans think only Democratic voters don’t have the appropriate ID. I mean there have to be some old, white conservatives that don’t.
japa21
@ET: In terms of sheer numbers, the Dem voters (all of whom shouldn’t even be allowed to vote anyway, since obviously they are too dumb to know better) far and away outnumber the GOP voters. Probably on the level of 10,000 to 1.
PeakVT
@ET: It’s the net effect that matters. And it’s fairly well established that poor voters and minority voters of any age are more likely to be affected by these suppression laws.
RaflW
Glad you mentioned ALEC, Kay.
This sort of shit is why we have to say “well done!” to kicking ALEC in the teeth and then not rest for one second.
Just because ALEC has been exposed and shamed doesn’t mean these democracy-haters will do everything in their powers to continue to dismantle the basic tenets of representative gov’t.
They just going to go further underground. So nice catch/post. We need to know this crap.
danielx
One might think there was a conspiracy at work to suppress the votes of blacks, Hispanics and anyone else likely to vote for Democratic candidates.
One would be wrong. There’s no conspiracy involved, it’s right out in the open.
David Hunt
@ET:
Sure they realize that there are Republicans that don’t have ID. The assumption is that the majority of people that don’t have ID are poor and those people tend to vote Democrat. It doesn’t matter if some Republicans can’t vote as long as there are more Democrats that get shafted. The goal isn’t to make sure their guys can vote, but to make sure the other guys can’t. They don’t care about the voting rights. They care about winning.
Seanly
@Patricia Kayden:
I believe the DOJ oversight is limited to states with a history of voting rights abuse like the former Confederacy states.
This story & the gazillions Romney is raising have me very depressed today. I wish I was a younger revolutionary instead of a cowardly mid-40’s worker drone.
The system is horribly broken and if I starve to death after it fails, I’ll be comforted by the knowledge that all those rich douches will also starve. Having millions in the Caymans won’t be much help when we’re reduced to bartering for the last can of peas.
Omnes Omnibus
@Patricia Kayden: It is being challenged in PA courts. WI’s voter ID law was struck down by WI courts.
Chris
@David Hunt:
This.
I read a conversation in PJMedia in which people were saying that dual citizenship should be illegal, which turned into a discussion about how Americans not living in America shouldn’t be allowed to vote, with one person who claimed to be in the U.S. military heroically saying he would support that and realized he was losing his right to vote but it was worth it – because of some deep-seated universal principle? No, just because the “majority” of Americans overseas were faggots and hippies and other sub-species of liberal and people like that shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
I posted yesterday about how mind-boggling it was to me that in the Gilded Age, three-quarters of Louisiana was disenfranchised by poll tax. But things like this explain why so many people are willing to tolerate that shit.
Chris
@danielx:
This.
My dad likes the word “conspiracy” (as in VRWC, as Krugman put it) and I repeatedly tell him it’s the wrong word. It’s not conspiracy, just run-of-the-mill political corruption that happens to’ve gone haywire because it was allowed to thrive for so long.
Davis X. Machina
@Seanly:
It’s got some weird and spotty exceptions and inclusions, for example, a half-dozen towns in New Hampshire.
Cacti
To answer the lawsuit question…
A suit has been brought against PA by the NAACP and ACLU. The plaintiff is 93-year old Viviette Applewhite. She was never issued a birth certificate, and has never been able to obtain a Photo ID for that reason.
And she’s voted in every national election since 1960.
Davis X. Machina
@David Hunt: Long-established (20+ years) GOP theory, ‘50% + 1’. Depress turnout, especially among lightly engaged voters, especially with negative ads (so people are turned off by the whole spectacle) and let your true believers, who will crawl over broken glass to vote if necessary, do the rest.
Davis X. Machina
@japa21: Maine’s voter-ID law, beloved of our Gov “37%” LePage, was tabled in its majority-GOP state legislature this spring. The repeal, by citizens’ veto, of the recently passed law ending our 38 years of same-day registration, was something of a bellwether.
Mino
Wonder why they didn’t use the expertise of Hans von Spakovsky? Or do they still hope to get him on the Federal Elections Board.
FlipYrWhig
@ET: If old white conservatives get prevented from voting, even because of a Republican law, they will undoubtedly blame The Government anyway, because they’re ill-tempered and always eager to find someone else at fault.
NonyNony
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s actually a feature. Republican governance can be inept and incompetent because their basic premise is that government is inept and incompetent. If Republican-backed laws cause misery to Republican voters it just underscores their belief that government is always the problem.
Buck Batard
@ET: It’s quite true that lots of Republican voters don’t have ID either in PA. Red (and quite white) Cumberland County (pop. 200,000 and some) has 12% voters with no ID.
Davis X. Machina
@Buck Batard: Those good people are just collateral damage. Keeping Philadelphia’s turnout down was never going to be a no-cost proposition Somebody’s done the math. Computers are cheap, the data’s out there…. How much can it cost to hire a bunch of GMU poli-sci students for a month?
Sly
“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”
bemused
Going by letters Republicans write to newspapers, they have no problem with voter ID purging laws whatsoever. They will buy any pig in a poke the GOP is selling them. On some level even if they can’t admit it out loud, they believe it will only affect liberals which is aok with them. It never even occurs to them that these laws could just as easily throw them off the rolls. I would call them idiots but I think it’s worse than that. Winning at any cost and punishing liberals trumps all.
Culture of Truth
If their cousin is manning the polls, it’s not as much of a problem.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Omnes Omnibus:
How GOP-packed are the PA courts, I wonder?
I looked up the list of PA governors, and the seat seems to have flipped back and forth between the two parties over the years.
AliceBlue
I been reading that Mitt hasn’t been paying much attention to PA; I guess now we know why.
slag
Kay, I just have to say…you really are a gem.
feebog
The sheer number of disenfranchised voters due to this law has to have an impact on the courts. When you are telling almost one in ten of your citizens that they no longer can vote, that is huge.
Omnes Omnibus
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: PA judges are elected. I looked at this guy’s background and he seems okay. Judge Robert Simpson. Can’t link because I am using my phone right now.
Roger Moore
@ET:
They’re playing the percentages. They figure it’s OK to disenfranchise some Republican voters as long as they get far more Democratic voters. As long as it boosts their chances come election day, they don’t really care about individuals.
Davis X. Machina
Lest there be any doubt that this is directed specifically at depressing the Obama vote in Philadelphia, let me recommend BooMan….
The New Jim Crow comes to PA
gene108
@c u n d gulag:
Reporters in Philly cover Philly.
The issue is do the big dailies in Philly and Pittsburgh have the budget to keep guys in Harrisburg to keep track of Gov. Corbett.
catpal
besides the total waster of $250,000 of PA Taxpayer $$$ – “The ad invokes the civil rights struggle and the women’s sufferage movement to promote a law that has the potential to disenfranchse tens of thousands of black and/or female voters”
via attytood
see the disgusting ad here
catpal
“While there have been a number of allegations of voter fraud, particularly in Philadelphia, state officials have produced no evidence from the last decade of any voter “impersonation” fraud that photo ID requirements address.”
JGabriel
__
__
RepubAnon:
It’s Show-Us-Your-Papers for voters, because, to the GOP, voters are just as bad as those illegal Messicans.
.
JGabriel
@Kay:
After the 2000 presidential selection, I think it’s safe to say that the GOP does not care about bad blood in presidential elections.
.