“Fighting Voter Suppression” @ In These Times

Posted on October 23, 2012

Brentin Mock — October 23, 2012: “On October 2, Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson blocked the state’s voter ID law  from being put into effect for this November’s election. He was concerned the law would disenfranchise voters—a possibility the state couldn’t deny. But Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, the lead sponsor of the bill and a member of the rightwing American Legislative Exchange Council—the force behind many such state laws saw the judge’s decision as “skewed in favor of the lazy who refuse to exercise the necessary work ethic to meet the commonsense requirements to obtain an acceptable photo ID.”

Metcalfe believes people didn’t want to comply with the law because they’re shiftless. That theory flies in the face of the evidence civil rights lawyers produced in the voter ID hearings: more than 50 cases of people who tried to get an ID to vote, but through no fault of their own—lack of birth certificate, discrepancies in the state’s voter registration records—weren’t able to……………………”

Read more at In These Times.