Day four of the court hearing on the state’s new photo identification requirement at the polls brought more testimony on the implementation of the new law, and a rare question for a witness from the judge presiding over the case. Jonathan Marks, a Department of State employee who oversees elections programs, testified that his office has worked out how to deal with exceptional cases for those people who have difficulty even obtaining the yet-to-be-released Department of State voting ID. “We’re ready to go,” said Marks on the stand. “It’s just a matter of training help desk staff [on] how to deal with these oddball exceptions.” Within the past month, the state revised its estimate of the number of people who may lack PennDOT-issued ID (driver’s or non-) to roughly 759,000. Commonwealth Secretary Carol Aichele has said her office is confident many of those people actually do have PennDOT ID but were flagged because of discrepancies between the state’s voter registration database and PennDOT database.
On Monday, Marks echoed comments made by Aichele – that the state has been contacted by some of those 759,000 people who say they do, in fact, have ID. One of the attorneys arguing against the voter ID law pressed Marks for a more specific count – how many people called to say they have ID? A lot? “It’s not going to fill up Beaver Stadium,” said Marks, adding: “probably a couple of hundred.”
Full Article: Judge in voter ID case asks witness: Let’s say I grant an injunction? – witf.org.
The Voting News
A News Service of the Verified Voting Foundation
