State lawyers agreed Thursday not to implement Pennsylvania’s voter ID law in the November election regardless of a judge’s pending decision on whether the law is constitutional. The state attorney general’s office agreed to extend a temporary injunction before the start of closing arguments in a two-week-long trial in Commonwealth Court. Some details of the agreement have yet to be worked out, said D. Alicia Hickok, the state’s attorney. Voters will be able to vote in the general election even if they do not have photo identification cards as the 2012 law requires, she said. The state would like poll workers to still ask voters to show proof of identification, she said. “Poll workers were confused. People were confused, and some were turned away from the polls [in prior elections],” Clarke said. Whatever the final agreement looks like, it will not stop Judge Bernard L. McGinley from deciding the law’s fate. In closing arguments Thursday, Clarke called the law “unreasonably and unnecessarily burdensome,” and said it infringes upon Pennsylvania citizens’ right to vote. She estimated at least 500,000 registered voters lack proper ID, based on a statistical analysis of voting records.
But Hickok said the plaintiffs were “playing fast and loose with the numbers” of people who would not be able to vote under the law. She said the law provides for IDs to be made for those who need them.
… Democrats and civil-rights groups claimed the law was aimed at preventing minorities and others from casting votes for Democratic President Barack Obama, who was up for re-election in November of that year.
Clarke pointed to that election in her closing argument. She cited a June 2012 video clip in which House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, predicted that the voter ID law would help Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney beat Obama in Pennsylvania.
It didn’t. The law was not enforced under an injunction granted by Commonwealth Court ruling by Judge Robert Simpson, a Republican. Obama won the state.
Full Article: PA’s voter ID law put on hold in November – mcall.com.