State transportation and election officials were ordered Monday to provide data on licensed drivers and registered voters to plaintiffs in the ongoing voter-ID dispute, hoping to answer a question that has baffled state officials for the last year: how many Pennsylvania voters do not already have photo identification cards from PennDot? Commonwealth Court Judge Robert E. Simpson Jr. agreed to a motion from opponents of the state’s new voter ID law, saying their data request was relevant.
“Not knowing how many Pennsylvania voters don’t have PennDot ID was a major problem in the legal proceedings last year,” said Vic Walczak, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, representing plaintiffs opposing the voter ID law.
“The state has refused to perform that analysis,” he said, “so forcing the state to turn the databases over so we can do the matching is important so we know how many people will be disenfranchised by the ID requirement.”
Opponents of the voter ID law, including Philadelphia City Commissioner Stephanie Singer, tried to obtain licensing information from the Department of Transportation more than a year ago but the request was denied because of PennDot’s security concerns.
Full Article: Pa. ordered to surrender data in voter-ID dispute.