Dauphin News

Immediately following Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s veto of election reform legislation, Republican legislative leaders announced that in the fall they will revisit the provisions in the bill, HB 1300, the Voter Rights Protection Act, which has garnered strong bipartisan support. 

They will also move ahead with a proposed constitutional amendment to implement a voter ID requirement for in-person voting, a provision in the legislation vetoed by the governor.

Republicans currently control both houses with strong majorities.

“GOP lawmakers are right for not resorting to the same old tactics,” said Ken Cuccinelli, former Attorney General of Virginia and National Chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, told Dauphin News. “They are taking the issue outside the political arena and taking it directly to people.”

Cuccinelli said that with his veto, Wolf, a Democrat, toed the party line by claiming that the legislation, approved after four months of hearings by the House State Government Committee, was intended to suppress voter turnout, especially among minority voters. 

But the voter ID provision in HB 1300, often cited by Democrats as one of the key weapons used by Republican to suppress votes, is along the lines of that proposed by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat, as a compromise to the so-called For the People Act, which would effectively federalize the nation’s elections. Some high-profile Democrats, including Stacey Abrams, a former Georgia state official, are on board with the Manchin proposal. 

“They’re beginning to realize they are on the wrong side of this one,” Cuccinelli said of Democrats who oppose voter ID.

Cuccinelli added that polls show that most voters support an ID requirement in state election law. 

In fact, just days before Wolf vetoed HB 1300 on June 30, a Franklin & Marshall College poll indicated that 74% of Pennsylvania voters support voter ID. 

Allowable forms of voter ID under HB 1300 included a PennDOT-issued driver’s license or non-photo ID, a free durable, scannable voter registration identification card or a free Department of State ID. Absent that, a voter would have been permitted to sign an affidavit affirming their identity when they go to vote. 

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Pennsylvania is one of 16 states that does not require voters to show a form of identification at the polls.