[EL] poll worker discretion

[John Tanner]

It also is the case that Philadelphia has a truly appalling record of abuse
of minority voters at the polls on election day

On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 1:44 PM, Lorraine Minnite <lminnite at gmail.com>wrote:

>  Apropos below:
> http://articles.philly.com/2012-07-26/news/32870365_1_id-law-new-voter-identification-law-delco-election
>
>   The Problem of Pollworker Discretion in Implementing PA’s Voter ID Law<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=37605>
> Posted on July 26, 2012 3:13 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=37605> by Rick
> Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
>
> One of the themes of The Voting Wars<http://www.amazon.com/Voting-Wars-Florida-Election-Meltdown/dp/0300182031/ref=sr_1_cc_2?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1329286945&sr=1-2-catcorr>is that it is dangerous when we give people charged with running our
> election lots of discretion for interpreting rules for who can vote, etc.,
> because inevitably subconscious biases and ideas can sneak in.  I talk
> about that a lot when it comes to my recounting of the Florida 2000
> debacle.  It happened when county canvassing boards were deciding whether
> or not to count votes for Gore, Bush or neither. It happened when local
> election officials decided whether or not to use a faulty voter purge list
> prepared by the state by DBT.  (It also happened when the Republican
> Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, and the Democratic Attorney General,
> Bob Butterworth, gave conflicting interpretations of Florida statutory
> provisions governing the election protest period.)
>
> I was reminded of that when I read this portion of the ACLU-PA’s recap
> <http://www.aclupa.blogspot.com/2012/07/voter-id-day-two-statistically-speaking.html>of
> today’s testimony in the voter id trial, raising an issue wholly apart from
> the question of how many people don’t have the right i.d. or the right
> documents to get that i.d.:
>
> A buzz-word of the day, “substantial conformity” is the term PA’s voter ID
> statue applies to the similarity between a voter’s name on his or her photo
> ID and the name that appears on state election rolls. The legislature
> included no definition nor criteria for this term, and Ms. Oyler testified
> that, while the Department of State may issue recommendations to the county
> boards of election, those recommendations would be non-binding. Ultimately,
> the question of substantial conformity, and the decision as to whether two
> names match – say, for example “James Smith” and “Jim Smith” – will be left
> to those individual boards of elections, and ultimately to the individual
> poll workers.
> Leaving such a subjective determination in the hands of so many
> individuals raises significant questions. Substantive differences in name
> are not uncommon – particularly for recently-married women, who are likely
> to have obtained a new driver’s license, but highly unlikely to have
> updated the election rolls. Voters whose ID is rejected would have the
> opportunity to cast a provisional ballot, but as they will have only six
> days to order and obtain a corrected ID card, the odds that their vote will
> be counted are slim. In his testimony, Baretto remarked that any voter who
> has an ID with a name that is not an exact match with his or her name on
> the voting rolls is “at risk” come election day.
> A similar problem confronts the voter ID law’s provision for “indigent”
> voters. According to the law, voters who are “indigent” are permitted to
> bypass ID requirements and instead complete a special form, which must be
> submitted to the county board of elections to accompany their provisional
> ballot. Once again, however, lawmakers failed to define “indigent,” and so
> it is left to the county boards of elections, and ultimately to the
> discretion of individual poll workers, to decide who is indigent and who is
> not – as well as to decide whether to provide the indigent voter form
> on-site at the polling place, or to require the voter to visit county
> election headquarters to obtain the form.
> In short, under PA’s new laws you’re not only handing that poll worker
> your photo ID card – you’re also handing over unprecedented authority over
> whether or not you can vote. Try to smile.
>
>  This alone raises some serious federal constitutional questions about
> vagueness, due process, and impermissible discretion, issues which were not
> addressed in the U.S. supreme Court’s *Crawford* case.
>  [image: Share]<http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D37605&title=The%20Problem%20of%20Pollworker%20Discretion%20in%20Implementing%20PA%E2%80%99s%20Voter%20ID%20Law&description=>
>   Posted in election administration <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, The
> Voting Wars <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>, voter id<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=9>
> | Comments Off
>
>
>
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