Counting the Votes
Apr 16th, 2008 at 7:56 am by Susie
Any first-time PA voters need to remember their IDs:
Pennsylvania state Rep. Babette Josephs, who chairs the committee that oversees elections, is worried that many first-time voters will forget that they have to show ID.
“And I fear that some of those who have no time to go back home and get ID, that there may not be enough provisional ballots for them to vote, which is a procedure we allow here in the state,” she says. Local officials say they’re prepared for a heavy turnout, and that there should be enough ballots.
One advantage for Pennsylvania voters is that their provisional votes can be counted, if they’re cast anywhere in the correct county. Many states require provisional votes to be cast in the correct precinct — a problem if a voter does not know where that is.
Ned Foley, a professor at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, sees other difficulties. He says state laws require that provisional voters be registered for their votes to count, but he adds: “That is usually all the state law says. And it turns out that that question is much trickier in practice. Sometimes registration forms get lost in transit from the motor vehicle bureau to the election officials. Is that voter registered or not registered?”
He notes that that question was decisive in a contested 2004 Washington gubernatorial race, after it was discovered that registration data wasn’t recorded for several hundred provisional voters.
This applies to anyone who’s moved into a new precinct, by the way, so don’t forget those photo IDs!
Is it just my non-whiteness showing that I can’t imagine leaving the house without ID?