There is more than enough justification for Pennsylvanians to expect the worst from their highest state court.
Often, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has performed atrociously — from giving state lawyers carte blanche to engage in unethical conduct, to giving its blessings to the clearly unconstitutional measure that allowed gambling casinos, to winking at the obvious corruption of two Luzerne County judges.
I am forced to admit, however, that the Supremes did the right thing last month when they decided to force a Commonwealth Court judge to put the kibosh, temporarily, on the state's new law requiring voters to present valid identification before casting a ballot.
Generally, I strongly favor such a requirement. I do not believe for one minute in the claims of the Democratic Party — that widespread voter fraud no longer exists, just because it is rarely prosecuted.
"Vote early and often," the motto of that party's Tammany Hall in years past, is still facilitated by a system that lets voters go from polling place to polling place without actually having to prove who they are, or whether they actually live in that voting district. Keep in mind there are 9,110 polling places in Pennsylvania.
In the debate over the law requiring voters to present a photo ID, such as a driver's license, virtually all of the support for such a measure came from the GOP and the opposition came from Democrats, cheered on by their constituency of union bosses and defenders of the downtrodden.
In one court hearing, ID foes wheeled a poor and elderly woman into a courtroom and gave a sob story about how she was unable to get any photo identification. (For people without driver's licenses, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation was supposed to provide free ID cards.) Then, just one day after the court upheld the voter ID law, she suddenly discovered she was able to get to a PennDOT office, after all, and received her ID card with no problem.
Then along comes the Supreme Court, with perhaps the worst reputation of any state appellate court in America, and all its Republicans side with the Democrats — telling a judge in the subordinate Commonwealth Court to rethink his previous ruling that the voter ID law was constitutional.
If allowed to stand, that earlier ruling, by former Northampton County Judge Robert Simpson, would have meant voters in next month's elections had to present photo IDs.
The Supreme Court's decision to bounce back Simpson's ruling, advising him to issue a preliminary injunction against implementation of the voter ID requirement, also bucked individual party affiliations (to its everlasting credit). It went this way.
In favor of the injunction: Chief Justice Ron Castille and associates Thomas Saylor and J. Thomas Eakin, all Republicans, plus Democrat Max Baer. Opposed to the injunction: Justices Seamus McCaffery and Debra McCloskey Todd, both Democrats.
To the delight of other top Democrats, Simpson issued the injunction against the photo ID requirement on Tuesday.
The most recent decisions by both Simpson and the Supremes were based on arguments that PennDOT and the Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees electoral matters, could not guarantee that every qualified voter without a driver's license would be able to get another form of ID by the Nov. 6 election.
"Both state agencies involved appreciate that some registered voters ... will be unable to comply with the requirements," said the Supreme Court ruling on Sept. 18. It told Simpson to assess whether IDs may be unavailable for some voters, and if so he "is obliged to enter a preliminary injunction."
The Supremes did not scuttle voter ID, but agreed with those challenging the new law that there was not "reasonable time" to accommodate every person affected by it. "The gravamen [lawyer talk for the most significant part] of their challenge at this juncture lies solely in the implementation."
It's a problem of logistics, not principle.
On principle, and in general, let's think about what the opponents of meaningful voter identification are saying.
They feel we should let people vote who have no way of proving who they are or where they live. What, then, is there to keep them from going from polling place to polling place — as many of the 9,110 they can fit into their schedule — to cast multiple votes? That is what Tammany Hall did in the 1800s, mobilizing the underprivileged to stuff ballot boxes, especially in big cities.
I've been around politicians long enough to know that if it's possible to cheat, many will, and that certainly was the case when I worked in Philadelphia in the 1970s. The only reason I suspect Democrats more than Republicans is that the latter have fewer underprivileged flunkies to mobilize.
That brings up the other most popular ploy to corrupt the electoral process, and this one benefits mainly the GOP. Millionaires can shovel enough money into television commercials to mislead voters with the most outrageous of lies, as happened in the 2004 "Swift Boat" campaign against presidential candidate John Kerry.
That form of corruption — elections bought by whoever has the most money — needs to be curtailed, even if it takes a constitutional convention.
paul.carpenter@mcall.com 610-820-6176
Paul Carpenter's commentary appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
