An editorial by the Patriot-News Editorial Board published on June 8, 2012 illustrates the costly effects of the Voter ID law. Obtaining identification may sound simple; however, for the estimated 320,000 voters who don’t have a drivers license, the majority of whom are seniors and minorities, it is anything but.

To obtain a photo ID, voters must travel to a PennDOT location and provide significant amounts of paperwork, including an official copy of a birth certificate; for voters without access to their birth certificates or cost-free forms of transportation, these measures alone are prohibitive. While the Corbett administration has made some changes to the implementation of the law, even the new measures are time-consuming and do not address all of the barriers created by the legislation.  The editorial argues that the millions of dollars that the administration has had to spend educating the public about what ID they need to have and how to obtain it could have been better spent on any one of the more pressing issues facing the state right now, like education or human services programs.

Click here to read more.