Harrisburg – May 8, 2014 – State Senate Democratic Leader Sen. Jay Costa (D-Allegheny) released the following statement following the Corbett administration’s announcement that they would not appeal the court decision which struck down Pennsylvania’s controversial voter ID law:
“We should never have gotten to the point where the Corbett administration was deciding whether or not to appeal an unconstitutional law. The law, on its face, was inappropriate and it never should have been adopted.
“There was no question that the whole law was based in politics and that its goal was to disenfranchise voters and suppress voting. The case fell apart almost immediately because the court rightly saw there was no evidence of fraud.
“The Corbett administration wasted time and money in the pursuit of this law and the court actions that resulted from its passage. Taking away the right to vote is a very serious matter and that is what the court addressed. The right to vote deserves to be protected and participation should be preserved.”
The law would have had impacted Pennsylvania’s estimated 8.2 million voters. Trial testimony indicated that more than 750,000 voters do not have proper ID’s and would have been prevented from voting.
More than 9 percent of voters did not have proper PennDOT-issued voter ID’s. PennDOT driver’s licensing centers, where voters are supposed to pick up ID’s, do not exist in nine counties and have limited operations in 22 others.
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