FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Camila Gallardo
(305) 573-7329/cell: (305) 215-4259
cgallardo@nclr.org
Judge rules against one of the strictest voter ID laws in the country
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Today, NCLR (National Council of La Raza) applauded the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court’s decision that prevents the state’s strict voter identification law from going into effect for the November elections. The six-month old law has faced heavy criticism from groups such as NCLR because it threatens to disenfranchise more than 750,000 voters, many of whom are Black and Hispanic.
“We applaud Judge Simpson’s commonsense decision today to prevent throwing the voting process into chaos weeks before the election and endangering the right to vote for nearly a million eligible voters in the state,” said Janet Murguía, President and CEO of NCLR. “This decision sends a strong message to other states that have attempted to pass similar legislation to suppress minority voting rights. It is our intent to keep up the pressure against efforts like these that attempt to silence a significant portion of our electorate.”
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania estimates that these more than 750,000 eligible voters lack the forms of identification required by the law. Minority voters—including Latinos, as well as the elderly and the state’s college-aged youth—would have been most affected by the new changes because they are less likely to have state-issued photo identification.
Proponents of the law claim the measure is necessary to prevent cases of voter fraud, yet the state of Pennsylvania could not produce one incident of voter identification fraud in its electoral history. Puerto Ricans living in Pennsylvania, who make up half of the state’s Latino population, would have faced an additional hardship—in 2010, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico invalidated all of its birth certificates and required the issuance of new forms. This process has been cumbersome and lengthy for some, and many are still waiting for their applications to be renewed. Those without a photo ID would potentially not have been in possession of the new document in time to vote in the upcoming election.
NCLR’s local Mobilize to Vote (M2V) campaign has worked closely with Pennsylvania Affiliates such as the Association of Puerto Ricans on the March, Congreso de Latinos Unidos, and The Council of Spanish Speaking Organizations, Inc., to register and educate Pennsylvania’s Latino voters on state requirements. NCLR is also a lead organization in the Pennsylvania Voter ID Coalition, which is coordinating statewide advocacy efforts to defend the voting rights of all citizens.
“Our focus should be on urging more Americans to take part in the electoral process rather than coming up with dubious ways to exclude them,” concluded Murguía.
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