The Liberty Bell may have a lot more cracks in it before this election is over.
Voters across Pennsylvania are being robbed of their right to vote by confused bureaucrats who themselves have been ill-trained and misled by elected Republican officials ranging from the governor on down to small-time elected judges.
Republican Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson ruled back in August that a harsh photo voter ID law enacted by the legislature and signed by the governor was legal. The same judge overruled himself after locals complained and the PA Supreme Court ordered him to review his decision.
Meanwhile, millions in taxpayer dollars continued to be spent on TV, radio, billboard, newspaper and online advertising to inform the public that voters are be required to provide a government-issued photo ID card in order to vote.
When Judge Simpson temporarily quashed the law requiring photo IDs, he cleverly let the misleading advertising campaign continue right up until the polls close today. If there's a scent of cynicism at the end of that last sentence, you need only look to the news of voting disasters across the Keystone State going on right now.
Many officials manning the polls think a photo ID is still required because while they may have skipped reading the memo in their in-box last week telling them that photo IDs were no longer needed to vote, they couldn't miss the ongoing TV and radio spots, not to mention the billboards, telling them exactly the opposite. Just to make it even more confusing, first-time voters to a polling place (not first-time ever voters) are exempt from all the voter ID rules!
According to a VoteRiders.com analyst "It appears that not having a voter ID law makes voting more problematic than actually having one."