Why Voting in Pennslyvania Sucks
Comments (0) So as you might expect, I am a registered voter who tends to vote in every election. I recently moved from one county to another, and the other day got a letter in the mail from the county board of elections. Since I had filled out a mail forwarding address with the post office, they had my new address. What did this letter say? Quite simply that if I was no longer living at my former address, I would be purged from the voter rolls.
That’s pretty much it. No offer to forward my information to the board of elections in my new area. No new voter registration form that I could full out and send in to update my registration. Nothing at all helpful about the form they sent me, other then confirming to them that I live at my new address. This is a joke and is horrible in this day and age with the internet and about a million different ways to possibly have me update my info.
Add that to the fact that PA is one of the states that have created the strictest laws requiring Voter ID (to combat the non-existent voter fraud) at the booth now. I happen to be lucky, in that despite not having a drivers license (or an ability to get a State ID due to transportation problems) I do have a Passport. But trust me, it wasn’t exactly easy, especially since I don’t have a way to get around. I mostly had to rely on friends and family to get me around to places and get the stuff I needed.
All of this because all that happened was that my former roommate took my license when they moved out by accident and could never find it. My car was already dead, and when I got a friend to take me to replace the license in PA, they wouldn’t until I handed in my Jersey license which I couldn’t get or replace. So getting a license has been fun to say the least.
I can see how a lot of people can have trouble getting IDs just to vote. Of course voters who don’t have IDs skews largely to the minority and poor voters. Ironically for me, most of the places I needed to get to to get a Drivers License are nowhere near mass transit. You’d think they would try to build these places closer to Mass Transit hubs so people who don’t drive could get to them easier.
