EDIT: Can I see some ID?

Pennsylvania’s controversial voter ID law has been postponed for another year, according to an article in The Boston Globe Tuesday.

The law requires each resident to present a valid photo ID at the polls.

Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson decided to postpone the law after hearing testimony about the state’s hasty efforts to provide residents with valid IDs, according to the Globe.

Simpson’s decision seems appropriate.

What about the residents who don’t have the means to obtain a valid photo ID? Do they deserve to be barred from the polls? No, of course not.

Not everyone has the funds or the physical capacity to go out and get an ID, especially in such short a time frame. Forbidding them from voting because of that simple fact would be unjust.

While the state has instituted “11th-hour efforts to make it easier to get a valid photo ID,” according to the Globe, it doesn’t sound like those efforts have been all that successful.

Simpson heard testimonies about “long lines” and “ill-informed clerks at driver’s license centers,” according to the Globe. If the state is going to institute such a policy, it needs to compensate its residents.

Voters should have access to their IDs.

What’s more, is ballot stuffing such a problem that state would be forced to enact such a policy? No, not really.

Perhaps the saying, “If the system isn’t broke, don’t fix it,” should really be applied here.

And even if electoral fraud was a problem, aren’t there other less stringent laws that could have been passed?

Yes. Asking voters to present an ID with their name on it seems more reasonable than asking them to run out to the DMV to get an ID.

It’s interesting that the concern here is about people stuffing ballots. Typically, around this time the concern is that not enough people are registered to vote.