Seventy Volunteer on Importance of Voter ID Education

Faye Anderson is volunteering for '70.'
Faye Anderson, who we last spoke to about her web-based Voter ID app Cost of Freedom, is out volunteering for the Committee of Seventy outside polling places today. Their mission: Inform the public on the new Voter ID law. She says while she’s been handing out the Seventy fliers she was given—which explain which IDs will be accepted at the polls and what’s needed to get a new ID—thus far there’s been little need to educate voters.
“The word is getting out,” she says. “People are hearing radio ads, PSAs and news reports. There is a lot of information.”
Part of the reason her job’s been relatively easy today, she says, is that primaries often bring out the base of the party and regular voters. “This young guy, he walked up and he already had his driver’s license in his hand,” she continues. “So the word is getting out.”
Which doesn’t mean there isn’t more work to do. Anderson notes the people she’s running into aren’t the “people on the wrong side of the Voter ID divide.” Which, by November, may be larger than it is today.
Even though the law has been signed by Gov. Tom Corbett, she says, the requirements keep changing. “It’s still a work in progress,” says Anderson. “Everyday there is a new tweek to it.”
As we’ve noted before—and quoted polling place workers saying today—those most affected by the Voter ID bill are often the elderly, minorities and, in many cases, women. It’s generally accepted those who may be turned away at the polls due to this law will be the same people who vote only in November, and perhaps vote Democrat.
Anderson has helped launch a text-based Voter ID application which will explain what kind of ID is needed in your state. She says she’s gotten a positive response thus far, especially considering the number of people who’ve viewed her online press release. She hopes to have a web-based app launched by the end of May.




Voter ID is a bad law and deserves as much opposition as possible. I am almost certain that it will be overturned or restrained before the November election; however, if it isn’t, I will work hard to make sure as many voters as possible refuse to show ID when they go to the polls and vote with provisional ballots, making things as messy and unmanageable as possible in as many polling places as possible. When civil rights are trampled on, civil disobedience is called for.