Will State’s Most Recent Voter ID Concession Convince Critics?
As the newest round of Voter ID hearings began this morning in Commonwealth Court, the state said it’s attempting to ease its identification rules, again. PennDOT officials noted today that applicants looking to get a new state ID to vote will now only have to make one trip to ID centers.
While there, they can apply for a voting-only card, “and if there is a problem,” writes the Inquirer this morning, “they will still have their photo taken” and a card will be mailed to them.
But Philadelphia good government group the Committee of Seventy thinks the state can do more.
“The state deserves credit for this positive step forward for voters. But it’s still one step short. PennDOT should open its doors much wider to make sure that everyone who needs a DOS ID is able to get one in these final weeks before the election,” said Zack Stalberg, Seventy’s President and CEO, in a statement from the group.
Seventy also put out recommendations for PennDOT to remedy their other problems, which include opening temporary driver’s license centers throughout Pennsylvania, longer hours and providing forms in languages other than English.
Speaking of problems, according to Philadelphia voting activist Faye Anderson, the new change is just another flaw in a long line of flaws.
“The state is implementing the voter ID law on the fly,” she tells Philadelphia Weekly. “In a desperate effort to salvage the ill-conceived and hastily drawn law, PennDOT is issuing a voter ID card to anyone who shows up and provides the same information they gave when they registered to vote. No proof of residency? No problem. Just sign on the dotted line that you are a registered voter.”
Anderson, a volunteer with the Pennsylvania Voter ID Coalition, is the creator of web applications Cost of Freedom, which provides information on Voter ID laws; and Yo! Philly Votes, which allows voters to monitor the polls and post their observations to an online forum.
Anderson, an opponent of the Voter ID law, has dedicated much of her time as of late to informing Philadelphians on the new state rules, assuming it is upheld for the Nov. 6 election.
“What’s the point of requiring already registered voters to go to PennDOT to complete an application stating they are a registered voter?” she continues. “The process may be streamlined but it’s still disenfranchisement by design. The voter suppression by voter ID scheme is designed to sow confusion among voters and their advocates, and create chaos at the polls.”
As it happens, today is National Voter Registration Day. Rock the Vote is holding a rally at the Community College of Philadelphia and we’re hearing Talib Kweli is set to perform at 3 p.m.
One important fact that apparently no news media outlets are reporting about this big government push for everyone to get their photo taken for ID cards is that it’s a massive facial biometric data acquisition grab.
State governments are building massive facial biometric databases from drivers license and “non-drivers license” photos. Now they’re going after a subset of the population that have neither of those ID cards because the state wants their photos on file.
Why? Because video surveillance technology now allows near-instant facial identification from CCTV cameras for logging who went where and when and with whom. The Philadelphia Police Department alone has hundreds of such cameras on public streets, and PennDOT has even more. Federal tax dollars funneled through the Department of Homeland Security are funding a large portion of these projects.
Camden’s so-called “Eye In The Sky” program has resulted in hundreds of arrests–many unfounded–of people simply being in the wrong place (high-crime areas) at the wrong time. Their facial images were captured by government CCTV cameras and warrants were issued for their arrest.
This is not some crazy conspiracy theory–it’s really happening and people should know about it. Why are new media reporters not even asking about the privacy implications of all these vast digital facial biometric databases being collected?
Everyone’s facial biometric data is being collected, stored, and shared with other government agencies with no oversight whatsoever on how it will be used. And the news media isn’t even looking into this.
-bernieS