How Jim Cramer Solved His Dad’s Voter ID Mess In 7 Hours
Jim Cramer
Ryan J. Reilly-September 11, 2012, 10:13 PM
Are you one of hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania voters who lack the type of photo identification required by the state’s voter ID law? If your son is a rich cable news personality with a big Twitter following, the state of Pennsylvania is on the case.
As TPM reported earlier [ http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/jim_cramer_pennsylvania_voter_id.php ], CNBC’s Jim Cramer tweeted on Tuesday morning that his father — a World War II veteran named Ken — would lose the ability to vote under the state voter ID law because he “does not drive, he is elderly, and can’t prove his citizenship.”
So how did it happen so fast? Needless to say, the reach of the younger Cramer, who has more than a half million Twitter followers and a net worth reportedly in the tens of millions of dollars, had a lot to do with it.
Jan McKnight of the Pennsylvania Department of Transporation told TPM that a fellow staffer alerted her to Cramer’s tweet with an email. McKnight was then able to contact Cramer’s publicist. The publicist gave Cramer’s family a phone number for McKnight.
“I can’t go into the details because of privacy issues, but we were able to help him,” McKnight told TPM. She also said she has helped other people get IDs after reading accounts of their struggles in the news.
McKnight said the agency recently began offering a “safety net” form of photo identification, which is given to voters [who] lack a birth certificate but have a Social Security number. The agency issued 472 of those IDs from the first day they were available on Aug. 27 through Sept. 7. PennDOT’s Philadelphia branch alone issued 286 of them.
Besides transportation officials, a congressional staffer also reached out to Cramer on Tuesday and offered to help the cable host’s father. The staffer never got a response. But he later said the case was another example of the problems created by the rush to enact restrictive voting laws.
“Cases like Mr. Cramer’s show that ID laws are about disenfranchising eligible voters, not preventing fraud,” staffer Gregory Abbott told TPM. “Many don’t yet realize that its affecting them or someone they know.”
Abbott works for Democrats in the House Administration Committee. He said even Rep. Bob Brady (D-PA), the ranking Democrat on the committee, had trouble getting adequate photo identification for one if the congressman’s own parents.
by themselves, instances like this one should, categorically, be the legal death of this Pennsylvania voter ID law -- folks are not all being treated the same in its implementation; potentially embarrassing cases are being given IDs with expedited VIP treatment -- legally, that should be the end of it, period
Voter ID Ruling In Pennsylvania Cited Bigoted 1869 Court Decision
Say no more .. "Republican Rep. Mike Turzai, bragged recently that restricting the vote to people who have photo identification is “gonna help Governor Romney win.”"
A Pennsylvania judge's decision to uphold the state's tough new voter-identification law last month was based in part on a 19th century state court decision that at the time disenfranchised many Philadelphia workmen who the court didn't feel were virtuous enough to vote.
Voter rights advocates will ask the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Thursday to overrule the Aug. 15 decision .. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/15/pennsylvania-voter-id-decision_n_1772584.html .. by Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson. In his decision, Simpson heavily relied on an 1869 court case, Patterson v. Barlow, which legalized voting procedures uniquely for Philadelphia, with its large working class and immigrant populations.
What he didn't quote were the parts of the Patterson ruling warning that allowing Philadelphians to vote according to the same rules as the rest of the state would be “to place the vicious vagrant, the wandering Arabs, the Tartar hordes of our large cities, on a level with the virtuous and good man."
A reader of the election law blog .. http://electionlawblog.org/?p=38624 .. run by Rick Hasen, who is a University of California Irvine voting expert and author, also noted the bigoted aspects of the Patterson ruling last month.
The court of the time wrote: “Where the population of a locality is constantly changing, and men are often unknown to their next-door neighbors; where a large number is floating upon the rivers and the sea, going and returning and incapable of identification; where low inns, restaurants and boarding-houses constantly afford the means of fraudulent additions to the lists of voters, what rule of sound reason or of constitutional law forbids the legislature from providing a means to distinguish the honest people of Philadelphia from the rogues and vagabonds who would usurp their places and rob them of their rights?"
The parties who initially sued to overturn the law, argue in their appeal of Simpson's decision .. http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Brief83012.pdf .. that "Patterson is an anachronism, predating the modern framework of differing levels of scrutiny by more than half a century and based on outright prejudice. Patterson is no guide to a current construction of the constitutional rights of Pennsylvanians."
The use of Patterson as legal precedent is particularly relevant, because opponents of the law allege that the current Pennsylvania legislature is similarly trying to use the law to prevent certain people from voting -- in this case, demographic groups that tend to vote Democratic.
The state's voter ID bill came as Republican legislatures across the country pursued bills that would make it harder for people to vote .. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/voting-rights, and register to vote. GOP supporters argue that the laws are necessary to reduce voter fraud, but voter fraud in general is extremely rare, and in-person voter fraud -- the only kind that would be affected by voter ID requirements -- is virtually nonexistent .. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/13/gop-voter-id-data-voter_n_1773142.html.
Allen wrote in her piece: "Wrenched out of context, the legal language that the Commonwealth Court judge chose to quote from Patterson sounds like a fair basis for upholding the new voter ID law. But, in fact, the old Patterson case represents the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's shameful failure to protect elections from a law designed to make voting harder for some people than for others."
"[T]he appropriate level of scrutiny raises a substantial legal question," Simpson wrote in his opinion. "Indeed, if strict scrutiny is to be employed, I might reach a different determination on this prerequisite for a preliminary injunction."
Also on HuffPost:
7 Ways You Could Be Disenfranchised By Voter ID - 1 of 8 - [slideshow]
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