There seems to be a hole, plus unanswered questions, in Gov. Josh Shapiro’s much ballyhooed Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) policy, an updated version of what’s been called motor voter.
City Commissioner Lisa Deeley couldn’t come to the phone
The policy states that any eligible person obtaining a new or renewed driver’s license will automatically be enrolled as a voter, unless they opt out. Under previous policy, those seeking a drivers’ license could opt in to the enrollment program. And that led to some problems, as you will see.
In order to register to vote in Pennsylvania, you have to produce a state-issued ID, such as a driver’s license, proof of residency, and a Social Security number, according to the Philadelphia City Commissioners website. To vote, you must be a citizen.
But a driver’s license is not proof of citizenship, and neither is a Social Security number.
To register to vote online, I was told by Shapiro deputy press secretary Rosie Lapowsky, an applicant must provide scans of the front and back of a driver’s license, or the last four digits of a Social Security number, plus an electronic signature.
Automobile driver’s licenses are issued to foreigners living here legally, and are identical to yours. Noncitizens who work in the U.S. are eligible to enroll in Social Security, according to the SSA website.
Since either document can be obtained by foreigners, these forms of ID seem to open the voting rolls to people who should not be allowed to vote.
This isn’t theoretical. Foreigners have voted in Pennsylvania elections before.
The Inquirer reported the Tom Wolf administration admitted in 2019 that at least 11,000 noncitizens, who live in the state legally, but who are not entitled to vote, were registered to vote.
If they opted in to get on the voting rolls there’s no telling how many made an innocent mistake, and how many deliberately violated the law.
What are the safeguards this time around?
I called Democrat Lisa Deeley, chair of the three-member City Commissioners, which oversees Philadelphia’s elections.
By a great coincidence, I called her on Friday, Sept. 22, while she was in Harrisburg attending a meeting of the Pennsylvania Election Law Advisory Board, which spent part of its nearly two-hour meeting discussing the topic of Shapiro’s AVR policy. The board’s purpose is to study election law and changes.
Deeley declined to speak with me, instead pointing me to a video recording of the meeting. I found her glowing remarks about AVR on the video. I also found other remarks that were not as cheery.
Her videoed remarks said Secretary of State Al Schmidt signed off on the new AVR, and that was good enough for her. Schmidt had served on the City Commission from 2012 to 2022, until Shapiro appointed him to the statewide job, which includes supervising elections.
“Schmidt would not put his name to this if he were not 100% sure,” Deeley said on video.
“It’s rare to make a change this significant that improves voter access and election integrity at the same time,” Schmidt told the Inquirer, which did not report how it improves integrity. In fact, it reported that “some election deniers were quick to falsely claim that the move would endanger the security of Pennsylvania’s elections.”
Falsely? Says who? Why would they say that? Those questions were not answered in the paper’s lackadaisical reporting.
I have nothing but admiration for Republican Schmidt, whom I have known for about a decade, but no one’s perfect. I called him for clarification, and left a message, but he passed me to a flunkie subordinate.
Advisory Board member Jesse David, a lawyer from Indiana, Pa., noted during the meeting that there was no outside verification of a person’s citizenship status.
Deeley said the first question on the paperwork asks if the person is a citizen, and warns that falsely claiming citizenship is a crime.
But the Department of Motor Vehicles does not double check, David said, which opens the door to fraud. He also said the change from opt-in to opt-out was not minor, but “significant.”
Board member Joseph Kantz observed that the automatic opt-in would be problematic for a percentage of the population which resists being pressured into anything by the government.
Deeley herself acknowledged that many people, when faced with forms, don’t pay attention and just click through without even reading.
Shapiro’s announcement said the automatic opt-in will increase the number of registered voters, which it will, according to a study done by the Brenner Center for Justice. The news release predicted “appreciable increases” in turnout, which I asked the governor’s press office to quantify. In other words, predict the increased numbers. I never got an answer.
As far as turnout, the Sept. 19 Inquirer reported “there is little evidence that it increases the number of people who vote in an election,” citing a Public Policy Institute of California study. In fact, the Inquirer said, there was “a decrease in voter turnout.”
May I say, WTF?
If the policy doesn’t actually increase voter turnout, why is it being touted as some kind of panacea? Is this some kind of a feel-good shell game?
During the advisory board meeting, a question was raised as to whether Shapiro actually had the authority to make the opt-in change.
“We will look into this,” said Deeley.
I asked the governor’s press office if he had the authority to change from opt-in to opt-out.
Shapiro spokesman Manuel Bonder replied, “It is abundantly clear that this common sense step to securely streamline voter registration and enhance election security is within the governor’s authority.”
If it is that self-evident, how come Deeley didn’t know that?
AVR is authorized by federal and state law, but my question was not about the law itself, but the governor’s right to implement change from opt-in to opt-out.
I am uncertain.
After 10 days of dealing with the governor’s office, the state department and PennDOT, there are other questions that remain unanswered.
- What was the original flaw and how was it fixed?
- What makes the new process foolproof?
- How does the new process guarantee election security?
- Especially when registering to vote online?
Voter registration should be made as easy as possible, sure, but not so easy as to invite fraud, as has happened in the past.
Here’s a disheartening fact: Over the past three decades numerous moves have been made to make it “easier” to vote — voting that can be done in person in advance of Election Day, polls that are open 24 hours, mail-in ballots, drop boxes, weekend voting, a really long list.
And yet turnout percentage remains abysmal — in the 50s since 1972, with a few exceptions.
Those exceptions were elections with historic characters: The first Black candidate, Barack Obama, rang up 61.6% in 2008 (the first year he ran.) His second election dipped to 58.6% in 2012. The novelty was gone.
In 2016, the Donald J. Trump candidacy produced turnout of 60.1%, then climbed in 2020 to a modern record of 62% (Richard M. Nixon hit 62.5% in 1968) because Trump motivated voters on both sides of the aisle — by harnessing both love and hate.
I expect 2024 to go even higher, and not because of motor voter.
There is lagging interest in voting, but the lack of interest is not because voting is ”too hard.”
The root of the disinterest lies elsewhere, perhaps in the quality of the candidates.
I particularly love your last sentence about quality of candidates. More specifically, how both sides just repeat talking points and don’t address real needs by real people.
SO if they register them all as R, that should pretty much stop them in their tracks. What party do they intend to register them into? Why not consider everybody as registered to vote and skip the paper work, since you can get a license at 16. Such a dumb idea, again.
Stu,
I’ve voted in 5 states in my adult life, two of them, Texas and Florida, from the old Jim Crow South. In none of these states was it difficult to register. None. In fact, in Florida, a state often excoriated in the press, it is easy to register and even easier to vote than in PA. That many of the new voters in FL like me don’t vote the way the Inky would like us to is reflective in part of why we no longer live, vote, or pay taxes in Philadelphia. (And we’re missing all those extra services our higher taxes in Philly pay for like great public schools, carjackings, homelessness, and looting!)
The fact is, as you noted, the problem isn’t registration, it’s motivation. Whatever the guv does, it won’t motivate citizens to vote. And whether he can, in fact, do what he says he will do isn’t a trivial question. Our chief executives at both the national and state levels seem to forget that it is the legislatures that have the role of setting policy. Indeed, the first clause of the first section of Article I of our constitution reads, “All legislative powers herein granted are vested in a Congress…”. To avoid any ambiguity, it begins with the word, “All”. Likewise, PA’s constitution says, “The legislative power of this Commonwealth shall be vested in a General Assembly…”. To similarly avoid ambiguity, it begins with the definite article, “The”. Shapiro’s policies may be the best that can be imagined, but even if that’s true, the way to implement them is through legislation passed by the General Assembly. Yes, passing legislation through both houses is often tedious, but that’s our system. I’ve read both the state and federal constitutions cover to cover. Nowhere does it say anything like, “If the legislature won’t do what the governor wants, he can just do it anyway.”
Yes, Florida catches hell from Dems, but it is easier to enroll there than. In Biden’s liberal Delaware.
Ah, but doesn’t Pa. have a “unified executive” who may decide details on how a form is written? What’s in a checkbox? Maybe it should be upheld under the “minor questions” doctrine. Opt in, opt out, what’s the diff, as long the option remains?
No, PA does not have a unified executive.
Just wondering. Did any of the five states you registered in require proof of citizenship? I don’t remember ever needing a birth certificate when I registered.
The law has changed in our country, if you work, you get to vote, regardless if you are a citizen or not, is it bad, who knows, but these workers do donate to Social Security, which helps us senior citizens. I am ok with that, since we are going broke in our country and with low voter turnout, who cares at this point. Josh Shapiro 2028 for President, our first Jewish president!
Non citizens do NOT get to vote, except in a few far left communities.
Obviously, this decision appears problematic and it should be addressed. However, one must also note that there is virtually no demonstrable evidence of voter fraud in this country, and certainly none on a scale that would ever impact the results of a election. That’s very important to remember when having discussions such as these. There are a lot of people running around making claims to the contrary, and they should be called out as the liars they obviously are. The elections are secure. Period.
I agree no NATIONAL election has been turned by fraud. Local is a different matter, especially where the outcome was decided by a handful of votes.
Surely you have no objection to a system being as perfect as possible. I have questions about this one — and if you think 11,000 fraudulent voters don’t matter, Biden won Arizona by 10,467.
I find it odd that a driver’s license requires better ID than voting registration.
YOU GOT IT! It is the appalling lack of quality in our choices of candidates that keeps most people home, feeling ‘nothing will change’. Can you argue that things will change? Sure does not look that way. What party, I wonder aloud, will all these new registrants be filed under? Hmmmm, let me guess.
Sounds like you would support some sort of voter I.D. system, Stu. Or am I misunderstanding?
I do support voter ID. Just like check cashing, and airport, etc.
The flaw in motor/voter is that it encourages young, usually woefully uninformed, often disinterested, gullible, and immature people to vote.
Did any reader of this comment cast a well informed vote before about 35 years old?
Then you might be married, have children, been in the military, have a real job, been paying taxes, school taxes, too, listened to politicians boast about things and then accomplish nothing, searched for a competent public school that was even safe, and by 35 years old these issues, local, state and national ones, had become very important to you.
At 18 years old, 21 or even 25, what did you know about the broad range of issues we vote about? Not much, I bet. And with todays loopy education, it seems the students and young adults know less than we did.
An idea to consider is to allow voting when one gets to 35!
Yes, that idea will send some people into cardiac arrest, but consider it as a question: “Would that be a better way to elect better politicians to enact better policies for a better USA?”
I think you have something there. Sure, we trust their judgment in allowing legal “adults” to drink, drive, own guns, be cops, firemen, serve in the military, be lawyers, doctors, EMTs, have kids and even own real estate in their own name, while expecting them to pay taxes and obey the law, but we really need to discard those outmoded slogans like “a government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed” and the silly “no taxation without representation.” It makes it easier to reject this stuff when you realize that Jefferson was a callow 33 when he drafted the Declaration, and that the much-celebrated Hamilton was nothing but a gullible 21-year old in 1776. Heck, he wasn’t even thirty-five 13 years later when the constitution was ratified in 1789.
But I think you don’t go far enough–we need an upper age limit too. Talk about gullible! Fraudsters intentionally target the elderly because they are so easy to fool. We have to have special laws to protect them that we don’t need even for the under 35 set. Why exclude the folks who haven’t finished their first childhood and keep the ones starting their second? Besides, who do you think elected those politicians “who boast about things and then accomplish nothing”? They had their chance, so bye-bye. And how can they, with their often tax-free social security appreciate the current burden on taxpayers paying for it who know what’s going on? Is there anybody here who thought their grandparents were in touch with the times? They stopped thinking about issues years ago, and are voting based on ancient, out-dated information. Let’s keep “senior moments” out of the polling places.
And you know, now that I think about it, there are a lot of ways we could improve the electorate, and get better results by weeding out the gullible and clueless. Folks who believe in Q-anon or Trutherism and a whole list of other conspiracy theories have proven that they are too gullible and detached from reality to vote–and we ought to look at some of those weird religious cults too, probably. Sure, all adult citizens of the U.S. have to be treated equally, but as a wise man once wrote “some are more equal than others.”
Hey Stu, this jumped out at me:
“Foreigners have voted in Pennsylvania elections before.
The Inquirer reported the Tom Wolf administration admitted in 2019 that at least 11,000 noncitizens, who live in the state legally, but who are not entitled to vote, were registered to vote.”
So we know 11,000 were REGISTERED to vote. How many of those actually voted? Do you have any numbers? How do you know any of them voted?
There could be other reasons to register, such as obtaining an additional I.D..
A friend of mine and I registered to vote when we were 17–which we could because we’d be 18 before the date of the next election. We decided to try to use our voter registration cards to see an X-rated movie. And it worked, though with the glitch that the ticket agent, obviously a civics major, thought that the voting age was 16. We said, no, and she asked someone in back what the voting age was and he confirmed it was 18. So, she gave us our 3-D glasses and waved us in. That’s the kind of thing that teenagers did before the internet.
A quick check of acceptable employer I-9 ID docs shows that it includes voter registration (+ social security card). So, it could be just to have 2 ID’s for a place that requires more than one ID, or to maybe get through an airport faster or otherwise pose as US Citizen. None of these are good, and it should not have happened, but there is no fraudulent vote as a result.
If we can trust the Inky, some 400 voted. There is no way to know which way they voted.
MVD requires you to appear in person. Voting registration does not. Why not?
Could be a lit of things, but in this case it was incompetence by PennDot. They neglected to ask drivers license applicants if they were citizens before asking if they wanted to register to vote.