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An appeal is likely, but with two pending appeals in other state jurisdictions and the State Supreme Court saying they did not intend to intervene until they were settled, the law will probably be on hold until after the November elections:
A Dane County judge on Tuesday permanently barred enforcement of the photo identification requirements of Wisconsin's voter ID law, saying that it imposes too great a burden on voters in Wisconsin than the state constitution allows.
Circuit Judge David Flanagan ruled that Wisconsin Act 23, the voter ID law, "tells more than 300,000 Wisconsin voters who do not now have an acceptable form of photo identification that they cannot vote unless they first obtain a photo ID card."
That requirement, he wrote, imposes a "substantial burden" upon a significant proportion of state residents who are registered or eligible to vote because of the cost and difficulty of obtaining documents needed to apply for a state photo ID. That creates a "substantial impairment" to the right to vote guaranteed by the Wisconsin Constitution, he wrote.
"I think that the judge recognized the severe flaw in Wisconsin's photo ID law in that it imposes an unreasonable burden on a very large number of people," said Richard Saks, lawyer for the Milwaukee Branch of the NAACP and Voces de la Frontera, which sued to the state to stop the Republican-authored law.
Meanwhile, in my home state of Pennsyltucky, similar lawsuits are also pending:
HARRISBURG — No matter what people say about Pennsylvania's new photo ID requirement for voting, the debate is clearly filling the summertime void in this high-stakes election year.
Four months before the new mandate takes effect on Election Day, Nov. 6, voting rights advocates were sounding the alarm and demanding that Republican Gov. Tom Corbett and the Legislature postpone it so that the state's 8.2 million voters can be more thoroughly educated about the change.
At least two lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the law are pending in state Commonwealth Court — one filed by a legal team that includes the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, the other by the Allegheny County Board of Elections. A trial on the ACLU suit is scheduled to start July 25.
Voters themselves, meanwhile, apparently love the statute, one of the nation's most stringent voter ID laws. A Quinnipiac University poll released in June showed voters supported the law by a 2-1 margin.
Did I mention that a lot of the people in PA watch Fox News?
