When the commonwealth of Pennsylvania was making its case for voter ID, I noticed that its stategy was to prove that all 14 of the petitioners’ carefully selected witnesses could get cards for themselves.
Why did the petitioners scour the state for stories of people who might not be able to vote? Put 14 of them in a room, and sure, you can explain how each of them could adapt to the new law. The petitioners’ point was that there might be hundreds of thousands of people with sob stories or wrong IDs, and that this state—no state—could fix their problems by the end of October.
Sure enough, the day after the commonwealth wins, 93-year-old Viviette Applewhite, star of New York Times A1 stories, has her ID card. But that’s exactly what the petitioners were worried about. Yes, the famous disenfranchised voter can find a way out, but what about the tens of thousands (to use a vew low estimate) of voters who didn’t get famous this summer?
