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Greetings from Harrisburg. I'm Andy Hoover, legislative director for the American
Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania.
It is a sad day, it's a shameful day here in our commonwealth as today the State
House of Representatives passed House Bill 934,
the bill to mandate all voters at all elections to show
photo identification before they can vote.
The bill was passed by the State Senate last week. Twice the bill passed
the Senate by one vote: Back in December when it passed out of committee, it
passed six to five, and then last week the Senate was only able to gather twenty-six
votes,
just enough to get the bill through the Senate.
Because the Senate had amended it, it had to come back to the House, and today the House
passed the bill
on to the Governor.
Governor Tom Corbett has said that he will sign this bill. He leaves on Saturday for
a week-long trip out of the country, and so we expect him to sign this bill
before Friday.
After that it's on to court. Our legal team is currently mapping their strategy.
They're currently taking phone calls and e-mails
from potential plaintiffs.
The phone calls and emails from people who think they or a loved one could be
effected
have increased dramatically
into our offices and offices of our allies. Since the Senate passed the bill
last week they've come out the woodwork,
telling their stories about how they could lose the vote if this bill becomes
law. So our legal team is working on a strategy right now.
So we did everything we could. The coalition Protect Our Vote did a heck of
a job. It took nine months to get this bill out of the Senate. It passed the House
last June and finally passed the Senate
last week
and it took a long time for the Senate to get that done because they were
hearing from us. They heard our story, they heard why this bill is bad news, why
people could be disenfranchised if this becomes law. In the end we couldn't quite
carry the day as we lost twice by one vote.
So we did our work, and now we hand it off to the lawyers. Unfortunately
in the last three months the legislature has passed, the governor has signed, three
different bills. This will be the third, ultimately, that could lead to
litigation. That's a sad sad state of affairs. Let me finish this video with some
good news. Earlier this week the House State Government Committee was
scheduled to consider House Bill 1434. This is a bill to
amend the state constitution to ban not only same sex marriage, but also civil
unions and all forms of legal recognition of same-sex relationships. That bill was
ultimately pulled from the committee's agenda. The committee chairman said they
will consider it a future date and we have reason to believe that we have the
upper hand in his fight, that people here at the General Assembly do not want to
deal with yet another constitutional amendment on same-sex relationships. We
defeated this three times, and if they want to take it on we will defeat them a
fourth time. So that's the update here from Harrisburg. Thank you for your
support, I especially want to say thank you to everyone, not only to allied
organizations but everyone out there, our members, everyone across Pennsylvania
who opposed this voter ID scheme. You did great work and the circumstances were
just against us in the end. So thanks for your support, we appreciate it. We're here in
Harrisburg because freedom can't protect itself.