State Sen. Jake Corman (R-Centre), the chamber’s President Pro Tempore, said in a statement last week that now is a great time to re-examine the state’s voting laws – because some judges think the law around mail ballots should change.
“Today’s ruling should serve as a call to action to open up a serious conversation about the reforms necessary to make voting both accessible and secure for all Pennsylvanians,” Corman wrote.
Ray Murphy of voter advocacy group Keystone Votes said that conversation should be targeted at making the ballot box easier for voters to access, rather than scaling back any of the changes that have been made in the last few years.
“We were woefully behind every state in the nation before we implemented vote by mail,” Murphy said “Now we have it, [and] now we have a chance to catch up on some of other modernizations and conveniences other states have known for years, like same day voter registration or early voting.”
Susan Gobreski of the League of Women Voters said examining the state’s voting laws is fine, but added her group won’t support any plan to restrict mail ballot access, which some Republicans support and separately sued over last September. A number of gubernatorial candidates, like former Congressman Lou Barletta, have pledged to roll back the no-excuse provision if elected.
“If we start down the road of talking about this, I think our collective responsibility is to continue to figure out how to make sure that every eligible voter can vote,” Gobreski said.
Separately, the Republican-controlled legislature is considering a number of state constitutional amendments aimed at changing the state’s voting laws, including requiring voters to show government-issued identification each time they vote. Lawmakers would have to approve those proposals twice before sending them to voters, who would also have to approve them.