Residual headaches from voter ID law

Most of Pennsylvania’s voter ID law is blocked for the November election, but what’s left is creating headaches for some voters trying to get their absentee ballots.

Part of the voter ID law is sticking.

Voters who apply for absentee ballots now have to provide either their driver license numbers, or the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.

And those numbers alone have proven tough to get right.

Department of State spokesman Ron Ruman says the numbers voters provide don’t always match what county election boards have on-file.

But, he says, there’s no systemic problem resulting in non-matches.

“This is very likely the result of human error, when the number was entered the first time and put into the voter registration database,” Ruman said. “We have about 8.5 million registered voters and certainly, when those numbers are entered by humans in a few cases, there are human errors that occur.”

Ruman says he doesn’t have a comprehensive list of counties where people have reported problems in getting their absentee ballots.

He said voters who apply for them with ID numbers that don’t match their county’s system should be contacted directly by their county elections office.

Before the voter ID law passed, voters had only to provide name, address, and birth date to get their absentee ballots.