Voter ID expected to dominate Pa. county commissioners conference

Pennsylvania’s county commissioners are having their annual conference this week in Dauphin County.

The state’s voter ID law is expected to take up a bit of oxygen during the four-day program.

 

It’s mostly the big-picture issues that commissioners will be hearing about in a presentation about the implementation of voter ID — things such as the state’s effort to educate voters.

Doug Hill, executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, says for the counties, the fine-level detail will be worked out in the coming months, as commissioners and election directors train people working at the polls to administer the new photo identification requirement.

“It’s still early for the poll workers,” Hill said. “We won’t begin active training for them until late September, early October, because we want the training to be fresh, and so that is really secondary.

“What we’re working on now is what we’re going to be giving the poll workers,” he said.

Hill says counties aren’t seeing any big budgetary constraints because of the voter ID law.

But he notes most counties are printing more provisional ballots than usual.

Those are the ballots people can fill out if they show up to vote without acceptable photo ID.

The commissioners conference continues through Wednesday.