Patriot-News/PennLive (OP-ED): Some lawmakers are trying to sneak through legislation to advance their hardline agenda

Despite Pennsylvania voters’ overwhelming rejection of hardliner policies this past November, as the new legislative session begins, it’s clear very little has changed in Harrisburg.

Lawmakers are still using sleight-of-hand tricks to force their hardliner agenda on Pennsylvanians because they can’t pass it through regular legislation.

As they have for so many years, these lawmakers have ignored the voice of the people and are trying to circumvent the legislative process by forcing through constitutional amendments that limit voting rights, create unnecessary and expensive bureaucracies, and upset the balance of power in the state government.

Constitutional amendments must pass two consecutive legislative sessions in unchanged form before being put on a ballot. These amendments were passed during the last session through last minute maneuvers and middle-of-the-night votes without the benefit of debate and public input, and it looks like the story will be the same in this legislative session.

On the first full session day of this year, the Senate State Government Committee scheduled a vote on two constitutional amendments. One is a voter ID constitutional amendment ,and the other is an amendment to strip counties of their responsibility for auditing elections and create an entirely new and expensive bureaucracy.

The committee chair did not invite experts, advocates, or the public to provide comment or testimony, and they passed these measures out of committee within minutes, without the thoughtful and reasoned deliberation that the people of Pennsylvania deserve from their elected lawmakers.

Another proposal would remove the power of the governor – who was overwhelmingly elected by voters in November – to check the legislature when approving or disapproving regulations. This would give the historically ineffective and unpopular state legislature the power to interfere in the governor’s work administering programs related to schools, healthcare, jobs, the environment, transportation, and other areas that have a direct and immediate impact on our daily lives.

These proposals were packaged together with other hardliner policies last session. They passed in a series of under-the-radar procedural feints and middle of the night rules changes that revealed the legislature’s profound disrespect for the voice of the people.

Their continued support of these proposals shows that they have no intent to change this session. Here are details on the two issues:

Voter ID

A voter ID constitutional amendment is completely unnecessary. The legislature has always had the ability to pass legislation regulating the types of ID they can require at the ballot box. In fact, Pennsylvania already has legislation that provides for voter ID.

The fact that this amendment passed last year with no real deliberation and no expert testimony suggests that the legislature needs to take more time to investigate the real-world consequences of this proposal.

Voter identification laws have been shown to disproportionately disenfranchise Black and Latino voters and provide little additional security to elections, as there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud, whether in Pennsylvania or elsewhere in the country.

Bureau of Election Audits

Pennsylvania voters overwhelmingly trust their county elections boards over other agencies to handle the business of conducting and auditing elections. This unnecessary amendment is designed to convince voters that there is a problem where there is none, and create a new, expensive, and completely unnecessary bureaucracy. In 2020, the Senate Appropriations Committee determined that this new Bureaus of Election Audits would cost Pennsylvania taxpayers over $3 million annually.

Is this how we want our legislators to spend $3 million in taxpayer funding each year?

These lawmakers are rushing to have these amendments passed before special elections are held to fill vacancies in the legislature so they can be placed on a primary ballot where only a fraction of eligible voters will vote.

Republicans will say they’re giving the people the opportunity to have their voices heard, but if that were true, why not put these measures on the November general election ballot, where more voters will vote on it? Why not wait until all of the seats in the legislature are filled, so that we can be sure that the voice of the people is being heard?

The truth is, these hardliner Republicans don’t want to listen to the voice of the people — they want to advance their agenda through any trick, loophole, or backdoor ploy available.

Republicans will say that these amendments are required to allow the legislature to function and serve the people, but the truth is that these proposals only serve to help these legislators gain more power.

The proper legislative process requires legislators to work in a bipartisan manner, give due diligence to each bill they want to advance, listen to experts, and secure a veto-override vote if they need one. Rather than do that, they want to sneak their hardliner proposals under the radar once again. Pennsylvanians deserve so much better than this.

Khalif Ali is Executive Director of Common Cause Pennsylvania.