In the last few weeks, the Pennsylvania General Assembly turned its attention to the question of reforming our elections.

In recent years, partisan gridlock has prevented the legislature from reaching consensus to pass fixes to our election laws that non-partisan experts and election administrators have been calling for.  And they should resist efforts to complicate our elections and inconvenience voters with a poorly conceived voter ID proposal.
 

Rather than repeat past mistakes, this time the legislature has a chance to pass real voting reforms – and we can’t miss the opportunity.

House Bill 1396 is a pro-voter proposal that would enact reforms Pennsylvanians and voting rights groups have called for, and it passed the House on May 13th. Named the Voting Rights Protection Act, this bill would implement a long list of fixes to our elections. It would bring consistency to Pennsylvania’s vote-by-mail rules, providing secure drop boxes and ensuring voters are not disenfranchised for making simple mistakes. Under current law, whether your county provides ballot drop-boxes or the opportunity to fix a mistake with your mail ballot-say, a missing signature on the return envelope — depends entirely on the policies enacted by each county’s Board of Elections. That’s unfair and unnecessarily complicated. Every voter, in every county, deserves every opportunity to make sure their vote counts. 

This legislation would also bring true in-person early voting to every county. Twenty-five states and DC have some amount of early in-person voting already; this includes conservative states like Texas, Florida and North Carolina, as well as every single one of Pennsylvania’s neighboring states. Voting in Pennsylvania should be at least as convenient and accessible as in West Virginia and New Jersey. It’s time to make this commonsense reform and for Pennsylvania to run a modern election, like our peer states. And perhaps most importantly, this bill would end the days when valid ballots are thrown out over a missing envelope date, a pointless requirement that disenfranchised thousands of Pennsylvanians in last year’s election.  

The Voting Rights Protection Act passed the House this week and should be given a chance in the Senate. If the bill can be improved, Senators should follow the legislative process, incorporating feedback from experts, advocates and election administrators. But these reforms are too important, and necessary, to ignore.

At the same time, a proposal on Voter ID, House Bill 771 is struggling. Although it was originally anticipated to receive a vote at the same time as the Voting Rights Protection Act, it was not voted on. According to media reports, it is struggling to receive majority support as both Republican and Democratic representatives do not support the bill.

This bill is the latest in a long line of voter ID proposals in Pennsylvania. The last time the legislature passed such a bill, it was struck down in court as an unconstitutional infringement on the right to vote. Now, legislators are advancing this new voting restriction, claiming that it would not disenfranchise anyone. Although it’s true that this bill is less restrictive than past proposals, in reality this bill would do what voter ID proposals have always done: disenfranchise voters.  

To understand why, consider how this legislation would work in practice. 

Under current law, all Pennsylvania voters have their identities checked before they vote. In fact, they are checked twice: first when voters register, and again when voters show their IDs the first time they vote in a new polling place. This legislation would require additional, redundant ID checks, every time you vote. But these new rules come with implementation challenges that the bill’s authors do not foresee, let alone address. Checks for every voter would slow down polling place operations and delay voting for everyone. 

Recent elections show that long lines at the polls are a serious issue. In the 2024 election, a significant number of Pennsylvania voters waited in long lines. This bill would only make those lines longer.

What if a voter has the right documents, sees the line and asks, “is this worth the hassle?” That voter would be disenfranchised. But longer wait times would not be the only detrimental effect of this bill. Troublingly, voter ID laws have been shown to deter voters from even attempting to vote in the first place. 

This chilling effect was shown in a University of Wisconsin-Madison study, which found that thousands of non-voting registrants were deterred from voting in Wisconsin by that state’s law, even if they had qualifying ID.

HB 771 appears not to have the support to pass the legislature, is poorly conceived and potentially unconstitutional. But legislators should not allow disagreement about voter ID to prevent them from advancing positive voting reforms that benefit voters in every corner of our Commonwealth.

Pennsylvanians are demanding reforms that help them vote. It’s time for the General Assembly to listen. The Senate needs to give House Bill 1396 a real shot.  

Common Cause Pennsylvania is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to upholding the core values of American democracy. We work to create open, honest, and accountable government that serves the public interest; promote equal rights, opportunity, and representation for all; and empower all people to make their voices heard in the political process.