The congressman who represents much of Philadelphia said last night on MSNBC that he will continue to challenge the “conspiracy” of voter ID laws, which a Pennsylvania judge refused to block yesterday.
“We are going to win this election because we are going to make sure they can vote,” Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) said of his constituency, of which he said many need help obtaining birth certificates to get photo ID in order to vote.
“Many of my constituents migrated from South Carolina, from other Southern states. Those who are older may even be at a point at which there weren’t recorded birth certificates for them and we have to find other ways to meet the hurdle,” Fattah said, encouraging everyone to at least cast provisional ballots while trying to obtain ID.
“This is an attempt to — it’s really a conspiracy to put aside the Republican Party’s principles, in lieu of trying to win this election,” he said. “It is an embarrassment and it should be to the Republican Party. But we are not going to let it stand in the way of people exercising their franchise.”
Fattah said “if this was just a matter of people producing some identification that will be one thing,” noting that government-issued employee IDs won’t count.
“It’s a very prescriptive law; a lot of people when they show up at the polls are never going to know these details,” the congressman said. “So we have to work very, very hard and we put together an effort to be able to knock on every one of these doors and to work to make sure that people can be educated while our great lawyers continue to fight this in a Supreme Court and if necessary, in other courts.”
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