Wolf vetoes bill with election law changes

The governor says he considers the measure, which includes voter ID mandates, a voter suppression effort.

HARRISBURG >> Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed a Republican-crafted elections bill Wednesday, a proposal that would have mandated voter identification in all elections and made a host of other changes to election law.

Wolf said outside his Capitol offices that he considers the measure a voter suppression effort.

“I think voter suppression is absolutely the wrong thing to do,” Wolf said, adding that he would welcome a narrower bill that would give counties more time to start counting ballots and to provide more money to help them run elections.

The Republican elections bill, developed in large part in response to some GOP voters’ anger over President

Donald Trump’s reelection loss, would have changed registration deadlines from 15 days to 30 days prior to an election. Mail-in voters would have had an earlier deadline to request ballots.

“It’s really a shame for the counties and those who are looking to improve our election laws that the governor vetoes a bill that he refused to be engaged with even for one minute of his time,” said House Republican spokesman Jason Gottesman.

Asked if majority Republicans would pursue a more narrow bill to focus on elements that are not divisive along partisan lines such as the authorization to begin tabulating votes earlier, Gottesman deferred to Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, who led the effort to develop the bill that Wolf vetoed.

Grove noted public opinion polls that show wide public support for mandating voter IDs and said he would pursue it through a constitutional amendment — a process in which the governor has no formal role.

“This will take election reform directly to the people, the majority of whom support the measure, and bypass the executive branch,” Grove said in a statement.

Wolf noted that people currently need an ID if they are first-time voters or using a polling place for the first time.

“The question is, are we satisfied that that’s enough?” Wolf asked at a budget news conference Wednesday, describing the bill he vetoed as “not the voter ID that I think is reasonable. It is selectively discriminatory, and it suppresses the vote.”

Under the bill, drop boxes for mail-in ballots would have been limited to being available for only seven days before an election and monitored by designees of the major political parties.

In a veto message issued Wednesday, Wolf said the bill was “incurably riddled with unacceptable barriers to voting,” including new limits on mail-in voting, what he called an “arbitrary” signature matching process to verify voters and the drop box rules.

“This bill is ultimately not about improving access to voting or election security, but about restricting the freedom to vote,” Wolf said in the message. “If adopted, it would threaten to disrupt election administration, undermine faith in government and invite costly, time-consuming and destabilizing litigation.”