New Castle News
May 10, 2008 01:35 am
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By John K. Manna
jmanna@ncnewsonline.com
Sen. Hillary Clinton did well among Catholic voters in Indiana on Tuesday.
But she could have done better. However, it wasn’t through any fault of her own.
About a dozen nuns in South Bend were turned away from a polling place because they lacked identification bearing a photograph. If I had been on the election board at that precinct, I would have let them vote anyway for fear that I’d be struck immediately by lightning.
Worse yet, if nothing happened immediately, I’d be wondering when lightning would strike or when the earth would open up and suck me in. This feeling stems from my childhood when, in the era before Vatican II, nuns wore habits and there was no mistaking who was in charge.
On Tuesday, though, it wasn’t a lay person who turned the nuns away, but a fellow member of the same convent. So, my guess is she has nothing to worry about.
The nun, Sister Julie McGuire, said her fellow members were told earlier that they needed photo identification. However, the nuns, who are in their 80s or 90s, went to the precinct anyway. Sister McGuire noted that some of the nuns are in wheelchairs or on walkers and don’t have driver’s licenses.
What also needs to be noted — and this is a key point — is that these nuns have been voting their entire adult lives. But Indiana law, which was upheld by the Supreme Court just a week earlier, requires every voter to produce a state or federal photo identification card.
The court said there was little evidence that the law was unduly burdensome for voters. Well, I guess we found out that the court was wrong and that it was burdensome to some voters.
A few years ago, when Pennsylvania was considering some a tougher voting law, I wrote that people would have to turn away their relatives if they didn’t have identification.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of State’s Web site, first-time voters have to produce some form of identification.
The intent of these laws is to prevent voter fraud. And we’re all opposed to voter fraud, aren’t we? But I believe it’s a little bit of a stretch to imagine that someone would be posing as a 98-year-old nun.
The irony is that people can vote by absentee ballot without having to produce any identification. Elections offices in Pennsylvania and even in Indiana simply trust that people given the absentee ballots are completing them honestly.
Here’s hoping that Pennsylvania doesn’t go the way of Indiana and institute such a restrictive law. But if it does, my warning to poll workers is that they make sure the people they may be turning away aren’t nuns.
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