The Pennsylvania Voter ID law is on its way to the state Supreme Court, but a law professor discovered the precedent used by a lower court judge to uphold the obviously pro-Republican law. The precedent is a decision from 1869.
The law approved in Patterson enacted a complicated set of registration procedures for Philadelphia (with its large working-class and immigrant populations) and a simpler procedure for the rest of the state. . . . The opinion justifies a tougher process for Philadelphia voters because “rogues and strumpets do not nightly traverse the deserted highways of the farmer. Low inns, restaurants, sailors’ boarding-houses and houses of ill fame do not abound in rural precincts, ready to pour out on election day their pestilent hordes.”
For good measure, the court explained that to overturn the tighter procedures for Philadelphia voters “would be to place the vicious vagrant, the wandering Arabs, the Tartar hordes of our large cities, on a level with the virtuous and good man.”
Yes, we have to make sure to keep "rogues and strumpets" off our roads and away from "virtuous men."
These are the crazy people deciding whether you can vote -- and that should terrify everyone.
Correction: I removed the second blockquote in which I mistakenly attributed to the 2012 judge.