Will you be allowed to vote in November's Presidential election?

Not if you are among the 758,000 Pennsylvanians that lack an approved Identification Card to vote. It a requirement passed by the Pennsylvania legislature.The potential disenfranchisement that disproportionately burdens the poor, minorities, those in rural areas, and senior citizens is rallying a disparate coalition to oppose the law.Rallies are planned to be held in Harrisburg at the Capitol on Tuesday, July 24 at 1 p.m., and in Allentown at 7th and Hamilton Streets on Wednesday, July 25 at noon. A rally held July 19 in Philadelphia drew hundreds of Pennsylvania seniors.The American Association of Retired Persons - AARP has taken a stand against the Voter ID requirement in an article, "Can We Still Vote?" The article notes, "11 percent of adult citizens - more than 21 million people - lack a valid, government-issued photo ID, according to a study by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law."A year ago, only Georgia and Indiana required photo ID cards to vote. Since then, Kansas, Pennsylvania and Tennessee have joined the list... "The U.S. Justice Department has put laws in Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas on hold as potential violations of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and Wisconsin's law was declared unconstitutional in March 2012.""As a non-partisan organization, AARP opposes the voter ID law as a matter of fairness," said AARP Pennsylvania State Director Ivonne Gutierrez Bucher. "Thousands of older Pennsylvanians could be shut out of the voting process this November simply because they don't have the right kind of identification required by Pennsylvania's new voter ID law.""This is the first time in decades that we have seen a reversal in what has been a steady expansion of voting rights in the United States," Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center said. "There's no question that citizens over 65 will be particularly impacted. The older you get, the more likely you won't have an ID."In discussing the Texas Voter ID law, US Attorney General Eric Holder said that voter ID laws are "poll taxes." "We will not allow political pretexts to disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious right," Holder said. The twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution reads, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote... shall not be denied... by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax."A trial on Texas' Voter ID law is now in the hands of a three judge panel. According to National Public Radio, "all three raised concerns about the data Texas presented in its case."The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania issued the following statement, "The ACLU believes the state's new voter ID statute is an unconstitutional law that will disenfranchise tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians. The law will disproportionately affect older citizens, people with disabilities, racial minorities, and lower-income people. The ACLU of Pennsylvania and several other groups filed a lawsuit on May 1, 2012, to challenge the law."The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, the Advancement Project, the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, and the Washington, DC law firm of Arnold & Porter LLP filed a lawsuit on behalf of 10 Pennsylvania voters and three prominent advocacy organizations, alleging that the state's voter photo ID law violates the Pennsylvania Constitution by depriving citizens of their right to vote. A trial has been scheduled for July 25 at the Judicial Center in Harrisburg.Pennsylvania's Voter ID law requires a potential voter to produce a driver's license or a government-approved photo ID with an expiration date. There have been various reports and confusion abounds about whether expired driver's licenses, student IDs, municipal IDs, and IDs issued by senior living facilities will be accepted.The Voter ID law penalizes those without driver's licenses, requiring them to obtain applications, provide documentation, pay fees to obtain raised seal birth certificates, and travel to and wait at driver's license centers. Not only does its series of procedures require research, take personal time, and cost money, but it can take several weeks to obtain the proper documentation-even months for people who were born out of state or married, widowed and divorced women. Women who have changed their last names upon marrying, must provide suitable documentation to indicate the change from that on their birth certificate. This paper trail grows for women who have remarried, those who have been adopted, and those who chosen to change their name."For many older Pennsylvanians, the burden of obtaining the required documentation in terms of dollars, time and difficulty will make exercising their franchise so difficult and costly as to effectively deny them the right to vote," said Karen Buck, Executive Director of the Philadelphia-based Senior Law Center.The bottom line is-many people who do not already have have driver's licenses will not jump through the hoops to obtain the Voter ID cards, which will expire and have to be renewed periodically, and not bother to vote.