Pennsylvania Joins the Interstate Voter Registration Cross-Check Consortium

Pennsylvania has joined with 23 other States in a consortium that shares voter registration data in order to cross-check for individuals who are registered in more than one state.  Those individuals can then be purged from the voter rolls by the state in which they are not resident in order to prevent them from voting in more than one state, which is illegal.

The Keystone State is the first Northeastern State to join the consortium, called the Interstate Voter Registration Cross-Check Program, which is administered by Kansas.  Other Northeastern States should also join because many residents there also maintain winter residences in the South, especially in Florida.  These snowbirds sometimes do vote in both states, one in person and the other by absentee ballot.  A number of registered Democrats who resided in New York, for example, voted for the Gore-Lieberman slate of Presidential Electors in the disputed Election of 2000 in both the Excelsior and Sunshine States, thereby contributing to the closeness of the contest.  

I commend the Corbett Administration for its efforts in favor of ballot integrity, both in joining the consortium and in continuing the legal defense of the voter identification law approved by the Republican-led legislature and signed by Governor Tom Corbett, who is also a Republican, which I posted about several times last year.  The new law will still not go into effect in time for the General Election this year because of legal challenges by liberal Democrats.  Pennsylvania should continue to support voter identification and other common-sense anti-fraud measures that prevent the dilution of the vote of the honest electors and give more confidence to the people in the results of elections for public office.