DENVER, Colorado — During a panel on voter ID laws, the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky declared at the Colorado Conservative Political Action Conference that voters who are facing disenfranchisement should really be thankful for new, discriminatory voter ID laws being introduced by conservatives across the country:

VON SPAKOVSKY: Getting the very few people who don’t have an ID an ID is very easy. And in fact, we should be happy that people have to get an id like that. Why? Because you cannot function in today’s society without an id. And anyone who doesn’t have one, we’re doing them a favor. We are helping them to get identification they will then need to do all kinds of things. Like if they want to apply for public systems or welfare, you need an ID. You want to do all kinds of other things, you need an ID.

Watch it:

Von Spakovsky’s condescending and offensive remarks about people on welfare aside, his comments on the number of people without government-issued identification are false. The non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University has published an exhaustive study which shows that 11 percent of all eligible voters nationally don’t have a government-issued photo id. That figure climbs dramatically for college students, seniors, minorities and low-income voters.

Von Spakovsky has a long history of voter suppression dating back to his time as a George W. Bush appointee to the Federal Election Commission, where, according to the Washington Post, he used “every opportunity he had over four years in the Justice Department to make it difficult for voters — poor, minority and Democratic — to go to the polls.”

Now from his perch at the far-right Heritage Foundation, he and fellow conservatives have spent the last few years promoting new voter ID laws in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in an attempt to solve the country’s non-existent voter fraud problem. Since 2000, there has been about one case of voter impersonation per every 15 million votes cast, according to a report from ProPublica. That’s compared to an estimated 21 million eligible voters who don’t have a state-issued ID.

Last week, a Pennsylvania court mostly suspended that state’s voter ID law for the upcoming election. Under the court’s order, voters will still be asked for ID at the polls, but they will still be able to cast a regular ballot — not a provisional ballot — if they are unable to show it.

Yet, despite this court order, at least five Pennsylvania county websites still falsely inform voters that they need to show ID in order to cast a regular ballot:

• Butler County: Butler County’s website still tells voters that “[s]tarting with the November 2012 general election, Pennsylvania requires voters to show an acceptable photo identification to vote at the polls.”
• Bucks County: Bucks County’s website falsely claims that “[i]f you do not have a photo ID or are indigent and unable to obtain one without payment of a fee, you may cast a provisional ballot, and will have six days to provide your photo ID and/or an affirmation to your county elections office to have your ballot count.”
• Perry County: Perry County echoes Bucks County’s false statement that voters without IDs will only be able to cast provisional ballots.
• Luzerne County: Luzerne County’s website is similarly incorrect, also falsely claiming that “ALL voters will be required to show a photo ID before voting at a polling place.”
• Delaware County: Delaware County’s website falsely claims that “Pennsylvania law now requires voters to show approved photo ID to vote at the polls.”

In addition to these five county websites, at least one state university — West Chester University — falsely informs its students that they “MUST present one of the following forms of PHOTO ID when [they] go to their poll place to vote in the General Election this November 6, 2012.”

To be fair, it is likely that these websites remain live simply because county or university officials have not yet updated their sites after the court’s decision last week. Nevertheless, they are a possible sign that elections officials may not fully understand that the requirement that voters present ID at the polls before they can cast a regular ballot is not in effect in November. Last month, elections officials in New Hampshire falsely told some primary voters that ID was required, even though the law did not yet require ID to be shown. The websites listed above indicate a similar error is taking place in Pennsylvania, potentially discouraging many voters from casting a ballot they are lawfully entitled to cast.

Last month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously rejected a lower court judge’s decision allowing that state’s voter ID law to move forward. The high court ordered the trial judge to reexamine the case to ensure “liberal access” the ID voters need to vote, and to ensure that voter disenfranchisement will not result from the voter ID law — which the state’s Republican House Majority Leader said was enacted to “allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”

This morning, the lower court judge responded to the state supreme court’s order, and he blocked some — but not all — of the state’s voter suppression law. The punchline of his opinion is that voters will still be asked to present IDs at the polls, but voters without IDs will be allowed to cast ballots of some kind. In November, the opinion indicates that voters will be allowed to cast regular ballots. After November, assuming the judge’s order remains in effect, they may have to cast provisional ballots, but the provision of the voter ID law that effectively prevents these provisional ballots from being counted will not take effect.

I reject the underlying assertion that the offending activity is the request to produce photo ID; instead, I conclude that the salient offending conduct is voter disenfranchisement. As a result, I will not restrain election officials from asking for photo ID at the polls; rather, I will enjoin enforcement of those parts of Act 18 which directly result in disenfranchisement. . . .

As to voter disenfranchisement, I carefully reviewed the language of the Election Code after amendment by Act 18. The language of disenfranchisement is found in the part of the Election Code dealing with provisional ballots: “A provisional ballot shall not be counted if ….” This language pre-existed Act 18, but Act 18 added two new circumstances when a provisional vote will not be counted. Both of these new circumstances relate to electors who are unable to produce proof of identification. . . . Thus, disenfranchisement expressly occurs during the provisional ballot part of the in-person voting process, which is addressed in subsections (a.2) and (a.4) of Section 1210. It is this part of the process which must be enjoined to prevent disenfranchisement.

The two provisions that the judge enjoined requires a voter who casts a provision ballot to “appear before the county board of elections” within six days after the election to prove their identity — normally by showing an ID. These provisions are no longer in effect, meaning that individuals who vote without IDs can have their provisional ballots cast without having to jump through even more hoops after the election.

This is an imperfect solution. It creates two different voting processes for different voters, and there are still opportunities for a provisional ballot to be tossed if the voter does not properly fill out the paperwork associated with a provisional ballot or even the ballot is not sealed using a special process involving two envelopes. Worse, the creation of a unique process for voters without IDs may discourage lawful voters from casting their ballot or lead to poll workers mistakenly turning away voters without IDs. Nevertheless, the judge’s decision is an improvement over the status quo. For at least the upcoming election, voters without IDs will have a path to avoid disenfranchisement.

Earlier this week, every single sitting Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice rejected a lower court decision allowing that state’s voter ID law to take effect. Four justices joined a majority opinion requiring the lower court judge to look at the case again due to concerns that voters were unable to obtain the IDs they were supposed to have easy access to as a matter of law, and two more justices joined a dissent arguing that the law should simply be suspended right away. Three of the justices in the majority were Republicans.

Nevertheless, a Tea Party group is now threatening to exact revenge upon the state supreme court for refusing to uphold a law that prevents many low-income, student and minority voters from casting a ballot:

A Philadelphia-area tea party group says it will work to defeat two state Supreme Court justices next year if the state’s new voter identification law isn’t in effect for the Nov. 6 election.

The Independence Hall Tea Party on Thursday also criticized the court’s decision to send a legal challenge to the law back for a lower court review.

It called the decision “a cowardly move” to “punt the ball.”

Chief Justice Ronald Castille, a Republican, and Justice Max Baer, a Democrat, are each finishing a 10-year term in January 2014.

These kinds of campaigns of vengeance against justices who place the law ahead of conservative’s policy preferences are increasingly common. Two years ago, a Florida Tea Party group launched a similar revenge campaign after the Florida Supreme Court kept an unconstitutional ballot initiative attempting to nullify the Affordable Care Act off the state ballot. Similarly, anti-gay groups poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a successful effort to remove three Iowa supreme court justices because they had the audacity to recognize that the state’s constitution does not permit discrimination against gay couples.

As a recent Center for American Progress report explains, corporate interest groups have also spent big money to stack state judiciaries with friendly judges and justices. In one of the most egregious cases, a West Virginia coal baron spent $3 million to buy a seat on the state supreme court for a justice who later went on to strike down a $50 million verdict against his company, although the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the bought-and-paid-for justice should have recused himself.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R), apparently not satisfied with restricting state-wide early voting hours, has now admitted he wants to reduce the number of valid IDs voters can show at the polls. A leaked audio recording of a Tea Party event in Cincinnati caught the Secretary reassuring Tea Party members that the Legislature plans to push strict voter ID requirements that he once opposed:

I was listening to a show one night about these onerous photo ID rules in Ohio. Well, the photo ID law in Ohio is not onerous. As a matter of fact, I suspect the GA [General Assembly] will take up a more strict version of what we have after this election process.

Husted went on to say “we need to streamline” the number of currently eligible voter IDs, and he is “quite confident” the Legislature would take the issue up after the election:

Husted seems to have changed his mind since last year, when he declared, “I would rather have no bill than one with a rigid photo identification provision that does little to protect against fraud and excludes legally registered voters’ ballots from counting.” Ohio’s voter ID bill failed in the Senate, partly due to Husted’s public break with his party.

More recently, Husted’s office has been flooded with criticism over his directive limiting voting hours in spite of requests from multiple election boards to stay open on weekends. He’s also in hot water with a federal judge after he resisted a court order to restore voting hours on the last weekend before Election Day — although Husted ultimately backed down after the judge ordered him to appear in court.