Voting rights rally at Williams’ office

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Event coordinator Cathy Spahr welcomes people to the rally at state Rep. Craig Williams’ office Monday, Martin Luther King Day.

[SEE UPDATE BELOW]

A group of about 30 people took part in a rally at the field office of state Rep. Craig Williams on Monday. According to organizer Cathy Spahr, the rally was to draw attention to state-sponsored redistricting maps. But the rally also turned into a drive to get more people registered to vote and, what participants call, voter suppression.

“We’re advocating for overall voting rights,” Spahr said. “Craig Williams came out publicly saying he’s opposed to the Grove Bill, HB2207. However, we want more.”

(The Grove Bill calls for a Legislative Reapportionment Commission. It’s named after state Rep. Seth Grove, a Republican from York County.)

Spahr said Williams voted in favor of House drawn, “gerrymandered” congressional maps and supported HB1300. She said that the bill limits voting rights because it would require a formal photo identification to vote. Spahr said she believes such a requirement interferes with a person’s right to vote.

“There are a lot of people who have limited access to obtain their voter ID,” she said, adding that the voters’ registration card should be sufficient without the need to get a photo ID as well.

Williams didn’t attend the rally held on the steps of his Concord Township office. The office was closed for the Martin Luther King Day holiday.

One politician who did attend was Delaware County Councilwoman Christine Reuther.

“I’m here to speak about democratic values, but not in the party sense,” Reuther said, “but not in a partisan way. I want to talk about what the county’s goal is.”

She said one of county council’s responsibilities is to ensure “fair and accessible elections are held and that only those people who are legally registered to vote in Pennsylvania vote, that nobody votes more than once, that every legally cast vote is counted.”

Yet, Reuther went further by invoking King, saying one of his major commitments was making voting accessible and “doing away with unconstitutional barriers.”

She said one of the reasons she ran for the council was to “make sure that our elections worked.” Reuther said she knew how difficult it could be to even get on the ballot in Delaware County. She and other Democrats on the council were advocates for mail-in drop boxes and a pop-up voters’ center in Chester, but Williams spoke in opposition to those things.

“Representative Williams stood on the floor of the Pennsylvania House and complained about Delaware County having a pop-up voting center in Chester because it made it easier for, you know, certain kinds of people to vote. And he complained about the drop boxes because he represents all those people who have cars and can find an easy way to get to a place, like a county seat where they know they can drop off their ballots. He doesn’t represent people who don’t have a car.”

Williams was not immediately available for comment and hadn’t returned a phone call by press time.

UPDATE:

Later, in a telephone interview, Williams said his comments on the House floor that Reuther referred to were in response to an amendment proposed by state Rep. Joanna E. McClinton to HB1800. That amendment, he said, would have allowed pop-up voting precincts anywhere and anytime in the county, but also allow them to close down at any time with “virtually no notice.”

“My objection was to having pop-up precincts anywhere in the county with no minority or majority inspectors. They didn’t call it a precinct. They called it a pop-up voting center so that it has the appearance of being a county-run operation, but it really is a voting precinct that ought to be treated like a precinct.

“I’m in favor of drop boxes but, right now, drop boxes are not in Pennsylvania law. And my first priority is to have law. I would like to codify drop boxes. I also opposed my party’s limitation on the number of drop boxes, especially in Delaware County where we have half a million people,” he said.

END UPDATE

Also speaking was Kadida Kenner of the New Pennsylvania Project, who focused on voter registration and fair redistricting.

“There’s no celebration without legislation,” she said in reference to MLK Day. “We’re here today to honor the legacy of the late Dr. King. That means to stand in front of our state representatives’ office to let them know that we are watching our elected officials. We want to make sure that they are moving legislation that is here to help the people and not to get in the way of our voting rights, and not to put in additional barriers in our way,” Kenner said.

About Rich Schwartzman

Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.

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