Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R) said that the voter ID law passed by the legislature would help deliver the state for Mitt Romney in November.
“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation - abortion facility regulations - in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done,” Turzai said at this weekend’s Republican State Committee meeting , according to PoliticsPA.com.
A spokesman for Turzai confirmed the accuracy of the quote for TPM but argued that people were reading too much into it.
“The fact is that while Pennsylvania Democrats don’t like it to be talked about, there is election fraud,” Turzai spokesman Stephen Miskin told TPM. “Protecting the integrity of an individual vote is the purpose of any election reform.
So was Turzai suggesting that Democrats had won previous elections through voter fraud?
“Rep. Turzai was speaking at a partisan, political event, a Republican state committee,” Miskin said. “He was simply referencing that for the first time in a long while, the Republican presidential candidate will be on a more even keel thanks to voter ID. The reference is nothing more than that to a statewide Republican crowd.”
Unprompted, Miskin brought up a 2008 event in which members of the New Black Panther Party stood outside a polling place in Philadelphia. TPM asked what that had to do with voter ID.
“It goes to the whole thing! You’ve got various instances of voter fraud, voter intimidation, the idea is to protect the integrity of the vote,” Miskin said. “We’re saying we think it will be a more fair election, you’re putting the word Democrat in there.”
“It will be more fair, period,” Miskin said.
Video of the brief section of Turzai’s remark was posted on-line by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.
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