Who needs Legislature?
The Republican legislative majorities at the state Capitol have abandoned even the pretense of legislating. Now, their strategy is to conduct an end run around Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf by governing by constitutional amendment. Wednesday, the Senate approved an amendment along party lines that would enshrine in the constitution the need for every Pennsylvanian to present a state-approved ID at every polling place every time they vote. GOP leaders have concluded that they would have a better chance to enact the vote-suppression measure by amendment  eventually requiring voter approval, but probably in a low-turnout primary election  rather than by legislation, since Wolf correctly has vowed to veto vote-suppression laws. By turning to amendments rather than legislation, the Republican leaders have raised the question of why the state even needs a legislature if it is not going to govern through a legislative process  much less the 253-member, $400 million-a-year behemoth that does, well, not much. Beyond failing to legislate, the turn toward governing by amendment is supremely cynical. In 2019, lawmakers actually engaged in a democratic legislative process, reaching a compromise that established wide-scale mail-in balloting and other reforms to ease voting access. Republicans insisted on, and Democrats agreed to, eliminating straight-ticket voting in exchange for otherwise expanded access. That measure played a major role in the Republicans success in statewide down-ballot races in the 2020 general election. Now, the Republicans want to move for draconian identification measures that, in effect, would limit the mail-in balloting to which they previously had agreed, while retaining the ban on party-line voting. We should not go down the path of amending our constitution every time we may disagree on a particular issue of policy, and certainly theres disagreement on this particular issue, said Democratic Sen. Steve Santarsiero of Bucks County. He is correct. The constitutions purpose is to protect Pennsylvanians rights and establish the governments structure. Legislators should not lard it with matters that should be matters of regular legislation. Doing so only provides yet another incentive, like the gerrymandering under which they select their own like-minded voters, for lawmakers to reject compromise. Legislative leaders should not go down this path, which is just another aspect of lousy governance in Pennsylvania.