welcome back to hardball. with just six months to go before the election, republican lawmakers are jockeying to rewrite voter identification laws in ways that would undeniably suppress voter turnout among city dwellers, minorities and the elderly. in other words voters that usual support democrats. big surprise there. republicans say it s all to prevent voter fraud, whatever that is, these days. democrats say it s a solution in search of a problem. and it will have big consequences come november. well, u.s. congressman bob ray is a democrat from pennsylvania, also the chairman of the democratic city committee in philadelphia, the organization there, and michael waldman is president of the brennan center in new york university of law. so let s start with the real guide. congressman bob brady, you ve got a city organization you ve got to get into the streets. what happens when these older people who live in row houses, don t own cars, don t have driver s licenses, want to vote democrat
they say why risk it? there s an upside to it, as well, if you do come out publicly in support of same sex marriage. joe, it s great to have you on. sam, it s great to have you on. i love this topic and i know you do, too, joe. it s a very important cause but also great to watch politics in action. as we cover this story, the president s thinking. right? he s evolving. he ll be evolving all night long, probably, the easiest phrase. it will be so interesting to see where he ends up. at least the democrats believe in evolution. how s that for that one? coming up the forum, some republicans don t believe in evolution and don t involve themselves. we ve got the kickoff of the obama campaign coming up next. the themes he s going to run on. you re watching hardball.
replaced al awlaki as the leader of al qaeda in the arabian peninsula. so these may well be connected, that the intelligence developed with this thwarted plot did lead to a successful drone attack in yemen. we don t know, we don t have a second source on that. i m just suggesting that it has been it has been told to me that these are connected. chris? andrea, step back from the what we re doing now. the police reporting on this, the news breaking part. give us the context. maybe it needs to be explained one more time. what s al qaeda trying to accomplish in the saudi peninsula? why is it targeting us? why is it using people from yemen? what is it trying to disrupt geopolitically with these attempted attacks? well, as you know, al qaeda in the arabian peninsula now mainly located in yemen, is considered the greatest threat against the united states. these are the terrorists, first awlaki and his successors who have been trying repeatedly to
everybody as best we can for those that don t have a driver s license or don t have a voter a photo i.d. we re trying to do this as best as possible. plus we re in court. we re going to court next we are with the naacp and aclu. the most restrictive law in the united states we re trying to appeal it. michael, this is really, i think, brutal. what they are saying to people is you can show up as you ve done all your light. suppose you voted in every primary for 25, 30 years. suppose you vote in every general election. you walk around the corner. go where you ve always voted and the person says, where is your photo i.d.? the person says, what would that be? i didn t go to college. i don t have a car or a driver s license. you mean i can t vote? you can have a provisional ballot. how the heck is anyone going to do that who doesn t even how do you get to city hall? take a subway. get down there with some money. you have to know how to do it. your probably intimidated to do it in the f
suppression to me. it is quite remarkable at a time we ought to be expanding democracy and upholding everybody s right to vote, instead these very carefully crafted laws in pennsylvania and in other places, they really make it harder for seniors for poor people to vote are being passed. and you see situations in a lot of places where you have to go to the dmv office to get the paperwork but you basically have to have a car to go the distance to get to the dmv office. these kind of laws we don t know how big an impact they will have. but we do know that about 11% of people who are eligible to vote in the country don t have a driver s license. so we can certainly expect it will make it harder if nothing else, for a lot of people to vote. and it isn t needed to protect the integrity of our elections. let me go to congressman brady on the political impact statement in pennsylvania. most poll shows democrats ahead with the president in pennsylvania by somewhere around ten points right n