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Service Workers' Union Pitches In With Pa. Voter ID Assistance

By John Ostapkovich

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Members of SEIU, the Service Employees International Union -- which is dead set against Pennsylvania's new voter ID law (see related stories) -- today tried to help people comply with it.

Union members in purple t-shirts and ID aides in yellow prowled the sidewalk outside the Penndot licensing center, at 8th and Arch Streets in center city.

"You got your ID?" one person involved in the campaign asked passersby.

Ali Kronley, with SEIU Health Care PA (in yellow shirt in photo), says voters can be easily confused by the new law.

"We want to make sure that those folks can get the ID but, more importantly, we really want to call out this ID as an attack on people's fundamental right to vote," she said.

Faced with that kind of outcry, the state has established a new, less stringent, voter-only ID card, available through Penndot.

Although obtaining it was still not always easy, as Cobra Talley learned.

"This is my second time here, so I just finally got up and I'm finally going to get it today," he said.

Talley says he'd been voting for years, using his voter registration and Social Security cards as ID.

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