The first legal test for Pennsylvania's tough new voter identification law began Wednesday, with state lawyers calling the measure a completely rational step, while opponents attacked it as an unnecessary, unjustified and partisan scheme that will deprive countless people of their right to vote.
 
The law is the subject of a furious debate over voting rights as Pennsylvania is poised to play a key role in deciding the November 6th presidential election.
 
Republicans say if GOP candidate Mitt Romney wins Pennsylvania, then President Barack Obama, a Democrat, will lose the national election.  Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson, who presided over a packed courtroom, must decide whether to block the law from taking effect in this year's election as part of a wider challenge to its constitutionality.
 
The original rationale in Pennsylvania's Republican-controlled Legislature for the law — to prevent election fraud — will play little role in the legal case since the state's lawyers have decided not to make that argument and acknowledged that they are "not aware of any incidents of in person voter fraud."
 
A hearing on the matter continues today.