Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson has ruled that Pennsylvanians will not need a photo ID to vote in the Nov. 6 election.

Simpson's order, which could be appealed by either party back to the Supreme Court, states that Pennsylvania's tough new voter identification requirement not be enforced in the presidential election.

The state Supreme Court wanted Simpson to stop the voter ID from taking effect in this year’s election if he'd found the state hadn’t met the law’s promise of providing easy access to a photo ID, or if he believed it would prevent any registered voter from casting a ballot.

The new law called for each voter to show a particular form of photo ID, such as a driver’s license, passport, active duty military identification, nursing home ID or college student ID. The prior law required identification only for people voting in a polling place for the first time and it allowed non-photo documents such as utility bills or bank statements.

The law is among the toughest in the nation, and the Pennsylvania case has become a political lightning rod in the contest between Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for the state’s prized 20 electoral votes.

Republicans, long suspicious of ballot-box stuffing in the Democratic bastion of Philadelphia, maintain that the law will deter election fraud. But Democrats point to a blank trail of evidence of such fraud, and charge that Republicans are trying to steal the White House by making it harder for the elderly, disabled, minorities, the poor and college students to vote.

Simpson initially denied the request for a preliminary injunction in August, saying the plaintiffs did not show that “disenfranchisement was immediate or inevitable.” But after an appeal, the Supreme Court directed him to use a much tougher standard for tolerating voter disenfranchisement.