Pennsylvania’s new voter ID requirement, which was signed into law in March, has evoked a number of responses — pro and con — in the Butler Eagle’s letters to the editor column.

The letters column is a correct forum for such a debate.

But those on either side of the issue had to have been taken aback on Tuesday when they learned that the state’s top elections official — four months after the measure became law — still was unfamiliar with some of its details.

During the fifth day of testimony regarding a lawsuit seeking to delay the law’s implementation, Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele, in response to a question about ID standards for elderly people in assisted living, said, “I don’t know what the law says.”

She was asked to provide particulars of one form of identification acceptable for voting.

Her response might not have been so eye-opening if she were just another state official with few direct ties to the law.

Instead, in her role as the commonwealth’s top election official, Aichele has served as the Corbett administration’s face in explaining the law to the press and the public.

Her inability to answer some of the questions asked at the court session raises the question of whether Aichele should be hiding her face in shame, rather than trying to bolster the administration’s prospects in the lawsuit.

As reported by a Pittsburgh newspaper, Aichele also gave the impression of being unreliable regarding the correctness of an analysis that indicated 99 percent of adults have photo identification.

Although she defended the analysis’ finding, when she was pressed further about the accuracy, she answered, “We don’t know.”

Unfortunately, Aichele isn’t the only state official who, at one time or another, has not known important details about an issue with which he or she was dealing and should have been vastly familiar.

Many lawmakers, if pressed about details at the time they are casting votes on an important measure, would end up as embarrassed as Aichele must have been during her testimony and subsequent questioning about the voter ID law’s provisions.

Aichele is paid to know; so are lawmakers.

The new law’s opponents argue that, if it is implemented, many eligible voters who show up at the polls without photo IDs would be disenfranchised.

One Eagle letter writer said “one’s vote is valuable, and it’s worth showing identification to make sure our votes are counted fairly.”

However, another letter writer characterized the new law as a “thinly veiled return to early 1960s, Mississippi delta, backwoods skulduggery.”

Judging from their letters, they seem to have researched the issue more than in a cursory way. Aichele should have done likewise.